Sullied (Natural & Social) Sciences: A Basic Reading Guide

From the introduction: This compilation endeavors to help us appreciate where, when, how, and (especially if only hopefully) why the practice of science has gone (or is in danger of going) awry, egregiously failing to modestly conform to or at least sufficiently approach our ideal or best conceptions or models of what constitutes science as a form of intellectual inquiry and field of knowledge praxis. Not unrelated to this aim, is the desire to provide titles that enable one to better understand the pitfalls of “scientism,” as well as arrive at a nuanced if not sophisticated grasp of the methodological distinctions between the natural and social sciences (without assuming the former are ‘hard’ and the latter are ‘soft,’ in effect, failing to properly emulate the most putative exemplar of the former, namely, physics). I share the late John Ziman’s belief that “In less than a generation we have witnessed a radical, irreversible, worldwide transformation in the way that science is organized, managed and performed.”

The bibliography on “sullied (natural and social) sciences” is here.