Scientific Rationality: The Sociological Turn PDF Download

Author: J.R. Brown
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401576882
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Author: James Robert Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317651294
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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To paraphrase Marx, sociologists have only interpreted science; the point is to improve it. The Rational and the Social attempts both. It begins by sketching recent sociological approaches to science, notably the strong programme – Bloor’s ‘science of science’ and Barnes’s ‘finitism’ – and that of the ‘anthropologists in the lab’, Collins and Latour and Woolgar. The author argues that although sociological accounts are valuable in many respects, when morals are drawn about the structure and epistemology of science, they are badly flawed. In rejecting the sociological theory of science, it is not necessary to conclude that science develops without reference to the social. James Robert Brown argues for an alternative account. He proposes a novel way of viewing the history of science as a source of evidence for how to do good science and argues that the most important aspect of methodology is that it is comparative. Rival theories are evaluated by comparison and the contribution of the social to this process is inevitable and should be acknowledged. This is the challenge to science.

Author: W.H. Newton-Smith
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134930968
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author: Paul L. Allen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317141768
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Scientists, philosophers and theologians have wrestled repeatedly with the question of whether knowledge is similar or different in their various understandings of the world and God. Although agreement is still elusive, the epistemology of critical realism, associated with Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke, remains widely credible. Relying on the lifetime work of philosopher Ernan McMullin, this book expands our understanding of critical realism beyond a permanent stand-off between the subjective and objective, whether in science or theology. Critical realism illuminates the subject and the objectively known simultaneously. Responding to criticisms made against it, this book defends critical realism in science and theology with a specific role to play in our understanding of God.

Author: Michael Matthews
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940115032X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Constructivism is one of the most influential theories in contemporary education and learning theory. It has had great influence in science education. The papers in this collection represent, arguably, the most sustained examination of the theoretical and philosophical foundations of constructivism yet published. Topics covered include: orthodox epistemology and the philosophical traditions of constructivism; the relationship of epistemology to learning theory; the connection between philosophy and pedagogy in constructivist practice; the difference between radical and social constructivism, and an appraisal of their epistemology; the strengths and weaknesses of the Strong Programme in the sociology of science and implications for science education. The book contains an extensive bibliography. Contributors include philosophers of science, philosophers of education, science educators, and cognitive scientists. The book is noteworthy for bringing this diverse range of disciplines together in the examination of a central educational topic.

Author: I. Niiniluoto
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402019852
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1074

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The twenty-eight essays in this Handbook, all by leading experts in the field, provide the most extensive treatment of various epistemological problems, supplemented by a historical account of this field. The entries are self-contained and substantial contributions to topics such as the sources of knowledge and belief, knowledge acquisition, and truth and justification. There are extensive essays on knowledge in specific fields: the sciences, mathematics, the humanities and the social sciences, religion, and language. Special attention is paid to current discussions on evolutionary epistemology, relativism, the relation between epistemology and cognitive science, sociology of knowledge, epistemic logic, knowledge and art, and feminist epistemology. This collection is a must-have for anybody interested in human knowledge, and its fortunes and misfortunes.

Author: Léna Soler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317935365
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346

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In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. Analysts of science were asked to pay attention to scientific practices in meticulous detail and along multiple dimensions, including the material, social and psychological. Following this turn, the interest in scientific practices continued to increase and had an indelible influence in the various fields of science studies. No doubt, the practice turn changed our conceptions and approaches of science, but what did it really teach us? What does it mean to study scientific practices? What are the general lessons, implications, and new challenges? This volume explores questions about the practice turn using both case studies and theoretical analysis. The case studies examine empirical and mathematical sciences, including the engineering sciences. The volume promotes interactions between acknowledged experts from different, often thought of as conflicting, orientations. It presents contributions in conjunction with critical commentaries that put the theses and assumptions of the former in perspective. Overall, the book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn.

Author: Ullica Segerstrale
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791492397
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Beyond the Science Wars offers a broad contextualization of the "Science Wars"—an ongoing debate between scientists and social scientists over the nature and meaning of science—from interdisciplinary sociological, historical, scientific, political, and cultural perspectives. Beyond providing an understanding of the conflict itself, this book presents the comments of two science and technology studies' (STS) "founding fathers" (Bernard Barber and John Ziman), a scientist's protest that STS has abandoned its original mission, a historian's view of the fluctuating social support for science, and a sociologist's analysis of the motives of "anti-antiscience warriors." In addition, an STS statesman discusses ongoing structural changes in science, a sociologist sorts out different views of objectivity, and an STS veteran from the Science Wars brings us tales from the front and evaluates the meaning of recent events. Contributors include Bernard Barber, Henry H. Bauer, Valery Cholakov, Stephan Fuchs, Steve Fuller, Ullica Segerstrale, and John Ziman.

Author: Steve Fuller
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253215154
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This is the book that launched the research program of social epistemology, which has fuelled imaginations and provoked debates across many disciplines around the world. Its opening question remains as pressing as ever: How should knowledge production be organised. The second edition contains a substantial new introduction, in which Fuller reflects on social epistemology's place in the history of analytic and continental epistemology and discusses the inspiration he has drawn from a wide variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences. It also includes a spirited attack on alternative philosophical groundings for social epistemology and a detailed response to the standard criticism that social epistemology has received from realist philosophers and natural scientists during the "Science Wars."In Social Epistemology Fuller seeks to reconcile normative philosophy of science and empirical sociology of knowledge. He reinterprets key problems in the philosophy of science, such as realism, the nature of objectivity, the demarcation of science from other disciplines, and the nature of our knowledge of other times and places. In the course of this reinterpretation, which draws on concepts and arguments from many branches of the humanities and social sciences, Fuller considers such philosophically neglected questions as: How is the burden of proof determined in science? On what basis is the historian licensed to say that a "consensus" has been reached on a scientific claim? What implications do our patently imperfect means of linguistic transmission have for the notion that science "retains and accumulates" knowledge? Finally, Fuller proposes a course of "Knowledge Policy Studies" designed to make the theory of knowledge a branch of political theory and thereby to hasten the evolution of the epistemologist into a knowledge policy maker. In its new edition, the book remains a provocative contribution to the debate on the production, dissemination, and interpretation of knowledge in the sciences.

Author: Jeff Kochan
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783744138
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger’s early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing. By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger’s philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject. Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels. Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.