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Fuller, Steve (2014) The higher whitewash. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Volume 44 (Number 1). pp. 86-101. doi:10.1177/0048393113478133
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0048393113478133
Abstract
An assessment of Joel Isaac’s recent, well-researched attempt to provide a context for the emergence of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. That context consisted in the open space for cross-disciplinary projects between the natural and social sciences that existed at Harvard during the presidency of James Bryant Conant, from the early 1930s to the early 1950s. Isaac’s work at the Harvard archives adds interesting detail to a story whose general contours are already known. In particular, he reinforces the view that the guiding intellectual presence of what Isaac dubs Harvard’s “interstitial academy” was the biochemist Lawrence Henderson, someone who was enamored of Vilfredo Pareto’s version of scientism and was materially supported by the Rockefeller Foundation’s interest in increasing worker productivity. Isaac fails to consider the normative implications of Henderson’s vision, which influenced Talcott Parsons even more deeply than Kuhn. Isaac’s book is read in light of this concern, which reveals a profound sense of what is required of the sort of future elite policy maker that Harvard hoped to train: namely, a systems-based orientation that is at the same time tolerant of considerable intrasystemic incommensurability. The epistemological and ethical aspects of this prescription are analyzed.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology | ||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Philosophy of the Social Sciences | ||||
| Publisher: | Sage Publications Ltd. | ||||
| ISSN: | 0048-3931 | ||||
| Official Date: | 2014 | ||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Volume 44 | ||||
| Number: | Number 1 | ||||
| Page Range: | pp. 86-101 | ||||
| DOI: | 10.1177/0048393113478133 | ||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access |
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