In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger’s early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing.
By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger’s philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject.
Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels.
Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.
Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Jeff Kochan | December 2017
444 | 6.14" x 9.21" (234 x 156 mm)
ISBN Paperback: 9781783744107
ISBN Hardback: 9781783744114
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783744121
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783744138
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783744145
ISBN Hardback: 9781783744114
ISBN Digital (PDF): 9781783744121
ISBN Digital ebook (epub): 9781783744138
ISBN Digital ebook (mobi): 9781783744145
ISBN Digital (XML): 9781783744404
DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0129
BIC: PDX (History of Science); BISAC: PHI018000 (PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Phenomenology), SCI075000 (SCIENCE / Philosophy & Social Aspects), SOC026040 (SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Social Theory), PHI046000 (PHILOSOPHY / Individual Philosophers)
You may also be interested in:
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
Introduction
Chapter One
The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Phenomenology,and the Problem of the External World
1. Introduction
2. Scepticism and SSK
3. SSK and External-World Realism
4. Phenomenology and the ‘Natural Attitude’
5. The Phenomenology of Subjectivity in Heidegger’s Being and Time
6. Heidegger’s Response to External-World Scepticism
7. A Heideggerian Critique of SSK’s Response to External-World Scepticism
8. Conclusion
Chapter Two
A Minimal Realism for Science Studies
1. Introduction
2. Heidegger’s Existential Conception of Science
3. Getting at the Real
4. A Phenomenological Reformulation of SSK’s Residual Realism
5. Rouse on Heidegger and Realism
6. Minimal Realism and Scientific Practice
7. Conclusion
Appendix
Chapter Three
Finitude, Humility, and the Bloor-Latour Debate
1. Introduction
2. Kantian Humility and the Thing-in-Itself
3. Latour’s Attack on Social Constructivism
4. Bloor’s Defence of Social Constructivism
5. Where the Dust Settles in the Debate
6. Heidegger and the Thing-in-Itself
7. Putting the Bloor-Latour Debate to Rest
8. The Humility of Science Studies
9. Conclusion
Chapter Four
Things, Thinking, and the Social Foundations of Logic
1. Introduction
2. Heidegger on the Unity of Things and Thinking
3. Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Plato
4. Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Aristotle
5. Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Descartes
6. Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Kant
7. ‘The Argument Lives and Feeds on Something’
8. Time and Tradition at the Existential Root of Logic
9. From the Phenomenology of Thinking to the Sociology of Knowledge
10. The Social Foundations of Logic
11. Conclusion
Chapter Five
Mathēsis and the Emergence of Early-Modern Science
1. Introduction
2. Modern Science as Mathēsis
3. Renaissance Regressus and the Logic of Discovery
4. From Renaissance Regressus to Early-Modern Mathēsis
5. Mathematics and Metaphysics at the Cusp of the Early-Modern Period
6. Nature, Art, and Final Causes in Early-Modern Natural Philosophy
7. Conclusion
Chapter Six
Mathematics, Experiment, and the Ends of Scientific Practice
1. Introduction
2. The Galilean First Thing and the Aims of Experiment
3. Releasing Experimental Things
4. Boyle versus Line: A Study in Experimental Fact-Making
5. Social Imagery and Early-Modern Science
6. Conclusion
Chapter Seven
Conclusion: Subjects, Systems, and Other Unfinished Business
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index
© 2017 Jeff Kochan

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the work; to adapt the work and to make commercial use of the work providing attribution is made to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Attribution should include the following information:
Jeff Kochan, Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017, http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0129
Further details about CC BY licenses are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or error will be corrected if notification is made to the publisher.
Cover image: Scanning electron micrograph of a cabbage white butterfly egg, very close up (colour-enhanced). Credit: David Gregory & Debbie Marshall, Wellcome Images, CC BY 4.0. Cover design: Anna Gatti.