Showing papers on "Science studies published in 1995"
TL;DR: A shift from the study of gender to science, the influence of postcolonial critiques of the discipline, and the impact of cultural studies are discussed in terms of their influence upon the cultural analysis of science as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Although controversial, science studies has emerged in the 1990s as a significant culture area within anthropology. Various histories inform the cultural analysis of science, both outside and within anthropology. A shift from the study of gender to the study of science, the influence of postcolonial critiques of the discipline, and the impact of cultural studies are discussed in terms of their influence upon the cultural analysis of science. New ethnographic methods, the question of “ethnosciences” and multiculturalism, and the implosion of informatics and biomedicine all comprise fields of recent scholarship in the anthropology of science. Debates over modernism and postmodernism, globalization and environment, and the status of the natural inform many of these discussions. The work of Escobar, Hess, Haraway, Martin, Rabinow, Rapp, and Strathern are used to highlight new directions within anthropology concerning both cultures of science and science as culture.
284 citations
01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a collection of books by a number of great authors as the starting point of departure from the science studies canon to explain why science progresses as it does and how in fact it does progress.
Abstract: “We must explain why science — our surest example of sound knowledge — progresses as it does, and we must first find out how in fact it does progress” (Kuhn, 1970, p. 20). Many answers have been proposed to these two questions. In choosing to organize this chapter in terms of different models of scientific development, I have deliberately sought to emphasize the collective character of work in science studies. My aim is to avoid the repetitive and controversial step of taking a few selected books by a number of great authors — the science studies canon — as the point of departure. To be sure, my way of presenting the arguments has its drawbacks. For instance, the debates that have driven the field as it has grown do not come into focus. However, the theoretical structure of arguments and choices is made clearer, as is the fact that analysts are always struggling with a series of different dimensions. It is thus impossible to give a definition of, for example, the nature of scientific activity, without at the same time suggesting a certain interpretation of the overall dynamics of development and establishing the identity of the actors involved. Even the most philosophical works imply a conception of the social organization of science, and reciprocally the purest sociological analyses assume views of the nature of scientific knowledge.
260 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that the claim of certainty for scientific knowledge which science educators grounded in positivist philosophy was rendered untenable years ago and pointed out that social and cultural factors surrounding discovery may be at least as important as the justification of knowledge.
Abstract: In Kuhnian terms, science education has been a process of inducting students into the reigning paradigms of science. In 1985, Duschl noted that science education had not kept pace with developments in the history and philosophy of science. The claim of certainty for scientific knowledge which science educators grounded in positivist philosophy was rendered untenable years ago and it turns out that social and cultural factors surrounding discovery may be at least as important as the justification of knowledge. Capitalizing on these new developments, Duschl, Hamilton, and Grandy (1990) wrote a compelling argument for the need to have a joint research effort in science education involving the philosophy and history of science along with cognitive psychology. However, the issue of discovery compels the research community go one step further. If the science education community has been guilty of neglecting historical and philosophical issues in science, let it not now be guilty of ignoring sociological issues in science. A collaborative view ought also to include the sociological study of cultural milieu in which scientific ideas arise. In other words, an external sociological perspective on science. The logic of discovery from a sociological point of view implies that conceptual change can also be viewed from a sociological perspective.
47 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it is argued that the rhetorics of these two approaches to social science are fundamentally different, that this difference is difficult for gatekeepers in the mainstream to assimilate and that there is thus a tendency to absorb the rhetoric of human science into that of natural science.
Abstract: The thesis that all forms of science are rhetorical is taken up with respect to social science. It is pointed out that, although the natural science approach to social science continues to prevail, it is now being challenged by qualitative research as a methodological instantiation of the human science of Dilthey and Wundt. It is argued that the rhetorics of these two approaches to social science are fundamentally different, that this difference is difficult for gatekeepers in the mainstream to assimilate and that there is thus a tendency to absorb the rhetoric of human science into that of natural science. It is also argued that there are several views within the human science community on the appropriate rhetoric of human science. Practically, these tensions have led to a proposal of guidelines for the publishability of qualitative research. Implications of this development are discussed.
44 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an overview of the historical and philosophical context from which originated G. Bachelard's concept of "phenomenotechnique" and explain why it is crucial for science studies.
Abstract: This article provides an overview of the historical and philosophical context from which originated G. Bachelard's concept of "phenomenotechnique". It analyzes why phenomenotechnique is crucial for science studies. By incorporating the concept of phenomenotechnique into Hacking's and Galison's models of science, I argue that we can avoid the radicalism of both while also preventing the analysis of scientific practices from collapsing into the interpretive frames mandated by social constructivists.
42 citations
TL;DR: The increased popularity of the label "cultural" within science studies, especially in relation to "cultural studies, " invites consideration of how it is and can be used in historical work as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The increased popularity of the label "cultural" within science studies, especially in relation to "cultural studies, " invites consideration of how it is and can be used in historical work. A lot more seems now to be invested in the notion of "cultural history. " This article examines some recent historiography of science as a means of considering what counts as cultural history in that domain and attempts to coordinate it with the sociologically informed studies of the past ten orfifteen years. The label "sociocultural" seems a more useful term by which to capture recent developments.
42 citations
01 Jan 1995
27 citations
TL;DR: Suchting's comprehensive search for a definition of the nature of scientific thought has significant implications for the science education community's current conceptions of science process, nature of science, and multiculturalism in science as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Scientific thought and the nature of science have been perennial concerns of science teachers and science curriculum developers. That is, the development of students' scientific thinking patterns and understandings of science as a way of knowing have been formally identified as desired outcomes of science instruction since the beginning of this century, and arguably earlier (Lederman 1992). Our desire to help students develop scientific thinking skills and an adequate understanding of the nature of science continues to this day, as is evidenced by the various contemporary reforms in science education (AAAS 1993; National Research Council 1994). Wallis Suchting's comprehensive search for a definition of the nature of scientific thought (Suchting 1995) has significant implications for the aforementioned goals of the science education community. Notwithstanding the almost certain disagreements regarding Suchting's analytical methods, his ultimate conclusion that ‘there is no final, ‘ultimate’ answer to the question of the nature of scientific thought’ should receive careful consideration as it has significant implications for science instruction, curriculum development, research in science education, and the content and focus of science education reform. In particular, these implications relate specifically to the science education community's current conceptions of science process, nature of science, and multiculturalism in science.
23 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1995
TL;DR: A review of current controversies, emerging agendas and recent research in the history of science can be found in this paper with a focus on knowledge and values, gender or authorship, knowledge constructed by discipline, chronology or geography, and knowledge in related fields.
Abstract: Providing a review of current controversies, emerging agendas and recent research in the history of science, these essays are organized to consider such themes as knowledge and values, gender or authorship; knowledge constructed by discipline, chronology or geography; and knowledge in related fields. Contributors include: Lorraine Daston on the moral economy of science; Evelyn Fox Keller on gender in science; Sally Gregory Kohlstedt on women in science; David C. Lindberg on medieval science and its religious context; Shigeru Nakayama on East Asian science; Daniel J. Kevles and Gerald L. Geison on the modern experimental life sciences; Joan L. Richards on mathematics and the human mind; Nancy J. Nersessian on cognitive science and history of science; John Harley Warner on history of science and the sciences of medicine; Thomas Nickles on philosophy of science and history of science; and Stephen Brush on scientists as historians.
TL;DR: In this paper, Labinger's humorously exasperated critique of relativism in science studies ends with a peaceable appeal for more interdisciplinary cooperation between scientists and their 'SCS' critics.
Abstract: Jay Labinger most commendably practices what he preaches: his humorously exasperated critique of relativism in science studies ends with a peaceable appeal for more interdisciplinary cooperation between scientists and their 'SCS' critics.1 His ideal joint agenda would include 'projects aimed at improving the practice of science as well as the management of science, on both micro and macro levels'.2 Such an olive branch from a worthy adversary is surely worth taking seriously, although one cannot help wishing that Labinger had read as widely in the segment of the SSK literature that deals with science in public life as he evidently has in the segment of SSK that is primarily concerned with practices in the laboratory.3 This wider reading might have persuaded him that, before any cooperation is possible, scientists and their most dedicated (if sometimes unfriendly) observers must converge on a mutually agreeable understanding of what 'science' is in other words, they must sort through just those arguments and counterarguments that make for the stand-off that Labinger so amusingly and ably describes. Taking science studies to task for a too-easy relativism may well be a useful way to begin the rapprochement, but as a defender of reflexivity Labinger must see that correcting the SSK critics' possibly misguided notions about reality is at best one half of the problem. (I use 'SSK' here to privilege the self-identifying marker of choice for our community.) The other half, which his paper only
TL;DR: This article argued that eminent philosophers of science (who once could not spare the time of day for the social sciences) now feel impelled to aspire to the status of social theorist, and in this particular case, to explicitly appropriate neoclassical economic theory in order to buttress the case that science is "progressive".
Abstract: Why should an economist have anything especially pertinent or interesting to say about Philip Kitcher's new book on the philosophy of scienceAdvancement of science(1993)? If you read it, the first question that will surely pop to mind is, why do eminent philosophers of science (who once could not spare the time of day for the social sciences) now feel impelled to aspire to the status of social theorist, and in this particular case, to explicitly appropriate neoclassical economic theory in order to buttress the case that science is ‘progressive’? While some reviewers have registered their bemusement at this curious turn of events (Hacking, 1994; Fuller, 1994), no one has yet adequately been able to diagnose this symptom of recent convulsions in science studies, I will argue, because of lack of recourse to the economics side of the story. Once all branches of the lineage trees of the disciplines of philosophy of science, social studies of scientific knowledge (SSK) and economics are sketched in, it then bec...
TL;DR: Science interpretation in museums has, until now, largely focused on the products of science as mentioned in this paper, the technological artefacts of our scientific past and the scientific phenomena presented in hands-on ga...
Abstract: Science interpretation in museums has, until now, largely focused on the products of science—the technological artefacts of our scientific past and the scientific phenomena presented in hands-on ga...
01 Jul 1995
TL;DR: The authors analyze the presuppositions of cognitive sciences, characterize and situate their argumentative models and explain the social and epistemological conjuncture: the reconstruction today of a theory of the subject as the source and ground of knowledge.
Abstract: The goal is to analyze the presuppositions of cognitive sciences, to characterize and situate their argumentative models and explain the social and epistemological conjuncture: the reconstruction today of a theory of the subject as the source and ground of knowledge