The Sociology of Science
“Modern” Science
Science in the 20th/21st century
Prof. Stuart Bunt
Nowadays, almost all modern scientists participate in a
scientific community, hypothetically global in nature
(though often based around a relatively few number of
nations and institutions of stature), but also strongly
segregated into different fields of study. The scientific
community is important because it represents a source of
established knowledge which, if used properly, ought to be
more reliable than personally acquired knowledge of any
given individual. The community also provides a feedback
mechanism, often in the form of practices such as peer
review and reproducibility.
Merton and the Sociology of Science
Merton carried out extensive research into the sociology of science,
developing the Merton Thesis explaining some of the causes of the
scientific revolution, and the Mertonian norms of science, often referred
to by the acronym "Cudos". This is a set of ideals that are dictated by
what Merton takes to be the goals and methods of science and are
binding on scientists. They include:
•
Communalism - the common ownership of scientific discoveries,
according to which scientists give up intellectual property rights in
exchange for recognition and esteem (Merton actually used the term
Communism, but had this notion of communalism in mind, not
Marxism);
•
Universalism - according to which claims to truth are evaluated
in terms of universal or impersonal criteria, and not on the basis of
race, class, gender, religion, or nationality;
•
Disinterestedness - according to which scientists are rewarded
for acting in ways that outwardly appear to be selfless;
•
Organized Skepticism - all ideas must be tested and are subject
to rigorous, structured community scrutiny.
The Matthew effect
In sociology, Matthew effect was a term coined by Robert K. Merton to describe how,
among other things, eminent scientists will often get more credit than a
comparatively unknown researcher even if their work is similar; it also means
that credit will usually be given to researchers who are already famous: for
example, a prize will almost always be awarded to the most senior researcher
involved in a project, even if all the work was done by a graduate student. An
example is given by the story of the isolation of the antibiotic streptomycin by
Albert Schatz in 1943, and the attribution of all the credit, including the award of
the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1952, to his supervisor, Selman
Waksman. 20th century mathematician John von Neumann is frequently called the
"father of game theory" or the "father of the computer," even though his
influential publications were sometimes restatements of the ideas of his
collaborators (see the First Draft).The Matilda effect is the corollary to the
Matthew effect: the work of women in science is often neglected. The Matilda
effect was postulated by historian of science Margaret W. Rossiter in 1993.
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Karl Popper’s philosophy of science
Karl Popper
• Almost everyone is familiar with the classical method
of reasoning know as modus ponens. The well
known example goes as follows:
If Socrates is a man then Socrates is mortal.
Socrates is a man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
• Few know that the progress of science no longer
depends primarily upon this method, but on the less
familiar form known as modus tolens,(A=>B and NOT
A) which goes like this:
If Socrates is a god, then Socrates is immortal.
Socrates is not immortal.
Therefore, Socrates is not a god.
Karl Popper's philosophy of science uses modus
tolens as the central method of disconfirming, or
falsifying, scientific hypotheses.
Scientists start with a current scientific theory and use the usual
methods of deductive reasoning to derive specific conclusions, of
which some are "predictions".
Strictly deductive reasoning is "truth preserving", that is, it is such that
if one starts out with "true" premises, one can only deduce "true"
conclusions. Starting with a "theory" and deducing "predictions"
can be stated in the form of a premise:
If the theory is true, then the prediction is true
The key feature of Popper's theory is "critical testing".
In order for critical testing to give valid results, the theory to be tested must
be free from any "looseness"; Popper lists four criteria, or levels of
evaluating, for determining whether a proposed theory is sufficiently
"tight" to be admitted as a "scientific" theory.
1.
2.
3.
Popper shows that we cannot prove that a theory is true, but we can
certainly show that a prediction is false. If the scientist tests one of
these predictions and finds out that it is not true, he uses modus
tolens to conclude that the theory cannot be true.If the theory is
true, then the prediction is true.The prediction is not true.Therefore,
the theory is not true.
4.
The logical comparison of the conclusions among themselves, by
which the internal consistency of the system is tested.
The logical form of the theory, whether it has the character of an
empirical or scientific theory, or whether it is, for example, tautological.
Whether the theory would constitute a scientific advance should it
survive our various tests.
And finally, there is the testing of the theory by way of empirical
applications of the conclusions which can be derived from it.
Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, New York: Harper & Row, 1968, pp. 32-33
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Popper admits only theories capable of being tested by experience. If the form of a theory is
such that its basic statements simply don't correspond to experience, or are otherwise not
testable, then that theory does not qualify as empirical scientific. It may be some other kind
of theory, but it is definitely not to be considered scientific. For a theory to be scientific it
must be testable.
The task of formulating an acceptable definition of the idea of an "empirical science" is not
without its difficulties. Some of these arise from the fact that there must be many theoretical
systems with a logical structure very similar to the one which, at any particular time, is the
accepted system of empirical science. This situation is sometimes described by saying that
there is a great number -- presumably an infinite number -- of "logically possible worlds". Yet
the system called "empirical science" is intended to represent only one world: the "real world"
or the "world of our experience".
In order to make this idea a little more precise, we may distinguish three requirements which
our empirical theoretical system will have to satisfy.
•First, it must be synthetic, so that it may represent a non-contradictory, a possible world.
•Secondly, it must satisfy the criterion of demarcation . . . , i.e. it must not be metaphysical,
but must represent a world of possible experience.
•Thirdly, it must be a system distinguished in some way from other such systems as the one
which represents our world of experience.(5)
In general, science is broken up into three distinct stages.
“Pre-science”, which lacks a central paradigm, comes first.
”Normal science", when scientists attempt to enlarge the central
paradigm by "puzzle-solving". Thus, the failure of a result to conform
to the paradigm is seen not as refuting the paradigm, but as the mistake
of the researcher, in contrast to Popper’s concept of refuting the
hypothesis.
As anomalous results build up, science reaches a crisis, at which point a
new paradigm, which subsumes the old results along with the
anomalous results into one framework, is accepted. This is termed
“Revolutionary science”.
Thomas Kuhn is most
famous for his book The
Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (SSR) (1962)
wherein he argued that
science does not progress
via a linear accumulation of
new knowledge, but
undergoes periodic
revolutions that he called
"paradigm shifts", in which
the nature of scientific
inquiry within a particular
field is abruptly transformed.
The enormous impact of Kuhn's work can be measured in the
changes it brought about in the vocabulary of the philosophy of
science:
besides "paradigm shift", Kuhn raised the word "paradigm" itself
from a term used in certain forms of linguistics to its current
broader meaning, coined the term "normal science" to refer to
the relatively routine, day-to-day work of scientists working
within a paradigm, and was largely responsible for the use of
the term "scientific revolutions" in the plural, taking place at
widely different periods of time and in different disciplines, as
opposed to a single "Scientific Revolution" in the late
Renaissance.
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Paul Feyerabend
Kuhn also argues that rival paradigms are incommensurable—
that is, it is not possible to understand one paradigm through
the conceptual framework and terminology of another rival
paradigm.
For many critics, this thesis seemed to entail that theory
choice is fundamentally irrational: if rival theories cannot be
directly compared, then one cannot make a rational choice as
to which one is better.
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Paul Feyerabend
Heliocentric Universe
According to Feyerabend, new theories came to be
accepted not because of their accord with scientific
method, but because their supporters made use of any
trick – rational, rhetorical or ribald – in order to
advance their cause. Without a fixed ideology, or the
introduction of religious tendencies, the only approach
which does not inhibit progress (using whichever
definition one sees fit) is "anything goes": "'anything
goes' is not a 'principle' I hold... but the terrified
exclamation of a rationalist who takes a closer look at
history." (Feyerabend, 1975).
Been There, Done That: Aristarchus of SamosThe idea of Copernicus
was not really new! A sun-centered Solar System had been proposed
as early as about 200 B.C. by Aristarchus of Samos (Samos is an
island off the coast of what is now Turkey). However, it did not
survive long under the weight of Aristotle's influence and
"common sense":1.If the Earth actually spun on an axis (as
required in a heliocentric system to explain the diurnal motion of
the sky), why didn't objects fly off the spinning Earth?2.3.If the
Earth was in motion around the sun, why didn't it leave behind the
birds flying in the air?4.5.If the Earth were actually on an orbit
around the sun, why wasn't a parallax effect observed? That is, as
illustrated in the adjacent figure, stars should appear to change
their position with the respect to the other background stars as
the Earth moved about its orbit, because of viewing them from a
different perspective (just as viewing an object first with one eye,
and then the other, causes the apparent position of the object to
change with respect to the background).
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