What is science? How is scientific knowledge affected by the society that produces it? Does scientific knowledge directly correspond to reality? Can we draw a line between science and pseudo-science? Will it ever be possible for computers to undertake scientific investigation independently? Is there such a thing as feminist science? In this book the author addresses questions such as these using a technique of 'cognitive play', which creates and explores new links between the ideas and results of contemporary history, philosophy, (...) and sociology of science. New ideas and approaches are applied to a wide range of case studies, many of them from controversial and contested science. This book will be of interest to historians and sociologists of science, to anyone interested in science studies, and to educated general readers with an interest in the history, philosophy, and social context of science. (shrink)

The paper reviews criteria which have been used to distinguish science from nonscience and from pseudo–science, and it examines the extent to which they can usefully be applied to “creation science.” These criteria do not force a clear decision, especially as creation science resembles important eighteenth–century forms of orthodox science. Nevertheless, the proponents of creation science may be accused of pious fraud in failing to concede in their political battles that their “science” is tentative and tendentious and will continue to (...) be so while it remains archaic and poorly integrated into the rest of science. (shrink)

The new disciplines of experimental psychology and physical chemistry which emerged in late-nineteenth-century Germany were transmitted rapidly to North America, where they flourished. At the time, American higher education was growing fast and undergoing important organizational changes. It was then especially receptive to such European ideas as these new growth points in German science. However, although there were important similarities in the transmission of the two sciences, experimental psychology was changed far more than physical chemistry by the transfer. Physical chemistry (...) was able to fit into a flourishing pattern of German-inspired chemistry in higher education. Psychology was more dependent on its intellectual and social context, and the American context was quite different from that of Germany. (shrink)