The Contested Sciences
eBook - PDF

The Contested Sciences

Between Idealization and Contempt

  1. 131 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Contested Sciences

Between Idealization and Contempt

About this book

The defense against attacks on the sciences requires not an idealized image of "Science" but a realistic understanding of scientific practices to account for their epistemic authority.

Analysing the controversy about contemporary attacks on the sciences, Frieder Vogelmann shows that the defenders of scientific practices all too often erect an ideal that immunises them against criticism, obscures their diversity and ignores firmly established knowledge about them from philosophy and sociology of science. This exaggerated defence is grist for the mill of science deniers, because no actual scientific practice could ever correspond to it.

Instead, Vogelmann proposes a realistic understanding of scientific practices that brings into view their political contestations, historical developments and social embeddedness. Vogelmann demonstrates how such a realistic picture of scientific practices defends their epistemic authority with a political epistemology, centred on a conceptualisation of truth as a comparatively weak force emerging in social practices. The resulting materialist, non-sovereign epistemology of the sciences recognizes their value as well as their plurality, historicity and contextuality.

Information

Year
2026
Edition
1
eBook ISBN
9798216391500

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Half-Title Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Imprint
  5. Contents
  6. Preface to the English Edition
  7. The Spontaneous Philosophy of Science
  8. 1 Contempt for the Sciences
  9. 2 Idealizing the Sciences
  10. 3 A Realist Image of Scientific Practices
  11. 4 Non-Sovereign Truth
  12. Against Purity: Academic Freedom from a Realist Perspective
  13. Endnotes
  14. Bibliography
  15. Index

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