Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line

by Thomas F. Gieryn

Overview

Why is science so credible? Usual answers center on scientists' objective methods or their powerful instruments. In his new book, Thomas Gieryn argues that a better explanation for the cultural authority of science lies downstream, when scientific claims leave laboratories and enter courtrooms, boardrooms, and living rooms. On such occasions, we use "maps" to decide who to believe—cultural maps demarcating "science" from pseudoscience, ideology, faith, or nonsense.

Gieryn looks at episodes of boundary-work: Was phrenology good science? How about cold fusion? Is social science really scientific? Is organic farming? After centuries of disputes like these, Gieryn finds no stable criteria that absolutely distinguish science from non-science. Science remains a pliable cultural space, flexibly reshaped to claim credibility for some beliefs while denying it to others. In a timely epilogue, Gieryn finds this same controversy at the heart of the raging "science wars."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226292618
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	01/15/1999
Edition description:	1
Pages:	412
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Thomas F. Gieryn is professor of sociology at Indiana University. He is the editor of three books, most recently of Theories of Science in Society.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction: Contesting Credibility Cartographically
1. John Tyndall's Double Boundary-Work: Science, Religion, and Mechanics in Victorian England
2. The U.S. Congress Demarcates Natural Science and Social Science (Twice)
3. May the Best Science Win: Competition for the Chair of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh, 1836
4. The (Cold) Fusion of Science, Mass Media, and Politics
5. Hybridizing Credibilities: Albert and Gabrielle Howard Compost Organic Waste, Science, and the Rest of Society
Epilogue: Home to Roost: "Science Wars" as Boundary-Work
Bibliography of Secondary Works
Index

What People are Saying About This

Paul DiMaggio

An important contribution to the institutional analysis of science—and even more broadly to the study of social classification and to the emerging cultural sociology of rationality. This book is insightful, reflexive and, best of all, a consistently good read.

Craig Calhoun

Tom Gieryn's writing is refreshingly unpretentious and engaging. His inquiry into the cultural authority of science and the boundary work that maintains it is a pleasure to read. It is also insightful and clarifying.

Mark A. Schneider

Tom Gieryn's unique investigations of the shifting boundaries of science have been one of the premier contributions to the sociology of science. Gieryn's new book is an outstanding work that is deftly, engagingly, and often charmingly written.
— (Mark A. Schneider, author of Culture and Enchantment)