Overview

Why does the history of dogmatism deserve our attention? This open access book analyses uses of the term, following dogmatism from Victorian Britain to Cold War America, examining why it came to be regarded as a vice, and how understandings of its meaning have evolved. Whilst the field of scientific thought is committed to continuous innovation, ideas about dogmatism – with their roots in ancient philosophy – are pervasive in scientific thought today. Carrying connotations of both vice and ecclesiastical authority, the term’s prevalence during the ‘age of science’, and the rise of new thought categories such as totalitarianism and creationism, prompted scholars to repeat the old wisdom that science is incompatible with dogmatism. Tracing the concept across decades and different disciplines, Paul and Stoeger demonstrate how it has survived not only the passage of time, but changes in language and scientific methodologies. The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Dutch Research Council (NWO).

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9781350382640

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This original book builds a fascinating story about dogmatism identifying its transformations from an individual vice to a polemical device in various academic, political, and religious debates. Drawing on rich primary sources, Paul and Stoeger convincingly demonstrate the meanings that scholars have given to dogmatism in the history of knowledge over time. * Sari Kivistö, Professor of Comparative Literature, Tampere University, Finland * Paul and Stoeger’s Dogmatism offers a lucid and gripping presentation of an impressively rich material, combined with stimulating reflections on the ways in which intellectual history can return to questions of longue-durée continuity, as well as fertilize current interrogations in virtue and vice epistemology or the studies of cultural discourse. * Sorana Corneanu, Professor of English, University of Bucharest, Romania *

Author Information

Herman Paul is Professor of the History of the Humanities at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Alexander Stoeger is a Postdoctoral Researcher in History of Science at Leiden University, the Netherlands

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