title: The sciences of subjectivity.
abstract: In historical and ethnographic studies of the making of scientific knowledge, there has been a long-standing fascination with deflating certain stories about objectivity. Among the resources used to achieve that deflation have been the notions of subjectivity, which has been treated more as a trouble for objectivity than as a knowledge-making mode open to systematic study. I describe notions of subjectivity implicated in that inattention; I trace potentially constructive links between contemporary science studies and resources in 18th-century philosophical aesthetics; I draw notice to available engagements with the mode of subjectivity known as taste, and, especially, gustation and olfaction; and I suggest ways in which we might study the achievement of intersubjectivity in these domains.
authors: Department of History of Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. shapin@fas.harvard.edu
authors: Steven
authors: S
authors: Shapin
mesh_terms: D004954:Esthetics / Q000266:history*; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D019359:Knowledge; D012586:Science; D013649:Taste