Reconfiguring Truth: Postmodernism, Science Studies, and the Search for a New Model of Knowledge

Steven C. Ward

doi:10.5771/9781461641865

Summary

This refreshingly original book links the postmodern critique of notions such as 'reality' and 'truth' with approaches to knowledge found in science and technology studies (STS), a field also discontent with traditional epistemology. Exploring STS approaches to knowledge, such as actor-network theory, Ward forges a path through the impasse of the modernism vs. postmodernism debate. Reconfiguring Knowledge is an important work for social scientists and theorists, philosophers, historians, and scholars of science and technology.

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Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/1996
Copyright Year: 1996
ISBN-Print: 978-0-8476-8259-1
ISBN-Online: 978-1-4616-4186-5
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 165
Product Type: Monograph

1. Table of Contents No access
2. Preface No access
3. Acknowledgements No access
4. Introduction No access
1. Belief versus Truth No access
2. Rhetoric versus Reality No access
3. Literary versus Scientific Knowledge No access
4. Conclusion: The Modem Episteme and the Development of Scientific Realism No access
1. Nietzsche on Truth and lie No access
2. Derrida, the Metaphysics of Presence, and Deconstructionism No access
3. Baudrillard and the end of the Social-as-Real No access
4. Conclusion: The Politics of Rhetoric and Reality No access
1. Science as Rhetoric and Text No access
2. Engendered Knowledge: Feminist Critiques of Science No access
3. Scientists Strike back: The Response to Postmodernism and Feminism No access
4. Conclusion: Reversing the Causal Arrows of Science No access
1. The Epistemological Roots of Durkheim's Social Realism No access
2. Durkheim's Substantive Theory of Knowledge No access
3. Durkheim's Encounter with Pragmatism and the Problem of Reflexivity No access
4. Conclusion: The Legacies of Durkheim No access
1. Mannheim and Other free Floaters No access
2. Grounding Knowledge in the Lifeworld: Phenomenology, Ethnomethodology, and Habermasian Theory No access
3. The Strong Programme and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge No access
4. The Reflexivity Project and new Literary Forms No access
5. Conclusion: Accounting for Reflexivity in the Sociology of Knowledge No access
1. How are Facts Made? No access
2. Latour's Rules of Method No access
3. Why Science is Stronger than Nonscience No access
4. Conclusion: An Amodern Model of Fact Making No access
1. The Modem Constitution of Truth No access
2. Hybridization, Quasi-Objects, and the end of the Modem Constitution of Truth No access
3. The Nonmodern Constitution of Truth No access
4. To you Culture, to us Nature: The Implications of the Modem Constitution of Truth and Its Demise No access
1. The Unrealities of Scientific Realism No access
2. The Ironic Epistemological Vigilance of Postmodernism No access
3. A Sociology without Social Realism No access
4. Conclusion: A Final Comment on the Knowledge Wars No access
Bibliography of Works Cited No access Pages 149 - 160
Index No access Pages 161 - 164
About the Author No access Pages 165 - 165