As the embodiment of objectivity, scientific knowledge has been placed at the heart of the transition to modern society. Generations of social theorists, including Max Weber, have considered the rise of rationality to be a good thing. But Weber also wrote of his regret of society's loss of 'spirit'. Today, many scientists also harbour a sense of nostalgia for the 'little science' that prevailed before the era of the atomic bomb - science that was small-scale in personnel and resources and happily autonomous. This has been supplanted by the large-scale, capital-intensive science that serves industry and is organized in an industrial mode. In The Scientific Life, historian Steven Shapin asks if contemporary high-tech science is a moral enterprise. Does objectivity render scientific achievement less personal than that in the humanities, and does the scientist possess any special moral virtue? Shapin threads his way through this tangled set of issues with skill, leaving only a few loose ends.
展开▼
