Who Speaks for Nature? : On the Politics of Science / Laura Ephraim.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ephraim, Laura, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Science--Political aspects.

Science.

Science--Philosophy.

Political science--Philosophy.

Political science.

Natural history--Philosophy.

Natural history.

Nature--Political aspects.

Nature.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (189 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

When natural scientists speak up in public about the material phenomena they have observed, measured, and analyzed in the lab or the field, they embody a distinctive version of political authority. Where does science derive its remarkably resilient, though often contested, capacity to give voice to nature? What efforts on the part of scientists and nonscientists alike determine who is regarded as a legitimate witness to material reality and whose speech is discounted as idle chatter, mere opinion, or noise?In Who Speaks for Nature?, Laura Ephraim reveals the roots of scientific authority in what she calls "world-building politics": the collection of practices through which scientists and citizens collaborate with and struggle against each other to engage natural things and events and to construct a shared yet heterogeneous world. Through innovative readings of some of the most important thinkers of science and politics of the near and distant past, including René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Giambattista Vico, and Hannah Arendt, Ephraim argues that the natural sciences are political because they are crucial sites in which the worldly relationships that bind together the human and nonhuman are inherited, augmented, and reconstructed.Who Speaks for Nature? opens a novel conversation between political theory, science, and technology studies and augments existing efforts by feminists, environmentalists, and democratic theorists to challenge the traditional binary separating nature and politics. In an age of climate change and climate-change denial, Ephraim brings theoretical understandings of politics to bear on real-world events and decisions and uncovers fresh insights into the place of scientists in public life.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction. The Science Question in Political Theory

Chapter 1. Earth to Arendt

Chapter 2. Vico's World of Nature

Chapter 3. Descartes and Democracy

Chapter 4. Hobbes's Worldly Geometry of Politics

Epilogue. Science and Politics at the End of the World

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 25. Jul 2018)

ISBN:

9780812294682

0812294688

OCLC:

1017731402