The Uncertain Sciences [Paperback]

Bruce Mazlish (Author, Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2007

This sweeping inquiry into the present condition of the human sciences addresses the central questions: What sort of knowledge do the human sciences claim to be offering? To what extent can that knowledge be called scientific? and What do we mean by "scientific" in such a context?

In this wide-ranging book, one of the most esteemed cultural historians of our time turns his attention to major questions about human experience and various attempts to understand it "scientifically." Malish considers the achievements, failings, and possibilities of the human sciences--a domain that he broadly defines to include the social sciences, literature, psychology, and hermeneutic studies.

In a rich and original synthesis built upon the work of earlier philosophers and historians, Malish constructs a new view of the nature and meaning of the human sciences. Starting with the remote human past and moving through the Age of Discovery to the present day, Malish discusses the sort of knowledge the human sciences claim to offer. He looks closely at the positivistic aspirations of the human sciences, which are modeled after the natural sciences, and at their interpretive tendencies. In an analysis of scientific method and scientific community, he explores the roles they can or should assume in the human sciences. His approach is genuinely interdisciplinary, drawing upon an array of topics, from civil society to globaliation to the interactions of humans and machines.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Our understanding of the natural world, from the tiniest quark to the biggest galaxy, is ever-deepening, even while it seems that our grasp of who we are--our essential humanity--is slipping further and further away. Renowned cultural historian Bruce Mazlish makes the case for advancing the "human sciences" (psychology, philosophy, hermeneutics, and literature) in his masterful yet humble book The Uncertain Sciences. Standing on the shoulders of giants from nearly every field of endeavor, Mazlish seeks a place for us to fit into our schemes of knowledge, to be at one with the objects of our understanding.

Can we develop a science of humanity while avoiding the pitfalls of positivism and postmodernism? Mazlish is optimistic, even ebullient at times, though always practical and keeping an eye on what is possible. Hopeful that our species can transform itself into a "truth community" that values knowledge of self and others more highly than today's culture, he explores what it would mean to merge morality with mathematics, meaning with measurement, into a synthesis by which we might retain both our knowledge and our essence. Mazlish writes that The Uncertain Sciences "is like an orange, to be slowly peeled"--and any book that quotes Faraday, Asimov, and Foucault in the first few pages deserves such a warning, but the careful reader will find the rewards well worth the challenge. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"In The Uncertain Sciences, Bruce Malish presents a cunning and visionary examination of the scientific enterprise of understanding the human species and, by doing so, of its ability to address real life problems... Undoubtedly, The Uncertain Sciences by Bruce Malish is a thought provoking read that will force you to break the boundaries of conventional thinking and ask yourself whether it is time to reach out to other fields of knowledge for changes in the conceptualiation of human events and for feasible solutions to human problems.... it is a book that will engage your mind beyond the boundaries of the commonalities of scientific discourse." -- Maura Pilotti, Metapsychology Online Reviews

"Bruce Malish has written an immensely learned book, one that will appeal to and be read by specialists and generalists alike."

– Christopher Fox, director, Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, University of Notre Dame

"Writing with eloquence, wit, and deep humaneness, Bruce Malish demonstrates what is to be gained by a lifetime of scholarship in the 'uncertain sciences'--not absolute knowledge, but wisdom."

– Susan Buck-Morss, professor of political philosophy and social theory, Cornell University

"This book is a great banquet of ideas from a bold and brave mind."

– W. Warren Wager, Distinguished Teaching Professor of History, State University of New York at Binghamton

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 348 pages
• Publisher: Transaction Publishers (May 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1412806305
• ISBN-13: 978-1412806305
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,079,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent, wide-ranging study of the human sciences, June 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Uncertain Sciences (Hardcover)

This is an important book not only for the students of social sciences and humanities but also for anyone interested in the different ways human nature and human culture can be studied and conceived. The author succeeds in illustrating the peculiar nature of the human sciences, which aspire to be scientific and yet lack most of the preconditions of (natural) scientific inquiry.

Mazlish manages to cross existing boundary lines in a way that makes his study an interdisciplinary work in the profound sense of the word. As a philosophy -oriented historian, I can easily sympathise with the author's general approach and with his specific claim that we must avoid the Scylla of `scientistic' positivism without succumbing to the Charybdis of extreme relativism and `interpretative nihilism' of the postmodernists. He himself holds an intermediate position between positivistic inquiry and hermeneutical interpretation. Ideally, the human sciences would combine the valuable elements of positivism (such as some form of public verification) and hermeneutics (such as the narrative element and the question of meaning. As the author correctly points out, to the extent the human sciences try to imitate natural scientific methodology (and even vocabulary), they exclude the question of meaning from their work, and by so doing they exclude the most relevant element from their inquiry. Still, it is of no use either to totally reject the scientific method inhering in positivism.

Mazlish has a fine grasp not only of different fields of the human sciences (sociology, history, economics, etc.) but also of such natural scientific disciplines as evolutionary biology, which he sees as the counterpart in the human sciences to evolutionary theory in the natural sciences. His explication of `emergent phenomena' in the context of cultural evolution is brilliant and helps us to understand the latter as a sort of acceleration of emergent phenomena. Furthermore, Mazlish illustrates a number of issues that are usually difficult to find in academic studies of the human sciences, such as the Other, madness, development of consciousness, the idea of `truth community', and man as `animal symbolicum'.

Mazlish brings forward the intriguing idea that development of consciousness must be embodied in a scientific community. What I particularly liked about his conception of consciousness is that he emphasises the practical implications of changed consciousness: our human predicament is not that we don't `know' with sufficient scientific guarantees; the problem is that we have not readily incorporated such knowledge into our behavior and beliefs. The perennial question of how to put knowledge into action is the problem that Mazlish forcefully address in his book.

In his account the Other appears as an essential element in the human sciences and not as some strange psychological phenomenon, and this is a very fruitful way to look at the issue. To interpret the Other (such as `exotic', foreign cultures and peoples) is to adopt a new or different perspective, and through encountering the Other there can occur something like the `development of consciousness'. I think the way the Other is presented in this book makes it a very relevant notion for the human sciences, which study the human interactions and relationships. Of course, as the author points out, to encounter the real or imaginary Other can also lead to the extermination of the Other, as the conquest of the New World or the Holocaust testify.

This learned, wide-ranging and yet easily accessible study provokes us to reflect on the possibility to form a truth community that is devoted to rational search for `increased consciousness' and all that it entails in a world where the traditional national, cultural, and economic boundaries are tumbling down. The idea of developing a scientific `truth community' may be utopian, but Mazlish's remodelling it into a community held together by `historical consciousness', which affirms both the natural and the human sciences, is an intriguing idea, especially, as he points out, experiences are becoming sharable by all humans. A highly recommendable book.