The scientific life
Subtitle: a moral history of a late modern vocation
By: Steven Shapin.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Chicago
Language: eng
Number of pages: 468
ISBN-13: 9780226750248
Subjects: Scientists -- Moral and ethical aspects; Science -- Economic aspects
Description: "In this brilliant book Shapin takes us from celebration and criticism to description and understanding of one of the most important phenomena of the twentieth century-the creation of technical novelties. Richly paradoxical and entertaining, The Scientific Life contrasts the evidence-free moralizing of the cultural critics and early sociologists of science with the often insightful analyses of the despised industrial researchers. He shows that when adequately described the worlds of technoscientific research and venture capital are not the soulless, routinized, bureaucratic antithesis of the academic ideal, but ones where the necessary uncertainties of innovation are dealt with using face-time, trust, charisma, and even proverbs, things our narratives mistakenly consign to a pre-modern era. This is a book where the doers get their due and the contemplators their comeuppance; where the quotidian is richer than the transcendent."--David Edgerton, author of The Shock of the Old -- Book jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Knowledge and virtue : the way we live now; title: From calling to job : nature, truth, method, and vocation from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries; title: The moral equivalence of the scientist : a history of the very idea; title: Who is the industrial scientist? : the view from the tower; title: Who is the industrial scientist? : the view from the managers; title: The scientist and the civic virtues : the moral life of organized science; title: The scientific entrepreneur : money, motives, and the place of virtue; title: Visions of the future : uncertainty and virtue in the world of high-tech and venture capital; title: The way we live now.