Scientific Rationality: The Sociological Turn

Scientific Rationality: The Sociological Turn PDF Author: J.R. Brown
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401576882
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description

Scientific Rationality: The Sociological Turn

Scientific Rationality: The Sociological Turn PDF Author: J.R. Brown
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401576882
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description


Science after the Practice Turn in the Philosophy, History, and Social Studies of Science

Science after the Practice Turn in the Philosophy, History, and Social Studies of Science PDF Author: Léna Soler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317935365
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
In the 1980s, philosophical, historical and social studies of science underwent a change which later evolved into a turn to practice. Analysts of science were asked to pay attention to scientific practices in meticulous detail and along multiple dimensions, including the material, social and psychological. Following this turn, the interest in scientific practices continued to increase and had an indelible influence in the various fields of science studies. No doubt, the practice turn changed our conceptions and approaches of science, but what did it really teach us? What does it mean to study scientific practices? What are the general lessons, implications, and new challenges? This volume explores questions about the practice turn using both case studies and theoretical analysis. The case studies examine empirical and mathematical sciences, including the engineering sciences. The volume promotes interactions between acknowledged experts from different, often thought of as conflicting, orientations. It presents contributions in conjunction with critical commentaries that put the theses and assumptions of the former in perspective. Overall, the book offers a unique and diverse range of perspectives on the meanings, methods, lessons, and challenges associated with the practice turn.

Ernan McMullin and Critical Realism in the Science-Theology Dialogue

Ernan McMullin and Critical Realism in the Science-Theology Dialogue PDF Author: Dr Paul L Allen
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409477053
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Scientists, philosophers and theologians have wrestled repeatedly with the question of whether knowledge is similar or different in their various understandings of the world and God. Although agreement is still elusive, the epistemology of critical realism, associated with Ian Barbour, John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke, remains widely credible. Relying on the lifetime work of philosopher Ernan McMullin, this book expands our understanding of critical realism beyond a permanent stand-off between the subjective and objective, whether in science or theology. Critical realism illuminates the subject and the objectively known simultaneously. Responding to criticisms made against it, this book defends critical realism in science and theology with a specific role to play in our understanding of God.

The Rational and the Social (RLE Social Theory)

The Rational and the Social (RLE Social Theory) PDF Author: James Robert Brown
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317651308
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
To paraphrase Marx, sociologists have only interpreted science; the point is to improve it. The Rational and the Social attempts both. It begins by sketching recent sociological approaches to science, notably the strong programme – Bloor’s ‘science of science’ and Barnes’s ‘finitism’ – and that of the ‘anthropologists in the lab’, Collins and Latour and Woolgar. The author argues that although sociological accounts are valuable in many respects, when morals are drawn about the structure and epistemology of science, they are badly flawed. In rejecting the sociological theory of science, it is not necessary to conclude that science develops without reference to the social. James Robert Brown argues for an alternative account. He proposes a novel way of viewing the history of science as a source of evidence for how to do good science and argues that the most important aspect of methodology is that it is comparative. Rival theories are evaluated by comparison and the contribution of the social to this process is inevitable and should be acknowledged. This is the challenge to science.

Science as Social Existence

Science as Social Existence PDF Author: Jeff Kochan
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
ISBN: 1783744138
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger’s early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing. By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger’s philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject. Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels. Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.

Meaning, Agency and the Making of a Social World

Meaning, Agency and the Making of a Social World PDF Author: Amitabha Das Gupta
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 042953437X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
This book explores a vital but neglected element in the philosophy of social science – the complex nature of the social world. By a systematic philosophical engagement, it conceives the social world in terms of three basic concerns: epistemic, methodological and ethical. It examines how we cognize, study and ethically interact with the social world. As such, it demonstrates that a discussion of ethics is epistemically indispensable to the making of the social world. The book presents a new interpretation of philosophy of social science and addresses a series of related topics, including the role of the human subject in the context of scientific knowledge, objectivity, historicity, meaning and nature of social reality, social and literary theory, scientific methodology and fact/value dichotomy, human and collective agency and the limits to relativism. Examining each in turn, it argues that the social world is constructed through human actions and becomes significant because we ascribe meaning to it. This is organized around discussions on the meaning, agency and the making of a social world. The book will be useful to scholars and researchers of philosophy of social science, political philosophy and sociology.

Handbook of Epistemology

Handbook of Epistemology PDF Author: I. Niiniluoto
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9781402019852
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1074

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Book Description
The twenty-eight essays in this Handbook, all by leading experts in the field, provide the most extensive treatment of various epistemological problems, supplemented by a historical account of this field. The entries are self-contained and substantial contributions to topics such as the sources of knowledge and belief, knowledge acquisition, and truth and justification. There are extensive essays on knowledge in specific fields: the sciences, mathematics, the humanities and the social sciences, religion, and language. Special attention is paid to current discussions on evolutionary epistemology, relativism, the relation between epistemology and cognitive science, sociology of knowledge, epistemic logic, knowledge and art, and feminist epistemology. This collection is a must-have for anybody interested in human knowledge, and its fortunes and misfortunes.

Trends in the Historiography of Science

Trends in the Historiography of Science PDF Author: K. Gavroglu
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401735964
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 453

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Book Description
The articles in this volume have been first presented during an international Conference organised by the Greek Society for the History of Science and Technology in June 1990 at Corfu. The Society was founded in 1989 and planned to hold a series of meetings to impress upon an audience comprised mainly by Greek students and scholars, the point that history of science is an autonomous discipline with its own plurality of approaches developed over the years as a result of long discussions and disputes within the community of historians of science. The Conference took place at a time when more and more people came to realise that the future of the Greek Universities and Research Centres depends not only on the progress of the institutional reforms, but also very crucially on the establishment of new and modern subject areas. Though there have been significant steps towards such a direction in the physical sciences, mathematics and engineering, the situation in the so-called humanities has been, at best, confusing. Political expediencies of the post war years and ideological commitments to a glorious, yet very distant past, paralysed the development of the humanities and constrained them within a framework which could not allow much more than a philological approach.

Making 20th Century Science

Making 20th Century Science PDF Author: Stephen G. Brush
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199978158
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 553

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Book Description
Historically, the scientific method has been said to require proposing a theory, making a prediction of something not already known, testing the prediction, and giving up the theory (or substantially changing it) if it fails the test. A theory that leads to several successful predictions is more likely to be accepted than one that only explains what is already known but not understood. This process is widely treated as the conventional method of achieving scientific progress, and was used throughout the twentieth century as the standard route to discovery and experimentation. But does science really work this way? In Making 20th Century Science, Stephen G. Brush discusses this question, as it relates to the development of science throughout the last century. Answering this question requires both a philosophically and historically scientific approach, and Brush blends the two in order to take a close look at how scientific methodology has developed. Several cases from the history of modern physical and biological science are examined, including Mendeleev's Periodic Law, Kekule's structure for benzene, the light-quantum hypothesis, quantum mechanics, chromosome theory, and natural selection. In general it is found that theories are accepted for a combination of successful predictions and better explanations of old facts. Making 20th Century Science is a large-scale historical look at the implementation of the scientific method, and how scientific theories come to be accepted.

Scrutinizing Science

Scrutinizing Science PDF Author: A. Donovan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400928556
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description