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Sociology

In general, Sociology is an empirical study of people and their behaviour. The Sociology of Science (SoS) is a particular application of Science to itself as a systematic study of systematic study. The goal is not to rate or justify Scientific practice (cf. Philosophy of Science) but to describe the people and behaviour involved in Scientific activities.

New Techniques

Sources in the present: use methods of Anthropology

  • Participants: researchers, reviewers, (non-)experts
  • Public Discussions: meetings, talks
  • Practices: tools and techniques

Sources in the past: use methods of History

  • Interview retired participants
  • Recorded documents (mainly textual)
  • Artefacts

Sociology of Science

General Philosophical Heritage

  • Understanding Institutions: Bloor on Wittgenstein

Specific links to Philosophy of Science

  • Beyond Kuhn

A New Perspective

The main criticisms of studies of science before the Sociological Turn of mid-twentieth century was that they were too often ahistorical, biased and whiggish.

Reports and reviews often came from participant memoirs and so risked being partisan polemics or celebrations of conventional understanding.

Alternatively, philosophical critiques, which offered historical support, often emphasised events and actors as it suited narrative models.

Too often descriptions of theories and practice (when practice was included) were refracted through normative prisms of the narrators.

The foregrounding of participants was employed in cautionary tales, used to warn newcomers, and perhaps would be rebels, of the dangers of epistemic dissent. In this way, what reference there was to psychological or sociological factors, was in explanations of error (Bloor reference TBA).

Merton's Macroscopic Analyses

The advent of sociology in the twentieth century focussed scholarly attention on mass activity and provided a new explanatory resource for descriptions of coordinated human behaviour.

Initially Scientific activity was neglected. It was assumed this purely or predominantly rational activity was not an approriate subject for sociological description. Indeed this rational character meant there was little insentive to study Scientific activity as there would be little of scoiological interest.

The first studies of Science from a modern perspective came from Merton (reference TBA). Here the focus was on the demographic profile of Scientific Institutions. and some understanding of the financial connections in diciplinary networks. Macro-economic factors were the limits of these studies and no serious attention was given to pyschological or sociological influence of participants. Further, the content of Science - the empirical facts, meta-physics, technological practices - were seen as beyond the limits of any analysis other than the purely rational; and this was best left to practicioners themselves.

Hence, it was left to Scientists to discuss, define and delimit the content of Science. While the remaining discourse concerning bureaucratic funding and demographic details were left to sociological scrutiny.

Beyond Merton

In the latter half of the twentieth century the attentions of Sociological analyses of Science turned to the content of Science. The macro-scopic lens was upgraded to much higher resolution such that the interactions inside instiutions came into focus, which lay beyond the Mertonian horizon. this became known as the The Sociological Turn, where the behaviouir of Scientific institutions and practitioners was analysed sociologically as any other human activity.

Two intellectual strategies led to this path if inquiry. First, was Kuhn's critque and then counter-analysis of the standard Philosophical accounts of Science. He replaced normative models with a descriptive framework, which had more tolerance for practice than the previous theory-dominated approaches. Second, a Wittgensteinian analysis was developed, which foregrounded practice as the only way properly appreciate institutions (Bloor).

Several influencial schools of Sociological inquiries into Science began:

  • Strong Program of the Edinburgh (Bloor) and Bath (Collins) schools

  • From which Pickering was to emerge and diverge

  • Sociology Construction of Technology (SCOT) expanded focus to science in application (Pinch and Bijker)

  • French School pioneered in Paris (Latour and Callon) which became Actor Network Theory.

  • Others