Thomas F. Gieryn's Books

Cultural Boundaries of Science

Credibility on the Line

By: Thomas F. Gieryn

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Cultural Boundaries of Science

Credibility on the Line

By: Thomas F. Gieryn

Why is science so credible? Usual answers center on scientists' objective methods or their powerful instruments. In his new book, Thomas Gieryn argues that a better explanation for the cultural authority of science lies downstream, when scientific claims leave laboratories and enter courtrooms, boardrooms, and living rooms. On such occasions, we use "maps" to decide who to believe—cultural maps demarcating "science" from pseudoscience, ideology, faith, or nonsense. Gieryn looks at episodes of boundary-work: Was phrenology good science? How about cold fusion? Is social science really scientific? Is organic farming? After centuries of disputes like these, Gieryn finds no stable criteria that absolutely distinguish science from non-science. Science remains a pliable cultural space, flexibly reshaped to claim credibility for some beliefs while denying it to others. In a timely epilogue, Gieryn finds this same controversy at the heart of the raging "science wars.

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Page Count

413

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022682442X

ISBN 13

9780226824420

Truth-Spots

How Places Make People Believe

By: Thomas F. Gieryn

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Truth-Spots

How Places Make People Believe

By: Thomas F. Gieryn

We may not realize it, but truth and place are inextricably linked. For ancient Greeks, temples and statues clustered on the side of Mount Parnassus affirmed their belief that predictions from the oracle at Delphi were accurate. The trust we have in Thoreau’s wisdom depends in part on how skillfully he made Walden Pond into a perfect place for discerning timeless truths about the universe. Courthouses and laboratories are designed and built to exacting specifications so that their architectural conditions legitimate the rendering of justice and discovery of natural fact. The on-site commemoration of the struggle for civil rights—Seneca, Selma, and Stonewall—reminds people of slow but significant political progress and of unfinished business. What do all these places have in common? Thomas F. Gieryn calls these locations “truth-spots,” places that lend credibility to beliefs and claims about natural and social reality, about the past and future, and about identity and the transcendent. In Truth-Spots, Gieryn gives readers an elegant, rigorous rendering of the provenance of ideas, uncovering the geographic location where they are found or made, a spot built up with material stuff and endowed with cultural meaning and value. These kinds of places—including botanical gardens, naturalists’ field-sites, Henry Ford’s open-air historical museum, and churches and chapels along the pilgrimage way to Santiago de Compostela in Spain—would seem at first to have little in common. But each is a truth-spot, a place that makes people believe. Truth may well be the daughter of time, Gieryn argues, but it is also the son of place.

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Page Count

215

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022656200X

ISBN 13

9780226562001

The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine

Writing Recent Science

By: Ronald E. Doel,Thomas Söderqvist

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The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine

Writing Recent Science

By: Ronald E. Doel,Thomas Söderqvist

As historians of science increasingly turn to work on recent (post 1945) science, the historiographical and methodological problems associated with the history of contemporary science are debated with growing frequency and urgency. Bringing together authorities on the history, historiography and methodology of recent and contemporary science, this book reviews the problems facing historians of technology, contemporary science and medicine, and explores new ways forward. With contributions from key researchers in the field, the text covers topics that will be of ever increasing interest to historians of post-war science, including the difficulties of accessing and using secret archival material, the interactions between archivists, historians and scientists, and the politics of evidence and historical accounts.

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Page Count

666

Publisher

Routledge

Published Date

ISBN 10

1134482965

ISBN 13

9781134482962

Truth-Spots

How Places Make People Believe

By: Thomas F. Gieryn

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Truth-Spots

How Places Make People Believe

By: Thomas F. Gieryn

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215

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University of Chicago Press

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ISBN 10

022656200X

ISBN 13

9780226562001

Cultural Boundaries of Science

Credibility on the Line

By: Thomas F. Gieryn

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Cultural Boundaries of Science

Credibility on the Line

By: Thomas F. Gieryn

This text argues that an explanation for the cultural authority of science lies where scientific claims leave laboratories and enter boardrooms and living rooms. Here, one uses "maps" to decide who to believe - cultural maps demarcating "science" from pseudoscience, ideology, faith, or nonsense.

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Page Count

422

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226292614

ISBN 13

9780226292618

Book's by Thomas F. Gieryn

Cultural Boundaries of Science

Cultural Boundaries of Science

Truth-Spots

Truth-Spots

The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine

The Historiography of Contemporary Science, Technology, and Medicine

Truth-Spots

Truth-Spots

Cultural Boundaries of Science

Cultural Boundaries of Science

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