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• Introduction and biographical notes on Helene Metzger
• Part I: Themes in Metzger's writings
• 1: Anachronism and scientific concepts
• 2: The study of science in the making
• 3: Emotions, habits and sympathy
• Part II: The role of other disciplines in Metzger's historiography
• 4: Historical synthesis and the shape of history of science
• 5: History of science and philosophy
• Chapter 6: History of science, ethnology and religion
• Part III: Metzger's legacy
• 7: Metzger's impact on her world
• 8: Metzger in our world
• Appendix: Four talks by Helene Metzger
• Appendix 1: Should historians of science become the contemporaries of the scholars they study?
• Appendix 2: The tribunal of history and the theory of scientific knowledge
• Appendix 3: The a priori in scientific theory and in history of science
• Appendix 4: The philosophical method in the history of science.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Is there something important to learn from the history of science about knowledge and the mind? Do habits and emotions play a significant role in science? To what extent do present concerns and knowledge distort our understanding of past texts and practices? These are crucial questions in current debates, but they are not new. This monograph evaluates the answers to these and other questions that Helene Metzger (1889-1944) provided. Metzger, who was the leading historian of chemistry of her generation, left us unparalleled reflections on the theory, practice and aims of history writing. Despite her influence on subsequent generations of thinkers, including Thomas Kuhn, this is the first full-length monograph on her. Beginning with an overview of her life, and the challenges faced by a Jewish woman working within academia, the book goes on to discuss the most important themes of her historiography, and her engagement with other disciplines, notably general history, philosophy, ethnology and religious studies. The book also explores both Metzger's immediate legacy and the relevance of her ideas for a host of current debates in science studies. The Appendices include four of her historiographical papers, translated into English for the first time.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Foreword by Scott F. Gilbert Preface Introduction
• Chapter 1-Beginnings Chapter 2-On Ways of Knowing Chapter 3-Transitions Chapter 4-Rewriting Immunology Chapter 5-The Immune Self Chapter 6-Systems Philosophically Considered
• Chapter 7-Pursuing the Enigmatic Self
• Chapter 8-Rethinking Science Chapter 9-Outline of a Post-Positivist Philosophy of Science
• Chapter 10-A New Agenda Chapter 11-Personalizing Science Chapter 12-Moral Epistemology Chapter 13-Requiem for the Ego Chapter 14-Identity Reconsidered Conclusion
• Appendix 1-The Modernist Self Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Tauber, a leading figure in history and philosophy of science, offers a unique autobiographical overview of how science as a discipline of thought has been characterized by philosophers and historians over the past century. He frames his account through science's - and his own personal - quest for explanatory certainty. During the 20th century, that goal was displaced by the probabilistic epistemologies required to characterize complex systems, whether in physics, biology, economics, or the social sciences. This "triumph of uncertainty" is the inevitable outcome of irreducible chance and indeterminate causality. And beyond these epistemological limits, the interpretative faculties of the individual scientist (what Michael Polanyi called the "personal" and the "tacit") invariably affects how data are understood. Whereas positivism had claimed radical objectivity, post-positivists have identified how a web of non-epistemic values and social forces profoundly influence the production of knowledge. Tauber presents a case study of these claims by showing how immunology has incorporated extra-curricular social elements in its theoretical development and how these in turn have influenced interpretive problems swirling around biological identity, individuality, and cognition. The correspondence between contemporary immunology and cultural notions of selfhood are strong and striking. Just as uncertainty haunts science, so too does it hover over current constructions of personal identity, self knowledge, and moral agency. Across the chasm of uncertainty, science and selfhood speak.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

A month after receiving a fatal diagnosis in January 2015, Oliver Sacks sat down for a series of filmed interviews in his apartment in New York City. For eighty hours, surrounded by family, friends, and notebooks from six decades of thinking and writing about the brain, he talked about his life and work, his abiding sense of wonder at the natural world, and the place of human beings within it. Drawing on these deeply personal reflections, as well as nearly two dozen interviews with close friends, family members, colleagues, and patients, and archival material from every point in his life

• Introduction
• Part I. The Groundwork for Structure: Harvard 1947 to 1955: 1. What did Aristotle Teach Kuhn?
• 2. The Influence of James B. Conant
• 3. Kuhn and the History of Chemistry
• 4. Kuhn and the Logical Positivists
• Part II. The Unexpected Uptake: Kuhn and the Social Sciences: 5. Kuhn's Influence on the Social Sciences
• 6. The Elephant in the Room: The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
• Part III. Kuhn and the History of Science
• 7. Copenhagen, 1962-1963: A Return to the History of Science
• 8. Structure, Historicism and the History of Science
• Part IV. Kuhn's Philosophical Legacy: 9. Squeals of Outrage from Philosophers
• 10. Kuhn and the Contemporary Realism/Anti-realism Debates
• 11. Kuhn's Career, Post-Structure.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions offers an insightful and engaging theory of science that speaks to scholars across many disciplines. Though initially widely misunderstood, it had a profound impact on the way intellectuals and educated laypeople thought about science. K. Brad Wray traces the influences on Kuhn as he wrote Structure, including his 'Aristotle epiphany', his interactions, and his studies of the history of chemistry. Wray then considers the impact of Structure on the social sciences, on the history of science, and on the philosophy of science, where the problem of theory change has set the terms of contemporary realism/anti-realism debates. He examines Kuhn's frustrations with the Strong Programme sociologists' appropriations of his views, and debunks several popular claims about what influenced Kuhn as he wrote Structure. His book is a rich and comprehensive assessment of one of the most influential works in the modern sciences.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)