[PDF] Masons, Tricksters and Cartographers: Comparative Studies in the Sociology of Scientific and Indigenous Knowledge David Turnbull

Science and technology have created many of the problems besetting us at the turn of the century, yet, paradoxically, we cannot address them without their assistance. This beautifully illustrated book takes a fresh approach to resolving the problems of progress and modernity by reframing science and technology. In an eclectic and highly original study, Turnbull brings together a wide range of traditions as diverse as cathedral building, Micronesian navigation, cartography and turbulence research. He argues that all our differing ways of producing knowledge, including science, are messy, spatial and local. Every culture has its own ways of assembling local knowledge, thereby creating space through the linking of people, practices and places. The spaces we inhabit and assemblages we work with are not as homogeneous and coherent as our modernist perspectives have led us to believe-rather they are complex and heterogeneous motleys.