The Triumph of Uncertainty: Science and Self in the Postmodern Age

Author:   Alfred I. Tauber
Publisher:   Central European University Press
ISBN:  

9789633865965


Pages:   404
Publication Date:   10 October 2022
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
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The Triumph of Uncertainty: Science and Self in the Postmodern Age


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Overview

Tauber, a leading figure in history and philosophy of science, offers a unique autobiographical overview of how science as a discipline of thought has been characterized by philosophers and historians over the past century. He frames his account through science’s – and his own personal – quest for explanatory certainty. During the 20th century, that goal was displaced by the probabilistic epistemologies required to characterize complex systems, whether in physics, biology, economics, or the social sciences. This “triumph of uncertainty” is the inevitable outcome of irreducible chance and indeterminate causality. And beyond these epistemological limits, the interpretative faculties of the individual scientist (what Michael Polanyi called the “personal” and the “tacit”) invariably affects how data are understood. Whereas positivism had claimed radical objectivity, post-positivists have identified how a web of non-epistemic values and social forces profoundly influence the production of knowledge. Tauber presents a case study of these claims by showing how immunology has incorporated extra-curricular social elements in its theoretical development and how these in turn have influenced interpretive problems swirling around biological identity, individuality, and cognition. The correspondence between contemporary immunology and cultural notions of selfhood are strong and striking. Just as uncertainty haunts science, so too does it hover over current constructions of personal identity, self knowledge, and moral agency. Across the chasm of uncertainty, science and selfhood speak.

Full Product Details

Author:   Alfred I. Tauber
Publisher:   Central European University Press
Imprint:   Central European University Press
Weight:   0.712kg
ISBN:  

9789633865965


ISBN 10:   9633865964
Pages:   404
Publication Date:   10 October 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

Foreword Scott F. Gilbert Preface Introduction Chapter 1. Beginnings Chapter 2. On Ways of Knowing Chapter 3. Transitions Chapter 4. Rewriting Immunology Chapter 5. The Immune Self Chapter 6. Systems Philosophically Considered Chapter 7. Pursuing the Enigmatic Self Chapter 8. Rethinking Science Chapter 9. Outline of a Post-Positivist Philosophy of Science  Chapter 10. A New Agenda Chapter 11. Personalizing Science Chapter 12. Moral Epistemology Chapter 13. Requiem for the Ego Chapter 14. Identity Reconsidered Conclusion Appendix—The Modernist Self Acknowledgements Bibliography Index

Reviews

Tauber is well qualified, I would hazard to say uniquely qualified, to relate the growing pains and false starts of the developing science of immunology - his insights and perceptions penetrate to the core of the subjects covered. This book brings its intellectual message as a product of the writer's quest for self-examination and personal understanding, a revelation of the doctor-scientist-philosopher as a young man viewed from the elevation of his maturity. --Irun Cohen Fred Tauber has written a brilliant book. At once autobiography, intellectual history, and theory of immunology, Tauber focuses less on self/nonself discriminations than on the symbiotic relationship between antibodies (anti-foreign bodies) and antigens (antibody generators). But it is not only Tauber's original ideas about immunology that matter. What also makes The Triumph of Uncertainty memorable is its personal origins. Anyone contemplating a career in medical science should read this book. So too should seasoned immunologists, and all clinician charged with explaining immune responses to unsettled patients. --A. David Napier While Tauber's book is intensely personal, it yet manages to break new philosophical ground while displaying varied interdisciplinary scholarship. --Sahota Sarkar


Tauber is well qualified, I would hazard to say uniquely qualified, to relate the growing pains and false starts of the developing science of immunology - his insights and perceptions penetrate to the core of the subjects covered. This book brings its intellectual message as a product of the writer's quest for self-examination and personal understanding, a revelation of the doctor-scientist-philosopher as a young man viewed from the elevation of his maturity.--Irun Cohen Fred Tauber has written a brilliant book. At once autobiography, intellectual history, and theory of immunology, Tauber focuses less on self/nonself discriminations than on the symbiotic relationship between antibodies (anti-foreign bodies) and antigens (antibody generators). But it is not only Tauber's original ideas about immunology that matter. What also makes The Triumph of Uncertainty memorable is its personal origins. Anyone contemplating a career in medical science should read this book. So too should seasoned immunologists, and all clinician charged with explaining immune responses to unsettled patients.--A. David Napier While Tauber's book is intensely personal, it yet manages to break new philosophical ground while displaying varied interdisciplinary scholarship.--Sahota Sarkar


""Tauber is well qualified, I would hazard to say uniquely qualified, to relate the growing pains and false starts of the developing science of immunology - his insights and perceptions penetrate to the core of the subjects covered. This book brings its intellectual message as a product of the writer's quest for self-examination and personal understanding, a revelation of the doctor-scientist-philosopher as a young man viewed from the elevation of his maturity."" --Irun Cohen ""Fred Tauber has written a brilliant book. At once autobiography, intellectual history, and theory of immunology, Tauber focuses less on self/nonself discriminations than on the symbiotic relationship between antibodies (anti-foreign bodies) and antigens (antibody generators). But it is not only Tauber's original ideas about immunology that matter. What also makes The Triumph of Uncertainty memorable is its personal origins. Anyone contemplating a career in medical science should read this book. So too should seasoned immunologists, and all clinician charged with explaining immune responses to unsettled patients."" --A. David Napier ""While Tauber's book is intensely personal, it yet manages to break new philosophical ground while displaying varied interdisciplinary scholarship."" --Sahota Sarkar


Author Information

Alfred I. Tauber, Professor of Philosophy, emeritus and Zoltan Kohn Professor of Medicine, emeritus at Boston University, has published extensively on the theoretical development of immunology (Immunity, the Evolution of an Idea, Oxford 2017), contemporary science studies (Science and the Quest for Meaning, Baylor 2009), and medical ethics (Patient Autonomy and the Ethics of Responsibility, MIT 2005).

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