Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

Nature of Science: Implications for Education an Undergraduate Course for Prospective Teachers

In this paper, I offer a detailed reconstruction and a critical analysis of Abraham Maslow’s neglected psychological reading of Thomas Kuhn’s famous dichotomy between ‘normal’ and ‘revolutionary’ science, which Maslow briefly expounded four years after the first edition of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, in his small book The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance (1966), and which relies heavily on his extensive earlier general writing in the motivational and personality psychology. Maslow’s Kuhnian ideas, put forward as part of a larger program for the psychology of science, outlined already in his 1954 magnum opus Motivation and Personality, are analyzed not only in the context of Kuhn’s original ‘psychologizing’ attitude toward understanding the nature and development of science, but also in a broader historical, intellectual and social context.

Kuhn Meets Maslow: The Psychology Behind Scientific Revolutions

Information history is moving beyond listing the “what” and to answering how-and-why systems emerged, prospered, or died. This paper explores the nature of (and debates over) explanation in historical studies. The conclusion is that the history of information has to rely upon complex explanations that are a mixture of social science and humanities approaches. There are no formulas for such historical work, as shown by Boyd Rayward’s sensitive efforts on the history of Paul Otlet’s career and personal life.

Thanks, Prof. Rayward, for Explaining…

Law and Nature: The natures of legal practice

Finding an appropriate place for STS within the American science and engineering curriculum has never been easy. Convincing science, engineering, and medical students, and their professors, to pay serious attention to the broader context of their respective professions seems to require a sustained dialogue across conventional disciplinary boundaries. Otherwise, STS ends up talking mostly to itself and its critics rather than to its most important audience, students (at all levels) and the general public (especially museum visitors). This essay considers a number of historical and present-day examples to argue that the founding vision of STS as a collaborative enterprise still offers some valuable lessons about how best to reach that audience.

Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science

Citations

Nature of Science: Implications for Education an Undergraduate Course for Prospective Teachers

Kuhn Meets Maslow: The Psychology Behind Scientific Revolutions

Thanks, Prof. Rayward, for Explaining…

Law and Nature: The natures of legal practice

Reestablishing a Conversation in STS: Who’s Talking? Who’s Listening? Who Cares?

Related Papers (5)

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

We Have Never Been Modern

Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature

The Social Construction of What

Science in action : how to follow scientists and engineers through society