Rhetorical, narrative, cognitive and epistemological perspectives on science and culture

Kurzfassung/Abstract

The diverse and interdisciplinary approaches gathered in Kris Rutten, Stefaan Blancke and Ronald Soetaart’s edited volume Perspectives on Science and Culture calmly and measuredly investigate the continuities and discontinuities between scientific understanding and cultural representation. The book thus constitutes a welcome addition to an academic terrain that has been occupied by positions as diverse as – in the disparaging characterization by the respective detractors – ‘crypto-positivism’ or ‘scientism’ (ranging over empiricism, naturalism, scientific realism and rationalism) and the ‘politically correct’ ‘academic left’ (comprising postmodernism, poststructuralism, constructionism, radical sociology and the like), a terrain that has, unsurprisingly, been marked by vociferous disputation and substantial acrimony. The book provides fresh insights into the so-called ‘science wars’, exploring the tensions between what C.P. Snow has referred to as the ‘two cultures’, i.e. the sciences and the humanities, and also engaging with Jerome Bruner’s account of logical-scientific versus narrative modes of thinking. In what follows, I will examine the different perspectives proffered here – rhetorical, narrative, cognitive, and epistemological – especially in relation to the educational dimensions and implications, the socially/culturally aware teaching and learning of science.