The Invention of Modern Science

by Isabelle Stengers

A proposal for better understanding the nature of scientific endeavor from a major European thinker.

The so-called exact sciences have always claimed to be different from other forms of knowledge. How are we to evaluate this assertion? Should we try to identify the criteria that seem to justify it? Or, following the new model of the social study of the sciences, should we view it as a simple belief? The Invention of Modern Science proposes a fruitful way of going beyond these apparently irreconcilable positions, that science is either "objective" or "socially constructed." Instead, suggests Isabelle Stengers, one of the most important and influential philosophers of science in Europe, we might understand the tension between scientific objectivity and belief as a necessary part of science, central to the practices invented and reinvented by scientists.

"Stengers has chosen to look for a touchstone distinguishing good science from bad not in epistemology but in ontology, not in the word but in the world." Bruno Latour

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

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Isabelle Stengers is the author of many books on the philosophy of science, and is Professor of Philosophy at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.

Reviews

[Pavlogreen]

Isabelle Stengers es a veces oscura de más y cuesta entenderla, pero cuando se la entiende es brillante.

Su análisis detallado y no reduccionista de las ciencias modernas es de lo más lucido, sobre todo la consigna de que el compromiso científico no es con la verdad, sino con la historia, que me apunto ya para siempre.

Ojalá fuese más clara, pero es una lectura importante para las interesadas en el área.

[Dylan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stengers propose une relecture de épistémologiste popperienne et kuhnienne a travers sa lecture de Deleuze, Guattari et Latour. Le livre commence par une critique honnête et constructive de ces traditions épistémologiques, redéfinissant les sciences modernes a partir du concept d’évènement. Il se finit cependant par une conclusion underwhelming d’intégration de "citoyens" abstraits dans la participation d'un développement scientifique qu'on a progressivement dépolitisé, non pas en relativisant l'effet des structures sur des scientifiques individuels en leur rendant une agentivité, mais en affirmant la séparation entre science et pouvoir. Dans un contexte théorique post-foucaldien (savoir-pouvoir), de dépolitisation de la crise écologique par l'expertise et avec le développement de nouvelles formes de subjectification néolibérale, c'est une conclusion peu réjouissante que Stengers propose. Celle d'un pessimisme (on peut pas faire sans) assimilationniste (alors il faut s'intégrer en tant que sujet dans les processus de savoir-pouvoir tels que définis par les sciences). Une lecture guattarienne des sciences qui manque un franchement de radicalité donc.

[Travis]

This is more a note to self for my orals project.

Stengers tries to redefine the history of science by means of a Deleuzian conception of the event. Her main foe is Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", which is a great book. I think she basically wants to relativize what kind of work science does at any certain period to a greater extent that does Kuhn. Kuhn lays out the ways scientific discourses change over time, with many ruptures and crises within given fields, and creating new fields. But the process seems internal to science and part of a vast unfolding that follows its own internal rules. The "structure" of scientific revolutions.

Stengers wants to construe changes in scientific discourses by means of events--a given "discovery" is just the thing that happened to occur, nothing inevitable about it. And at least one way she tries to do this is through a sociology of scientific communities. But I basically just flipped thruogh this as it is not exactly on topic, and it is written in a somewhat annoying glib French-intello style. But it seems like it could be quite useful in the future.

[Teddy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Interesting topic, but very complicated to understand -- most likely due to a lack of knowledge/background in the field. Starting the book I was hoping to get a peek at the world of the sciences which, unfortunately, did not materialize.

[Constanza]

ugh