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The Last Scientist, the First Magician: Dramatic and Epic Theater as Alternative Images of Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Diana L. Kormos Barkan
Diana L. Kormos Barkan
Affiliation:
Division of the Humanities and Social SciencesCalifornia Institute of Technology
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Extract

In his “A Programmatic Attempt at an Anthropology of Knowledge,” published in 1981, Yehuda Elkana briefly introduced the notions of dramatic and epic theater as metaphors for distinct and opposite conceptions of history. He elaborated more fully on this theme in a paper published in 1982 on the occasion of the Albert Einstein centenary celebration. Elkana there criticized the “myth of simplicity” surrounding Einstein, and proposed to replace a “facile holism” often attributed to Einstein with “two-tier thinking.” According to Elkana, Einstein's historical epistemology was a blend of an epic, contingent view of historical scientific change coupled with strong scientific realism.

Type
Homage to Yehuda Elkana
Information
Science in Context , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , Summer 1996 , pp. 163 - 175
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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