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This volume explores how the scientific method enters and determines the dominant methodologies of various modern academic disciplines. It highlights the ways in which practitioners from different disciplinary backgrounds -- the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences -- engage with the scientific method in their own disciplines.
The book maps the discourse (within each of the disciplines) that critiques the scientific method, from different social locations, in order to argue for more complex and nuanced approaches in methodology. It also investigates the connections between the method and the structures of power and domination which exist within these disciplines. In the process, it offers a new way of thinking about the philosophy of the scientific method.
Part of the Science and Technology Studies series, this volume is the first of its kind in the South Asian context to debate scientific methods and address questions by scholars based in the global south. It will be useful to students and practitioners of science, humanities, social sciences, philosophy of science, and philosophy of social science. Research scholars from these disciplines, especially those engaging in interdisciplinary research, will also benefit from this volume.
List of contents
Introduction: Method-o-logical Diversity: Seeking Disciplinary Narrations
Gita Chadha and Renny Thomas
Part I: SHIFTS WITHIN THE SILO: HUMANITIES
Introduction to Part I
1. Methods in Substantivist Linguistics
Probal Dasgupta
2. 'If Not Precisely a Science': The Provocations of Literary Studies
Sharmila Sreekumar
3. Philosophy and Method
Sundar Sarukkai
Part II: SHIFTS WITHIN THE SILO: NATURAL SCIENCES
Introduction to Part II
4. The Methods of Mathematics
Amber Habib
5. Questions of Method: The Philosophy and Practice of Modern Human Genetics
Chitra Kannabiran
6. Chemistry, Method, Science, and Society: A Conversation
Gita Chadha, Ram Ramaswamy and Renny Thomas
7. 'Between Clearing and Concealment': Knowledge-making in Physics
K. Sridhar
Part III: SHIFTS WITHIN THE SILO: SOCIAL SCIENCES
Introduction to Part III
8. Decolonising Method: Where Do We Stand in Political Studies?
Aditya Nigam
9. Betwixt And Between?: Anthropology’s Engagement with the Sciences and Humanities
Kamala Ganesh
10. Economics, Feminist Economics, and Women’s Studies: Methodological Orientations and Disciplinary Boundaries
Neetha N.
11. Method, Object, and Praxis: Marx and the Historians of Science
Rahul Govind
12. Psychology in India: Knowledge, Method, Nation
Sabah Siddiqui
13. Geography in India: Gendered Concerns and Methodological Issues
Saraswati Raju
14. Beyond the Postcolonial: Speculations on the Indian Contemporary
Yasmeen Arif
15. Towards New Ecologies of Method: A Speculative Afterword
Sasheej Hegde
About the author
Gita Chadha is a faculty member at the Department of Sociology, University of Mumbai, India. Her areas of academic interests are sociological theory, feminist epistemologies, feminist science studies and visual cultures. Her publications include
Feminists and Science: Critiques and Perspectives in India, Vo 1 & 2 (2015, 2017) and
Reimaging Sociology in India: Feminist Perspectives (2018).
Renny Thomas is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. He is the author of
Science and Religion in India: Beyond Disenchantment (2022).
Summary
This volume explores how the scientific method enters and determines the dominant methodologies of various modern academic disciplines. It highlights the ways in which practitioners from different disciplinary backgrounds –– the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences –– engage with the scientific method in their own disciplines.
