Showing papers on "Social science education published in 1971"

Scientific knowledge and its social problems

Abstract: Science is continually confronted by new and difficult social and ethical problems. Some of these problems have arisen from the transformation of the academic science of the prewar period into the industrialized science of the present. Traditional theories of science are now widely recognized as obsolete. In Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (originally published in 1971), Jerome R. Ravetz analyzes the work of science as the creation and investigation of problems. He demonstrates the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error, in scientific research. Ravetz's new introductory essay is a masterful statement of how our understanding of science has evolved over the last two decades.

The logic of science in sociology

Abstract: The subject of this book is limited to the abstract form or "logic" of science, as applied particularly to scientific sociology. But the discussion presented here goes beyond abstraction and serves a practical role in the sociology and history of science by providing a framework for reducing the enormous variety of scientific researches-both within a given field and across all fields-to a limited number of interrelated formal elements. Such a framework may prove useful in assessing empirical relationships between the formal aspects of scientific work and its substantive social, economic, political, and historical aspects. This is a work of synthesis that merits close attention. It provides an area for viewing theory as something more than a review of the history of any single social science discipline.

The political sciences : general principles of selection in social science and history

Abstract: Social science is a social activity as well as a method of discovery. The researchers’ values and politics colour their work and so do their choices of scientific method. This book is about both – the technical effects of values and the political effects of technique. The author reports what social scientists and historians actually do. He sorts out the scientific from the political content in a wide range of old and new work in history, sociology, political science and economics. The overall work is a detailed political and technical criticism of the ‘scientistic’ programme which would have researchers select for such qualities as objectivity, uniformity, and generality, cumulation and professional unanimity.

The support of victorian science: The endowment of research movement in Great Britain, 1868–1900

Abstract: Within the context of broad social changes being wrought by science and technology in Britain during the nineteenth century, four institutional developments were of particular importance to the character of fundamental research. The first following the "Declinist" controversy was the creation of the British Association and the reform of the Royal Society in the 1830s and 1840s. The second was the establishment of research laboratories and scientific museums in the 1840s and 1850s. The

Sociology of Knowledge in Natural Science

Abstract: This paper is intended to explore the role of sociological factors in the knowledge-producing activity of natural science. The study of the production of scientific knowledge has always been a central issue in the history and philosophy of science. It is also a natural part of the sociological study of intellectual activities and their place in society, a separate pursuit which has arisen within this century. There has only been a partial interaction between these two separate approaches, and it is hoped that the present paper will promote cross-fertilization.

On the evolution of information science

Abstract: The emergence and development of information science within its wider disciplinary framework is interpreted. Information science is approached as one of a modern generation of communication or behavioral disciplines which emerged almost simultaneously around World War II. Consequently, an attempt is made to discern the evolution of relationships between information science and other modern generation disciplines. The internal development of information science is first sketched. Second, possible relationships and roles of information science within a potentially emergent suprasystem of knowledge are discussed.

Ideology and Social Sciences: A Communicational Approach

Abstract: One of the obvious levels of empirical reality of what we call science corresponds to the PRODUCTS of scientific activity: bodies of linguistic materials consisting, in different proportions, of propositions made up of signs of a natural language and elements of artificial or formal languages. With regard to any system of signs, there is a traditional distribution of areas: (a) SYNTACTICS, the study of the relationships among signs themselves. Syntactics has been characterized as the study of the rides for constructing \"acceptable\" expressions within a given language system, irrespective of their meanings, (b) SEMANTICS, the study of how signs are related to what they stand for, refer to, or 'represent'. Semantics is supposed to state the rules of correspondence between signs and their denotata, (c) PRAGMATICS, the study of the relationships between signs and their human users, i.e., those who send and receive the signs available in particular situations. From this point of view, therefore, the science of sign-phenomena comprises three basic chapters: the analysis of the formal relationships between signs, the analysis of meaning, and the analysis of use. An empirical science considered as a linguistic system and studied without taking into account the associated processes relating signs to the communicators, could be described by the set of its syntactic-semantical construction rules. As, for the time being, the social sciences use

The Sociology of the Social Sciences

Abstract: lack of unity arising out of some theoretical system or a comprehensive and generally accepted conceptual framework. Rather, it is a field which derives its content and impetus from the concrete phenomena studied; phenomena which in most instances are linked to a specific time, culture or set of sociopolitical circumstances. Furthermore, and probably as a result of the lack theoretical unity in the field, among those who have used sociological perspectives and methods to study the social sciences there has been little consciousness that this work is associated with or could be associated with a distinct specialty whether it be labelled the sociology of the social sciences or some other ’sociology of...’. When such an association is made, it is usually put forth with a timidity rarely displayed by sociologists when claiming other areas of social life as the objects of their study. Examples of such wariness are found in the recent works by Friedrichs (22), on the one hand, and Crawford and Biderman (14),

Future developments in social science computing

Abstract: The set of computer related activities characterized by the term "social science computing" is both diverse and extensive. During the past 15 years, such activities have grown substantially both in scope and in volume and have become increasingly important both for basic research in the social and behavioral sciences and for public policy formation and evaluation.

Review : Social Science Information and its Users

Abstract: . Science. Previously worked in p ublic libraries and the BBC Reference Library. Has recently coi-npleted a documcntaiy for BBC Radio. &dquo;Hoiv do social scientists communicate research results?&dquo;, &dquo;How do they make use of such sources of information as are available to them?&dquo; Qucstions like rhcsc receive a great deal of attention nowadays, not only from librarians and information scientists (who were the first to explore these fields) but also from psychologists and sociologist who are, to an increasing extent, getting in on the