Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press (
2005)
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Abstract
Chronic and current epistemological controversies, with particular attention to the development of pragmatist/historicist/constructivist reconceptions of knowledge and science in the 20th century and the scandalized responses to them by defenders of more traditional rationalist/objectivist/realist conceptions. Individual chapters deal with complex and confused relations among epistemic skepticism, relativism, and constructivist epistemology ; 20th-century "postmodern" relativism and anti-relativism; Ludwik Fleck and constructivist views of truth, science, and knowledge;
attacks on and disavowals of constructivism and/or relativism by established and feminist philosophers; the Science Wars and fraught relations between the humanities and the sciences; the problematic claims of Evolutionary Psychology; and chronic problems and contemporary views of animal-human relations.