The seminar has a double focus: first, significant theoretical and methodological problems leading to 20th-century critiques of traditional (realist, rationalist, positivist) conceptions of human knowledge and scientific truth, method and progress; second, the attendant development of alternative (constructivist, interactionist, pragmatist) conceptions of the formation and stabilization of knowledge and the relations between scientific and other cultural and social practices. Readings will include texts by Karl Popper, Ludwik Fleck, Thomas S. Kuhn, Michel Foucault, David Bloor, Bruno Latour, Lorraine Daston/Peter Galison, and Steven Shapin.
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