Making Natural Knowledge

In Making Natural Knowledge, Jan Golinski reviews recent writing on the history of science and shows how it has been dramatically reshaped by a new understanding of science itself. In the past few years, scientific knowledge has come to be seen as a product of human culture, an approach that has challenged the tradition of the history of science as a story of steady and autonomous progress. New topics have emerged in historical research, including the identity of the scientist, the importance of the laboratory, the role of language and instruments, and the connections with other realms of culture and society. Golinski has written a sympathetic but critical survey of this exciting field of research, at a level that can be appreciated by students or anyone else who wants an introduction to contemporary thinking in the development of the sciences.

Jan Golinski is professor of history and humanities at the University of New Hampshire. He is the coeditor, with William Clark and Simon Schaffer, of The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, also published by the University of Chicago Press.