An audio link blog from James King, packaged as a podcast.
Published about once a week.
Clips from episode 4 of How to Think About Science in which David Cayley interviews the philosopher of science, Andrew Pickering.
Andrew Pickering discusses the old and new styles of physics described in his book, Constructing Quarks.
The world does not sit around waiting to be described. "We try to do things, the world does things back." "An open-ended, never-ending, emergent process."
There are no eternal and unchanging ideas.
The "strong program" in STS ultimately concluded that there is a sociological cause of scientific knowledge production. But this just replaces one set of unchanging natural truths with another set of social truths. All aspects of reality are in flux in relation to one another.
Cybernetics in Britain. A science of "getting along in a world that will always surprise you, that you can never dominate."
Models of the brain as an organ of adaptation that bumps up against the world.
Royal sciences and nomad sciences. Putting modernity in its place. An option, not a destiny.