Overcoming the Two Cultures - Science vs. the Humanities in the Modern World-system (Hardcover, New)

Describes the evolution of the structures of cognition and intentionality over the longue-duree of historical capitalism. This the first book to analyze this socio-cultural sphere using this approach. It is timely, given the contemporary period of educational crisis, and ideal for students of Sociology. This book tells the story of how the very idea of two cultures - the so-called divorce between science and the humanities - was a creation of the modern world-system. The contributors, working from a common research framework, trace the divorce of facts and values - indivisible within medieval Europe's structures of knowledge - as part of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. This led to a polarization between universalist science (destined to become dominant as the empirical mode of arriving at truth) and the particularist humanities (defending its legitimacy as an alternative, more empathetic mode of knowing) and finally to the creation of the social sciences as an uneasy intermediary in this epistemological debate. the two cultures that emerge from science, feminism, race and ethnic studies, cultural studies, and ecology, ending with an analysis of the culture wars and the science wars.