February 6, 2007
Method and the Contemporary
So per my usual I have been reading some totally out of date methodologists in political science (actually, worse, making my students read them as well). But in one Giovanni Sartori — a huge figure in social science method discussions — found some chesnuts on methology in relationship to a problematic that, in our terms, might reasonably be called “contemporary.” Read on for a couple highlights from his 1970 classic “Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics”…
Arpita vs Shapin on Science and the Modern World
I’m posting this on Arpita’s behalf:
Monday, January 22, 2007 “Science and the Modern World” - Steven Shapin, UC Berkeley
Shapin started his talk by explicitly trying to discredit Alfred North Whitehead’s claim in Science and the Modern World (a must read, by the way) that the scientific mentality in modernity has spread through the educated world. He did this by citing quite a few Gallup and other opinion polls–statistics on how many people believe in a physical heaven (81%), how many believe that God created the world (an overwhelming 92%), how many think humans are descended from apes (an abysmal 9%), etc etc. He did this for about 30 minutes of the talk. Okay, so the point is that science is not as widespread in the educated world as some scholars would like to believe.
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