Michael Polanyi and his generation : origins of the social construction of science

Resource Information

The work Michael Polanyi and his generation : origins of the social construction of science represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Boston University Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Michael Polanyi and his generation : origins of the social construction of science

Title remainder

origins of the social construction of science

Statement of responsibility

Mary Jo Nye

Creator

• Nye, Mary Jo

Subject

• Freundschaft
• Geistesleben
• Jewish scientists -- Germany -- Intellectual life
• Jewish scientists -- Hungary -- Intellectual life
• Juden
• Judiska vetenskapsmän -- intellektuellt liv -- Tyskland -- 1900-talet
• Judiska vetenskapsmän -- intellektuellt liv -- Ungern -- 1900-talet
• Kultur
• Philosophie
• Polanyi, Michael
• Polanyi, Michael
• Deutschland
• Polanyi, Michael, 1891-1976 -- Friends and associates
• Polanyi, Michael, 1891-1976 -- Influence
• Polanyi, Michael, 1891-1976 -- influenser
• Science -- Philosophy | History -- 20th century
• Science -- Social aspects
• Ungarn
• Vetenskapsteori -- historia -- 1900-talet
• Wissenschaft
• Wissenschaftler
• Wissenschaftsphilosophie
• Polanyi, Michael, 1891-1976

Language

eng

Summary

In Michael Polanyi and His Generation, Mary Jo Nye investigates the role that Michael Polanyi and several of his contemporaries played in the emergence of the social turn in the philosophy of science. This turn involved seeing science as a socially based enterprise that does not rely on empiricism and reason alone but on social communities, behavioral norms, and personal commitments. Nye argues that the roots of the social turn are to be found in the scientific culture and political events of Europe in the 1930s, when scientific intellectuals struggled to defend the universal status of scientific knowledge and to justify public support for science in an era of economic catastrophe, Stalinism and Fascism, and increased demands for applications of science to industry and social welfare. At the center of this struggle was Polanyi, who Nye contends was one of the first advocates of this new conception of science. Nye reconstructs Polanyi's scientific and political milieus in Budapest, Berlin, and Manchester from the 1910s to the 1950s and explains how he and other natural scientists and social scientists of his generation--including J. D. Bernal, Ludwik Fleck, Karl Mannheim, and Robert K. Merton--and the next, such as Thomas Kuhn, forged a politically charged philosophy of science, one that newly emphasized the social construction of science

Cataloging source

ICU/DLC

Illustrations

illustrations

Index

index present

LC call number

B945.P584

LC item number

N94 2011

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography