Princeton Pre-read

The Princeton Pre-read program, initiated by President Eisgruber in 2013, introduces new students to Princeton’s vibrant intellectual life. Members of the incoming class join together to read and discuss a book that President Eisgruber selects and sends to new students prior to their arrival on campus. First year students then participate in Pre-read discussions with student leaders during Orientation Week and with President Eisgruber over the course of the academic year.

Professor Gordon’s book explores the philosophical and historical attempts to address the problem of deciding what is pseudoscience, and what is not. It argues that by understanding doctrines that are often seen as antithetical to science, we can learn a great deal about how science operated in the past and does today. This exploration raises several questions: How does a doctrine become demonized as pseudoscientific? Who has the authority to make these pronouncements? How is the status of science shaped by political or cultural contexts? How does pseudoscience differ from scientific fraud? On the way to answering these questions, Dean Gordin guides readers along a bewildering array of marginalized doctrines, looking at parapsychology (ESP), Lysenkoism, scientific racism, and alchemy, among others, to better understand the struggle to define what science is and is not, and how the controversies have shifted over the centuries. On the Fringe provides a historical tour through many of these fringe fields in order to provide tools to think deeply about scientific controversies both in the past and in our present.

Princeton Pre-read

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