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Sociology of scientific knowledge

December 01, 2023

See also: Science and technology studies, Technology and society, Science studies, and Social construction of technology

The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity."[1] The sociology of scientific ignorance (SSI) is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge.[2][3] For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises.

A hands-on activity at the 2014 Cambridge Science Festival, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Use of balloons to explore fundamental mathematics.

Sociologists of scientific knowledge study the development of a scientific field and attempt to identify points of contingency or interpretative flexibility where ambiguities are present.[4] Such variations may be linked to a variety of political, historical, cultural or economic factors. Crucially, the field does not set out to promote relativism or to attack the scientific project; the objective of the researcher is to explain why one interpretation rather than another succeeds due to external social and historical circumstances.

The field emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s and at first was an almost exclusively British practice. Other early centers for the development of the field were in France, Germany, and the United States (notably at Cornell University).[5] Major theorists include Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Sal Restivo, Randall Collins, Gaston Bachelard, Harry Collins, Karin Knorr Cetina, Paul Feyerabend, Steve Fuller, Martin Kusch, Bruno Latour, Mike Mulkay, Derek J. de Solla Price, Lucy Suchman and Anselm Strauss.

Programmes and schools edit

The sociology of scientific knowledge in its Anglophone versions emerged in the 1970s in self-conscious opposition to the sociology of science associated with the American Robert K. Merton, generally considered one of the seminal authors in the sociology of science. Merton's was a kind of "sociology of scientists," which left the cognitive content of science out of sociological account; SSK by contrast aimed at providing sociological explanations of scientific ideas themselves, taking its lead from aspects of the work of Ludwik Fleck,[6][7] Thomas S. Kuhn,[8] but especially from established traditions in cultural anthropology (Durkheim, Mauss) as well as the late Wittgenstein. David Bloor, one of SSK's early champions, has contrasted the so-called 'weak programme' (or 'program'—either spelling is used) which merely gives social explanations for erroneous beliefs, with what he called the 'strong programme', which considers sociological factors as influencing all beliefs.

The weak programme is more of a description of an approach than an organised movement. The term is applied to historians, sociologists and philosophers of science who merely cite sociological factors as being responsible for those beliefs that went wrong. Imre Lakatos and (in some moods) Thomas S. Kuhn might be said to adhere to it. The strong programme is particularly associated with the work of two groups: the 'Edinburgh School' (David Bloor, Barry Barnes, and their colleagues at the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh) in the 1970s and '80s, and the 'Bath School' (Harry Collins and others at the University of Bath) in the same period. "Edinburgh sociologists" and "Bath sociologists" promoted, respectively, the Strong Programme and Empirical Programme of Relativism (EPOR). Also associated with SSK in the 1980s was discourse analysis as applied to science (associated with Michael Mulkay at the University of York), as well as a concern with issues of reflexivity arising from paradoxes relating to SSK's relativist stance towards science and the status of its own knowledge-claims (Steve Woolgar, Malcolm Ashmore).[9]

The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) has major international networks through its principal associations, 4S and EASST, with recently established groups in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Latin America. It has made major contributions in recent years to a critical analysis of the biosciences and informatics.

The sociology of mathematical knowledge edit

Studies of mathematical practice and quasi-empiricism in mathematics are also rightly part of the sociology of knowledge since they focus on the community of those who practice mathematics. Since Eugene Wigner raised the issue in 1960 and Hilary Putnam made it more rigorous in 1975, the question of why fields such as physics and mathematics should agree so well has been debated. Proposed solutions point out that the fundamental constituents of mathematical thought, space, form-structure, and number-proportion are also the fundamental constituents of physics. It is also worthwhile to note that physics is more than merely modeling of reality and the objective basis is upon observational demonstration. Another approach is to suggest that there is no deep problem, that the division of human scientific thinking through using words such as 'mathematics' and 'physics' is only useful in their practical everyday function to categorize and distinguish.

Fundamental contributions to the sociology of mathematical knowledge have been made by Sal Restivo and David Bloor. Restivo draws upon the work of scholars such as Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West, 1918), Raymond Louis Wilder[10] and Leslie Alvin White, as well as contemporary sociologists of knowledge and science studies scholars. David Bloor draws upon Ludwig Wittgenstein and other contemporary thinkers. They both claim that mathematical knowledge is socially constructed and has irreducible contingent and historical factors woven into it. More recently Paul Ernest has proposed a social constructivist account of mathematical knowledge, drawing on the works of both of these sociologists.

Criticism edit

SSK has received criticism from theorists of the actor-network theory (ANT) school of science and technology studies. These theorists criticise SSK for sociological reductionism and a human centered universe. SSK, they say, relies too heavily on human actors and social rules and conventions settling scientific controversies. The debate is discussed in an article titled Epistemological Chicken.[11]

See also edit

Disputes:

Notes edit

  1. ^ Ben-David, Joseph; Teresa A. Sullivan (1975). "Sociology of Science". Annual Review of Sociology. 1 (1): 203–222. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.01.080175.001223. Retrieved 2006-11-29.
  2. ^ Stocking, Holly (1998). "On Drawing Attention to Ignorance". Science Communication. 20 (1): 165–178. doi:10.1177/1075547098020001019. S2CID 145791904.
  3. ^ Wehling, Peter (2001). "Beyond knowledge? Scientific ignorance from a sociological point of view". Zeitschrift für Soziologie [de]. 30 (6): 465–484. Retrieved 2013-01-19.
  4. ^ Baber, Zaheer (1992). Ashmore, Malcolm; Bhaskar, Roy; Mukerji, Chandra; Woolgar, Steve; Yearley, Steven (eds.). "Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: Lost in the Reflexive Funhouse?". Theory and Society. 21 (1): 105–119. doi:10.1007/BF00993464. ISSN 0304-2421. JSTOR 657625. S2CID 145211615.
  5. ^ "Department of Sociology | Department of Sociology Cornell Arts & Sciences". sociology.cornell.edu. Retrieved 2021-09-05.
  6. ^ Fleck 1935.
  7. ^ Fleck 1979.
  8. ^ KUHN, THOMAS (2021-06-08), "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", Philosophy after Darwin, Princeton University Press, pp. 176–177, doi:10.2307/j.ctv1jk0jrs.26, S2CID 236228428, retrieved 2021-09-05
  9. ^ Mulkay, Michael; Gilbert, G. Nigel (1982). "What is the Ultimate Question? Some Remarks in Defence of the Analysis of Scientific Discourse". Social Studies of Science. 12 (2): 309–319. doi:10.1177/030631282012002006. ISSN 0306-3127. S2CID 144024114.
  10. ^ Raymond Wilder (1981) Mathematics as a Cultural System. ISBN 0-08-025796-8
  11. ^ Collins, H. M. and S. Yearley (1992). "Epistemological Chicken". In A. Pickering (Ed.) Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago, Chicago University Press: 301-326. Referenced at ANT resource list University of Lancaster, with the summary "Argues against the generalised symmetry of actor-network, preferring in the interpretive sociology tradition to treat humans as ontologically distinct language carriers". Website accessed 8 February 2011.

References edit

  • Kusch, Martin (1998). "Sociology of scientific knowledge – research guide". Retrieved February 23, 2012.

Further reading edit

  • Baez, John (2010). "The Bogdanoff Affair".
  • Bloor, David (1976) Knowledge and social imagery. London: Routledge.
  • Bloor, David (1999) "Anti-Latour". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A Volume 30, Issue 1, March 1999, Pages 81–112.
  • Chu, Dominique (2013), The Science Myth---God, society, the self and what we will never know, ISBN 1782790470
  • Collins, H.M. (1975) The seven sexes: A study in the sociology of a phenomenon, or the replication of experiments in physics, Sociology, 9, 205-24.
  • Collins, H.M. (1985). Changing order: Replication and induction in scientific practice. London: Sage.
  • Collins, Harry and Steven Yearley. (1992). "Epistemological Chicken" in Science as Practice and Culture, A. Pickering (ed.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 301-326.
  • Edwards, D., Ashmore, M. & Potter, J. (1995). . History of the Human Sciences, 8, 25-49.
  • Fleck, Ludwik (1935). Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv [Emergence and development of a scientific fact: Introduction to the study of thinking style and thinking collectives] (in German). Verlagsbuchhandlung, Basel: Schwabe.
  • Fleck, Ludwik (1979). Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
  • Gilbert, G. N. & Mulkay, M. (1984). Opening Pandora's box: A sociological analysis of scientists' discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Latour, B. & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. 2nd Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (not an SSK-book, but has a similar approach to science studies)
  • Latour, B. (1987). Science in action : how to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (not an SSK-book, but has a similar approach to science studies)
  • Pickering, A. (1984). Constructing Quarks: A sociological history of particle physics. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.
  • Schantz, Richard and Markus Seidel (2011). The Problem of Relativism in the Sociology of (Scientific) Knowledge. Frankfurt: ontos.
  • Shapin, S. & Schaffer, S. (1985). Leviathan and the Air-Pump. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Williams, R. & Edge, D. (1996). The Social Shaping of Technology. Research Policy, vol. 25, pp. 856–899
  • Willard, Charles Arthur. (1996). Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy, University of Chicago Press.
  • Zuckerman, Harriet. (1988). "The sociology of science." In NJ Smelser (Ed.), Handbook of sociology (p. 511–574). London: Sage.
  • Jasanoff, S. Markle, G. Pinch T. & Petersen, J. (Eds)(2002), Handbook of science, technology and society, Rev Ed.. London: Sage.
Other relevant materials
  • Becker, Ernest (1968). The structure of evil; an essay on the unification of the science of man. New York: G. Braziller.
  • Shapin, Steven (1995). "Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge" (PDF). Annual Review of Sociology. Annual Reviews. 21: 289–321. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.21.080195.001445. S2CID 3395517.
  • Historical sociologist Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin are interviewed on SSK
  • The Sociology of Ignorance website featuring the sociology of scientific ignorance

External links edit

December 01, 2023
sociology, scientific, knowledge, also, science, technology, studies, technology, society, science, studies, social, construction, technology, sociology, scientific, knowledge, study, science, social, activity, especially, dealing, with, social, conditions, ef. See also Science and technology studies Technology and society Science studies and Social construction of technology The sociology of scientific knowledge SSK is the study of science as a social activity especially dealing with the social conditions and effects of science and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity 1 The sociology of scientific ignorance SSI is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge 2 3 For comparison the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises A hands on activity at the 2014 Cambridge Science Festival Cambridge United Kingdom Use of balloons to explore fundamental mathematics Sociologists of scientific knowledge study the development of a scientific field and attempt to identify points of contingency or interpretative flexibility where ambiguities are present 4 Such variations may be linked to a variety of political historical cultural or economic factors Crucially the field does not set out to promote relativism or to attack the scientific project the objective of the researcher is to explain why one interpretation rather than another succeeds due to external social and historical circumstances The field emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s and at first was an almost exclusively British practice Other early centers for the development of the field were in France Germany and the United States notably at Cornell University 5 Major theorists include Barry Barnes David Bloor Sal Restivo Randall Collins Gaston Bachelard Harry Collins Karin Knorr Cetina Paul Feyerabend Steve Fuller Martin Kusch Bruno Latour Mike Mulkay Derek J de Solla Price Lucy Suchman and Anselm Strauss Contents 1 Programmes and schools 2 The sociology of mathematical knowledge 3 Criticism 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External linksProgrammes and schools editThe sociology of scientific knowledge in its Anglophone versions emerged in the 1970s in self conscious opposition to the sociology of science associated with the American Robert K Merton generally considered one of the seminal authors in the sociology of science Merton s was a kind of sociology of scientists which left the cognitive content of science out of sociological account SSK by contrast aimed at providing sociological explanations of scientific ideas themselves taking its lead from aspects of the work of Ludwik Fleck 6 7 Thomas S Kuhn 8 but especially from established traditions in cultural anthropology Durkheim Mauss as well as the late Wittgenstein David Bloor one of SSK s early champions has contrasted the so called weak programme or program either spelling is used which merely gives social explanations for erroneous beliefs with what he called the strong programme which considers sociological factors as influencing all beliefs The weak programme is more of a description of an approach than an organised movement The term is applied to historians sociologists and philosophers of science who merely cite sociological factors as being responsible for those beliefs that went wrong Imre Lakatos and in some moods Thomas S Kuhn might be said to adhere to it The strong programme is particularly associated with the work of two groups the Edinburgh School David Bloor Barry Barnes and their colleagues at the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh in the 1970s and 80s and the Bath School Harry Collins and others at the University of Bath in the same period Edinburgh sociologists and Bath sociologists promoted respectively the Strong Programme and Empirical Programme of Relativism EPOR Also associated with SSK in the 1980s was discourse analysis as applied to science associated with Michael Mulkay at the University of York as well as a concern with issues of reflexivity arising from paradoxes relating to SSK s relativist stance towards science and the status of its own knowledge claims Steve Woolgar Malcolm Ashmore 9 The sociology of scientific knowledge SSK has major international networks through its principal associations 4S and EASST with recently established groups in Japan South Korea Taiwan and Latin America It has made major contributions in recent years to a critical analysis of the biosciences and informatics The sociology of mathematical knowledge editStudies of mathematical practice and quasi empiricism in mathematics are also rightly part of the sociology of knowledge since they focus on the community of those who practice mathematics Since Eugene Wigner raised the issue in 1960 and Hilary Putnam made it more rigorous in 1975 the question of why fields such as physics and mathematics should agree so well has been debated Proposed solutions point out that the fundamental constituents of mathematical thought space form structure and number proportion are also the fundamental constituents of physics It is also worthwhile to note that physics is more than merely modeling of reality and the objective basis is upon observational demonstration Another approach is to suggest that there is no deep problem that the division of human scientific thinking through using words such as mathematics and physics is only useful in their practical everyday function to categorize and distinguish Fundamental contributions to the sociology of mathematical knowledge have been made by Sal Restivo and David Bloor Restivo draws upon the work of scholars such as Oswald Spengler The Decline of the West 1918 Raymond Louis Wilder 10 and Leslie Alvin White as well as contemporary sociologists of knowledge and science studies scholars David Bloor draws upon Ludwig Wittgenstein and other contemporary thinkers They both claim that mathematical knowledge is socially constructed and has irreducible contingent and historical factors woven into it More recently Paul Ernest has proposed a social constructivist account of mathematical knowledge drawing on the works of both of these sociologists Criticism editSSK has received criticism from theorists of the actor network theory ANT school of science and technology studies These theorists criticise SSK for sociological reductionism and a human centered universe SSK they say relies too heavily on human actors and social rules and conventions settling scientific controversies The debate is discussed in an article titled Epistemological Chicken 11 See also editAcademic careerism Tendency of academics to put career over truth Cliodynamics Mathematical modeling of historical processes Economics of scientific knowledge Historiography of science History of the history of science Paradigm shift Fundamental change in ideas and practices within a scientific discipline Philosophy of social science Study of the logic methods and foundations of social sciences Public awareness of science Aspect of education and communication Science studies Research area analyzing scientific expertise Science and technology studies Academic field Scientific community metaphor Social constructionism Sociological theory regarding shared understandings Sociology of knowledge Field of study Sociology of scientific ignorance Study of ignorance in science Sociology of the history of scienceDisputes Bogdanov affair 2002 French academic dispute Sokal affair 1996 scholarly publishing sting accepted by an academic journalNotes edit Ben David Joseph Teresa A Sullivan 1975 Sociology of Science Annual Review of Sociology 1 1 203 222 doi 10 1146 annurev so 01 080175 001223 Retrieved 2006 11 29 Stocking Holly 1998 On Drawing Attention to Ignorance Science Communication 20 1 165 178 doi 10 1177 1075547098020001019 S2CID 145791904 Wehling Peter 2001 Beyond knowledge Scientific ignorance from a sociological point of view Zeitschrift fur Soziologie de 30 6 465 484 Retrieved 2013 01 19 Baber Zaheer 1992 Ashmore Malcolm Bhaskar Roy Mukerji Chandra Woolgar Steve Yearley Steven eds Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Lost in the Reflexive Funhouse Theory and Society 21 1 105 119 doi 10 1007 BF00993464 ISSN 0304 2421 JSTOR 657625 S2CID 145211615 Department of Sociology Department of Sociology Cornell Arts amp Sciences sociology cornell edu Retrieved 2021 09 05 Fleck 1935 Fleck 1979 KUHN THOMAS 2021 06 08 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Philosophy after Darwin Princeton University Press pp 176 177 doi 10 2307 j ctv1jk0jrs 26 S2CID 236228428 retrieved 2021 09 05 Mulkay Michael Gilbert G Nigel 1982 What is the Ultimate Question Some Remarks in Defence of the Analysis of Scientific Discourse Social Studies of Science 12 2 309 319 doi 10 1177 030631282012002006 ISSN 0306 3127 S2CID 144024114 Raymond Wilder 1981 Mathematics as a Cultural System ISBN 0 08 025796 8 Collins H M and S Yearley 1992 Epistemological Chicken In A Pickering Ed Science as Practice and Culture Chicago Chicago University Press 301 326 Referenced at ANT resource list University of Lancaster with the summary Argues against the generalised symmetry of actor network preferring in the interpretive sociology tradition to treat humans as ontologically distinct language carriers Website accessed 8 February 2011 References editKusch Martin 1998 Sociology of scientific knowledge research guide Retrieved February 23 2012 Further reading editBaez John 2010 The Bogdanoff Affair Bloor David 1976 Knowledge and social imagery London Routledge Bloor David 1999 Anti Latour Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A Volume 30 Issue 1 March 1999 Pages 81 112 Chu Dominique 2013 The Science Myth God society the self and what we will never know ISBN 1782790470 Collins H M 1975 The seven sexes A study in the sociology of a phenomenon or the replication of experiments in physics Sociology 9 205 24 Collins H M 1985 Changing order Replication and induction in scientific practice London Sage Collins Harry and Steven Yearley 1992 Epistemological Chicken in Science as Practice and Culture A Pickering ed Chicago The University of Chicago Press 301 326 Edwards D Ashmore M amp Potter J 1995 Death and furniture The rhetoric politics and theology of bottom line arguments against relativism History of the Human Sciences 8 25 49 Fleck Ludwik 1935 Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache Einfuhrung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv Emergence and development of a scientific fact Introduction to the study of thinking style and thinking collectives in German Verlagsbuchhandlung Basel Schwabe Fleck Ludwik 1979 Genesis and development of a scientific fact Chicago Illinois University of Chicago Press Gilbert G N amp Mulkay M 1984 Opening Pandora s box A sociological analysis of scientists discourse Cambridge Cambridge University Press Latour B amp Woolgar S 1986 Laboratory life The construction of scientific facts 2nd Edition Princeton Princeton University Press not an SSK book but has a similar approach to science studies Latour B 1987 Science in action how to follow scientists and engineers through society Cambridge MA Harvard University Press not an SSK book but has a similar approach to science studies Pickering A 1984 Constructing Quarks A sociological history of particle physics Chicago University of Chicago Press Schantz Richard and Markus Seidel 2011 The Problem of Relativism in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Frankfurt ontos Shapin S amp Schaffer S 1985 Leviathan and the Air Pump Princeton NJ Princeton University Press Williams R amp Edge D 1996 The Social Shaping of Technology Research Policy vol 25 pp 856 899 1 Willard Charles Arthur 1996 Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy University of Chicago Press Zuckerman Harriet 1988 The sociology of science In NJ Smelser Ed Handbook of sociology p 511 574 London Sage Jasanoff S Markle G Pinch T amp Petersen J Eds 2002 Handbook of science technology and society Rev Ed London Sage Other relevant materialsBecker Ernest 1968 The structure of evil an essay on the unification of the science of man New York G Braziller Shapin Steven 1995 Here and Everywhere Sociology of Scientific Knowledge PDF Annual Review of Sociology Annual Reviews 21 289 321 doi 10 1146 annurev so 21 080195 001445 S2CID 3395517 Historical sociologist Simon Schaffer and Steven Shapin are interviewed on SSK The Sociology of Ignorance website featuring the sociology of scientific ignoranceExternal links editSociology of Science at PhilPapers Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Sociology of scientific knowledge amp oldid 1187810722, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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