The Scientific Life: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation: Steven Shapin
Review
“An excellent book.” - New York Times Book Review “Highly readable…. A book which every scientist curious about our predecessors should read.” - New Scientist “It’s hard to believe there could be a more accessible, informed or concise account.” - London Review of Books “Informed, nuanced, and articulated with clarity…. An impressive achievement.” - Science”
Review
“Shapin’s The Scientific Life glitters with deep knowledge of the realities of contemporary science as practiced in academe, industry, and government. Lucidly written, it upsets much conventional thinking about the ways and workings of science. It is a terrific book, a welcome addition to a crowded genre, and adds greatly to Shapin’s formidable reputation as a leading historian of science.”-Daniel S. Greenberg, author of Science for Sale (Daniel S. Greenberg, author of Science for Sale )
“Shapin is at his most insightfully mature in this magisterial book. He leads us through a century long tour of the changing figure of the scientist in a remarkably clear and deeply learned manner. The result adroitly bypasses innumerable sterile debates by showing through scholarship and thoughtfulness the place of the scientists in the `way we live now.’ A tour de force!”-Paul Rabinow, author of French DNA (Paul Rabinow, author of French DNA )
“In this brilliant book Shapin takes us from celebration and criticism to description and understanding of one of the most important phenomena of the twentieth century-the creation of technical novelties. Richly paradoxical and entertaining, The Scientific Life contrasts the evidence-free moralizing of the cultural critics and early sociologists of science with the often insightful analyses of the despised industrial researchers. He shows that when adequately described the worlds of technoscientific research and venture capital are not the soulless, routinized, bureaucratic antithesis of the academic ideal, but ones where the necessary uncertainties of innovation are dealt with using face-time, trust, charisma, and even proverbs, things our narratives mistakenly consign to a pre-modern era. This is a book where the doers get their due and the contemplators their comeuppance; where the quotidian is richer than the transcendent.”-David Edgerton, author of The Shock of the Old (David Edgerton, author of The Shock of the Old )
“Shapin here examines science as a vocation. The practice of science, once a calling from God or, perhaps, a mere amateur’’s hobby, has come into its own as a profession, particularly following World War II. Shapin’’s sociological history documents this vocational evolution as he raises the following questions: How does the practice and authority of science relate to the virtues of its practitioners? Is academic science superior to the commercialization of science? How does industry compete for the best minds in science? Can the practice of scientific research be organized, team driven, and accountable to investors? Shapin addresses all these questions without weighing in with his personal opinions on the topic. The result is a thought-provoking challenge to the assumptions of scientific objectivity by science’’s practitioners and an acknowledgment of just how important the morality of scientists may be in the advancement and authority of knowledge.”-Library Journal (Library Journal )
“In The Scientific Life, Steven Shapin writes masterfully about the evolution of what he calls `the world of making the worlds to come.’ Broadly historic, yet deftly nuanced, Shapin constructs a journey that begins with the lone investigators and solitary altruists of lore, through the mutually disdainful academic purists and Organization Men of the mid-twentieth century, to today’s technoscientific movers and shakers, who roam an ambiguous moral cosmos of university classrooms, high-tech boardrooms, research hospitals, and Wall Street. He illuminates at each step along the way how men and women of science, who more than any other vocation present us with flashes of the future, have come to regard their pursuits, their times, and, most intriguingly, themselves. I greatly admire the learnedness and dexterity with which Shapin has pulled this off. A forceful, revealing, vital work.”-Barry Werth, author of The Billion-Dollar Molecule (Barry Werth, author of The Billion-Dollar Molecule )
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