Derek L. Phillips

Bio: Derek L. Phillips is an academic researcher from University of Amsterdam. The author has contributed to research in topics: Sociology of knowledge & Politics. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 13 publications receiving 133 citations.

Epistemology and the sociology of knowledge: The contributions of mannheim, mills, and merton

Abstract: In the natural and social sciences alike, there exists a rather rigid separation between those thinkers concerned with the practice of knowledge and those concerned with questions about the theory of knowledge. This is in contrast to the situation for the early Greeks and, much later, for such seventeenth century thinkers as Descartes and Locke, where there clearly existed an explicit concern with the connection between the theory and practice of knowledge. Just as clearly, the twentieth century has witnessed an obvious separation between the interest and practices of scientists and philosophers, and, consequently, between "science" and "epistemology".

Paradigms, Falsification, and Sociology:

Abstract: This paper is concerned with examining closely Kuhn's notion of paradigm, as expressed in the first edition of his book and in more recent writings. The implications of the paradigm notion for two ...

Paradigms and Incommensurability

Abstract: One of the consequences of the new image of science has been an emphasis on the ‘incommensurability’ of paradigms. As we have seen, advocates of the new image challenge the view that statements, including scientific theories, have some atomic, fixed meanings; they argue that statements have meanings only by virtue of their relations to other statements in the system to which they belong. Further, Kuhn and Feyerabend stress the very impossibility of comparing, contrasting and discussing different observational languages, theories and standards when different scientific paradigms are involved. Scientists work within these paradigms, and the paradigms determine the scientists’ views of the world. A scientist working within a given paradigm simply cannot, on Kuhn’s account, transcend his own particular situation. In his words: ‘Though most of the same signs are used before and after a [scientific] revolution e.g. force, mass, element, compound, cell the ways in which some of them attach to nature have changed. Successive theories are thus, we say, incommensurable.’1 Feyerabend is in general agreement with Kuhn, acknowledging that ‘succeeding paradigms can be evaluated only with difficulty and that they may be altogether incomparable’.2 He goes on to speak of incommensurable theories whose ‘content cannot be compared’.

Robert Nozick's anarchy, state, and utopia

Abstract: Robert Nozick is a natural rights theorist, beginning his book with the sentences, "Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do." The book, then, is an attempt to answer this question, beginning with a set of rational, self-interested persons possessing individual rights in the "state of nature," and potentially engaged in a Hobbesian war of all against all.

Sociology of Science

Abstract: The Social Contexts of Research. Edited by Saad Z. Nagi and Ronald G. Corwin. Pp. xii + 409. (John Wiley: New York and London, August 1972.) £5.65.

The manufacture of knowledge

Abstract: that i s empty, continuous, and homogeneous-space and time as abstract substances which thereby suffer no material change and which are capable of none but quantitative differentiation" . The affinity between this description and the Galilean concept of inertial motion is taken as proof of the thesis that the basic concepts of natural science (such as time and space, matter, movement and quantity) derive from physical activities of exchange which preceded science. Science emerges from such an analysis as social by origin and descent, and as abstract and theoretical through the postulated character of intellectual labour . The hallmark of intellectual labour is abstract , quantitative thinking and, its origin aside, is once more exempted from situated social production. 23 4. 5 Variable Transscientific Fields In contrast to an approach which seeks the social constitution of scientific work in its historical descent, I wish to locate it in the ongoing presence of scientific production. In contrast to any interpretation which identifies scientific production with a theoretical (abstract) activity oriented toward describing a world, I have proposed that we consider scientific products as, first and foremost, the result of a process of construction . In Chapter 1 , this process was characterised as one which involves a series of necessary selections ; or, phrased differently, as a process marked by the selectivity it incor­ porates . Scientific work was said to consist of the continued thematisation of this selec­ tivity , which means that the selections realised in previous scientific work become both topic and resource for further scientific investigation. We have also seen that selections can only be made on the basis of other selections; that is, they require translation into further selections . The question of the contextuality of scientific reason involves the way in which the selectivity of scientific construction is contextually organised . It asks where we should locate the constraints into which the laboratory selections translate, and how we should specify the relationships which nourish those constraints . It wants to know who has a part in the ongoing play of laboratory construction, even if the part is not played at the predominant site of scientific action. In a sense, it wants to determine the locus of scientific production beyond the concrete site of production. From the point of view of radical situationalism, the question itself may appear ab­ surd . What, it might ask, is there to observe beyond a series of concrete, interconnected situations monitored as such by the actors themselves? The answer is that, while there may not be anythng else to observe, there is something else to take into account . The scientists' laboratory selections constantly refer us to a contextuality beyond the im­ mediate site of action. How does this contextuality manifest itself to the observer? We hear a scientist pleading to the director over the phone, asking that a certain instrument be bought im­ mediately . We watch a group writing a grant proposal, and hear that the research leader will meet with "the relevant person in Washington" . We listen to the report of that meeting, and see the proposal modified. We watch a scientist sending samples to an industry-sponsored laboratory which has contracted certain experiments, and read the correspondence within which this contract is realised. We see a scientist write to the head of a search committee in regard to a position, and see him invited to give a lecture on his research . Above all, we hear the scientists reason about matters at stake for 82 The Manufacture of Knowledge them, and about the people involved in those stakes, and notice that it refers us not only beyond the immediate site of action, but beyond the speciality area and the com­ munity of scientists identified with it. I assume that it will be considered obvious that laboratory reasoning constantly refers us beyond the site of laboratory action. It will probably be conceded as well that this reasoning takes us beyond the specialty under which a scientist-or a piece of research-come to be classified. Suppose, then, that we draw the conclusion that the relevant contextual organisation of laboratory production is not the scientific com­ munity, but variable, transscientific fields which in principle transcend the speciality networks of social studies of science? Presumably, we have now trespassed the bounds of accord. But if we do not draw this conclusion, we have to introduce a partition into the scientists ' reasoning, lumping certain references to scientists who are community colleagues on one side, and putting everyone else on the other . The problem is how to justify such a distinction in the laboratory, given the mix of persons and arguments which do not fall naturally into such classes . When the group's research leader returned from Washington, the scientists not only changed the title of the grant proposal that had occasioned her visit, but also rewrote a substantia1 .part of its content . When a scientist applied for a university position, he realigned his research (including the use of certain methods), to match the orientation of the appropriate department head. When a representative of industry did not respond enthusiastically to a scientist ' s results, he began to pursue alternative procedures . In each of these cases, an external contact-a negotiation about money or a career strategy-had immediate technical repercussions . Just as there is no reason to believe that the interactions between members of a speciality group are purely "cognitive" , there is no reason to believe that the interac­ tion between these community members and other scientists (or non-scientists, as defined by institutional role) are limited to money-transfers, credit-negotiations and other exchanges called "social" by scientists or sociologists. If we cannot assume that the "technical" selections of the laboratory are exclusively determined by a scientist 's speciality membership group , it makes no sense to postulate the respective communities as the relevant contextures of knowledge production. And it makes no sense to exclude without further consideration anybody who does not qualify as a member of the com­ munity in question. If a partition between references made to the speciality group and those made to others cannot be reconciled with the scientific reasoning relevant to laboratory selec­ tions, then what does this reasoning refer us to? The argument here is that the discourse into which the selections of the labo�atory are fitted points to variable transscientijic fields; that is, it refers us to networks of symbolic relationships which in principle go beyond the boundaries of a scientific community or scientific field, however broadly defined.24 The crucial point is that a variable transscientific field is not primarily determined by characteristics held in common by its members, as in the case of a logical class. In addition to the scientist in the laboratory, it may include the provost of the university, the research institute 's administrative staff, functionaries of the National Science Foundation, government officials , members or representatives of industry, and the managing editor of a publishing house. 25 For the most part, it will include other scientists, from areas different from and identical to the one in which the laboratory The Scientist as a Socially Situated Reasoner 83 production proceeds . The argument here is not that a trans scientific field is non-scientific, in the sense that it excludes colleagues in the same speciality area. Instead , the claim is that if we are interested in the concrete reasoning of scientists as it relates to laboratory selections, we cannot start by making shared membership-characteristics the criterion for the contextual organisation we admit. The networks I encountered in the laboratory were hybrids in respect to membership characteristics, at once smaller and larger than the speciality groups determined from citation clusters . For the most part, they seemed to comprise no more than a few agents with or against whom the scientists proceeded in the laboratory. But when a certain expansiveness prompted them to pursue an i ssue beyond its usual limits , the scientists could weave a more extended fabric of relationships from their references to these agents . . By piecing many of these interchanges together , the social scientist can arrive at an impression of what I have called variable transscientific fields . These fields not only criss-cross the borders of a speciality group, but also shrink and expand in response to the issues at stake .26 Let us now look at the symbolic relationships which characterise these fields . 4.6 Resource-Relationships What are these symbolic relationships that we have said characterise a transscientific field? On the most general level, transscientific fields appear to be the locus of a perceived struggle for the imposition, expansion and monopolisation of what are best called resource-relationships. Resource-relationships are at stake, for example, when a position is to be filled by a scientist , when money is to be distributed among scientists or groups of researchers, when a speaker is to be chosen for a scientific lecture, or when a result produced by a scientist is incorporated into the research of others . The respec­ tive decisions usually relate to the value of the prospective resource (whether a can­ didate or a candidate ' s work) in the ongoing games of those who make the selection . When an academic position is filled, for example, consideration will be given to the candidate' s potential for teaching and grant-raising, to affiliation with relevant groups or institutes, to interest in local activities (including sports and committee work), or, I have been told, to the standing and position of the candidate's spouse. As w

Extracurricular activities and high school dropouts.

Abstract: Previous research on high school dropouts has typically examined the relationship between a student's attributes and dropping out, but research on the more "voluntary" or behavioral attributes associated with dropping out of high school has been limited. The findings presented here indicate that participation in certain extracurricular activities (athletics andfine arts) significantly reduces a student's likelihood of dropping out, whereas participation in academic or vocational clubs has no effect. When all activities are examined simultaneously, only athletic participation remains significantly related to dropping out. Furthermore, participation in athletics and in fine arts serve as key intervening variables in the dropout process, magnifying the direct relationships between race, gender, academic ability, and dropping out. These findings persist even after crucial "dropout" forces (such as race, socioeconomic status, and gender) and "pullout forces" (such as employment) are controlled.