Postmodernism and Big Science

by Richard Appignanesi

The last 100 years has seen science deal with issues outside itself, communicate with the public and try to answer questions long considered the province of religion. A collection of accessible essays exploring the big questions of contemporary science.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Science

224 pages, Paperback

First published February 25, 1998

About the author

Richard Appignanesi is a published adapter and an author of young adult books. Published credits of Richard Appignanesi include Manga Shakespeare: Julius Caesar (Manga Shakespeare), Manga Shakespeare: Macbeth (Manga Shakespeare), Manga Shakespeare: Hamlet (Manga Shakespeare), and Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet (Manga Shakespeare).

Reviews

[Steve Dewey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very much a muddle of a book. Titled "Postmodernism and Big Science", we get very little postmodernism until the last essay, "Thomas Kuhn and the Science Wars" by Ziauddin Sardar. And what of Big Science? The introduction tries to set the scene, but simply ends up with a definition of "big science" that could encompass all science(s). And two of the best essays (for which the three stars are awarded), on Hawking and Dawkins, have very little postmodern analysis, and little to do with Big Science (after all, Dawkins on genes has been mainly a synthesiser and populariser of research, while Hawking works in a very theoretical field in which there are others with comparable achievements - both, however, are media friendly). The Sardar essay is particularly irksome to this reader, however, being tendentious and postmodern.