Institutionalist Sociology of Science (original) (raw)
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The sociology of scientific knowledge : a philosophical perspective
2002
Tartu Ülikooli Kirjastus Tiigi 78, Tartu 50410 Tellimus nr. similar hidden inconsistency to emerge in Woolgar's application of reflexivity. Collins & Yearley (1992a & 1992b). In this essay see basically part 2.4. 9 See Lakatos (1971: 9), where he distinguishes between primary internal history of rational reconstruction of science with its internal 'logic', and secondary, external history that shows the deviations from mainstream history.
History of the Human Sciences, 1994
Debates in SSK over who is a naturalist (or not) and whose interpretation of the symmetry principle is acceptable (or not) point to a deeper problem. The issue which these controversies help bring into focus concerns whether the putative advance in the explanation of scientific practice offered by SSK has proven more apparent than real, and for precisely the reasons that made their project plausible to begin with. Positivists wanted to explain belief maintenance and change within science by reference to the inherent rationality of scientific practices; SSK insisted that they had a more empirically adequate account, albeit one which found the causes of belief within a wider cultural nexus than canvassed by philosophers. But, I argue, no genuine causal explanations are to be found in that literature.
PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
For each of us, there are certain things worthy of preservation. This paper – written more than forty years ago – was one of them for me. Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn. Important voices in the Sociology of Science. Popper tends to focus on the timeless and universal, emphasizing the importance of falsification in scientific methodology. Kuhn takes a more sociological perspective, stressing that ideas have a social context. Popper the purist. Thomas Kuhn the pragmatist. Both of these voices were important forty years ago and remain so today.
Three Aspects of the Phenomenon of Science: In Search for Unity among Sociologists
The Education and science journal, 2018
Introduction. In today's globalising world, science acquires a crucial importance: integrating humanity within the framework of solving global problems, it becomes one of the leading factors in social development, facilitating work and diversifying leisure time, as well as serving as an instrument of transformations in the political sphere. Undoubtedly, the social aspects of contemporary science are capturing the attention of a huge number of researchers. However, it is not clear that all areas of the sociology of science treat the object of their study in the same way. Aim. A lack of reflection on the unity or otherwise in the understanding of the essence of science in the various fields of sociological research makes it difficult to compare different theories of the institutional, cultural, social and communicative contexts of scientific development. An urgent methodological task therefore consists in developing an understanding of the various definitions of the concept of "science" used in the framework of contemporary sociological analysis of this phenomenon. Results and scientific novelty. In this paper, two dominant sociological views on science-as an experimental-mathematical approach to cognising the world and as a system of representations in general-are compared. We conclude that while researchers studying institutional aspects of science tend to interpret it in terms of the "heritage" of post-Enlightenment European rationalism, constructionist and communicatively-oriented researchers tend to approach science as the system of knowledge and cognition that is formed in any human society, having its own specific sociocultural features in each respective case. While each of these two approaches undoubtedly has its own methodological potential, in order to
Sociology of scientific knowledge and scientific education: Part I
Science and Education, 1994
This article is the first of two that will examine the claims of contemporary sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) and the bearing of these claims upon the rationale and practice of science teaching. It is maintained that if the claims of SSK are true then there are serious, and educationally and culturally deleterious, implications which follow. The two articles will argue that, fortunately, the claims of SSK for the external causation of scientific belief are baseless. And thus science teachers should resist admonitions to accept the findings of the sociology of science. 'I look forward to the day when the last proponent of the 'strong program' in the sociology of science is strangled in the entrails of the last expert in the theory of metaphor' Alasdair MacIntyre, 1988 EDUCATION OR INDOCTRINATION? IDEAS OR IDEOLOGY? Bertrand Russell suggested that a wise system of education-one which considered the interests of the students and the society-would not aim at instilling allegiance to any particular view or particular party, but rather, it would aim at enabling them to choose intelligently between views and parties. Such an education 'would aim at making them able to think, not at making them think what their teachers think' (1961, 401-2). The same ideal is at the heart of modern science itself as one of its constitutive principles. As Popper (1963), Guthrie (1962) and other scholars have noted, the origins of science among the Presocratics had its characteristic novelty, not in the ideas themselves which might have become merely a different orthodoxy to replace the Homeric gods on Olympus; rather, the novelty was to be seen in the tradition of critical inquiry-the demand to improve upon the teacher's story rather than merely to perpetuate it unquestioningly. In this sense, science has a special importance in the curriculum through the values it embodies and, correspondingly, the history of science is more than a catalogue of past achievements, but an exemplification of these values. Russell's pedagogical precept is, however, implicitly challenged today by certain doctrines which are gaining a considerable following in our universities and among educationalists. The doctrines of social constructivism take scientific theories to reflect the social milieu in which they emerge and, rather than being founded on logic, reason and evidence, beliefs are taken to be causal effects of the prevailing context. Thus, typical of social
SCIENCE AS AN OBJECT OF SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY
Nómadas. Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas, 2018
Science as an object of sociological study” presents a theoretical reflection about the attributes of science that makes it a sociological matter of interest. Since science operates in a world composed of strong territorial, linguistic, cultural and political / ideological differences, it has been in the midst of a controversy between those who maintain that it is determined by social factors and those who conceive it as an entity that develops with a relative autonomy of them. The article argues that the tension between one conception and another diminishes when conceiving the rigorousness that distinguishes scientific methodology, not only as cognitive rules but also as symbolic ways which have been created and shared socially to materialize the consubstantial ethical principles of scientific rationality.
This paper revisits, from a new angle, some of the debates over the relativism of the "Sociology of Scientific Knowledge" (=SSK). The new angle is provided by recent work on relativism in epistemology and the philosophy of language. I defend three theses. First, SSK-relativism is not an instance of Paul Boghossian's well-known "template" for relativism. Second, SSK-relativism is therefore not directly threatened by arguments targeting this template position. And third, SSK-relativism is nevertheless in the vicinity of this template, and it offers at least sketches of arguments for distinctive and original relativist theses.