Synopses & Reviews
Science, Reason, Modernity: Readings for an Anthropology of the Contemporary provides an introduction to a legacy of philosophical and social scientific thinking about sciences, and their integral role in shaping modernities, a legacy that has contributed to a specifically anthropological form of inquiry. Anthropology, in this case, refers not only to the institutional boundaries of an academic discipline, but also to a mode of conceptualizing and addressing a problem: How to analyze and diagnose the modern sciences in their troubled relationships with lived realities? Such an approach addresses the sciences as forms of life, and illuminates how the diverse modes of reason, action, and passion that characterize the scientific life continue to shape our existences as late moderns.
The essays provided in this book have been arranged genealogically: a selective history of thinking whose purpose is to provide the background needed to understand a contemporary problem--in this case the problem of thinking through and inquiring into problems of science as contemporary forms of life. The book specifies the historical dynamics by way of which problems of science and modernity become matters of serious reflection, as well as the multiple attempts to provide solutions to those problems. Our aim is to make these works visible and to share what we think they can do for anthropological inquiry. If our composition is genealogical, our aim is therefore pedagogical. We have ordered the materials in this book as an answer to the question of which authors and works we think students of anthropology ought to read in order to be better equipped to conduct inquiry into sciences and modernities today. Our hope is that that by following this pathway, students and scholars working on sciences will be better equipped to think about scientific practices as anthropological problems.
Review
Science, Reason, Modernity offers an introduction to an anthropological engagement with the epistemologies, the ethical possibilities and limitations, and the practical impact of the sciences one that has no real precedent and stands as an important and generative alternative to the analytical frameworks that prevail in contemporary science and technology studies. -James Faubion, Rice University
About the Author
Anthony Stavrianakis is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Gaymon Bennett is co-founder and senior researcher at the Center for Biological Futures at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Unit, University of Washington. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Theology from the Graduate Theological Union. His book Technicians of Human Dignity: An Inquiry into the Global Politics of Intrinsic Worth is forthcoming from Fordham.
Lyle Fearnley is Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanities, Science and Society at Nanyang Technological University.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Contemporary Equipment for Anthropological Problems of Modern Sciences
Anthony Stavrianakis, Gaymon Bennett, and Lyle Fearnley
I. Problems
What Is Enlightenment?
Immanuel Kant
Science as a Vocation
Max Weber
Reconstruction as Seen Twenty-five Years Later
John Dewey
What Is Enlightenment?
Michel Foucault
II. Historical Problematizations
The "Trial" of Theoretical Curiosity
Hans Blumenberg
Justifications of Curiosity as Preparation for the Enlightenment
Hans Blumenberg
The Question of Normality in the History of Biological Thought
Georges Canguilhem
The Living and Its Milieu
Georges Canguilhem
III. Ethics: Truth and Subjectivity
The Hermeneutics of the Subject
Michel Foucault
The Courage of the Truth
Michel Foucault
Anthropos Today: Reflections on Modern Equipment
Paul Rabinow
Notes
Index