Ways of Knowing: A new history of science, technology and medicine

by John V. Pickstone

Overview

This classic MUP text discusses the historical development of science, technology and medicine in Western Europe and North America from the Renaissance to the present. It identifies four principle ways of knowing within specific periods and balances the historical exposition of natural magic and natural theology with a philosophical interpretation of the Scientific Revolution and reflective comments on Foucault and Collingwood. Combining theoretical discussion and empirical illustration, it redefines the geography of science, technology and medicine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780719059940
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	12/28/2000
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.64(d)

About the Author

Professor John Pickstone founded Manchester University’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) and the Manchester Histories Festival

Table of Contents

1. Ways of Knowing
2. World-readings: the meanings of nature and science
3. Natural History
4. Analysis and rationalism of production
5. The elements of bodies, earth and society
6. Experimentalism and invention
7. Invention and the technoscientific complexes
8. Technoscience and public understandings: the British case c.2000

Editorial Reviews

Pickstone describes three "ways of knowing"<-->natural history, or the classification of things; analysis, or separating things into various kinds of elements; and experimentation, a way of controlling phenomena and creating novelties<-->and then shows how they are intertwined in science, technology, and medicine. His overarching topic, through the use of everyday examples, is the history of science, technology, and medicine in the West from the Renaissance to the present; he also looks at how ways of knowing are linked to ways of making things, and how knowledge is built into commodities<-->pharmaceuticals and weapons, for instance. Finally he relates scientific and technical knowledge to popular understanding and to politics, Pickstone directs the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, U. of Manchester, UK. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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