Working Knowledge: Making the Human Sciences from Parsons to Kuhn

by Joel Isaac

The human sciences in the English-speaking world have been in a state of crisis since the Second World War. The battle between champions of hard-core scientific standards and supporters of a more humanistic, interpretive approach has been fought to a stalemate. Joel Isaac seeks to throw these contemporary disputes into much-needed historical relief. In "Working Knowledge" he explores how influential thinkers in the twentieth century's middle decades understood the relations among science, knowledge, and the empirical study of human affairs.

For a number of these thinkers, questions about what kinds of knowledge the human sciences could produce did not rest on grand ideological gestures toward "science" and "objectivity" but were linked to the ways in which knowledge was created and taught in laboratories and seminar rooms. Isaac places special emphasis on the practical, local manifestations of their complex theoretical ideas. In the case of Percy Williams Bridgman, Talcott Parsons, B. F. Skinner, W. V. O. Quine, and Thomas Kuhn, the institutional milieu in which they constructed their models of scientific practice was Harvard University. Isaac delineates the role the "Harvard complex" played in fostering connections between epistemological discourse and the practice of science. Operating alongside but apart from traditional departments were special seminars, interfaculty discussion groups, and non-professionalized societies and teaching programs that shaped thinking in sociology, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, science studies, and management science. In tracing this culture of inquiry in the human sciences, Isaac offers intellectual history at its most expansive.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Science, American History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published June 11, 2012

Reviews

[ger · Rating 4 out of 5]

He does love his subject. Detailed history of Harvard's various strands of 'Human Science' and the impact it had on Kuhn and how his work has been used to over emphasize aspects of difference in epistemology. If you are interested in this aspect of history of science, it's the book for you. I wasn't particularly.

[Michelle Marvin · Rating 2 out of 5]

So glad to be done with this. If you have solid thorough knowledge of every epistemological and philosophical "ism" floating in the air during the first half of the 20th century, as well as any famous person associated with Harvard during this time, then this book is for you. Two stars only because it forced me to do so much background reading that I learned some information on the way. There are so many things to read in the world.... Skip this one.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

(sort of a) Thick recontextualization of the development of Thomas Kuhn's thought, although Kuhn is really only a part of the introduction and final chapter and epilogue. Breaks down the oversimplified notion of a paradigm shift from positivism to post-positivism by placing the roots of Kuhn's book in the immediate context of interdisciplinary conversations at Harvard, what Isaac terms "the interstitial academy." Dense. Really dense.