Tieteenhistorian ja –historiografian filosofiaLUENTOKURSS I

OULUN YL IOP ISTO

27.10 .2014-11 .12 .2014

JOUNI -MATT I KUUKKANEN

Community

Ethics

Scientist

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

Ethics: Deliver Truth

Scientist

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

Community

Ethics: Mertonian

norms, Kuhnian epistemic

values

Scientist

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).

ExtraRejection 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 self-explanatory: “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 perceptual-social 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

Community

Ethics: Refelection of

interests

Scientist

BibliographyBloor, 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.