## Highlights , a social theorist is what you are when you move through your everyday/everynight world figuring out what others are doing around you, with you and to you ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5f9vzpt73bpk5tph4zqb72)) Writing in the early 1840s in England, watching the industrial revolution unfold, Marx noted in _The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844_ (1959, 104) that everything from our behaviors to our thoughts and our very selves was social: ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5fehgsh12cv2y2a7fxm4pz)) - 💭 courage to be disliked, every problem is a Social problem Introduction to the Book ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5fgar8e9h1ftww726qsx1m)) Mathematics is often thought to be pure and separate from social phenomena, but the final section introduces the idea of mathematics as a social construction. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5fkqr1xccd84274s9zb8tk)) - 💭 everything is a social construct 😭 super intrigued though Our goal here is to help you use the tools of social and cultural studies to study science and technology, to avoid the extremes of naïve realism and naive relativism, and to stay out of the “science wars.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5fsdpw9r1f08bad2gcjf76)) We want to know how the organization of society affects us, and how we affect society. We also want to know what the roles of science and technology are in a good society. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5g5b7bgm82egvtkygrss0f)) However, we wonder if students are good designers of technology? Can they evaluate technology based upon criteria other than price? Can they identify ethical issues surrounding a technology? ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5g9p38cyf660kenknfrfxd)) - 💭 kind of the difference between dev and designer? i like how this hints at potentially breaking out of the factory worker mindset, but at what point does this become the norm as well? i love how ive never come across this topic though 🤯 We want to recognize that other cultures have ways of developing and transmitting valid knowledge, and often it is not organized in ways which contemporary natural philosophers recognize or approve. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5gkreac19drxj689s2d7jk)) - 💭 advocating for intuition over facts and scientific method By the time you finish this book, you may begin to see that science and technology are abstractions from a reality in which there is only technoscience. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb5h2y60z57qk7qx9vxw22ar)) ### New highlights added September 26, 2023 at 9:45 AM Fredrich Nietzsche (1974, 335) describes science as having a potential for divesting existence of its “rich ambiguity” and reducing life to “a mere exercise for a calcula-tor and an indoor diversion for mathematicians.” Nietzsche (1882/1974, 335) goes on to describe science as an idiotic crudity, a mental illness, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb80fzvap3dypyv7xjaq11gf)) Many prominent philosophers, from Rousseau to Nietzsche and writers, from Dostoevsky to Kafka, have questioned our uncritical faith in _reason_. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb80w2recbm6ryj9zah8ts6y)) 2 Cultures of Science ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb80zr7ytazjjhpa5a2re4wa)) some understanding of society and culture is required to fully explain facts. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb819pgtsp2mjt3wdqts36z7)) feminists are revealing sexist bias in science’s explanation of sexual differences, reproductive theory, and medicine. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hb82fjy5xyxkrgmwb2c253yc)) ### New highlights added September 29, 2023 at 11:44 PM the people in power are the ones who determine the type of knowledge created. Middle to upper-class, well-educated, white males generally practice the science that has determined that women and minorities are incapable of performing science ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbjby4fv2pqyndbrxpax25bn)) Even individual efforts are collective in a sense, since individuals are social constructions and carry society and culture everywhere they go. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbjcc7tep0ng6qx9atn3npjk)) ### New highlights added October 1, 2023 at 9:51 AM In positing African thought as pre-scientific, Horton does not recognize the points of incommensurablility of western science and African traditional thought. It is traditional societies, he explains, not western society that lack an awareness of alternatives. For Horton, western science’s beliefs are not absolutes and are open to some questioning. In traditional thought, in Horton’s view, beliefs are absolutes and unquestioned. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbmyck3qpzsjt7nhat0c3c9w)) When a culture begins to move away from sacred beliefs, Horton claims that a transition from traditional thought to scientific thought has begun. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hbmyd4n2d4z060pprkevzkhh))