Scholars have long thought that, following the Muslim Golden Age of the medieval era, the Ottoman Empire grew culturally and technologically isolated, losing interest in innovation and placing the ...empire on a path toward stagnation and decline. Science among the Ottomans challenges this widely accepted Western image of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ottomans as backward and impoverished. In the first book on this topic in English in over sixty years, Miri Shefer-Mossensohn contends that Ottoman society and culture created a fertile environment that fostered diverse scientific activity. She demonstrates that the Ottomans excelled in adapting the inventions of others to their own needs and improving them. For example, in 1877, the Ottoman Empire boasted the seventh-longest electric telegraph system in the world; indeed, the Ottomans were among the era’s most advanced nations with regard to modern communication infrastructure. To substantiate her claims about science in the empire, Shefer-Mossensohn studies patterns of learning; state involvement in technological activities; and Turkish- and Arabic-speaking Ottomans who produced, consumed, and altered scientific practices. The results reveal Ottoman participation in science to have been a dynamic force that helped sustain the six-hundred-year empire.
In this wide-ranging and stimulating book, a leading authority on the history of medicine and science presents convincing evidence that Dutch commerce-not religion-inspired the rise of science in the ...sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Harold J. Cook scrutinizes a wealth of historical documents relating to the study of medicine and natural history in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe, Brazil, South Africa, and Asia during this era, and his conclusions are fresh and exciting. He uncovers direct links between the rise of trade and commerce in the Dutch Empire and the flourishing of scientific investigation.Cook argues that engaging in commerce changed the thinking of Dutch citizens, leading to a new emphasis on such values as objectivity, accumulation, and description. The preference for accurate information that accompanied the rise of commerce also laid the groundwork for the rise of science globally, wherever the Dutch engaged in trade. Medicine and natural history were fundamental aspects of this new science, as reflected in the development of gardens for both pleasure and botanical study, anatomical theaters, curiosity cabinets, and richly illustrated books about nature. Sweeping in scope and original in its insights, this book revises previous understandings of the history of science and ideas.
This book examines the practices of contesting evidence in democratically constituted knowledge societies. It provides a multifaceted view of the processes and conditions of evidence criticism and ...how they determine the dynamics of de- and re-stabilization of evidence. Evidence is an essential resource for establishing claims of validity, resolving conflicts, and legitimizing decisions. In recent times, however, evidence is being contested with increasing frequency. Such contestations vary in form and severity – from questioning the interpretation of data or the methodological soundness of studies to accusations of evidence fabrication. The contributors to this volume explore which actors, for what reasons and to what effect, question evidence in fields such as the biological, environmental and health sciences. In addition to actors inside academia, they examine the roles of various other players, including citizen scientists, counter-experts, journalists, patients, consumers and activists. The contributors tackle questions of how disagreements are framed and how they are used to promote vested interests. By drawing on methodological and theoretical approaches from a wide range of fields, this book provides a much-needed perspective on how evidence criticism influences the development and state of knowledge societies and their political condition. Evidence Contestation will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of science, epistemology, bioethics, science and technology studies, the history of science and technology and science communication.
This edited volume explores how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming international conflict in cyberspace. Over the past three decades, cyberspace developed into a crucial frontier and issue ...of international conflict. However, scholarly work on the relationship between AI and conflict in cyberspace has been produced along somewhat rigid disciplinary boundaries and an even more rigid sociotechnical divide – wherein technical and social scholarship are seldomly brought into a conversation. This is the first volume to address these themes through a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary approach. With the intent of exploring the question ‘what is at stake with the use of automation in international conflict in cyberspace through AI?’, the chapters in the volume focus on three broad themes, namely: (1) technical and operational, (2) strategic and geopolitical and (3) normative and legal. These also constitute the three parts in which the chapters of this volume are organised, although these thematic sections should not be considered as an analytical or a disciplinary demarcation. This book will be of much interest to students of cyber-conflict, AI, security studies and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This open access book discusses how the involvement of citizens into scientific endeavors is expected to contribute to solve the big challenges of our time, such as climate change and the loss of ...biodiversity, growing inequalities within and between societies, and the sustainability turn. The field of citizen science has been growing in recent decades. Many different stakeholders from scientists to citizens and from policy makers to environmental organisations have been involved in its practice. In addition, many scientists also study citizen science as a research approach and as a way for science and society to interact and collaborate. This book provides a representation of the practices as well as scientific and societal outcomes in different disciplines. It reflects the contribution of citizen science to societal development, education, or innovation and provides and overview of the field of actors as well as on tools and guidelines. It serves as an introduction for anyone who wants to get involved in and learn more about the science of citizen science.
Maps of physical spaces locate us in the world and help us navigate unfamiliar routes. Maps of topical spaces help us visualize the extent and structure of our collective knowledge; they reveal ...bursts of activity, pathways of ideas, and borders that beg to be crossed. This book, from the author ofAtlas of Science, describes the power of topical maps, providing readers with principles for visualizing knowledge and offering as examples forty large-scale and more than 100 small-scale full-color maps. Today, data literacy is becoming as important as language literacy. Well-designed visualizations can rescue us from a sea of data, helping us to make sense of information, connect ideas, and make better decisions in real time. InAtlas of Knowledge, leading visualization expert Katy Börner makes the case for a systems science approach to science and technology studies and explains different types and levels of analysis. Drawing on fifteen years of teaching and tool development, she introduces a theoretical framework meant to guide readers through user and task analysis; data preparation, analysis, and visualization; visualization deployment; and the interpretation of science maps. To exemplify the framework, the Atlas features striking and enlightening new maps from the popular "Places & Spaces: Mapping Science" exhibit that range from "Key Events in the Development of the Video Tape Recorder" to "Mobile Landscapes: Location Data from Cell Phones for Urban Analysis" to "Literary Empires: Mapping Temporal and Spatial Settings of Victorian Poetry" to "Seeing Standards: A Visualization of the Metadata Universe." She also discusses the possible effect of science maps on the practice of science.
EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book examines potential remedies for improving public trust and the legitimacy of science. It reviews different policy approaches ...adopted by governments to incentivise the empowerment of stakeholders through co-production arrangements, participatory mechanisms, public engagement and interaction between citizens and researchers. Offering an original analysis of the political roots of the governmental impact and engagement agenda, this book sheds much-needed light on the wider connections to democracy.
An argument that draws on canonical and contemporary thinkers in political theory and science studies--from Machiavelli to Latour--for insights on bringing scientific expertise into representative ...democracy.
This open access book provides a broad context for the understanding of current problems of science and of the different movements aiming to improve the societal impact of science and research. The ...author offers insights with regard to ideas, old and new, about science, and their historical origins in philosophy and sociology of science, which is of interest to a broad readership. The book shows that scientifically grounded knowledge is required and helpful in understanding intellectual and political positions in various discussions on the grand challenges of our time and how science makes impact on society. The book reveals why interventions that look good or even obvious, are often met with resistance and are hard to realize in practice. Based on a thorough analysis, as well as personal experiences in aids research, university administration and as a science observer, the author provides - while being totally open regarding science's limitations- a realistic narrative about how research is conducted, and how reliable ‘objective’ knowledge is produced. His idea of science, which draws heavily on American pragmatism, fits in with the global Open Science movement. It is argued that Open Science is a truly and historically unique movement in that it translates the analysis of the problems of science into major institutional actions of system change in order to improve academic culture and the impact of science, engaging all actors in the field of science and academia.
