Experiment and the making of meaning : human agency in scientific observation and experiment /

Gooding (University of Bath) aims to give the agency of observers a central place in an account of scientific activity. He stresses that the sort of empirical access involved in scientific activity is cognitive and social: cognitive in that it involves articulating experience; social in that it relies on encounters between observers. Gooding thus explains how scientific observers interact with their instruments, the material world, and each other. His account of experimental processes explains how observers confer meaning on words, objects, and practices. It aims to identify the pre-linguistic practices that enable the familiar argumentative practices in science. Gooding supports his account with a detailed case study of the development of Faraday's electromagnetic theory. The emphasis throughout is on agents making meaning and correspondence relations in scientific practice. The book is well organized and well written, but its price is exorbitant by any standard. Recommended for libraries supporting advanced undergraduate and graduate work in the philosophy of science. -P. K. Moser, Loyola University of Chicago