/lit/ - Literature

>>19135151
The go-to book is Bruno LaTour, Steve Woolgar, 'Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts' (1979). It's a very readable and rather fascinating book, based on Latour’s work as a participant-observer at the Salk Institute from 1975 to 1977. It offers a 'peek behind the curtain' of modern scientific practice. It does not aim at refuting the scientific method, as such, but it shows that as a matter of actual practice, the scientific method is often applied in a chaotic and haphazard fashion. In particular, the design of an experiment and the interpretation of the data are always ambiguous and disputable.

LaTour subsequently wrote several other books that address similar issues, notably 'Science in Action' and 'We Have Never Been Modern'. I haven't read them, but the latter book is mostly concerned with critiquing the presuppositions of science (although that indeed is subject to analysis and criticism in all three of these books).

The Kuhn is a very good book, well worth reading.