History and Philosophy of Science

2020

Experts and the Will of the People: Society, Populism and Science

Collins, Harry, Evans, Robert, Durant, Darrin and Weinel, Martin. Experts and the Will of the People: Society, Populism and Science. Springer Nature, 2020.

The rise of populism in the West has led to attacks on the legitimacy of scientific expertise in political decision making. This book explores the differences between populism and pluralist democracy and their relationship with science. Pluralist democracy is characterised by respect for minority choices and a system of checks and balances that prevents power being concentrated in one group, while populism treats minorities as traitorous so as to concentrate power in the government. The book argues that scientific expertise – and science more generally – should be understood as one of the checks and balances in pluralist democracies. More information...

Digital Domesticity: Media, Materiality, and Home Life

Kennedy, Jenny, Arnold, Michael, Gibbs, Martin, Nansen, Bjorn and Wilken, Rowan. Digital Domesticity: Media, Materiality, and Home Life. Oxford University Press, 2020.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, typical households were equipped with a landline telephone, a desktop computer connected to a dial-up modem, and a shared television set. Television, radio and newspapers were the dominant mass media. Today, homes are now network hubs for all manner of digital technologies, from mobile devices littering lounge rooms to Bluetooth toothbrushes in bathrooms – and tomorrow, these too will be replaced with objects once inconceivable. Tracing the origins of these digital developments, the authors advance media domestication research through an ecology-based approach to the abundance and materiality of media in the home. The book locates digital domesticity through phases of adoption and dwelling, to management and housekeeping, to obsolescence and disposal. More information...

2019

The Third Wave in Science and Technology Studies

Durant, Darrin. “The Third Wave in Science and Technology Studies,” in Caudill, D.S., Conley, S., Gorman, M.E. and Weinel, M. (eds.,). The Third Wave in Science and Technology Studies: Future Research Directions on Expertise and Experience. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

This book analyses future directions in the study of expertise and experience with the aim of engendering more critical discourse on the general discipline of science and technology studies. The Third Wave has garnered attention in journals and in international workshops, where scholars delivered papers explicating the theoretical foundations and practical applications of the Third Wave. This book arose out of those workshops, and is the next step in the popularisation of the Third Wave. The chapters address the novel concept of interactional experts, the use of imitation games, appropriating scientific expertise in law and policy settings, and recent theoretical developments in the Third Wave. More information...

Locations of Knowledge in Dutch Contexts

Wiesenfeldt, Gerhard . “The ‘Duytsche Mathematique’ and Leiden Family Networks, 1600-1620,” in Dijksterhuis, Fokko Jan; Weber, Andreas and Zuidervaart, Huib J. (eds.,). Locations of Knowledge in Dutch Contexts. Brill, 2019.

Locations of Knowledge in Dutch Contexts brings together scholars who shed light on the ways locations gave shape to scientific knowledge practices in the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This interdisciplinary volume uses four hundred years of Dutch history as a laboratory to investigate spatialised understandings of the history of knowledge. By conceptualising locations of knowing as time-specific configurations of actors, artefacts, and activities, contributors to this volume not only examine cities as specific kind of locations, but also analyse the regionally and globally networked and transformative character of locations. More information...

2018

Leisure and Death

Arnold, Michael et al. “Managing the consumption of death and digital media: The funeral director as market intermediary,” in Kaul, Adam and Skinner, Jonathan (eds.,). Leisure and Death: An Anthropological Tour of Risk, Death, and Dying. University of Colorado Press, 2018.

This anthropological study examines the relationship between leisure and death, specifically how leisure practices are used to meditate upon – and mediate – life. Considering travellers who seek enjoyment but encounter death and dying, tourists who accidentally face their own mortality while vacationing, those who intentionally seek out pleasure activities that pertain to mortality and risk, and those who use everyday leisure practices like social media or dogwalking to cope with death, Leisure and Death delves into one of the most provocative subsets of contemporary cultural anthropology. More information...

The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity

Fine, Cordelia, Donovan, C. and Kennett, J. “Reliable and Unreliable Judgments about Reasons,” in Star, Daniel (ed.,).The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. Oxford University Press, 2018.

The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity maps a central terrain of philosophy, and provides an authoritative guide to it. Few concepts have received as much attention in recent philosophy as the concept of a reason to do or believe something. And one of the most contested ideas in philosophy is normativity, the ‘ought’ in claims that we ought to do or believe something. This is the first volume to provide broad coverage of the study of reasons and normativity across multiple philosophical subfields. In addition to focusing on reasons in ethics, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, action, and language, the Handbook explores philosophical work on the nature of normativity in general. More information...

2017

Death and Digital Media

Arnold, Michael et al. Death and Digital Media. Routledge, 2017.

Death and Digital Media provides a critical overview of how people mourn, commemorate and interact with the dead through digital media. It maps the historical and shifting landscape of digital death, considering a wide range of social, commercial and institutional responses to technological innovations. The authors examine multiple digital platforms and offer a series of case studies drawn from North America, Europe and Australia. The book delivers fresh insight and analysis from an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, and media studies. It is key reading for students and scholars in these disciplines, as well as for professionals working in bereavement support capacities. More information...

The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography

Arnold, Michael et al. “Researching Death Online,” in Hjorth, L., Horst, H., Galloway, A. and Bell, G. (eds.,). The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography. Routledge, 2017.

With the increase of digital and networked media in everyday life, researchers have increasingly turned their gaze to the symbolic and cultural elements of technologies. From studying online game communities, locative and social media to YouTube and mobile media, ethnographic approaches to digital and networked media have helped to elucidate the dynamic cultural and social dimensions of media practice. The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography provides an authoritative, up-to-date, intellectually broad, and conceptually cutting-edge guide to this emergent and diverse area. More information...

Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics Twenty-First-Century Perspectives

Camilleri, Kristian and Schlosshauer, M. “Bohr and the problem of the quantum-to-classical transition,” in Niels Bohr and the Philosophy of Physics Twenty-First-Century Perspectives. Bloomsbury, 2017.

Niels Bohr and Philosophy of Physics: Twenty-First Century Perspectives examines the philosophical views, influences and legacy of the Nobel Prize physicist and philosophical spokesman of the quantum revolution, Niels Bohr. The sixteen contributions in this collection by some of the best contemporary philosophers and physicists writing on Bohr’s philosophy today all carefully distinguish his subtle and unique interpretation of quantum mechanics from views often imputed to him under the banner of the "Copenhagen Interpretation." More information...

Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society

Fine, Cordelia. Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society. W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

In Testosterone Rex, psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads. More information...

Reading Newton in Early Modern Europe

Wiesenfeldt, Gerhard. “The Practical Tradition of Dutch Newtonianism,” in Boran, E. and Feingold, M. (eds.,). Reading Newton in Early Modern Europe. Brill, 2017.

Reading Newton in Early Modern Europe investigates how Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia was read, interpreted and remodelled for a variety of readerships in eighteenth-century Europe. The editors, Mordechai Feingold and Elizabethanne Boran, have brought together papers which explore how, when, where and why the Principia was appropriated by readers in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, England and Ireland. Particular focus is laid on the methods of transmission of Newtonian ideas via university textbooks and popular works written for educated laymen and women. More information...

2016

Ethics and Visual Research Methods

Arnold, Michael et al. “Methodological and ethical concerns associated with digital ethnography in domestic environments: Participant burden and burdensome technologies,” in Warr, D., Guillemin, M., Cox, S., Waycott, J. (eds.,). Ethics and Visual Research Methods: Theory, Methodology, and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

This collection presents stories from the field that were gathered from researchers using a breadth of visual methods. Visual methods refer to the use of still or moving images either as forms of data, to explore research topics and explorations of artistic practice. In addition to well-established visual methods, such as photo-voice and photo-elicitation, the possibilities for visual methods are flourishing through the proliferation of visual culture and developments in digital technologies. More information...

Making Publics, Making Places

Arnold, Michael et al. “Overcoming the tyranny of distance? High speed broadband and the significance of place,” in Griffiths, M. and Barbour, K. (eds.,). Making Publics, Making Places. University of Adelaide Press, 2016.

This book focuses on the surprising generative possibilities which digital and smart technologies offer media consumers, citizens, institutions and governments in making publics and places, across topics as diverse as Twitter audiences, rural news, the elasticity of the public sphere, Weibo, cultural heritage and responsive spaces in smart cities. Multidisciplinary perspectives engage with critical questions in new media scholarship. General readers, curious about how technologies are enabling social, public and civic participation, will enjoy the book’s mix of fresh approaches and insights. More information...

Policy Legitimacy, Science and Political Authority Knowledge and action in liberal democracies

Durant, Darrin. “The undead linear model of expertise,” in Heazle, Michael and Kane, John (eds.,). Policy Legitimacy, Science and Political Authority Knowledge and action in liberal democracies. Routledge, 2016.

This book examines the tensions between political authority and expert authority in the formation of public policy in liberal democracies. It aims to illustrate and better understand the nature of these tensions rather than to argue specific ways of resolving them. The various chapters explore the complexity of interaction between the two forms of authority in different policy domains in order to identify both common elements and differences. The policy domains covered include: climate geoengineering discourses; environmental health; biotechnology; nuclear power; whaling; economic management; and the use of force. More information...

2015

Memory in a Mediated World

Arnold, Michael et al. “Remembering Zyzz – Distributed Memories on Distributed Networks,” in Hajek, A., Lohmeier, C. and Pentzold, C. (eds.,). Memory in a Mediated World: Remembrance and Reconstruction. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Considering both retrospective memories and the prospective employment of memories, Memory in a Mediated World examines troubled times that demand resolution, recovery and restoration. Its contributions provide empirically grounded analyses of how media are employed by individuals and social groups to connect the past, the present and the future. More information...