Showing papers on "Science studies published in 1986"

Science, Relativism and the New Sociology of Technology: Reply to Russell

Abstract: We welcome Stewart Russell's paper, 'The Social Construction of Artefacts: A Response to Pinch and Bijker',1 not only because the author fully supports our objective of 'developing an explanation of the content of technology', but also because the points he raises give us an opportunity to comment further upon the exciting developments in this new field of science studies. Since writing our earlier paper advocating a new sociology of technology, the rapid growth of this field has been most encouraging. Two edited collections of papers have appeared in which the theme of a sociology of the content of technology is developed.2 Furthermore, an international Workshop has been held which has brought together proponents of a variety of new approaches in the history and sociology of technology approaches which are in sympathy with many of the proposals outlined in our earlier paper. An edited volume of papers from this workshop will appear later this year.3 As one commentator has noted in discussing this Workshop, 'we may look back to it as the place where the social study of technology first became a recognizable field'.4 One of the most satisfying things about these recent developments is that detailed empirical case studies which attempt to show how the content of technology is socially shaped are at last being carried out. Thus, in a sense, our earlier paper has rapidly been overtaken by events in the field.5

Putting Texts in Their Place

Abstract: In this book we have mounted an argument about science and technology and offered a method for its study. The implications of the argument, which were developed in detail in early chapters, are reviewed for science studies and science policy studies in the first section of this chapter. The method, that of co-word analysis, which we see as being the pursuit of the qualitative argument by quantitative methodological means, is assessed in the second section.

Descartes as critic of Galileo's scientific methodology

Abstract: Some philosophers of science suggest that philosophical assumptions must influence historical scholarship, because history (like science) has no neutral data and because the treatment of any particular historical episode is going to be influenced to some degree by one's prior philosophical conceptions of what is important in science. However, if the history of science must be laden with philosophical assumptions, then how can the history of science be evidence for the philosophy of science? Would not an inductivist history of science confirm an inductivist philosophy of science and a conventionalist history of science confirm a conventionalist philosophy of science? I attempt to resolve this problem; essentially, I deny the claim that the history of science must be influenced by one's conception of what is important in science — one's general philosophy of science. To accomplish the task I look at a specific historical episode, together with its history, and draw some metamethodological conclusions from it. The specific historical episode I examine is Descartes' critique of Galileo's scientific methodology.