Transcript The Sociology of Science - Noppa

Tieteenhistorian ja –
historiografian filosofia
LUENTOKURSSI
OULUN YLIOPISTO
27.10.2014-11.12.2014
JOUNI-MATTI KUUKKANEN
Scientist
Community
Ethics
Four different visions
1.Objectivism
2. Sociology of knowledge/science
3. Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK)
4. Anthropological studies of science
1. Objectivism
Focus on an individual scientist and his reasoning
Both rationalists and empiricists
◦ Knowledge either by reasoning or by observation
Scientists seen to have a special truth-conducive capacity or method
Most of philosophy/philosophy of science individualistic in this sense
◦ Defeating scepticism
◦ Geniuses
Ethics of the scientist: to deliver truths; self-justified aim
Example: Galileo Galilei
Community
Scientist
Ethics: Deliver
Truth
2. Sociology of knowledge/science
Karl Mannheim
Ideology and Utopia (1936)
Founder of ‘Sociology of knowledge’
Influenced by Marxism
Contextualisation of science
◦ Focus on human sciences
Interest theory
◦ both ‘ideology’ and ‘utopian thinking’ can blind people to facts contrary to
their interests
Robert K. Merton
Founder of ‘sociology of science’
The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations
Interactions bw. social and cultural structures and science: “the linkage
between science and social structure by means of a conceptual
framework that has proved effective in other branches of sociology.”
◦ institutions of family, state, economy, religion
◦ extension to the institutions of science
Merton focused on:
1.
The ethos of science: the norms that underlay the research and
thinking of scientists
2.
The internal social structure of scientific disciplines (training,
communication, information flow, evaluation)
3.
The incentives of science, the reward system
Mertonian norms of science:
1.
Universalism: scientific claims are evaluated in terms of universal or
impersonal criteria – doesn’t depend on what the person
represents
2.
Communalism/communism: the common ownership of scientific
discoveries; scientists give up intellectual property in exchange for
recognition and esteem
3.
Disinterestedness: scientists are rewarded for acting in ways that
outwardly appear to be selfless
4.
Organized scepticism – all ideas must be tested and are subject to
rigorous, structured community scrutiny.
Extra
Notice also Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
Scientific communities guided by a special set of epistemic values:
empirical adequacy, consistency, coherence, scope maximising
fruitfulness
Scientific communities thus special
Scientist
Community
Ethics:
Mertonian
norms, Kuhnian
epistemic
values
2. Sociology of Scientific
Knowledge (SSK)
David Bloor: The Strong Programme in the Sociology of Knowledge
◦ The Edinburgh School
Sociology of knowledge/science too conservative
Merton’s “lack of nerve and will” to extend sociology further
From weak to strong programme
Sociology has studied tribal societies or primitive beliefs of our society –
Durkheim’s Elementary forms of the Religious Life
Why would anyone think that scientific knowledge production is
somehow special?
◦ That it is not just another form of social practice?
◦ That it is outside sociological investigations?
•”I do advise sociologists of science to act on the assumption that the
natural world in no way constrains what is believed to be” (Harry Collins
in ”Special Relativism – and the Natural Attitude”)
•”Agency belongs to actors not phenomena: scientists make their own
history, they are not the passive mouthpieces of nature” (Andrew
Pickering in Constructing Quarks)
“Can the sociology of knowledge investigate and explain the very
content and nature of scientific knowledge?”
YES
“All knowledge, whether it be in the empirical science or even
mathematics, should be treated, through and through, as material for
investigation.”
The strong programme in the sociology of knowledge
‘Naturalistic’ understanding of knowledge
◦ Note definition: “knowledge for the sociologists is whatever people take to be
knowledge” (2).
◦ For philosophers knowledge = true justified belief
◦ In particular: “beliefs which are taken for granted or institutionalised, or invested
with authority by groups of people”?
◦ Just belief? NO. Knowledge is a belief that is ‘collectively endorsed’ – individual and idiosyncratic ‘mere
belief’.
Causality as in natural sciences
Maximum generality of explanations to both true and false beliefs
◦ So called symmetry principle
◦ Cf. “theory of everything”
Four tenets of the strong programme:
1. It would be causal (explanations of beliefs).
2. It would be impartial with respect to truth
and falsity, rationality and irrationality, success or failure.
3. It would be symmetrical in its style of explanation (the same types of
cause to explain true and false beliefs).
4. It would be reflexive (the same patterns of explanation apply to
sociology itself).
Zammito on the SSK: ”By invoking the Duhem-Quine thesis Shapin and
Schaffer feel entitled to the view that ’there is nothing that could settle
such issue except the appeal to a force majeure, a socialized nexus of
power reasons” (179).
Extra
Rejection of the logic of error
•Can any beliefs be exempted from sociological explanations?
•Such as rational, true, scientific and or objective beliefs
•Rationality or rational behaviour, for example, would be selfexplanatory: “Like an engine on rails, the rails themselves dictate
where it will go”
Extra
•We would need sociological explanations only when we make mistakes,
deviate from rationality and rational enquiries: “when a train goes off
the rails, a cause for the accident can surely be found. But we neither
have, nor need, commission of enquiry into why accidents do not
happen” (5).
•Logic of error: “nothing makes people do thing that are correct but
something does make, or cause, them to go wrong”
Extra
•SSK contra Lakatos, who distinguished internal history vs. external
history
• Internal history self-sufficient and autonomous, internal has priority
• Less there is external history , more successful and more progressive science
– and thus less there is need for sociological study
•Sociology of error violates all three tenets of the strong programme
(causality, impartiality, symmetry)
•Bloor calls it ‘teleological model’ – rationality and truth natural goals
•Treats as methodological alternatives
Are social forces distortions; beliefs true due to perception?
SSK: Our knowledge is social, not individual (and perception is
individualistic)
◦ What we do is actually to compare two or more mixtures of perceptualsocial belief constellations
Examples of SSK type of analysis:
oSteam technology, thermodynamics, economic and social conditions
…..
oStatistics and eugenics in Galton
oNuclear physics and the war
oDevelopment of non-causal physics (of quantum theory) and the
intellectual culture of Weimar Republic
Scientist
Community
Ethics:
Refelection of
interests
Bibliography
Bloor, David. 1991. Knowledge and Social Imagery. 2nd ed. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
Callon, Michel. 1986. ”Some elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc
Bay.” In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge, edited by John Law. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Durkheim, Emile. 1915. Elementary forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.
Kuhn, Thomas. 1970. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2nd enl. ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Latour, Bruno, and Woolgar, Steve. 1979. Laboratory Life. The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. London: Sage Library of Social
Research.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1988. The Pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 1987. Science in Action. How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge.
Merton, Robert K. 1973. The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago: Chicago University Press.