Current sociology of knowledge tends to take for granted Robert K. Merton’s theory of cumulative advantage: successful ideas bring recognition to their authors, successful authors have their ideas recognized more easily than unknown ones. This article argues that this theory should be revised via the introduction of the differential between the status of an idea and that of its creator: when an idea is more important than its creator, the latter becomes identified with the former, and this will hinder recognition (...) of the intellectual’s new ideas as they differ from old ones in their content or style. Robert N. Bellah’s performance during the “civil religion debate” of the 1970s is reconstructed as an example of how this mechanism may work. Implications for further research are considered in the concluding section. (shrink)

REVIEW (1): "Jeff Kochan’s book offers both an original reading of Martin Heidegger’s early writings on science and a powerful defense of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) research program. Science as Social Existence weaves together a compelling argument for the thesis that SSK and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology should be thought of as mutually supporting research programs." (Julian Kiverstein, in Isis) ---- REVIEW (2): "I cannot in the space of this review do justice to the richness and range of Kochan's (...) discussion [...]. There is a great deal in this foundational portion of Kochan's discussion that I find tremendously interesting and engaging [...]." (David R. Cerbone, in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science) ---- REVIEW (3): "Science as Social Existence will be of interest not only to Heidegger scholars but to anyone engaged in science and technology studies. [...] This is an informative and original book. Kochan should be praised for his clear, pleasant-to-read prose." (Michael Butler, in CHOICE). (shrink)

Researchers misunderstand their role in creating ethical problems when they allow dogmas to purportedly divorce scientists and scientific practices from the values that they embody. Cortina, Edwards, and Powell help us clarify and further develop our position by responding to our critique of, and alternatives to, this misleading separation. In this rebuttal, we explore how the desire to achieve the separation of facts and values is unscientific on the very terms endorsed by its advocates—this separation is refuted by empirical observation. (...) We show that positivists like Cortina and Edwards offer no rigorous theoretical or empirical justifications to substantiate their claims, let alone critique ours. Following Powell, we point to how classical pragmatism understands ‘purpose’ in scientific pursuits while also providing an alternative to the dogmas of positivism and related philosophical positions. In place of dogmatic, unscientific cries about an abstract and therefore always-unobservable ‘reality,’ we invite all organizational scholars to join us in shifting the discussion about quantitative research towards empirically grounded scientific inquiry. This makes the ethics of actual people and their practices central to quantitative research, including the thoughts, discourses, and behaviors of researchers who are always in particular places doing particular things. We propose that quantitative researchers can thus start to think about their research practices as a kind of work, rather than having the status of a kind of dogma. We conclude with some implications that this has for future research and education, including the relevance of research and research methods. (shrink)

Quantitative researchers often discuss research ethics as if specific ethical problems can be reduced to abstract normative logics (e.g., virtue ethics, utilitarianism, deontology). Such approaches overlook how values are embedded in every aspect of quantitative methods, including ‘observations,’ ‘facts,’ and notions of ‘objectivity.’ We describe how quantitative research practices, concepts, discourses, and their objects/subjects of study have always been value-laden, from the invention of statistics and probability in the 1600s to their subsequent adoption as a logic made to appear as (...) if it exists prior to, and separate from, ethics and values. This logic, which was embraced in the Academy of Management from the 1960s, casts management researchers as ethical agents who ought to know about a reality conceptualized as naturally existing in the image of statistics and probability (replete with ‘constructs’), while overlooking that S&P logic and practices, which researchers made for themselves, have an appreciable role in making the world appear this way. We introduce a different way to conceptualize reality and ethics, wherein the process of scientific inquiry itself requires an examination of its own practices and commitments. Instead of resorting to decontextualized notions of ‘rigor’ and its ‘best practices,’ quantitative researchers can adopt more purposeful ways to reason about the ethics and relevance of their methods and their science. We end by considering implications for addressing ‘post truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ problems as collective concerns, wherein it is actually the pluralistic nature of description that makes defending a collectively valuable version of reality so important and urgent. (shrink)

The dramatic and ongoing changes in the funding of science have stimulated interest in an economics of scientific knowledge, which would investigate the effects of these changes on the scientific enterprise. Hands has previously explored the lessons for such an ESK from the existing precedent of the sociology of scientific knowledge. In particular, he examines the philosophical problems of SSK and those that any ESK in its image would face. This paper explores this argument further by contending that more recent (...) literature in SSK exposes even deeper philosophical problems than those identified by Hands. Meaning finitism has emerged as the philosophical core of SSK. An examination of the profound problems with this position is used to show that an underlying extensionalism is the root of SSK's intractable philosophical difficulties, and to illustrate the entirely different approach of a critical philosophy that is advocated in its place. In this way, the project of an ESK is shown to depend upon a critical philosophy. (shrink)

Sociologists of science have argued that due to the institutional reward system negative research results, such as failed experiments, may harm scientific careers. We know little, however, of how scientists themselves make sense of negative research findings. Drawing from the sociology of work, the author discusses how researchers involved in a double-blind, placebo, controlled randomized clinical trial for methamphetamine dependency informally and formally interpret the emerging research results. Because the drug tested in the trial was not an effective treatment, the (...) staff considered the trial a failure. In spite of the disappointing results, the staff involved in the daily work with research subjects still reframed the trial as meaningful because they were able to treat people for their drug dependency. The authors of the major publication also framed the results as worthwhile by linking their study to a previously published study in a post hoc analysis. The author concludes that negative research findings offer a collective opportunity to define what scientific work is about and that the effects of failed experiments depend on individual biography and institutional context. (shrink)

In an attempt to address some long-standing issues of epistemology, Hilary Kornblith proposes that knowledge is a natural kind the identification of which is the unique responsibility of one particular science: cognitive ethology. As Kornblith sees it, the natural kind thus picked out is knowledge as construed by reliabilism. Yet the claim that cognitive ethology has this special role has not convinced all critics. The present article argues that knowledge plays a causal and explanatory role within many of our more (...) fruitful current theories, diverging from the reliabilist conception even in disciplines that are closely related to cognitive ethology, and thus still dealing with knowledge as a natural as opposed to a social phenomenon, where special attention will be given to cognitive neuroscience. However, rather than discarding the natural kind approach altogether, it is argued that many of Kornblith’s insights can in fact be preserved within a framework that is both naturalist and pluralist. (shrink)

That science is fundamentally universal has been proclaimed innumerable times. But the precise geographical meaning of this universality has changed historically. This article examines conceptions of scientific internationalism from the Enlightenment to the Cold War, and their varying relations to cosmopolitanism, nationalism, socialism, and ‘the West’. These views are confronted with recent tendencies to cast science as a uniquely European product.

An increase in the scale of modern science is associated with the proliferation of a new kind of research formation: collaborations involving teams of researchers from several organizations. Historical and sociological studies indicate substantial variation in such formations, but no general classification scheme exists. The authors provide the outline of a scheme through a systematic analysis of multi-institutional collaborations that span a variety of fields in physical science. First, general dimensions of scientific collaborations were identified through a qualitative, historical analysis (...) of collaborations in high energy physics, space science, and geophysics. Next, the authors used informants in five new areas to collect systematic information on twenty-three recent collaborations. Finally, cluster analysis was employed to develop a variety of classification schemes and examine their relationships with outcome dimensions. Results show that a classification based on a broad conception of technological practice is superior to others in its ability to predict perceived success, trust, stress, conflict, and documentary routines. (shrink)

This article sets out to compare reconstructivism and critical theory as two possible avenues for a normative science and technology studies discipline “after constructivism”. This investigation is pursued through a case study of a wireless network community in the Czech Republic. The case study focuses on a schism that erupted after some users attempted to commercialise an invention for sending data with visible light. Their enterprise was partly motivated by a larger, political aspiration of creating a decentralised communication infrastructure. Other (...) members in the Czech wireless network community opposed this attempt as they perceived commercialisation as more of a threat than an aid for their politics. I will argue that these conflicting viewpoints over the role of markets can also clarify the different, theoretical assumptions behind reconstructivism and critical theory, and give some direction for a future, normative STS discipline. (shrink)

The concept of “ethical research” holds considerable sway over the ways in which contemporary biomedical, natural, and social science investigations are funded, regulated, and practiced within a variety of countries. Some commentators have viewed this “new” means of governance positively; others, however, have been resoundingly critical, regarding it as restrictive and ethics bodies and regulations unfit for the task they have been set. Regardless, it is clear that science today is an “ethical” business. The ways in which formal and informal (...) ethical discourses and practices—what might be called “regimes of normativity”—structure scientific work and the meanings it is ascribed with have, however, been underexplored. This article attends to how science and ethics articulate; how they are, in many ways, co-produced. Exploring these processes of co-production casts into sharp relief the essential emotionality of science; the relationships investigators have with their colleagues, work, and research participants pulse with emotion, potentially shaping in important ways the very kinds of knowledge that laboratories produce. (shrink)

This highly multidisciplinary collection discusses an increasingly important topic among scholars in science and technology studies: objectivity in science. It features eleven essays on scientific objectivity from a variety of perspectives, including philosophy of science, history of science, and feminist philosophy. Topics addressed in the book include the nature and value of scientific objectivity, the history of objectivity, and objectivity in scientific journals and communities. Taken individually, the essays supply new methodological tools for theorizing what is valuable in the pursuit (...) of objective knowledge and for investigating its history. The essays offer many starting points, while suggesting new avenues of research. Taken collectively, the essays exemplify the very virtues of objectivity that they theorize—in reading them together, the reader can sense various anxieties about the dangerously subjective in our age and locate commonalities of concern as well as differences of approach. As a result, the volume offers an expansive vision of a research community seeking a communal understanding of its own methods and its own epistemic anxieties, struggling to enunciate the key problems of knowledge of our time and offer insight into how to overcome them. -/- (Contributors: Alex Csiszar, Scott Edgar, Peter Galison, Ian Hacking, Sandra Harding, Moira Howes, Paolo Savoia, Judy Segal, Joan Steigerwald, and Alison Wylie). (shrink)

What is context and how to deal with it? The context issue has been a key concern in Science and Technology Studies. This is linked to the understanding that science is culture. But how? The irreductionist program from the early eighties sought to solve the problem by doing away with context altogether—for the benefit of worlds in the making. This special issue takes its points of departure in this irreductionist program, its source of inspirations, as well as its reworkings. The (...) aim is not to solve the context problem but rather to experiment with context and what we label contexting. (shrink)

The nineteenth-century strategist Carl von Clausewitz describes “fog” and “friction” as fundamental features of war. Military leverage of sophisticated information technology in the twenty-first century has improved some tactical operations but has not lifted the fog of war, in part, because the means for reducing uncertainty create new forms of it. Drawing on active duty experience with an American special operations task force in Western Iraq from 2007 to 2008, this article traces the targeting processes used to “find, fix, and (...) finish” alleged insurgents. In this case they did not clarify the political reality of Anbar province but rather reinforced a parochial worldview informed by the Naval Special Warfare community. The unit focused on the performance of “direct action” raids during a period in which “indirect action” engagement with the local population was arguably more appropriate for the strategic circumstances. The concept of “data friction”, therefore, can be understood not simply as a form of resistance within a sociotechnical system but also as a form of traction that enables practitioners to construct representations of the world that amplify their own biases. (shrink)

This paper addresses, and seeks to correct, some frequent misunderstandings concerning the claim that science is socially constructed. It describes several features of scientific inquiry that have been usefully illuminated by constructivist studies of science, including the mundane or tacit skills involved in research, the social relationships in scientific laboratories, the causes of scientific controversy, and the interconnection of science and culture. Social construction, the paper argues, should be seen not as an alternative to but an enhancement of scientists’ own (...) professional understanding of how science is done. The richer, more finely textured accounts of scientific practice that the constructivist approach provides are potentially of great relevance to public policy. (shrink)

This paper addresses, and seeks to correct, some frequent misunderstandings concerning the claim that science is socially constructed. It describes several features of scientific inquiry that have been usefully illuminated by constructivist studies of science, including the mundane or tacit skills involved in research, the social relationships in scientific laboratories, the causes of scientific controversy, and the interconnection of science and culture. Social construction, the paper argues, should be seen not as an alternative to but an enhancement of scientists’ own (...) professional understanding of how science is done. The richer, more finely textured accounts of scientific practice that the constructivist approach provides are potentially of great relevance to public policy. (shrink)

The paper provides an overview of the hermeneutic and phenomenological context from which the idea of a “constitutional analysis” of science originated. It analyzes why the approach to “hermeneutic fore-structure of scientific research” requires to transcend the distinction between the context of justification and the context of discovery. By incorporating this approach into an integral “postmetaphysical philosophy of science”, I argue that one can avoid the radical empiricism of recent science studies, while also preventing the analysis of science's discursive practices (...) from collapsing into the frames of radical anti-epistemological critique mandated by some hermeneutic philosophers. (shrink)

This paper discusses the tenets of the politics of postmodern philosophy of science. At issue are Rouse's version of naturalism and his reading of Quine's distinction between the indeterminacy of translation and the underdetermination of theories by empirical evidence. I argue that the postmodern approach to science's research practices as patterns of interaction within the world is not in line with the naturalistic account Rouse aims at. I focus also on Rouse's readings of Heidegger's existential conception of science and Kuhn's (...) concept of normal science. Finally, a strategy of defending science's cognitive distinctiveness in terms of hermeneutic philosophy is suggested as an alternative to the postmodern philosophy of science. (shrink)

Over the past decade or so a number of historians of science and historical geographers, alert to the situated nature of scientific knowledge production and reception and to the migratory patterns of science on the move, have called for more explicit treatment of the geographies of past scientific knowledge. Closely linked to work in the sociology of scientific knowledge and science studies and connected with a heightened interest in spatiality evident across the humanities and social sciences this 'spatial turn ' (...) has informed a wide-ranging body of work on the history of science. This discussion essay revisits some of the theoretical props supporting this turn to space and provides a number of worked examples from the history of the life sciences that demonstrate the different ways in which the spaces of science have been comprehended. (shrink)

This paper explicates the philosophical and epistemological background of the MIRRORS project, which is the starting point of the various contributions in this issue. Developments in the philosophy of science will be discussed, especially the watershed work of Kuhn, in order to analyze further developments in the sociology of science, particularly starting from the Strong Programme. Finally, it will be shown how a multidisciplinary approach in Science & Technology (S&T) studies, as opposed to an interdisciplinary one, is to be preferred. (...) Specifically, the connection between this approach and the modelling and idealizational approaches to science is stressed and defended as the best available approach for the formation of a conscientious democratic knowledge-based society. (shrink)

In recent years there have been major shifts in how the role of science—and scientists—are understood. The critical examination of scientific expertise within the field of Science and Technology Studies are increasingly eroding notions of the “otherness” of scientists. It would seem to suggest that anyone can be a scientist—when provided with the appropriate training and access to data. In contrast, however, ethnographic evidence from the scientific community tells a different story. Scientists are quick to recognize that not everyone can—or (...) should—be a scientist. Appealing to notions such as “good hands” or “gut feelings”, scientists narrate a distinction between good and bad scientists that cannot be reduced to education, access, or opportunity. The key to good science requires scientists to express an intuitive feeling for their discipline, but also that individuals derive considerable personal satisfaction from their work. Discussing this personal joy in—and “fittingness” of—scientific occupations using the fields of STS, ethics and science policy is highly problematic. In this paper we turn to theology discourse to analyze the notion of “callings” as a means of understanding this issue. Callings highlight the identification and examination of individual talents to determine fit occupations for specific persons. Framing science as a calling represents a novel view of research that places the talents and dispositions of individuals and their relationship to the community at the center of flourishing practices. (shrink)

In this chapter I investigate the prospects of integrated history and philosophy of science, by examining how philosophical issues raised by “hidden entities”, entities that are not accessible to unmediated observation, can enrich the historical investigation of their careers. Conversely, I suggest that the history of those entities has important lessons to teach to the philosophy of science. Hidden entities have played a crucial role in the development of the natural sciences. Despite their centrality to past scientific practice, however, several (...) of them (e.g., phlogiston, caloric, and the ether) turned out to be fictitious. For this reason, they have figured prominently in recent debates on scientific realism. The issues I explore in this paper are entangled with those debates. I argue that our understanding of hidden entities and their role in experimental practice can be enhanced by adopting an integrated historical-cum-philosophical approach. On the one hand, philosophical reflection on the reality of those entities has a lot to gain by examining historically how they were ntroduced and investigated. On the other hand, the historical reconstruction of the careers of those entities may profit from philosophical reflection on their existence. (shrink)

The purpose of this dissertation is to defend Pierre Fermat and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz against the charge of error made against them by Pierre Maupertuis that they errantly applied final causes to physics. This charge came in Maupertuis’ 1744 speech to the Paris Academy of Sciences, later published in different versions, entitled Accord Between Different Laws Which at First Seemed Incompatible. It is in this speech that Maupertuis lays claim to one of the most important discoveries in the history of (...) physics and science, The Principle of Least Action. From the date of this speech up until the end of the twentieth century, Maupertuis was credited with this discovery. Fermat discovered least time in optical physics, and Leibniz co-discovered infinitesimal calculus. When the credited discoverer of least action in physics accuses the discoverer of least time in optics and the co-discoverer of infinitesimal calculus of error before and audience of mathematicians, physicists and scientists, it is an event that calls out for investigation. The idea of final causes in physics is the idea that bodies move for an end purpose. During the early modern period, this challenged the intellectual establishment of the day with the idea of thinking in nature. The question which fueled the research for this dissertation is why such a man would accuse two other prominent intellects with such an unprovable metaphysical assumption. The research for this project started with a study of the positions of all three of these men regarding final causes in physics. The second phase was to research the historical context in which Accord Between Different Laws Which at First Seemed Incompatible was written and delivered. This context included the life of Maupertuis as member of the Paris Academy of Sciences and as later President of the Berlin Academy of Sciences. It also included the workings of three highly competitive, state funded, academies of science in Berlin, London and Paris. Research showed that no formal positions were held on the subject of final causes by either Maupertuis or Fermat. Only Leibniz demonstrated an established and well thought out position on the subject. Research did reveal the story of an ambitious man in Maupertuis, who made it the fulfillment of his ambition to rise in the ranks of math and science within the academies and establish himself as an intellectual great in European culture. Consequently, the life and career of Maupertuis illustrates the sociological dimension of scientific achievement. Accord Between Different Laws Which at First Seemed Incompatible turned out to be a politically calculated speech delivered for the purpose of career advancement. In 1744, Maupertuis was being considered by the King of Prussia, Frederick the Great, and the leadership of the Berlin Academy of Science for the presidency of that institution. Maupertuis knew this. Therefore, the work must be interpreted in this context. Consequently, the charge of error against Fermat and Leibniz by Maupertuis must be interpreted likewise. Discovery was made in contextual and Leibnizian research that Maupertuis was aware of Leibniz’s idea of action from 1738 on, and knowingly claimed to have discovered a generalized notion of action in physics which was not his. It is the story of ambition clouding human judgment. The Leibnizians attacked Maupertuis on this matter, led by a member of the Berlin Academy named Samuel Konig. In the “Konig Affair”, Konig accused Maupertuis of what is essentially plagiarism, and Maupertuis countered with charging Konig with forgery for claiming to have in his possession a letter from Leibniz to Jacob Hermann demonstrating Leibniz’s knowledge of least action. Maupertuis buries Konig in legal proceedings, but loses his reputation in the process. During the final stages of the Konig affair, Maupertuis admits to Patrick d’Arcy, a member of the Paris academy, that he had used Leibniz’s theory of action. Having lost his effective leadership as President of the Berlin Academy, Maupertuis spends the last years of his life in his native France without ever relinquishing his title and office. When at first examining the charge of error, the immediate notion is that this is a cause and effect argument. It appears to be an argument about the order of metaphysics before physics. This turns out not to be the case. Maupertuis agrees with Fermat and Leibniz at every turn. The charge is all about career success. (shrink)

This work consists of two parts. Part I will be a contribution to a philo- sophical discussion of the nature of causal explanation. It will present my contrastive counterfactual theory of causal explanation and show how it can be used to deal with a number of problems facing theories of causal explanation. Part II is a contribution to a discussion of the na- ture of interest explanation in social studies of science. The aim is to help to resolve some controversies (...) concerning interest explanation by explicating the concept of interest and its explanatory uses by using the account of explanation developed in Part I. (shrink)

Philosophy of science is showing an increasing interest in the social aspects and the social organisation of science—the ways social values and social interactions and structures play a role in the creation of knowledge and the ways this role should be taken into account in the organisation of science and science policy. My thesis explores a number of issues related to this theme. I argue that a prominent approach to the social organisation of science—Philip Kitcher’s well-ordered science—runs into a number (...) of problems. They undermine its philosophical plausibility and practical usefulness. I agree with Kitcher that arguments about the social organisation of science should recognise profound societal consequences of science. Kitcher argues that the appropriate organisation of science should therefore take into account laypersons’ values and needs when making decisions concerning research planning, evaluation and application. My criticisms show that this is not enough. Drawing on Helen Longino ideas, I argue that laypersons’ perspectives and knowledge may also be relevant when doing research. In order to show how more inclusive research practices may be possible, I discuss connections between philosophy of science and some developments in science policy, which has also recently shown considerable interest in democratic participation. I demonstrate how public participation experiments in science policy may sometimes be close enough to what the philosopher would recommend. Their analysis can thus be helpful for understanding how societal developments may provide opportunities for the involvement of laypersons in science and what factors may endanger its success. I conclude that a way to pursue a more socially relevant philosophy of science is to focus on the points of contact and possibilities of cooperation between philosophical proposals and these public participation initiatives. (shrink)

I reply here to an article by philosopher Paul Boghossian in which my article "Cutting-Edge Equivocation: Conceptual Moves and Rhetorical Strategies in Contemporary Anti-Epistemology" (Smith, *SAQ* 2002) provides him with an occasion for a supposed exposure and refutation of the alleged illogic of the "unpalatable relativism" of what Boghossian, at some distance from his topic, (mis)understands as the "constructivism" of contemporary sociology of science.