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Sociology of scientific knowledge
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The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), closely related to the sociology of science, considers social influences on science. Practitioners include Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Gaston Bachelard, Paul Feyerabend, Elihu M. Gerson, Thomas Kuhn, Martin Kusch, Bruno Latour, Susan Leigh Star, Anselm Strauss, Lucy Suchman, Harry Collins, and others.
These thinkers (sociologists, philosophers of science, historians of science, anthropologists and computer scientists) have engaged in controversy concerning the role that social factors play in scientific development relative to rational, empirical, and other factors.
SSK basically exploits the history and sociology of science, it consists of studying the development of a scientific field, and identfying points of contingency or interpretative flexibility, where at time, ambiguities are present.
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Encyclopedia
The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), closely related to the sociology of science, considers social influences on science. Practitioners include Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Gaston Bachelard, Paul Feyerabend, Elihu M. Gerson, Thomas Kuhn, Martin Kusch, Bruno Latour, Susan Leigh Star, Anselm Strauss, Lucy Suchman, Harry Collins, and others.
These thinkers (sociologists, philosophers of science, historians of science, anthropologists and computer scientists) have engaged in controversy concerning the role that social factors play in scientific development relative to rational, empirical, and other factors.
SSK basically exploits the history and sociology of science, it consists of studying the development of a scientific field, and identfying points of contingency or interpretative flexibility, where at time, ambiguities are present. Having identified such branch points, the researcher then seeks to explain why one interpretation rather than another succeeded.
Programmes and schools
David Bloor has contrasted the so-called weak programme (or 'program' — either spelling is used) which merely gives social explanations for erroneous beliefs, with what he called the strong programme, which considers sociological factors as influencing all beliefs.
The weak programme is more of a description of an approach than an organised movement. The term is applied to historians, sociologists and philosophers of science who merely cite sociological factors as being responsible for those beliefs that went wrong. Imre Lakatos and (in some moods) Thomas Kuhn might be said to adhere to it.
The strong programme is particularly associated with the work of two groups: the Edinburgh School (David Bloor and his colleagues of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh), and the Bath School (Harry Collins and others formerly from the Science Studies Unit at the University of Bath). This association is of course wrong as 'Edinburgh sociologists' and 'Bath sociologists' have different programmes- the Strong Programme and Empirical Programme of Relativism (EPOR) respectively. In addition discourse analysis (associated with Michael Mulkay at the University of York) and reflexivity (associated with Malcolm Ashmore at Loughborough University) are often taken to be major strands of the programme. This is also wrong as it is a conflation of different approaches to the study of scientific knowledge.
The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) has major international networks through its principal associations, 4S and EASST, with recently established groups in South Korea, Japan, and Latin America. It has made major contributions in recent years to a critical analysis of the biosciences and informatics.
Sokal affair
Sociology of scientific knowledge became increasingly the subject of discussions in the academic world in the 1990s after the publication of a hoax paper by Alan Sokal in the journal Social Text, under the title Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. The ensuing debate (the Sokal affair) led to SSK thinkers being accused of "relativism"--a charge that at least some proponents of the view embrace. The 'relativism' prevalent within SSK, especially in the work of 'strong sociologists' such as Barry Barnes and David Bloor may be regarded as a misnomer even though these sociologists themselves assent to the label. This is because strong sociology/ the strong programme does not deny the existence of a human-independent reality. Neither does it affirm that all knowledge claims are 'really true' just because the relevant community accepts them as true. The position of strong sociology is that sociologically interesting knowledge i.e. institutionalised forms of knowledge are human products even when they have been formulated as a result of interaction with a human-independent physical world as is the case in the so-called natural sciences. Such sociologically interesting knowledge is not given with the physical world but is a product of group/social processes. Passively observing the world will not convince 'rational' individuals to assent to such knowledge.
Criticism
SSK has received criticism from the French school called Actor-network theory (ANT) which belongs to the research field called Science and Technology Studies. The main theorists in the ANT-school are Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and John Law. SSK has been criticised for sociological reductionism and a human centered universe. SSK is said to rely too heavily on human actors and social rules and conventions settling scientific controversies. The ANT-school, instead, proposes that non-human actors (actants) play an integral role. For example instruments, measurement scales, laboratories and so forth have the unintentional capacities of closing a scientific controversy. This debate is widely discussed in the article Epistemological Chicken. These criticisms can be seen as rather misdirected since the strong programme does not deny the influence of the physical universe in the formulation of knowledge but takes it for granted. What the strong programme seems to stress, however, is that the knowledge that human beings acquire does not come straight from nature to the human mind unfiltered. What we call knowledge is a product of sensations from physical world mixed up with and transformed by the socially recognised ways of interpreting those sensations. The argument of the strong programme seems to be that these ways of interpreting what comes through our sense organs is not given with the physical world but socially constructed by groups of human beings interacting with each other. Whilst the physical world is not socially constructed, our knowledge of the physical world is in this sense socially constructed. The physical universe does not reduce to sociology or just human interaction so an allegation of sociological reductionism does not seem to be well aimed. Instruments, measurement scales, laboratories, nature and so forth, therefore, do not have the capacities of closing scientific controversies by themselves. They must be seen or interpreted as doing so by human beings in interaction. This seems to be what David Bloor of the strong programme says in his article Anti-Latour in response to criticisms.
See also
For a recent sourcebook see:
- Jasanoff, S. Markle, G. Pinch T. & Petersen, J. (Eds)(2002), Handbook of science, technology and society, Rev Ed.. London: Sage.
Other relevant materials
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