The scientific life

by Steven Shapin

"In this brilliant book Shapin takes us from celebration and criticism to description and understanding of one of the most important phenomena of the twentieth century-the creation of technical novelties. Richly paradoxical and entertaining, The Scientific Life contrasts the evidence-free moralizing of the cultural critics and early sociologists of science with the often insightful analyses of the despised industrial researchers. He shows that when adequately described the worlds of technoscientific research and venture capital are not the soulless, routinized, bureaucratic antithesis of the academic ideal, but ones where the necessary uncertainties of innovation are dealt with using face-time, trust, charisma, and even proverbs, things our narratives mistakenly consign to a pre-modern era. This is a book where the doers get their due and the contemplators their comeuppance; where the quotidian is richer than the transcendent."--David Edgerton, author of The Shock of the Old -- Book ja