Misplaced Pages

#295704

65-413: The strong programme or strong sociology is a variety of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) particularly associated with David Bloor , Barry Barnes , Harry Collins , Donald A. MacKenzie , and John Henry. The strong programme's influence on science and technology studies is credited as being unparalleled ( Latour 1999). The largely Edinburgh -based school of thought aims to illustrate how

130-638: A human centered universe. SSK, they say, relies too heavily on human actors and social rules and conventions settling scientific controversies. The debate is discussed in an article titled Epistemological Chicken . {{Columns-list|* Academic careerism  – Tendency of academics to put career over truth Disputes: Sociology of knowledge 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville  ·  Marx ·  Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto ·  Tönnies · Veblen ·  Simmel · Durkheim ·  Addams ·  Mead · Weber ·  Du Bois ·  Mannheim · Elias The sociology of knowledge

195-586: A Kantian framework and sought to understand how logical thought concepts and categories could arise out of social life. He argued, for example, that the types of space and time were not a priori . Instead, the category of space depends on a society's social grouping and geographical use of space, and a group's social rhythm determines our understanding of time. Durkheim sought to combine elements of rationalism and empiricism , arguing that certain aspects of logical thought common to all humans did exist, but that they were products of collective life (thus contradicting

260-488: A critical analysis of the biosciences and informatics. Studies of mathematical practice and quasi-empiricism in mathematics are also rightly part of the sociology of knowledge since they focus on the community of those who practice mathematics . Since Eugene Wigner raised the issue in 1960 and Hilary Putnam made it more rigorous in 1975, the question of why fields such as physics and mathematics should agree so well has been debated. Proposed solutions point out that

325-453: A critical epistemological distinction between the natural and social worlds, a central concept in the social sciences. Primarily focused on historical methodology , Vico asserts that it is necessary to move beyond a chronicle of events to study a society's history. He examined society's cultural elements, which were termed the "civil world". This "civil world", made up of actions, thoughts, ideas, myths, norms, religious beliefs, and institutions,

390-457: A fact of nature. The strong programme proposed that both "true" and "false" scientific theories should be treated the same way. Both are caused by social factors or conditions, such as cultural context and self-interest . All human knowledge, as something that exists in the human cognition, must contain some social components in its formation process. As formulated by David Bloor, the strong programme has four indispensable components: Because

455-666: A form of power. As a result, knowledge is socially constructed . He argues that knowledge forms discourses, which, in turn, form the dominant ideological ways of thinking that govern human lives. For him, social control is maintained in 'the disciplinary society' through codes of control over sexuality and the ideas/knowledge perpetuated through social institutions. In other words, discourses and ideologies subject us to authority and turn people into 'subjected beings', who are afraid of being punished if they sway from social norms . Foucault believes that institutions overtly regulate and control our lives. Institutions such as schools reinforce

520-683: A framework for the study of knowledge and education and is now being used to analyse a growing range of social and cultural practices across increasingly different institutional and national contexts, both within and beyond education. The approach primarily builds on the work of Basil Bernstein (1924-2000) and of Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002). It also integrates insights from sociology (including Durkheim, Marx, Weber and Foucault), systemic functional linguistics , philosophy (such as Karl Popper and critical realism ), early cultural studies, anthropology (especially Mary Douglas and Ernest Gellner ), and other approaches. The LCT-Centre for Knowledge-Building

585-553: A major role in defining "madness" as an "illness" and in prescribing "cures". In The Birth of the Clinic : An Archeology of Medical Perception (1963), Foucault extended his critique to institutional clinical medicine, arguing for the central conceptual metaphor of "The Gaze" , which had implications for medical education , prison design , and the carceral state as understood today. Concepts of criminal justice and its intersection with medicine were better developed in this work than in

650-413: A sociological point of view, the strong programme has adhered to a form of radical relativism . In other words, it argues that – in the social study of institutionalised beliefs about " truth " – it would be unwise to use "truth" as an explanatory resource. To do so would (according to the relativist view) include the answer as part of the question (Barnes 1992), and propound a " whiggish " approach towards

715-574: A subclass and a complement. Its subclass is sociology of scientific knowledge . Its complement is the sociology of ignorance. The sociology of knowledge was pioneered primarily by the sociologist Émile Durkheim at the beginning of the 20th century. His work deals directly with how conceptual thought, language, and logic can be influenced by the societal milieu in which they arise. The 1903 essay Primitive Classification , by Durkheim and Marcel Mauss , invoked "primitive" group mythology to argue that classification systems are collectively based and that

SECTION 10

#1732858117296

780-424: A theory of cyclical history ( corsi e ricorsi), are significant for the underlying premise about our understanding and knowledge of social structure. They are dependent upon the ideas and concepts we employ and the language used. Vico was primarily unknown in his own time. He was the first to establish the foundations of a sociology of knowledge, even though later writers did not necessarily pick up his concepts. There

845-458: A variety of political , historical , cultural or economic factors. Crucially, the field does not set out to promote relativism or to attack the scientific project; the objective of the researcher is to explain why one interpretation rather than another succeeds due to external social and historical circumstances. The field emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s and at first was an almost exclusively British practice. Other early centers for

910-419: Is a product of collective action. And because language is a collective action, language contains within it a history of accumulated knowledge and experience that no individual would be capable of creating alone. As Durkheim says, représentations collectives , and language in particular: "Add to that which we can learn by our own personal experience all that wisdom and science which the group has accumulated in

975-517: Is at the University of Sydney. Southern theory is an approach to the sociology of knowledge that looks at the global production of sociological knowledge and the dominance of the global north . It was first developed by Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell in her book Southern Theory , with colleges at the University of Sydney and elsewhere. Southern theory offers a decolonizing perspective within

1040-423: Is evidence that Montesquieu and Karl Marx read Vico's work. However, the similarities in their works are superficial, limited mainly to the overall conception of their projects. They were characterized by cultural relativism and historicism. Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) is credited as having been the first professor to successfully establish the field of sociology, institutionalizing a department of sociology at

1105-399: 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 S. Kuhn might be said to adhere to it. The strong programme is particularly associated with the work of two groups:

1170-654: Is only useful in their practical everyday function to categorize and distinguish. Fundamental contributions to the sociology of mathematical knowledge have been made by Sal Restivo and David Bloor . Restivo draws upon the work of scholars such as Oswald Spengler ( The Decline of the West , 1918), Raymond Louis Wilder and Leslie Alvin White , as well as contemporary sociologists of knowledge and science studies scholars. David Bloor draws upon Ludwig Wittgenstein and other contemporary thinkers. They both claim that mathematical knowledge

1235-556: Is socialized in the modern era by new kinds of social organizations and structures. American sociologist Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) dedicates a section of Social Theory and Social Structure (1949; revised and expanded, 1957 and 1968) to the study of the sociology of knowledge in Part III, titled The Sociology of Knowledge and Mass Communications . For the news in this prospect see Guglielmo Rinzivillo, Robert King Merton Utet, Turin, 2019. Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) emerged as

1300-434: Is socially constructed and has irreducible contingent and historical factors woven into it. More recently Paul Ernest has proposed a social constructivist account of mathematical knowledge, drawing on the works of both of these sociologists. SSK has received criticism from theorists of the actor-network theory (ANT) school of science and technology studies . These theorists criticise SSK for sociological reductionism and

1365-537: Is the product of the human mind. These socially constructed elements can be better understood than the physical world, as it is in abstraction. Vico highlights that human nature and its products are not fixed entities. Therefore, it necessitates a historical perspective emphasizing the changes and developments implicit in individuals and societies. He also emphasizes the dialectical relationship between society and culture as key in this new historical perspective. While permeated by his penchant for etymology, Vico's ideas and

SECTION 20

#1732858117296

1430-422: Is the study of the relationship between human thought , the social context within which it arises, and the effects that prevailing ideas have on societies. It is not a specialized area of sociology . Instead, it deals with broad fundamental questions about the extent and limits of social influences on individuals' lives and the social-cultural basis of our knowledge about the world. The sociology of knowledge has

1495-527: Is true, then it too is merely a product of socio-political forces and has no claim to truth and no persuasive force). Mannheim believed that relativism was a strange mixture of modern and ancient beliefs in that it contained within itself a belief in an absolute truth that was true for all times and places (the ancient view most often associated with Plato ) and condemned other truth claims because they could not achieve this level of objectivity (an idea gleaned from Marx). Mannheim sought to escape this problem with

1560-430: Is what makes such a description different from the "naive" subjective descriptions of the man in the street, or those of the traditional, positivist social scientist. The leading proponent of phenomenological sociology was Alfred Schütz (1899–1959). Schütz sought to provide a critical philosophical foundation for the interpretive sociology of Max Weber (1864-1920) through the use of phenomenological methods derived from

1625-506: The tabula rasa empiricist understanding whereby categories are acquired by individual experience alone), and that they were not universal a priori truths (as Kant argued) since the content of the categories differed from society to society. Another key element to Durkheim's theory of knowledge is his concept of représentations collectives ( collective representations ), which he outlined in 1912 in The Elementary Forms of

1690-637: The French Revolution with its Reign of Terror . Hamilton argues that the Enlightenment can be seen as a critical response to the Christian theology used by the Jacobins , which manipulated people's understanding of truth to maintain a feudal order. The sociology of knowledge requires a particular viewpoint that Giambattista Vico first expounded in his New Science in the early 18th century, long before

1755-553: The ' Edinburgh School' ( David Bloor , Barry Barnes , and their colleagues at the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh ) in the 1970s and '80s, and the ' Bath School' ( Harry Collins and others at the University of Bath ) in the same period. "Edinburgh sociologists" and "Bath sociologists" promoted, respectively, the Strong Programme and Empirical Programme of Relativism (EPOR). Also associated with SSK in

1820-499: The 1970s in self-conscious opposition to the sociology of science associated with the American Robert K. Merton , generally considered one of the seminal authors in the sociology of science. Merton's was a kind of "sociology of scientists," which left the cognitive content of science out of sociological account; SSK by contrast aimed at providing sociological explanations of scientific ideas themselves, taking its lead from aspects of

1885-678: The 1980s was discourse analysis as applied to science (associated with Michael Mulkay at the University of York), as well as a concern with issues of reflexivity arising from paradoxes relating to SSK's relativist stance towards science and the status of its own knowledge-claims (Steve Woolgar, Malcolm Ashmore). The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) has major international networks through its principal associations, 4S and EASST, with recently established groups in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Latin America. It has made major contributions in recent years to

1950-411: The 19th century transformed what knowledge was. Foucault stated that "Man did not exist" before the 18th century. Foucault regarded notions of humanity and of humanism as inventions of modernity . Accordingly, a cognitive bias had been introduced unwittingly into science, by over-trusting the individual doctor or scientist's ability to see and state things objectively. Foucault roots this argument in

2015-473: The Life-world (Natanson:1974). The difference in their research projects lies in the level of analysis, the objects taken as topics of study, and the type of phenomenological reduction that is employed for the purposes of analysis. Ultimately, the two projects should be seen as complementary, with the structures of the latter dependent on the structures of the former. That is, valid phenomenological descriptions of

Strong programme - Misplaced Pages Continue

2080-608: The Religious Life . Représentations collectives are the symbols and images that come to represent the ideas, beliefs, and values elaborated by a collectivity and are not reducible to individual constituents. They can include words, slogans, ideas, or any number of material items that can serve as a symbol, such as a cross, a rock, a temple, a feather, etc. As Durkheim elaborates, représentations collectives are created through intense social interaction and are products of collective activity. As such, these representations have

2145-437: The University de Bordeaux in the 1890s. While his works deal with several subjects, including suicide, the family, social structures, and social institutions , a large part of his work deals with the sociology of knowledge. While publishing short articles on the subject early in his career (for example, the essay De quelques formes primitives de classification written in 1902 with Marcel Mauss ), Durkheim worked mainly out of

2210-464: The analytical description of acts of intentional consciousness. The "object" of such an analysis is the meaningful lived world of everyday life: the "Lebenswelt", or life-world (Husserl:1889). The task, like that of every other phenomenological investigation, is to describe the formal structures of this object of investigation in subjective terms, as an object-constituted-in-and-for-consciousness (Gurwitsch:1964). The utilization of phenomenological methods

2275-508: The co-founder of the movement, the German philosopher, phenomenologist and social theorist Max Scheler (1874–1928), in Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens (1924, Attempts at a Sociology of Knowledge ). Mannheim feared that this interpretation could be seen to claim that all knowledge and beliefs are the products of socio-political forces since this form of relativism is self-defeating (if it

2340-595: The contributions of Szasz and others, who confined their critique to current psychiatric practice. Foucault's The Order of Things (1966) and The Archeology of Knowledge (1969) introduced abstract notions of mathesis and taxonomia to explain the subjective 'ordering' of the human sciences . These, he claimed, had transformed 17th and 18th-century studies of "general grammar" into modern " linguistics ", " natural history " into modern " biology ", and " analysis of wealth " into modern " economics "—though not, claimed Foucault, without loss of meaning. Foucault believed that

2405-747: The course of centuries. Thinking by concepts is not merely seeing reality on its most general side, but it is projecting a light upon the sensation which illuminates it, penetrates it, and transforms it." As such, language, as a social product, literally structures and shapes our experience of reality, an idea developed by later French philosophers, such as Michel Foucault . The German political philosophers Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) argued in Die deutsche Ideologie (1846, The German Ideology ) and elsewhere that people's ideologies , including their social and political beliefs and opinions, are rooted in their class interests and more broadly in

2470-691: The development of the field were in France, Germany, and the United States (notably at Cornell University ). Major theorists include Barry Barnes , David Bloor , Sal Restivo , Randall Collins , Gaston Bachelard , Harry Collins , Karin Knorr Cetina , Paul Feyerabend , Steve Fuller , Martin Kusch , Bruno Latour , Mike Mulkay , Derek J. de Solla Price , Lucy Suchman and Anselm Strauss . The sociology of scientific knowledge in its Anglophone versions emerged in

2535-422: The divisions within these systems derive from social categories. In his 1912 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life , Durkheim elaborated on his theory of knowledge. In this work, he examined how languages, concepts, and the categories (such as space and time) used in logical thought have a sociological origin. Neither Durkheim nor Mauss specifically coined the term "sociology of knowledge". However, their work

2600-691: The dominance of functionalism through the middle years of the 20th century, the sociology of knowledge remained on the periphery of mainstream sociological thought. However, it was reinvented and applied closely to everyday life in the 1960s, particularly by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality (1966). It is still central for methods dealing with a qualitative understanding of human society (compare socially constructed reality ). The 'genealogical' and 'archaeological' studies of Michel Foucault are of considerable contemporary influence. Peter Hamilton argues that

2665-455: The dominant ideological forms of thinking in the populace and force us into becoming obedient and docile beings. Hence, the dominant ideology that serves the interests of the ruling class, all the while appearing as 'neutral', needs to be questioned and must not go unchallenged. Knowledge ecology is a concept originating from knowledge management that aims at "bridging the gap between the static data repositories of knowledge management and

Strong programme - Misplaced Pages Continue

2730-531: The dynamic, adaptive behavior of natural systems", in particular relying on the concepts of interaction and emergence . Knowledge ecology, and its related concept information ecology has been elaborated by different academics and practitioners, such as Thomas H. Davenport , Bonnie Nardi , or Swidler. The New Sociology of Knowledge (a postmodern approach considering knowledge as culture by drawing upon Marxist, French structuralist, and American pragmatist traditions) introduces concepts that dictate how knowledge

2795-552: The existence of a scientific community , bound together by allegiance to a shared paradigm , is a prerequisite for normal scientific activity. The strong programme is a reaction against "weak" sociologies of science, which restricted the application of sociology to "failed" or "false" theories, such as phrenology . Failed theories would be explained by citing the researchers' biases , such as covert political or economic interests. Sociology would be only marginally relevant to successful theories, which succeeded because they had revealed

2860-402: The first sociologists studied the relationship between knowledge and society. The book, a justification for a new historical and sociological methodology, suggests that the natural and social worlds are known in different ways. The former is known through external or empirical methods, while the latter can be known internally and externally. In other words, human history is a construct that creates

2925-414: The formal structures of consciousness, and Schütz's analysis of the formal structures of the Life-world are specifically intended to establish the foundations in consciousness for the understanding and interpretation of a social world that is subject to cultural and historical change. The phenomenological position is that although the facticity of the social world may be culturally and historically relative,

2990-542: The formal structures of consciousness, and the processes by which we come to know and understand this facticity are not. That is, the understanding of any actual social world is unavoidably dependent on understanding the structures and processes of consciousness that found, and constitute, any possible social world. Alternatively, if the facticity of the social world and the structures of consciousness prove to be culturally and historically relative, then we are at an impasse in regard to any meaningful scientific understanding of

3055-419: The formal structures of the Life-world should be wholly consistent with the descriptions of the formal structures of intentional consciousness. It is from the latter that the former derives its validity and truth value (Sokolowski:2000). The phenomenological tie-in with the sociology of knowledge stems from two key historical sources for Mannheim 's analysis: It is also noteworthy that Husserl's analysis of

3120-457: The freedom of the individual to determine his own beliefs and values, which are at odds with traditional moral considerations in theology . The empirical method of cross-cultural comparison became a methodology for understanding society rather than the idea of revealed truth inherent in sociology, leading to a measure of cultural relativism . He argues that some thinkers sought to change society based on their theories. These ideas play out in

3185-457: The fundamental constituents of mathematical thought, space, form-structure, and number-proportion are also the fundamental constituents of physics. It is also worthwhile to note that physics is more than merely modeling of reality and the objective basis is upon observational demonstration. Another approach is to suggest that there is no deep problem, that the division of human scientific thinking through using words such as 'mathematics' and 'physics'

3250-408: The idea of relationism . This is the idea that certain things are true only in certain times and places (a view influenced by pragmatism ) however, this does not make them less true. Mannheim felt that a stratum of free-floating intellectuals (who he claimed were only loosely anchored to the class structure of society) could most perfectly realize this form of truth by creating a "dynamic synthesis" of

3315-428: The ideologies of other groups. The sociology of Mannheim is specified with particular attention to the forms of transmission of culture and knowledge. It follows the constellations of senses and options that, through the generations, are related to the transmission and reproduction of values. Phenomenological sociology is the study of the formal structures of concrete social existence as made available in and through

SECTION 50

#1732858117296

3380-399: The particular, and somewhat contradictory, aspect that they exist externally to the individual (since they are created and controlled not by the individual but by society as a whole), and yet simultaneously within each individual of the society (by virtue of that individual's participation within society). Language is an important représentation collective , which, according to Durkheim,

3445-557: The rediscovery of Kant, though his thought is significantly influenced by Nietzsche – that philosopher declaring the "death of God" in the 19th century, and the anti-humanists proposing the "death of Man" in the 20th. In Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1975), Foucault concentrates on the correlation between knowledge and power. According to him, knowledge is a form of power and can conversely be used against individuals as

3510-466: The social and economic circumstances in which they live: Under the influence of this doctrine and of phenomenology , the Hungarian-born German sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) gave impetus to the growth of the sociology of knowledge with his Ideologie und Utopie (1929, translated and extended in 1936 as Ideology and Utopia ), although the term had been introduced five years earlier by

3575-421: The social world that is not subjective (as opposed to being objective and grounded in nature [positivism], or inter-subjective and grounded in the structures of consciousness [phenomenology]), and relative to the cultural and idealization formations of particular concrete individuals living in a particular socio-historical group. The work of Michel Foucault made a particularly important contemporary contribution to

3640-426: The sociology of knowledge. Madness and Civilization (1961) postulated that conceptions of madness and what was considered "reason" or "knowledge" were themselves subject to major culture bias , in this respect mirroring similar criticisms by Thomas Szasz (1920-2012), at the time the foremost critic of psychiatry and subsequently an eminent psychiatrist. Foucault and Szasz agreed that sociological processes played

3705-470: The sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises. Sociologists of scientific knowledge study the development of a scientific field and attempt to identify points of contingency or interpretative flexibility where ambiguities are present. Such variations may be linked to

3770-403: The strong programme has incited climate denial . Sociology of scientific knowledge The sociology of scientific knowledge ( SSK ) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology of scientific ignorance (SSI) is complementary to

3835-457: The strong programme on some fundamental issues. In the social construction of technology (SCOT) approach developed by Collins' student Trevor Pinch , as well as by the Dutch sociologist Wiebe Bijker , the strong programme was extended to technology. There are SSK-influenced scholars working in science and technology studies programs throughout the world. In order to study scientific knowledge from

3900-607: The strong programme originated at the 'Science Studies Unit,' University of Edinburgh , it is sometimes termed the Edinburgh School . However, there is also a Bath School associated with Harry Collins that makes similar proposals. In contrast to the Edinburgh School, which emphasizes historical approaches, the Bath School emphasizes microsocial studies of laboratories and experiments. The Bath school, however, does depart from

3965-466: The study of history – a narrative of human history as an inevitable march towards truth and enlightenment. Alan Sokal has criticised radical relativism as part of the science wars , on the basis that such an understanding will lead inevitably towards solipsism and postmodernism . Markus Seidel attacks the main arguments – underdetermination and norm-circularity – provided by Strong Programme proponents for their relativism. It has also been argued that

SECTION 60

#1732858117296

4030-459: The thinkers of the Enlightenment produced a sociology of ideas and values when they turned their attention to the scientific analysis of society. He argues that specific values inherent in critical rationalism , such as anthropocentrism (i.e., the assumption that humans are the most crucial element in understanding reality), were central to these thinkers' understanding of society. Hamilton argues that these thinkers were committed to progress and

4095-411: The transcendental phenomenological investigations of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938). Husserl's work aimed at establishing the formal structures of intentional consciousness . Schütz's work was directed at establishing the formal structures of the Life-world (Schütz:1980). Husserl's work was conducted as a transcendental phenomenology of consciousness. Schütz's work was conducted as a mundane phenomenology of

4160-496: The work of Ludwik Fleck , Thomas S. Kuhn , but especially from established traditions in cultural anthropology (Durkheim, Mauss) as well as the late Wittgenstein . David Bloor , one of SSK's early champions, 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

4225-475: Was an exceptional contribution to the subject. The widespread use of the term 'sociology of knowledge' emerged in the 1920s, when several German-speaking sociologists , most notably Max Scheler and Karl Mannheim , wrote extensively on sociological aspects of knowledge. This was followed in 1937 by a much-cited survey of the subject by Robert K. Merton, the American sociologist, 'The sociology of knowledge'. With

#295704