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Roundtable on Jan Golinski's Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science Comments on Jan Golinski's Making Natural Knowledge

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  • Biddle, Jeff

Abstract

About three lines into his book Making Natural Knowledge, Jan Golinski defines the “constructivist” view of science as “that which regards scientific knowledge primarily as a human product, made with locally situated cultural and material resources, rather than as simply the revelation of a pre-given order of nature” (Golinski 1998, p. ix). Having a pretty good idea of what Professor Golinski's book was going to be about, this stopped me for a moment. Is that all there is to it? Is that what the work of the Strong Programme, Latour, Pickering, Knorr-Cetina; the talk of mangle, black boxes and resistances, is all about? Described this way, it seems quite reasonable; a way of thinking about scientific activity that should at least be given a hearing. Admittedly, I have seen other, usually more prolix, ways of characterizing what Golinski has called the constructivist view of science. But I like this one. It sends what I believe to be the correct message that this “constructivism” is, at its heart, better characterized as plausible and intriguing than outrageous, and that it is not necessarily threatening to any core values held by historians.

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  • Biddle, Jeff, 2001. "Roundtable on Jan Golinski's Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science Comments on Jan Golinski's Making Natural Knowledge," Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 253-259, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jhisec:v:23:y:2001:i:02:p:253-259_00
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