Ways of Knowing: A New History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

by John V. Pickstone

In Ways of Knowing, John V. Pickstone provides a new and accessible framework for understanding science, technology, and medicine (STM) in the West from the Renaissance to the present. Pickstone's approach has four key features. First, he synthesizes the long-term histories and philosophies of disciplines that are normally studied separately. Second, he dissects STM into specific ways of knowing—natural history, analysis, and experimentalism—with separate but interlinked elements. Third, he explores these ways of knowing as forms of work related to our various technologies for making, mending, and destroying. And finally, he relates scientific and technical knowledges to popular understandings and to politics.

Covering an incredibly wide range of subjects, from minerals and machines to patients and pharmaceuticals, and from experimental physics to genetic engineering, Pickstone's Ways of Knowing challenges the reader to reexamine traditional conceptualizations of the history, philosophy, and social studies of science, technology, and medicine.

Genres: Science, History Of Science, History, Nonfiction, Technology, Biology, Philosophy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[David Spanagel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought the book might work for my introduction to the history of science, but the students found the writing too impenetrably philosophical, while I labored hard to supply all the historical context the author too often took for granted. This book would be more valuable as a refresher for someone already well-informed about the issues that have roiled history of science the circles for the past couple of decades.

[Floris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A classic generalist work on the history of modern STM (science, technology, medicine) from a mostly British perspective. Although somewhat dated now, it still touches upon some central aspects of our understanding and study of STM. At its core, it concerns what Pickstone calls the five main ways of knowing (not to be confused with these “ways of knowing”): world-readings (hermeneutics), natural history, analysis, experimentalism, technoscience. These are, according to him, the dominant ways in which we can understand work in STM to be done. Although this series does represent a certain kind of development in STM over the past couple of centuries, these ways of knowing are not all evenly distributed in time. Pickstone spends most of his time explaining how these ways of knowing dominated STM practices at different points in time, concluding with a comment on the public understanding of science in Britain around 2000. As this outline implies, he is very much a generaliser, and his argument can at times feel pretty outdated. His style of writing is scholarly but highly approachable (no jargon, little assumed knowledge, etc.) which is critical given that he wrote the book primarily for readers with a budding interest in the history of STM, or students in this field who are still looking to navigate some of its broader concerns. This is one of those books where I think you would mainly benefit from reading just the introduction and final chapter, because I think it is these sections which have the best chance of standing the test of time.


Chunky Synopsis For A Rainy Day

The introduction includes a statement on what he considers to be the four guiding principles (or keys) of his narrative: breadth, history, dissection, and work. The first two are a defence of the broad church view of STM (i.e. that we should consider STM in the broadest possible sense, not merely along strict/modern disciplinary lines) and of the “big picture” view in STM studies (i.e. the willingness to look at wide timeframes in STM studies). His idea of dissection refers to his classification of scientific work into five ways of knowing. In doing so he is inspired by the methodologies of several titans of science studies (Foucault, Kuhn, Mumford, Collingwood, Temkin, Weber). I found it slightly funny, though, how for all the mid/late twentieth century historiography he draws from, it is the method of the nineteenth century writer (Weber) whom he draws on the most (with regard to his concept of ‘ideal types’, which Pickstone’s ways of knowing mimic). The final guiding principle refers to his division of work in STM into three categories: craft, rationalised production, and systematic invention. I did not find this division to be particularly important for the rest of his argument, but it serves as a reminder that for all the emphasis on ways of knowing, there are also different ways of doing in STM which are equally important. Overall, I found it striking how relevant his introduction still is to this day, which is why I think it is still worth reading if only for the way he expresses his aims and approaches to the history of science.

Chapter 2 concerns his first WoK, that of world-readings. The introductory anecdote of the sore throat and the multitude of ways you can think about it is a masterful demonstration of the complexity of hermeneutics (finding meaning) in STM. For much of human history (up to the European Renaissance, according to Pickstone), we humans saw society and the world around us in terms of meanings. The idea that the natural world was a mysterious place started to unravel – according to Pickstone and his predecessors – during the Renaissance with the “disenchantment” of nature. From the sixteenth century onwards, different ways of knowing gained dominance in different places (quite literally in his analysis, as he draws from traditional Alpine divides (northern Europe vs southern Europe) at times). He makes some very broad brush strokes about the development of these ways of knowing in post-Renaissance periods, which in itself isn’t particularly useful, but sets out the scope for the following chapters.

Chapter 3 looks at “natural history” as the dominant way of knowing up to the mid/late eighteenth century. Sometimes described as “notebook culture”, it involved collecting, identifying, or otherwise rendering visible nature and natural things. Think private collections and museums as repositories of knowledge about the natural world, explorers cataloguing exotic flora and fauna, instruments (like the air-pump) making visible the invisible (like the vacuum). Contrast this to Chapter 4, which concerns analysis and the rationalisation of production. Focused on the decades around 1800, Pickstone argues that the sciences were less concerned with meaning, and less concerned with stuff that way continuous with everyday knowledge (like collecting and cataloguing exotic plants was an extension of collecting and cataloguing local/domestic plants). The “Age of Analysis” (Gillispie), which is coterminous with the “Age of Revolutions” (c.1770s-1850s), represented a tradition of deconstructing nature to its constituent elements. Pickstone uses the German analytical chemist Justus Liebig as the figurehead for this way of knowing, emphasising the fact that the German states lay at the centre of this tradition.

Chapter 5 can be viewed as a continuation of Chapter 4, except instead of focusing primarily on analytical chemistry, Pickstone discusses other analytical traditions, namely in medicine, earth sciences, and social sciences (the former gets a lot more love than the latter two I should note). Analysis in medicine can be viewed as a concern predominantly for biological markers (tissue analysis, diagnostic tests, etc.) rather than biography (i.e. addressing the ailment based on the patient’s specific situation). But there are further distinctions to be made even within the analytical tradition. He distinguishes, for example, between the ‘French’ mode of analysis, which called for dissection (assuming a certain "multiple-element-compound model", whereby human bodies or natural objects were seen as composed of various elements, tissues, and organs), and the ‘German’ mode of analysis, which relied on the concept of a structural idea which ‘unfolds’ through development (see

[Christopher Nilssen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tried so hard to absorb this text. I can do focused reading. I read at a slower pace where I make sure I've got comprehension, and that's been working great for me for years, but this book challenged me in ways like no other. And it's not because of the subject material. It's plainly written. But there was something about it where I'd come to the end of a page and have no idea what I'd just read. I forced myself through just over 60% before throwing in the towel. I think that Pickstone has compiled an excellent reference manual for anyone interested in the history of science. The bibliography is worth copying and forming a separate "to read" list from. But the actual content of the book had me crossing my eyes and internally staring into space.

I had hoped to use this as a component of my "prepare to read Faust" project, but it seems that I'm going to have to find a better "history of science" primer.

[Froggarana · Rating 1 out of 5]

i don't know any sociologists but i suspect this is the sort of book they might like
But i'm feeling generous so i'll give it one star

ways of knowing ?
It mentions Carnot but merely that he , and others, used mathematics to investigate steam engines.
It doesn't tell you that by imagining a perfect heat engine ( no friction, noise , exhaust ) he was able to show that a heat engine must throw away heat in order to operate in a cycle.
This work allowed Clausius (and others) to derive the second law of thermodynamics
Many scientists have said the 2nd law is the single most important discovery made by science
Not bad for an imaginary engine, eh?
Ways of knowing

[Jonas Gehrlein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pickstone`s thesis is that there are 3 different scientific methods Natural History, Analysis and Experimentalism and sees the history as some kinds of shift between the different methods.

[J. Pearce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Blurb:

"Ways of Knowing is an original and accessible guide to the history of science, technology and medicine, from the Renaissance to the present day. The only study with this scope, it relates history to present concerns, and technical knowledge to everyday life. It brings out the major characteristics of science, technology and medicine in successful periods of history, while also revealing the many levels of understanding evident at any given period, including our own.

Ways of Knowing ranges from natural history to industrial science, from natural magic to the lures of modern commerce, and from the analysis of bodies, machines and languages to questions about the meanings of nature and science.

In fluent, non-technical prose this book makes available the best of recent scholarship on the history of science and on the usually separate histories of technology and medicine. Specialists in these fields will read it for the novelty of the approach; students of history and culture for the range and outreach. For all who are concerned with the ethical and political dimensions of science, Ways of Knowing provides long-term perspectives and tools for debate."

Pickstone asserts that there are many ways that science has been advanced since the renaissance - many ways of looking at the world and both understanding it and advancing our ways of controlling it. He call these “ways of knowing” and demonstrates how each of his “ways” - natural history, analysis, experimentation, technoscience, and world readings - are interrelated and continue without a break even today. This goes against the conventional history of scientific thinking that argues that older ways of knowing have been discarded and everything is bigger and better than before.

Pickstone shows how even our modern “technoscience” is adaption and incorporation of older concepts of the world. He takes a “big picture” approach to the work, tracing science, medicine and technology changing in the UK Germany, France, and the US. He owes some large debt to Kuhn’s earlier analysis.

According to Pickstone, this work “outlines the histories of science, technology, and medicine, not in a single chronological sequence, nor by discpline, but as different ways of knowing, each with its own history.” These ways are interconnected, found in any period, but they each varied in relative importance over time.
The ways Pickstone highlights are “world reading” (hermeneutics - decoding of the world and systems of meaning found there), “natural history” (describing & classification of things), “analysis” (into various kinds of elements - cells or chemicals), “experimentalism” (control phenomena and systematically create novelties) and “technoscience” (projects which are dependent on science ore vice versa). (A modern example of natural history would be Wikipedia.) Much of STM can usefully be understood in terms of these ways of knowing and their interactions. Way of knowing are linked with ways of production, ways of making, tending, mending, defending or destroying.

This book has a long time scale and a breadth of scope. It dissects STM into constitutional elements (ways of knowing) with different history, and describes those ways as forms of work related to making and mending.
Whereas histories of science have tended to highlight the scientific revolution (17th century), and technology has hinged or begun in the industrial revolution (1750 - 1850), and medicine in the birth of scientific medicine around 1870 or the birth of the clinic in 1800, this book pulls them all together.

It has admittedly been some time since I read it, so I can't give you a clear idea of how readable it is. It is more readable than Kuhn, but that's not really descriptive.

[Jayanta Bhattacharya]

A new epistemology of knowing. To differentiate between abstract reading and the evolution of knowing in specific socio-political and economic context. To situate knowledge within the matrix of evolving power relationships.