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Leslie White was one of the most important and controversial figures in American anthropology. This classic work, initially published in 1949, contains White's definitive statement on what he termed "culturology." In his new prologue to this reprint of the second edition, Robert Carneiro outlines the key events in White's life and career, especially his championing of cultural evolutionism and cultural materialism. Praise from readers "Republishing these pioneer articles now makes White's fundamental exposition easily available to a new generation of social scientists." Richard N. Adams, University of Texas "One of the best works ever produced by an anthropologist. White was a remarkable thinker and his writings were filled with 'intellectual content.'" Lewis R. Binford, Southern Methodist University "The enduring foundation of a science of culture is made supremely accessible thanks to the lucidity of White's writing." Robert Bates Graber, Truman State University "Written with a straightforward crispness. A welcome treat in an age when obscurity is often confused with profundity." David Kaplan, Brandeis University
Why did science emerge in the West and how did scientific values come to be regarded as the yardstick for all other forms of knowledge? Stephen Gaukroger shows just how bitterly the cognitive and cultural standing of science was contested in its early development. Rejecting the traditional picture of secularization, he argues that science in the seventeenth century emerged not in opposition to religion but rather was in many respects driven by it. Moreover, science did not present a unified picture of nature but was an unstable field of different, often locally successful but just as often incompatible, programmes. To complicate matters, much depended on attempts to reshape the persona of the natural philosopher, and distinctive new notions of objectivity and impartiality were imported into natural philosophy, changing its character radically by redefining the qualities of its practitioners. The West's sense of itself, its relation to its past, and its sense of its future, have been profoundly altered since the seventeenth century, as cognitive values generally have gradually come to be shaped around scientific ones. Science has not merely brought a new set of such values to the task of understanding the world and our place in it, but rather has completely transformed the task, redefining the goals of enquiry. This distinctive feature of the development of a scientific culture in the West marks it out from other scientifically productive cultures. In The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, Stephen Gaukroger offers a detailed and comprehensive account of the formative stages of this development—-and one which challenges the received wisdom that science was seen to be self-evidently the correct path to knowledge and that the benefits of science were immediately obvious to the disinterested observer.
Cultural Materialism, published in 1979, was Marvin Harris's first full-length explication of the theory with which his work has been associated. While Harris has developed and modified some of his ideas over the past two decades, generations of professors have looked to this volume as the essential starting point for explaining the science of culture to students. Now available again after a hiatus, this edition of Cultural Materialism contains the complete text of the original book plus a new introduction by Orna and Allen Johnson that updates his ideas and examines the impact that the book and theory have had on anthropological theorizing.
This book offers the first comparative account of the changes and stabilities of public perceptions of science within the US, France, China, Japan, and across Europe over the past few decades. The contributors address the influence of cultural factors; the question of science and religion and its influence on particular developments (e.g. stem cell research); and the demarcation of science from non-science as well as issues including the ‘incommensurability’ versus ‘cognitive polyphasia’ and the cognitive (in)tolerance of different systems of knowledge.
Seed magazine brings together a unique gathering of prominent scientists, artists, novelists, philosophers and other thinkers who are tearing down the wall between science and culture. We are on the cusp of a twenty-first-century scientific renaissance. Science is driving our culture and conversation unlike ever before, transforming the social, political, economic, aesthetic, and intellectual landscape of our time. Today, science is culture. As global issues—like energy and health—become increasingly interconnected, and as our curiosities—like how the mind works or why the universe is expanding—become more complex, we need a new way of looking at the world that blurs the lines between scientific disciplines and the borders between the sciences and the arts and humanities. In this spirit, the award-winning science magazine Seed has paired scientists with nonscientists to explore ideas of common interest to us all. This book is the result of these illuminating Seed Salon conversations, edited and with an introduction by Seed founder and editor in chief Adam Bly. Science Is Culture includes: E. O. Wilson + Daniel C. Dennet Steven Pinker + Rebecca Goldstein Noam Chomsky + Robert Trivers David Byrne + Daniel Levitin Jonathan Lethem + Janna Levin Benoit Mandelbrot + Paola Antonelli Lisa Randall + Chuck Hoberman Michel Gondry + Robert Stickgold Alan Lightman + Richard Colton Laurie David + Stephen Schneider Tom Wolfe + Michael Gazzaniga Marc Hauser + Errol Morris
Is history more than (in Boswell's words) a `chronological series of remarkable events'? Does it have a pattern? Is it fraught with `meaning'? Can we discern its trends? What determines its course? In short, can a substantial and coherent philosophy of history be devised that offers answers to these questions? These issues, which have intrigued -and bedeviled - historians for centuries, are explored in this thoughtful book.
This work addresses scientism and relativism, two false philosophies that divorce science from culture in general and from tradition in particular. It helps break the isolation of science from the rest of culture by promoting popular science and reasonable history of science. It provides examples of the value of science to culture, discussions of items of the general culture, practical strategies and tools, and case studies. It is for practising professionals, political scientists and science policy students and administrators.
Twenty-five years ago, Gerald Holton's Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought introduced a wide audience to his ideas. Holton argued that from ancient times to the modern period, an astonishing feature of innovative scientific work was its ability to hold, simultaneously, deep and opposite commitments of the most fundamental sort. Over the course of Holton's career, he embraced both the humanities and the sciences. Given this background, it is fitting that the explorations assembled in this volume reflect both individually and collectively Holton's dual roots. In the opening essay, Holton sums up his long engagement with Einstein and his thematic commitment to unity. The next two essays address this concern. In historicized form, Lorraine Daston returns the question of the scientific imagination to the Enlightenment period when both sciences and art feared imagination. Daston argues that the split whereby imagination was valued in the arts and loathed in the sciences is a nineteenth-century divide. James Ackerman on Leonardo da Vinci meshes perfectly with Daston's account, showing a form of imaginative intervention where it is irrelevant to draw analogies between art and science. Historians of religion Wendy Doniger and Gregory Spinner pursue the imagination into the bedroom with literary-theological representations. Science, culture, and the imagination also intersect with biologist Edward Wilson and physicist Steven Weinberg. Both tackle the big question of the unity of knowledge and worldviews from a scientific perspective while art historian Ernst Gombrich does the same from the perspective of art history. To emphasize the nitty-gritty of scientific practice, chemists Bretislav Fredrich and Dudley Herschback provide a remarkable historical tour at the boundary of chemistry and physics. In the concluding essay, historian of education Patricia Albjerg Graham addresses pedagogy head-on. In these various reflections on science, art, literature, philosophy, and education, this volume gives us a view in common: a deep and abiding respect for Gerald Holton's contribution to our understanding of science in culture. Peter Galison is Mallinckrodt Professor of History of Science and of physics at Harvard University. Stephen R. Graubard is editor of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and its journal, Daedalus, and professor of history emeritus at Brown University. Everett Mendelsohn is director of the History of Science Program at Harvard University.
This book tries to uncover science’s discoverer and explain why the conception of science has been changing during the centuries, and why science can be beneficial and dangerous for humanity. Far from being hermetic, this research can be interesting for all who want to understand deeper what really conditions the place of science in culture.
How did science come to have such a central place in Western culture? How did our ways of thinking, and our moral, political, and social values, come to be modelled around scientific values? Stephen Gaukroger traces the story of how these values developed, and how they influenced society and culture from the 19th to the mid-20th century.