Objectivity

Author: Lorraine Daston
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1942130619
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Book Description
Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences — and show how the concept differs from alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences — from anatomy to crystallography — are those featured in scientific atlases: the compendia that teach practitioners of a discipline what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Atlas images define the working objects of the sciences of the eye: snowflakes, galaxies, skeletons, even elementary particles. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity — or truth-to-nature or trained judgment — is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to any one interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity — and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically.

Objectivity

Author: David Usborne
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500515013
Category : Industrial design
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This miscellany of mysterious objects celebrates the beauty of simple, useful things. If you have ever thatched a roof, measured a skull, stuffed a rabbit or walked on a whale, you may well recognize some of these tools. If you haven't, but admire the work of, say, Miró, Duchamp and Cornell, you will appreciate these accidental masterpieces of the everyday. These are the tools of life, some developed according to our basic human needs, some for less obvious ends, still others from vanishing trades, yet all display a beauty and meaning beyond their function. There is something in these objects that will touch the designer, artist, inventor or collector in us all.

Rethinking Objectivity

Author: Allan Megill
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822314943
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
Although "objectivity" is a term used widely in many areas of public discourse, from discussions concerning the media and politics to debates over political correctness and cultural literacy, the question "What is objectivity?" is often ignored, as if the answer were obvious. In this volume, Allan Megill has gathered essays from fourteen leading scholars in a variety of fields--history, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, history of science, sociology of science, feminist studies, literary studies, and accounting--to gain critical understanding of the idea of objectivity as it functions in today's world. In diverse essays the authors provide fascinating studies of objectivity in such areas as anthropological research, corporate and governmental bureaucracies, legal discourse, photography, and the study and practice of the natural sciences. Taken together, Megill argues, this volume calls for developing a notion of "objectivities." The absolute sense of objectivity--that is, objectivity as a "God's eye view"--must be supplemented, and in part supplanted, by disciplinary, procedural, and dialectical senses of objectivity. This book will be of great interest to a broad range of scholars as it presents current thinking on a topic of fundamental concern across the disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Contributors. Barry Barnes, Dagmar Barnouw, Lorraine Code, Lorraine Daston, Johannes Fabian, Kenneth J. Gergen, Mary E. Hawkesworth, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Evelyn Fox Keller, George Levine, Allan Megill, Peter Miller, Andy Pickering, Theodore M. Porter

The View from Somewhere

Author: Lewis Raven Wallace
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022666743X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Book Description
A look at the history of the idea of the objective journalist and how this very ideal can often be used to undercut itself. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven Wallace dives deep into the history of “objectivity” in journalism and how its been used to gatekeep and silence marginalized writers as far back as Ida B. Wells. At its core, this is a book about fierce journalists who have pursued truth and transparency and sometimes been punished for it—not just by tyrannical governments but by journalistic institutions themselves. He highlights the stories of journalists who question “objectivity” with sensitivity and passion: Desmond Cole of the Toronto Star; New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse; Pulitzer Prize-winner Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah; Peabody-winning podcaster John Biewen; Guardian correspondent Gary Younge; former Buzzfeed reporter Meredith Talusan; and many others. Wallace also shares his own experiences as a midwestern transgender journalist and activist who was fired from his job as a national reporter for public radio for speaking out against “objectivity” in coverage of Trump and white supremacy. With insightful steps through history, Wallace stresses that journalists have never been mere passive observers. Using historical and contemporary examples—from lynching in the nineteenth century to transgender issues in the twenty-first—Wallace offers a definitive critique of “objectivity” as a catchall for accurate journalism. He calls for the dismissal of this damaging mythology in order to confront the realities of institutional power, racism, and other forms of oppression and exploitation in the news industry. The View from Somewhere is a compelling rallying cry against journalist neutrality and for the validity of news told from distinctly subjective voices.

Origins of Objectivity

Author: Tyler Burge
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199581401
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 645

Book Description
Tyler Burge's study investigates the most primitive ways in which individuals represent the physical world. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, Burge outlines the constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, thus locating the origins of representational mind.

Self-Consciousness and Objectivity

Author: Sebastian Rdl
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674976517
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
Sebastian Rödl undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. This profound work revives the thought that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.

Objectivity in Journalism

Author: Steven Maras
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745663923
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 295

Book Description
Objectivity in journalism is a key topic for debate in media, communication and journalism studies, and has been the subject of intensive historical and sociological research. In the first study of its kind, Steven Maras surveys the different viewpoints and perspectives on objectivity. Going beyond a denunciation or defence of journalistic objectivity, Maras critically examines the different scholarly and professional arguments made in the area. Structured around key questions, the book considers the origins and history of objectivity, its philosophical influences, the main objections and defences, and questions of values, politics and ethics. This book examines debates around objectivity as a transnational norm, focusing on the emergence of objectivity in the US, while broadening out discussion to include developments around objectivity in the UK, Australia, Asia and other regions.

Just the Facts

Author: David T.Z. Mindich
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814764150
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Book Description
A “superb” history of journalism’s most respected tenet—objectivity—and the challenges of achieving it in today’s world (Christian Science Monitor). If American journalism were a religion, as it has been called, then its supreme deity would be “objectivity.” The high priests of the profession worship the concept, while the iconoclasts of advocacy journalism, new journalism, and cyberjournalism consider objectivity a golden calf. Meanwhile, a groundswell of tabloids and talk shows and the increasing infringement of market concerns make a renewed discussion of the validity, possibility, and aim of objectivity a crucial pursuit. Despite its position as the orbital sun of journalistic ethics, objectivity—until now—has had no historian. David T.Z. Mindich reaches back to the nineteenth century to recover the lost history and meaning of this central tenet of American journalism. His book draws on high-profile cases, showing the degree to which journalism and its evolving commitment to objectivity altered—and in some cases limited—the public’s understanding of events and issues. Mindich devotes each chapter to a particular component of this ethic—detachment, nonpartisanship, the inverted pyramid style, facticity, and balance. Through this combination of history and cultural criticism, he provides a profound meditation on the structure, promise, and limits of objectivity in the age of digital media. “There is a growing unhappiness about the direction of news coverage. Readers and viewers want ‘objectivity’ back. The first step toward doing that is to understand where ‘objective’ journalism came from in the first place. Just the Facts is a good place to begin.” —The Washington Monthly

Truth Without Objectivity

Author: Max Kölbel
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415272452
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
Kölbel examines and rejects the mainstream view of 'meaning' and how this relates to truth, instead developing and defending an alternative, relativist, theory.

New Objectivity

Author: Sergiusz Michalski
Publisher: Taschen
ISBN: 9783822823729
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
Drawing on new research from local archives as well as reinterpretations of published literature,Power and the Peopledescribes how England remained governable between 1525 and 1640, despite the wars, famine, epidemics, and dynastic and religious crises of the period. The book surveys the mechanisms of authority at various levels, from the street and alehouse to the manor and the royal court. Maintaining order was a difficult challenge, given that England had no standing army or professional police, and Alison Wall investigates everything from the roles of village constables to the social cohesiveness that came from civic celebrations and participatory politics. Her book provides students with a rich perspective on the social world and political culture of early modern England.