The Uncertainties of Knowledge

Politics, History, and Social Change

by Immanuel Wallerstein

The Uncertainties of Knowledge extends Immanuel Wallerstein's decade-long work of elucidating the crisis of knowledge in current intellectual thought. He argues that the disciplinary divisions of academia have trapped us in a paradigm that assumes knowledge is a certainty and that it can help us explain the social world. This is wrong, he suggests. Instead, Wallerstein offers a new conception of the social sciences, one whose methodology allows for uncertainties.\

Genres: Sociology, Philosophy, Social Science, Politics

224 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

About the author

Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein was a scholar of politics, sociologist, historical social scientist, and world-systems analyst. His bimonthly commentaries on world affairs were syndicated.

Reviews

[Cengiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wallerstein analyses world systems and epistemology of the structures of knowledge. Historical systems constructs their own structures of knowledge. Capitalist system whose structures of knowledge based on Newtonian laws of motion, Cartesian dualism and Baconian scientism has determined our intelectual, political and academic lives for centuries. Philosophy which is in search
of good and science which is in search of true has has been separated fom each other. Therefore, science has been value-free and it anaylses what nature and man is. It has been held that it doesn't dominate and divert the world of values. The principal characteristic of this scientific knowledge was its certainty.
However, just as science rejected and questioned the revelation and speculative knowledge the same way after 1960's the science itself has been criticised and its truth has been questioned.
Wallerstein suggests that because the science misused or misundersood it should not be put aside.
But the end of the capitalism as a historical system and its structures of knowledge as we know it today has completed its life. Until a new historical system emerges, existing structures of knowledge will be in use and this knowledge will be premised on uncertainty.
Additionally, ı have to say that ı could not understand well the passage he is talking about Prigogine who is a Nobel laurate in physics.

[Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wallerstein'ın sosyal bilimler konusundaki eleştirel yaklaşımını özetleyen, farklı bir sosyal bilimler anlayışı için, bilginin üretiminden başlayarak, alternatif düşünce tarzları öneren, nitelikli bir kitabı daha.