A Social History of Truth by Steven Shapin
1997; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tech.1997.0149
ISSN1097-3729
Autores Tópico(s)Child and Adolescent Health
Resumo238 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE nine: the body divine (from biblical text to early modern saint); the body natural (from Greek treatises to Harvey); the body and destiny (from Aristotle through Freud and Masters andJohnson to a poem by W. D. Snodgrass); mind and body (from Hippocratic to Freudian, including the account of “Anna O”); disease and purity (from lep rosy to the germ theory); the healer (from Hippocratic Oath to Sara Lawrence Lightfoot); medical experimentation (from Jenner to Tuskegee); institutionalization and medicalization (from Pinel to Foucault); and pain, suffering and death (from preanesthetic mas tectomy to AIDS). Each reading is introduced with a paragraph es tablishing its background. There are a few minor errors in these introductions (Augustine as the Bishop of “Hatto” rather than Hippo, Marie “Zakrezewska” rather than Zakrzewska, for example), but I noted no substantial ones. Many fine black-and-white illustra tions (mainly from the iconographical collections of the Wellcome Institute) give the book further impact. One might ask whether this selection of readings shows the inter actions between medicine and culture in quite the way the authors’ introduction sets out; one might even ask if there is not a problem in essentializing the undefined categories of medicine and culture in the first place (perhaps one could ask for the plural forms, at least). The use of “civilization” in the title also harkens back to the earlier 20th century, with connotations of culture somewhat differ ent than the ethnographic ones specified in the introduction. Other reviewers might have equally churlish comments. But they would be beside the point. While choosing readings for an anthology7 inevita bly involves matters of taste and familiarity, Rothman, Marcus, and Kiceluk have chosen from truly varied and dramatic writings. The selections are almost all intriguing and important. It should make this volume not only a most welcome aid for the classroom but a book to be kept handy for moments of reflection. In that regard, it will indeed help to foster ideas about the varied meanings associated with the body and medicine. HaroldJ. Cook Dr. Cook is chair of the Department ofthe History ofMedicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He teaches the history of medicine and writes on early modern European medicine and society. A Social History of Truth. By Steven Shapin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Pp. xxxi +483; illustrations, notes, bibliogra phy, index. $29.95 (cloth). Most historians treat the notion of “truth” rather loosely; some philosophers treat “truth” very seriously. It is Steve Shapin’s signal achievement to engage historians, philosophers, and sociologists TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 239 with his account of the collective nature of truth-telling and knowl edge-making. Shapin’s aim is not conventionally “interdisciplinary,” but rather to engage a set ofphilosophical and sociological problems through detailed historical analysis. The case at hand is the gentle manly origins of English experimental philosophy in the 17th cen tury. The characters in the Royal Society’s circle range in social standing from Robert Boyle, a younger son of the vastly wealthy first earl of Cork, through Robert Hooke, the celebrated microscopist who began as a paid laboratory assistant, and down to the anony mous technicians responsible for building and operating the new experimental machines, including Boyle’s famous air pump. Shap in’s sharply etched and richly drawn collective portrait of a scientific community wrestling with how accurate knowledge about nature can be known is a rewarding read—but not a light one. The argument of this ambitious book can be stated concisely. Con stituting a body of reliable knowledge requires identifying trustwor thy agents. Working solutions to problems of credibility and trust were found in the practices of “gentlemanly culture.” These prac tices were the foundation of the new empirical science of 17th-cen tury England. Gentlemen, unlike courtiers or merchants or yeomen, were deemed truthful owing to their material independence and moral integrity. By possessing freedom of action, thanks to annual incomes of £280 or more, gentlemen literally had the freedom to tell the truth. (By contrast, persons in dependent states, including women and servants, were deemed unreliable due to their depen dent status.) Yet, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet...
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