Showing papers on "Science studies published in 2004"

How to Talk About the Body? the Normative Dimension of Science Studies:

Abstract: Science studies has been often against the normative dimension of epistemology, which made a naturalistic study of science impossible. But this is not to say that a new type of normativity cannot be detected at work in science studies. This is especially true in the second wave of studies dealing with the body which has been aiming at criticizing the physicalisation of the body without falling nonetheless in the various traps of a phenomenology simply added to a physical substrate. This paper explores the work of Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret in that respect and show how it can be used to rethink the articulation between the various levels that make up a body.

Discovering the nanoscale

Abstract: 'I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning the history of nanoscale science, and to those who would like to better understand some of the ethical, legal and social dilemmas to what I believe has rightly been labeled the technology of the 21st century.' - Rocky Rawstern, Nanotechnology Now Science and engineering, industry and politics, environmentalists and transhumanists are Discovering the Nanoscale. Policy makers are demanding explicit consideration of ethical, legal and social aspects, and popular books are explaining the achievements and promises of nanoscience. It may therefore seem surprising that this is the first collection of studies that considers nanoscience and nanotechnologies from the critical perspective of Science and Technology Studies (STS). However, when one appreciates that such a critical perspective needs to be historically informed it often involves intimate acquaintance with the research process. Accordingly, this book on the historical, analytical, and ethical study of nanoscience and -technology has come together in a period of several years. Though it presents only first results, these results for the most part stem from sustained investigations of nanoscience and nanotechnologies and of the contexts that are shaping their development. Nanoscience and technologies are developing very quickly, and for this reason, both pose a challenge to the more reflective approach commonly taken by science studies, while at the same time requiring the perspective provided by science studies scholars. Many are convinced that nothing meaningful can be said about the social and ethical implications of nanotechnologies at this early stage, but one can already see what programmatic attitudes go into nanoscale research, what metaphors are shaping it, and what conception of nature is implicit in its vision. It is also often assumed that in order to consider all aspects of nanotechnologies it is sufficient to know a bit of the science and to have some ethical intuitions. This collection of papers establishes that one also needs to appreciate nanoscale research and development in the larger context of the changing relations of science, technology, and society.

Making Sense of Science: Understanding the Social Study of Science

Abstract: PART ONE: THE CORE OF SCIENCE STUDIES Just What Makes Science Special Framing Commitments: The Strong Programme and the Empirical Programme of Relativisim PART TWO: SCHOOLS OF SCIENCE STUDIES Knowledge and Social Interest Actor-Networks in Science Gender and Science Studies Ethnomethodology and the Analysis of Scientific Discourse Reflection, Explanation and Reflexivity in Science Studies PART THREE: SCIENCE STUDIES AT WORK Experts in Public: Publics' Relationships to Scientific Authority Figuring out Risks Science in Law Speaking Truth to Power: Science and Policy Conclusion: Science Studies and the 'Crisis' of Representation

Animal Performances An Exploration of Intersections between Feminist Science Studies and Studies of Human/Animal Relationships

Abstract: Animal performances : An exploration of intersections between feminist science studies and studies of human/animal relationships.

The Force of Knowledge: The Scientific Dimension of Society

Abstract: Preface 1. Science as a social institution 2. Which came first: science or technology? 3. Who was a scientist? 4. Styles of research 5. Scientific communication 6. Authority and influence 7. From craft to science 8. Invention, research and industrial innovation 9. Big science 10. Paying for science 11. Science as a cultural import 12. The sciences of society 13. Science and war 14. Science and social need Questions and answers Picture sources Index.

Deflating Information: From Science Studies to Documentation

Abstract: Is disseminating information the main purpose of scholarly scientific literature? Recent work in science studies signals a shift of emphasis from conceptual to material sources, from thinking to doing, and from representing the world to intervening in it Scientific knowledge production is no longer seen as a process of seeking, collecting, organizing, and processing abstract elements, but instead one of assembling the many different material 'bits and pieces' of scientific culture in order to make things work In Deflating Information, Bernd Frohmann draws on recent work in the social studies of science, finding the most significant material in the coordination of research work, the stabilization of matters of fact, and the manufacture of objectivity Arguing for a 'deflationary' account of information, Frohmann challenges the central concept of information studies, thereby laying a foundation for a documentalist approach to emerging issues in the field

Science In Society : An Introduction to Social Studies of Science

Abstract: Introduction Prologue 1. The Development of Modern Science and the Birth of the Sociology of Science 2. Paradigms and Styles of Thought: A 'Social Window' on Science? 3. Is Mathematics Socially Shaped? The Strong Programme 4. Inside the Laboratory 5. Tearing Bicycles and Missiles Apart: The Sociology of Technology 6. Science Wars' 7. Communicating Science 8. A New Science? References. Index of Names

The Effortless Economy of Science

Abstract: Part One From Economics to Science Studies 1 Introduction: Cracks, Hidden Passageways, and False Bottoms: The Economics of Science and Social Studies Economics 3 1. Confessions of an Aging Enfant Terrible 37 Part Two Science as an Economic Phenomenon 51 2. On Playing the Economics Card in the Philosophy of Science: Why It Didn't Work for Michael Polanyi 53 3. Economics, Science, and Knowledge: Polanyi versus Hayek 72 4. What's Kuhn Got to Do with It? 85 5. The Economic Consequences of Philip Kitcher 97 6. Re-engineering Scientific Credit in the Era of Globalized Information Economy 116 Part Three Rigorous Quantitative Measurement as a Social Phenomenon 145 7. Looking for Those Natural Numbers: Dimensionless Constants and the Idea of Natural Measurement 147 8. A Visible Hand in the Marketplace of Ideas: Precision Measurement as Arbitrage 169 Part Four Is Econometrics an Empirical Endeavor? 193 9. Brewing, Betting, and Rationality in London, 1822-1844: What Econometrics Can and Cannot Tell Us about Historical Actors 195 10. Why Econometricians Don't Replicate (Although They Do Reproduce) 213 11. From Mandlebrot to Chaos in Economic Theory 229 12. Mandelbrot's Economics after a Quarter-Century 251 13. The Collected Economic Works of William Thomas Thornton: An Introduction and Justification 273 14. Smooth Operator: How Marshall's Demand and Supply-Curves Made Neoclassicism Safe for Public Consumption but Unfit for Science 335 15. Problems in the Paternity of Econometrics: Harry Ludwell Moore 357 16. Refusing the Gift 376 Notes 401 References 427 Index 459

Thirty years of science studies: knowledge, society and the political

Abstract: This article explores the last 30 years of science studies. It presents what the author takes to be some of the main questions raised in this field, the solutions most of its practitioners advocated, and what informed their intellectual and political attitudes. It tries to place the social studies of knowledge in a broader perspective, linking it to parallel changes in anthropology, sociology and history, and it questions its relations to social change on the one hand, and to the political on the other. It closes with a critique of some, often dominant, attitudes in the STS field.

Cyborgs, Coyotes and Dogs : A Kinship of Feminist Figurations a There Are Always More Things Going on Than You Thought! Methodologies as Thinking Technologies. An Interview with Donna Haraway, conducted in two parts.

Abstract: For readers in cultural studies, feminist theory, science studies and cyberculture, Donna Haraway is one of our keenest observers of nature, science and the social world This volume is provides an introduction to her thought

Scrutinising Science, The Changing UK Government of Science

Abstract: Foreword L.Georghiou The Changing Nature of Scientific Organization Historical Context New Public Management The Organization of Science Science and Markets Scientific Knowledge Production Processes Lab Reports The Future of Science

Overcoming the Two Cultures: Science vs. the Humanities in the Modern World-system

Abstract: Introduction: The Two Cultures. PART I: THE HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE STRUCTURES OF KNOWLEDGE. Constructing Authority: The Rise of Science in the Modern World. Reaction and Resistance: The Natural Sciences and the Humanities. The Social Sciences and Alternative Disciplinary Models. The Ambivalent Role of Psychology/Psychoanalysis. Orientalism and Area Studies: The Case of Sinology. PART II: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES IN AND TO THE STRUCTURES OF KNOWLEDGE. Complexity Studies. Science Studies. The Cultural turn in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Gender: Feminisms and Women's Studies. Regional Categories of Knowledge: Latin/o Americanisms. Environment and Ecology: Concepts and Movements. The "Culture Wars" and the "Science Wars". Conclusion?

Science studies, situatedness, and instructional design in science education: A summary and critique of the promise

Abstract: This article critically examines the claim that findings from the sociology of science (or science studies) literature may be used as benchmarks in designing authentic school science curricula. First, it argues that such instructional design claims are based on erroneous understandings of the concepts of situated learning and authenticity, which result from the historically evaluative orientation of education research. Second, it considers several specific claims about the success of designed environments from the science education literature (Roth & McGinn, 1998), and contrasts those claims with an alternative way of viewing students’ work in school science. The article concludes that science education could productively consider situated actions in school science settings as interesting and authentic phenomena in their own right, apart from measuring them against professional scientific activities.

A failing science: Understanding private landowners in the forestry milieu

Abstract: This thesis contributes towards science studies in the forestry milieu, a topic little investigated. In particular, it directs attention to the paucity of theoretical and critical discourse amongst the private landowner research community. While conducting research into private forest landowners, significant difficulties were noted within the forestry milieu over understanding complex socio-material systems. Consequently, an assertion was made that there exists a single research rationality that has epistemic (knowledge) and normative (belief) characteristics which restrict how landowners can be known. To assess the assertion, thirty-two research reports were analysed from within the landowner literature using insights from epistemology (theory of knowledge) and critical realism (philosophy on the nature of reality). The analysis was conducted through a general assessment of core epistemic and normative criteria across all cases, as well as of a single case showing how the normative and epistemic inter-relate. It was found that one knowledge framework dominates. As a generalisation, it lacks conceptual sophistication and is largely a-theoretical, emphasising data collection by questionnaire and data analysis by statistics. The dominant knowledge framework proves to be objectivist, determinist, dualist, positivist and foundationalist. It is being informed by a normative approach that promotes managerialism to the exclusion of any other relational system regarding people and forests. Although the knowledge framework appears rational, the lack of critique and diversity in ways of building knowledge both internal to it and external to it across the research community, suggests the science produced in the research community that studies landowners is irrational. This thesis may encourage critical dialogue alongside growing the potential for diverse theorisations and methodological care in research.

Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature: The Art of Making Knowledge, 1580-1670

Abstract: Science, Reading, and Renaissance Literature brings together key works in early modern science and imaginative literature (from the anatomy of William Harvey and the experimentalism of William Gilbert to the fictions of Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser and Margaret Cavendish) The book documents how what have become our two cultures of belief define themselves through a shared aesthetics that understands knowledge as an act of making Within this framework, literary texts gain substance and intelligibility by being considered as instances of early modern knowledge production At the same time, early modern science maintains strong affiliations with poetry because it understands art as a basis for producing knowledge In identifying these interconnections between literature and science, this book contributes to scholarship in literary history, history of reading and the book, science studies and the history of academic disciplines

Having It All: Naturalized Normativity in Feminist Science Studies

Abstract: The relationship between facts and values—in particular, naturalism and normativity—poses an ongoing challenge for feminist science studies. Some have argued that the fact/value holism of W.V. Quine's naturalized epistemology holds promise. I argue that Quinean epistemology, while appropriately naturalized, might weaken the normative force of feminist claims. I then show that Quinean epistemic themes are unnecessary for feminist science studies. The empirical nature of our work provides us with all the naturalized normativity we need.

Interventions in a cat's cradle

Abstract: What are feminist science studies? Feminist science studies have emerged as a monstrous transdisciplinary hybrid on the academic scene, mixing political concerns and objectives with scientific knowledge production. Within feminist science studies this monstrosity is often regarded as an epistemological and methodological as well as a political strength. At the same time the hybridity of feminist science studies represents a theoretical challenge itself: what is the epistemological and ideological glue that prevents feminist science studies from disintegrating into other kinds of critical science studies? Or, to be more precise: what is the discursive and, ultimately, the ideological function of the notion of feminism in specific knowledge producing contexts such as, for instance, feminist science studies? The article takes a closer look at the feminism in feminist science studies by discussing the notion of feminism as critique.

Credible Performances: The Performativity of Science Studies

Abstract: Taken within its own terms, Science on Stage delivers a more than credible performance. Staging the constitution of scientific authority as an influential form of cultural production, the text deploys a dramaturgical device to render visible and audible the workings of the 'social machinery of credibility' (Hilgartner, 2000: 146). Taking three publicly contested National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reports on diet, nutrition, and health as his proximate object, Hilgartner demonstrates how scientific authority is constituted as a cultural achievement through the finite set of social routines, protocols, and textual processes that comprise science advice.' Through the literal application of the metaphor of the theater, he casts science advice as a series of morality plays designed to guarantee textual and social credibility in ways that foreclose dissent, and thus reproduce the institution of the NAS as a source of consensual expertise. By treating this production of expert advice as 'performance', Hilgartner joins a widening current of scholars who extend and sometimes over-extend performance studies to the practices of politics and everyday life.2 We in science and technology studies (STS) argue that scientists repeatedly enact an 'interested' form of disinterest that lies at the base of their claims to authority and credibility. Taken in by their own act, the actors use stage management techniques that prevent their audiences from seeing this performance as the authoritarian ruse that it is (Butler, 1995). By subjecting their engrossment to scrutiny from a critical position like that of STS, we are in the business of 'breaking frame', to use Erving Goffman's term: 'All frames involve expectations of a normative kind as to how deeply and fully the individual is to be carried into the activity organized by the frames' (Goffman, 1974). Engrossment, involvement, or

Library and Information Science in Context: the development of scientific fields, and their relations to professional contexts

Abstract: Library and information science in context : The development of scientific fields and their relations to professional contexts

Science and the Committee Process The Presentation of the Scientific Self

Abstract: I just love Professor Hilgartner's book. It has been 14 years since I last commented on a book at an Author Meets Critics session at the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Annual Meetings. That book was Science in Action at Amsterdam in 1987 (Latour, 1987). You may know that that book never won a book prize. It never won a prize because the 4S had no book prize no Fleck Prize, no Carson Award, no Mullins award. Now we have a lot of stuff, a lot of awards. I'm against awards myself. I'm not in favor of them at all and I'd do away with them if I were the King. But as long as we have to have them, I'd be very happy if this book could win one of them. In a word, Professor Hilgartner's book is great, not just because it is about an interesting subject, but because it reveals and celebrates the development of the field, the maturity of the field it is Latourian, but it is not actor networks. It links up with classical sociology the man himself, the Elvis of sociology, Erving Goffman. And it succeeds in what many have found a very difficult task. Everyone loves to talk about dramaturgy I've given at least one lecture a semester on it for 20 years. But actually executing a dramaturgical analysis is quite difficult. The book combines organizational analysis with discourse analysis impeccably, and throws in new literary forms for good measure. But most important, I think, are the questions that it raises a litany of some of the most significant issues for science studies. We all know that knowledge-claims generated from research studies are important these are High Science. We all know that media science is important press releases, science writing and so forth this is Low Science. But what is extremely significant is this intermediate area 'science advice' the

Nursing Research in the Human Science and Natural Science Perspectives

Abstract: In this column Dobratz and Pilkington engage in a fascinating, informative discussion of nursing research conducted from two very different traditions, the human becoming and the natural sciences perspectives, using Parse’s theory and Roy’s model as the exemplars for each. Their discussion ranges from ontological assumptions about being human through transformative and instrumentalist knowledge development. Pilkington compares Dobratz’s study on the becoming-self in death and dying to her own study of the lived experience of grieving a loss, finding commonalities despite the differences in implications for knowledge and practice that can be derived from each. Dobratz speculates on a new way of knowing evolving within the Roy adaptation model given Roy’s redefinition of adaptation and her latest explication of philosophical assumptions. Together they offer new insights into future developments of both adaptation and human becoming theories.

Objectivity: Feminism, Values, and Science

Abstract: Gender, Science, and Values: The Gender and Science Reader (2001), an anthology edited by Muriel Lederman and Ingrid Bartsch, is an ambitious and needed collection addressing the role that gender plays in science and the questions this raises for a feminist science. The stated goals for this anthology are: 1) to provide a teaching tool for science studies; 2) to provide a source book for courses addressing these issues; 3) to increase familiarity for instructors across all disciplines; 4) to impact practitioners of science. The selections support these goals admirably and are suitably interdisciplinary, including selections by scientists, historians, philosophers, and science studies scholars.1 Hugh Lacey's recent book, Is Science Value Free? Values and Scientific Understanding (1999) is, in contrast, a single-author work that investigates the relation between science and values. The question of whether science is value free is closely connected to that of gender and science, since gender itself is laden with social values and it is precisely these sorts of social values that Lacey is wondering about. Lacey acknowledges this in addressing issues of feminism in one of his key chapters. Discussing both of these books when their goals are so different is difficult, but an overlap of subject provides motivation for doing so. Both books, in their different ways, are addressing the question of how the details of the claim that social factors, particularly gender, influence or play a role in science should be understood. They are complementary in that Lacey's analysis can be read as providing a framework from which to address the specific sorts of concerns the readings in the anthology raise. At the same time, many of those readings present a challenge to parts of Lacey's analysis. I will focus on the way the issue of the objectivity of science is raised in these works as a way of organizing the discussion.

Give This Book to a Chemistry Professor

Abstract: Should you offer one of these books to a colleague in chemistry? Or perhaps to one in geology, physics, or mathematics? As a chemist, I keep hoping to find The Perfect Book to hand to those who teach large, introductory chemistry courses. The Perfect Book would contain the perfect blend of answers and thought-provoking questions, all aimed at changing how science is taught and learned. Of course such a book has not been written. And I realize that no book could be written that would motivate its readers to carry out all the transformations of introductory physical science' courses that I have in mind. But I still find myself longing for a book that would make such strong connections between feminist science studies and the content and pedagogy of our large introductory courses that instructors could not resist the urge to explore new ways of teaching and learning. Dream on? In a limited sense, yes. Introductory chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, and any of the other physical sciences, both in college and in high school, are simply too important not to be the subject of our dreams, hopes, and fears. Admittedly, there are interdisciplinary courses, usually in the life sciences and often upper-level, that connect science and issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and society. A notable example in physics (together with other disciplines) is described in Feminist Science Studies (226-46). The architect of this course, Karen Barad, relates how it was "designed to enable students to learn science while