"The construction of scientific authority and credibility [is] a recent and fragile creation."
Jimena Canales is a pioneering historian of science and an expert in nineteenth and twentieth century history of the physical sciences. She is currently Vice-President of the Board of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Canales's most recent book, Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science, was awarded the Cosmos Prize for science popularization. Her work on the history of science has been published in Aperture, Artforum, WIRED, Nautilus, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker.
Canales' work challenges the authority of science to unilaterally pronounce on the nature of reality from a feminist and humanistic standpoint. Canales' bold challenges to scientism have reinvigorated the importance of the humanities in the search for truth.
"Canales has rescued from near oblivion a fascinating, highly significant debate." John Banville, London Review of Books