Book Review contributions are single-authored or multiple-authored reviews of recent books in the area of social epistemology.
Although it may seem to be a paradoxical claim, we know quite a lot about ignorance. In fact, our knowledge and understanding of ignorance is increasing as the burgeoning field of agnotology gains traction. Kourany and Carrier’s book, Science and… Read More ›
The Bias That Divides Us (2021) is about myside bias, the supposed bias whereby we generate and test hypotheses and evaluate evidence in a way that is biased toward our own prior beliefs. Myside bias prevents convergence in beliefs: if… Read More ›
It isn’t very often that a book comes along that offers the opportunity to write a review which is facilitated so well by the very logic and structure of the work in question: Knowledge Socialism is an edited and collaborative… Read More ›
Alexander William Morales’s (2021) shoe in this review was once on the other foot, mine. As an early-career scholar I wrote a review of Alan G. Gross’s groundbreaking (1990) The Rhetoric of Science. Gross responded with extraordinary grace, which, very… Read More ›
Few are quite so blessed as the Chinese and Egyptians whose written records extend to the prehistoric Neverland of others. Most are fortunate not to have this employed as an argument against their existence. Germanics, however, are not so lucky. Interrogating… Read More ›
Florian Jaton’s The Constitution of Algorithms: Ground-Truthing, Programming, Formulating takes up a simple question: where do algorithms come from? Although a great deal of sociotechnical research implies problems of this kind, they are rarely posed so directly. There may be… Read More ›
Dear Professor Gabriel, By coincidence I reviewed the first two books of your trilogy for two different journals, and this one on the meaning of Thought, for yet another journal, without realizing that you had the intent to write the three… Read More ›
Without intending to be distasteful, let alone insensitive, it seems fitting that the publication of Religion and the Technological Future: An Introduction to Biohacking, Artificial Intelligence, and Transhumanism (2021) by Calvin Mercer and Tracy J. Trothen should take place during… Read More ›
If I asked you who you would talk to about your personal problems, you might suggest a close friend, partner, or family member. This seems fairly straight forward on the surface; confiding in someone about our problems requires a level… Read More ›
At the time of what was perhaps distastefully called ‘Gulf War 2’ (sounding much like a video game sequel) in 2002, a charge of ‘excessive hubris’ was levelled against Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of the UK, by Dr David… Read More ›