Narratives and Comparisons

Narratives and Comparisons

Adversaries or Allies in Understanding Science?

Edited by: Martin Carrier, Rebecca Mertens and Carsten Reinhardt
Funded by: Praktiken des Vergleichens Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - SFB 1288

Bielefeld University Press, transcript | 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839454152

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Contents

About this book

As a powerful tool in the production of knowledge, comparing plays a crucial part in the sciences and the humanities. This volume explores the relationship between comparing and narrating in epistemic practices and clarifies the ways in which narratives enable or impede practices of comparing. It takes into account related activities, such as measuring and classifying, modeling, establishing norms and categories, as well as organizing and popularizing knowledge, to analyze the ambivalent relationship between narratives, scientific explanation, and understanding. The contributions bring out the epistemic role of narratives, and elucidate how narratives are connected to comparisons and scientific explanations.

Author information

Martin Carrier, born in 1955, teaches philosophy of science at Bielefeld University. His research is directed at methodological characteristics of science in the context of practice, that is, research targeted at economically or politically relevant fields.
Rebecca Mertens (PhD), born in 1984, is a postdoctoral researcher in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. She works on the role of analogies, models and forms of comparison in the history of molecular genetics and is a member of the collaborative research program "Practices of Comparison: Ordering and Changing the World". During her graduate and doctoral studies, she was a visiting scholar at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris and a visiting graduate fellow at the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science.
Carsten Reinhardt, born in 1966, teaches history of science at Bielefeld University. His research fields are the history of twentieth-century physical sciences, methods development, and expertise.

Frontmatter Open Access PDF PDF	1
Contents Open Access PDF PDF	5
Introduction Martin Carrier, Rebecca Mertens and Carsten Reinhardt Open Access PDF PDF	7
Does Narrative Matter? M. Norton Wise Open Access PDF PDF	29
Historical Narrative versus Comparative Description? Christine Peters Open Access PDF PDF	63
On the Narrative Order of Experimentation Hans-Jörg Rheinberger Open Access PDF PDF	85
The Flower People of Shanidar Oliver Hochadel Open Access PDF PDF	99
Narrating and Comparing in the Organization of Research Projects Rebecca Mertens Open Access PDF PDF	123
Seeing, Comparing, Narrating Joris Corin Heyder Open Access PDF PDF	145
Narrating Art History Britta Hochkirchen Open Access PDF PDF	175
Authors Open Access PDF PDF	203

Narratives and Comparisons

Adversaries or Allies in Understanding Science?

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