Steve Fuller (social epistemologist)

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Steve Fuller in 2005.
Steve Fuller in 2005.

Steve Fuller (born July 12, 1959 in New York City) is an Anglo-American philosopher-sociologist in the field of science and technology studies.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Fuller was admitted as a John Jay Scholar to Columbia University in 1976, from where he graduated summa cum laude in History and Sociology in 1979. He then studied at Clare College, Cambridge University, on a Kellet Fellowship. He received an M.Phil. in History and Philosophy of Science in 1981, followed by a Ph. D. in the same subject from the University of Pittsburgh in 1985, where he was an Andrew Mellon Pre-Doctoral Fellow. Fuller subsequently held assistant and associate professorships at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Virginia Tech and, again, the University of Pittsburgh. In 1994, at the age of 35, he was appointed to the chair in sociology and social policy at the University of Durham in the UK, from which he moved in 1999 to his current post at the University of Warwick, UK.

[edit] Research

Fuller is most closely associated with social epistemology as an interdisciplinary research program. Social epistemology is a normative discipline that addresses traditional problems of knowledge using the tools of history and the social sciences. Fuller founded the first journal (1987) and wrote the first book (1988) devoted to this topic.

Fuller is a prolific author and speaker, having written more than 200 academic articles and given over 500 public talks across the world. His works have been translated into fifteen languages. He has been active in public understanding of science initiatives in the UK, where he moved in 1994. He currently holds a chair in sociology at the University of Warwick.

Although Fuller's style of writing, covering broad ranges of subject at a sweep and sometimes marked by sarcasm, can make his views difficult to specifically determine, there are some characteristic themes and tendencies that distinguish him:

  1. A distrust of disciplinary boundaries as an indicator of epistemological significance. Fuller's critique of Thomas Kuhn revolves around this point, given that Kuhn defended the view that knowledge requires discipline-like paradigms.
  2. A strong futurist orientation tied to socialist and progressivist ideologies of the 18th to 20th centuries, including liberation theology. Fuller calls his brand of politics "civic republican" and, over the years, has shown an increasing interest in constitutionalism.
  3. An acceptance of the "postmodern condition" as a fact but not a norm. Fuller is presented, with some accuracy, as trying to reinvent positivism, especially the traditional positivist aversion to metaphysics as a necessary feature of the scientific method. This came through in Fuller's role as a defence witness supporting Intelligent Design in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, where he questioned the implicit metaphysics of "methodological naturalism" as necessary to the conduct of science.
  4. Reinterpretation of intellectual history, often explicitly contradicting established and accepted views through the use of counterfactual reasoning to suggest alternative futures. Fuller calls this "Tory Historiography", history from the standpoint of the losers. Fuller’s appearance as an expert witness defending intelligent design in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005) had this character.
  5. A concern with the social role of the intellectual, especially whether it can be fostered within academic life. Fuller defends of a fairly classical model of the university, as a unique institution that unifies teaching and research. His critique of knowledge management points in that direction.

[edit] Public Intellectual Work

Since moving to the UK, Fuller has increasingly oriented himself towards public intellectual expression, including television and radio, which he interprets as a natual outgrowth of his version of social epistemology. Two of his books have been recognised in this regard. Kuhn vs Popper was Book of the Month for February 2005 in the US mass circulation magazine, Popular Science. The Intellectual was selected as a Book of the Year in 2005 by the UK liberal-left magazine, New Statesman. He periodically contributes a column to the Project Syndicate, associated with George Soros' Open Society project, which appears in several languages in newspapers across the world.[1] In 2006 he also taught a course on the 'epistemology of journalism' at an international summer school at the University of Lund, Sweden.[2]

[edit] Controversy surrounding support of Intelligent Design

Fuller has been criticised for his allegedly postmodernist views on science in the light of his support for 'Intelligent Design'[3].[4][5]. A striking feature of this criticism is the lack of reference to anything in Fuller's writings other than quotes typically taken out of context. However, an intellectually balanced discussion was had in HOPOS-L, a listserv frequented by historians and philosophers of science, to which Fuller himself contributed in October and November 2005, immediately after his Dover testimony. [6] (Registration required.) On 21 February 2007, Fuller debated Lewis Wolpert on whether evolution and intelligent design should be accorded equal status as scientific theories. For an eyewitness account, see [7].

[edit] Bibliography

  • Social Epistemology, Indiana University Press, 1988 (2nd edition, 2002).
  • Philosophy of Science and Its Discontents, Westview Press, 1989 (2nd edition, Guilford Press, 1993).
  • Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge, University of Wisconsin Press, 1993 (2nd edition, with James H. Collier, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004)
  • Science, Open University Press (UK) and University of Minnesota Press (US), 1997.
  • The Governance of Science, Open University Press, 2000.
  • Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times, University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  • Knowledge Management Foundations, Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002.
  • Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science, Icon Books (UK) and Columbia University Press (US), 2003.
  • The Intellectual, Icon Books, 2005.
  • The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies, Routledge, 2006
  • The New Sociological Imagination, Sage, 2006.

[edit] See also

  • Special issue of Social Epistemology (2003) on Fuller's controversial Kuhn thesis[8]
  • Fuller's response to controversy (Social Epistemology 2004) [9]
  • Francis Remedios, Legitimizing Scientific Knowledge: An Introduction to Steve Fuller’s Social Epistemology, Lexington Books, 2003.[10]

[edit] External links

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