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Objectivity

Series: Zone Books
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( 381 ratings, 37 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison explores the development of the concept of scientific objectivity from the nineteenth century onwards. It examines how the pursuit of objectivity has shaped scientific practices and representations, highlighting the evolving methods used by scientists to depict the natural world without bias. The authors provide an intellectual history that underscores the shifting ideals and epistemic virtues in scientific inquiry.
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you are fascinated by the evolving concept of objectivity in the realms of science and philosophy. This work explores how the pursuit of objectivity has transformed over centuries, interlinking scientific practices with philosophical reflections.

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The emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences, as revealed through images in scientific atlases-a story of how lofty epistemic ideals fuse with workaday practices.

Historically brilliant, philosophically profound, and beautifully written, Objectivity will be the focus of discussion for decades to come. At one and the same time a history of scientific objectivity and a history of the scientific self, rarely have rigor and imagination been combined so seamlessly and to such deep effect. No one who opens this book can fail to be engaged and provoked by its energy, ideas, and arguments. One emerges from reading it as if from a series of intellectual earthquakes -- sound but no longer safe. -- Arnold Davidson, author of The Emergence of Sexuality: Historical Epistemology and the Formation of Concepts Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison is not just a fine book, it is that rare thing, a great book. It is almost shockingly original, genuinely profound, and amazingly learned without ever being pedantic. It should force everyone interested in science and its history or in objectivity and its history to think more deeply about what they think they already know. It gives me great satisfaction to learn that thinking and writing of this brilliance and depth are still going on, even in this age of consumerism and mass markets. -- Hilary Putnam, author of Ethics without Ontology This richly illustrated book deeply renews the meaning of accurate reproduction by showing how many ways there have been to be 'true to nature.' Art science and reproduction techniques are merged to show that 'things in themselves' can be presented with their vast and beautiful company. This splendid book will be for many years the ultimate compendium on the joint history of objectivity and visualization. -- Bruno Latour, author of Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences is revealed through images in scientific atlases—a story of how lofty epistemic ideals fuse with workaday practices. Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences and show how the concept differs from its alternatives: truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images.

From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences—from anatomy to crystallography—are those featured in scientific atlases, the compendia that teach practitioners what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealises an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature, refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity, or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment, is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology.

As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity—or truth-to-nature or trained judgment—is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight.

Objectivity is a book addressed to anyone interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity—and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically.

Series: Zone Books

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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison receives high praise for its in-depth research and thought-provoking content, offering a significant contribution to the history of scientific knowledge. It is described as beautifully crafted and intellectually stimulating, highlighting the evolution of the concept of scientific objectivity from the 17th century to modern times. Reviewers commend the book for its fascinating narrative that addresses both epistemic and ethical dimensions, whilst making complex arguments accessible through its stunning visual presentation.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781890951795

Publisher: Zone Books

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 12 July 2010

Country: United States

Imprint: Zone Books

Illustration: 32 color illus., 108 b&w illus.; 140 Illustrations, unspecified

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 39.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 229.0mm

Weight: 980g

Pages: 504

About the Author

Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Visiting Professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. She is the coauthor (with Katharine Park) of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150–1750 and (with Peter Galison) Objectivity and the editor of Things that Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science, all three published by Zone Books. Peter Galison is Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is the author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, How Experiments End, and Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, among other books, and coeditor (with Emily Thompson) of The Architecture of Science (MIT Press, 1999).

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