Originally published in 1974. ScientificKnowledge and Sociological Theory centres on the problem of explaining the manifest variety and contrast in the beliefs about nature held in different groups and societies. It maintains that the sociologist should treat all beliefs symmetrically and must investigate and account for allegedly "correct" or "scientific" beliefs just as he would "incorrect" or "unscientific" ones. From this basic position a study of scientific beliefs is constructed. The sociological interest of such beliefs (...) is illustrated and a sociological perspective upon scientific change is developed. (shrink)
Although science was once seen as the product of individual great men working in isolation, we now realize that, like any other creative activity, science is a highly social enterprise, influenced in subtle as well as obvious ways by the wider culture and values of its time. ScientificKnowledge is the first introduction to social studies of scientificknowledge. The authors, all noted for their contributions to science studies, have organized this book so that each chapter (...) examines a key step in the process of doing science. Using case studies from cognitive science, physics, and biology to illustrate their descriptions and applications of the social study of science, they show how this approach provides a crucial perspective on how science is actually done. ScientificKnowledge will be of interest not only to those engaged in science studies, but also to anyone interested in the practice of science. (shrink)
Historical sciences like paleontology and archaeology have uncovered unimagined, remarkable and mysterious worlds in the deep past. How should we understand the success of these sciences? What is the relationship between knowledge and history? In ScientificKnowledge and the Deep Past: History Matters, Adrian Currie examines recent paleontological work on the great changes that occurred during the Cretaceous period - the emergence of flowering plants, the splitting of the mega-continent Gondwana, and the eventual fall of the dinosaurs (...) - to analyse the knowledge of historical scientists, and to reflect upon the nature of history. He argues that distinctively historical processes are 'peculiar': they have the capacity to generate their own highly specific dynamics and rules. This peculiarity, Currie argues, also explains the historian's interest in narratives and stories: the contingency, complexity and peculiarity of the past demands a narrative treatment. Overall, Currie argues that history matters for knowledge. (shrink)
In “ScientificKnowledge,” Philip Kitcher challenges arguments that deny the truth of the theoretical claims of science, and he attempts to discover reasons for endorsing the truth of such claims. He suggests that the discovery of such reasons might succeed if we ask why anyone thinks that the theoretical claims we accept are true and then look for answers that reconstruct actual belief‐generating processes. To this end, Kitcher presents the “homely argument” for scientific truth, which claims that (...) when a field of science is continually applied to yield precise predictions, then it is at least approximately true. He defends this approach and offers a supplementary account that gives more attention to detail. This account includes a historical aspect that must answer to skeptical challenges and a social aspect. (shrink)
I argue that scientificknowledge is collective knowledge, in a sense to be specified and defended. I first consider some existing proposals for construing collective knowledge and argue that they are unsatisfactory, at least for scientificknowledge as we encounter it in actual scientific practice. Then I introduce an alternative conception of collective knowledge, on which knowledge is collective if there is a strong form of mutual epistemic dependence among scientists, which (...) makes it so that satisfaction of the justification condition on knowledge ineliminably requires a collective. Next, I show how features of contemporary science support the conclusion that scientificknowledge is collective knowledge in this sense. Finally, I consider implications of my proposal and defend it against objections. (shrink)
In Posterior Analytics 71b9 12, we find Aristotle’s definition of scientificknowledge. The definiens is taken to have only two informative parts: scientificknowledge must be knowledge of the cause and its object must be necessary. However, there is also a contrast between the definiendum and a sophistic way of knowing, which is marked by the expression “kata sumbebekos”. Not much attention has been paid to this contrast. In this paper, I discuss Aristotle’s definition paying (...) due attention to this contrast and to the way it interacts with the two conditions presented in the definiens. I claim that the “necessity” condition ammounts to explanatory appropriateness of the cause. (shrink)
In his latest attack, even though he claims to be a practitioner of “close reading” (Wills 2018b, 34), it appears that Wills still has not bothered to read the paper in which I defend the thesis he seeks to attack (Mizrahi 2017a), or any of the papers in my exchange with Brown (Mizrahi 2017b; 2018a), as evidenced by the fact that he does not cite them at all. This explains why Wills completely misunderstands Weak Scientism and the arguments for the (...) quantitative superiority (in terms of research output and research impact) as well as qualitative superiority (in terms of explanatory, predictive, and instrumental success) of scientificknowledge over non-scientificknowledge. (shrink)
Philosophical debates about collective scientificknowledge concern two distinct theses: groups are necessary to produce scientificknowledge, and groups have scientificknowledge in their own right. Thesis has strong support. Groups are required, in many cases of scientific inquiry, to satisfy methodological norms, to develop theoretical concepts, or to validate the results of inquiry as scientificknowledge. So scientificknowledge‐production is collective in at least three respects. However, support for (...) is more equivocal. Though some examples suggest that groups have scientificknowledge independently of their individual members, these cases are also explained in terms of relational complexes of members’ beliefs. (shrink)
In this article, I address the question of whether science can and should be seen as a common good. For this purpose, the first section focuses on the notion of knowledge and examines its main characteristics. I discuss and assess the core view of analytic epistemology, that knowledge is, basically, justified true belief. On the basis of this analysis, I then develop an alternative, multi-dimensional theory of the nature of knowledge. Section 2 reviews and evaluates several answers (...) to the question of what to understand by the notion of a common good. It discusses both economic and socio-political interpretations of this notion. In Section 3, I develop an alternative account of the common good of scientificknowledge. This knowledge constitutes a common good if it is both non-exhaustible and in the public interest. The two notions are equally important, but in this article, the focus is on the former. For reasons of space, a detailed discussion of the latter is impossible; it will be provided in a forthcoming book. My answer to the question posed in the title of this article builds on the critical discussion of extant views in Sections 1 and 2: some aspects of these views are included in this alternative account, while others are shown to be unhelpful or untenable. The final section discusses some practical implications of this account for the politics of science. The main conclusion is that scientific research should not be privatized through patenting its products. (shrink)
From antiquity to the end of the twentieth century, philosophical discussions of understanding remained undeveloped, guided by a 'received view' that takes understanding to be nothing more than knowledge of an explanation. More recently, however, this received view has been criticized, and bold new philosophical proposals about understanding have emerged in its place. In this book, Kareem Khalifa argues that the received view should be revised but not abandoned. In doing so, he clarifies and answers the most central questions (...) in this burgeoning field of philosophical research: what kinds of cognitive abilities are involved in understanding? What is the relationship between the understanding that explanations provide and the understanding that experts have of broader subject matters? Can there be understanding without explanation? How can one understand something on the basis of falsehoods? Is understanding a species of knowledge? What is the value of understanding? (shrink)
The article explores epistemic and social conditions of the trustworthiness of scientific expertise. I claim that there are three kinds of conditions for the trustworthiness of scientific expertise. The first condition is epistemic and means that scientificknowledge enjoys high credibility. The second condition concerns the significance of scientificknowledge. It means that scientific generalizations are relevant for elucidating the particular cases that constitute the challenges for expert judgment. The third condition concerns the (...) social processes involved in producing science-based recommendations. In this context trust is created by social robustness, expert legitimacy, and social participation. (shrink)
This classic remains one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientificknowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history.
This paper investigates the applicability of reliabilism to scientificknowledge, and especially focuses on two doubts about the applicability: one about its difficulty in accounting for the epistemological role of scientific instruments, and the other about scientific theories. To respond to the two doubts, we extend virtue reliabilism, a reliabilist-based virtue epistemology, with a distinction of two types of epistemic virtues and the extended mind thesis from Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58:7–19, 1998 ). We also present (...) a case study on the quantitative research methodology of social sciences to show that the methodology is actually an extended virtue reliabilism on how social science instruments and theories contribute to the formation of social scientificknowledge. (shrink)
Early modern commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics contain a lively debate on whether experience is ‘rational’, so that it may count as ‘proto-knowledge’, or whether experience is ‘non-rational’, so that experience must be regarded as a primarily perceptual process. If experience is just a repetitive apprehension of sensory contents, the connection of terms in a scientific proposition can be known without any experiential input, as the ‘non-rational’ Scotists state. ‘Rational’ Thomists believe that all principles of scientificknowledge (...) must rely on experiential data, because experience consists in an apprehension of facts rather than objects. And it is only apprehension of facts that can justify knowledge of principles. In this context, the role of mathematical knowledge is special, because it is self-evident. So Thomists must either show that mathematical principles do rely on experience, or that they do not express knowledge claims. (shrink)
This book offers a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the epistemology of science. It not only introduces readers to the general epistemological discussion of the nature of knowledge, but also provides key insights into the particular nuances of scientificknowledge. No prior knowledge of philosophy or science is assumed by The Nature of ScientificKnowledge. Nevertheless, the reader is taken on a journey through several core concepts of epistemology and philosophy of science that not (...) only explores the characteristics of the scientificknowledge of individuals but also the way that the development of scientificknowledge is a particularly social endeavor. The topics covered in this book are of keen interest to students of epistemology and philosophy of science as well as science educators interested in the nature of scientificknowledge. In fact, as a result of its clear and engaging approach to understanding scientificknowledge The Nature of ScientificKnowledge is a book that anyone interested in scientificknowledge, knowledge in general, and any of a myriad of related concepts would be well advised to study closely. (shrink)
_Conjectures and Refutations_ is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientificknowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error.
The first book to provide an in-depth examination of Steve Fuller's politically oriented social epistemology, Legitimizing ScientificKnowledge compares Fuller's social epistemology with other interest-oriented and truth-oriented social epistemologies. The result is a carefully argued, in-depth analysis of the work of a groundbreaking philosopher of science.
_Conjectures and Refutations_ is one of Karl Popper's most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insight into the way scientificknowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge, but our aims and our standards, grow through an unending process of trial and error.
The way in which knowledge progresses, and especially our scientificknowledge, is by unjustified anticipations, by guesses, by tentative solutions to our problems, by conjectures. These conjectures are controlled by criticism: that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests. They may survive these tests; but they can never be positively justified: they can neither be established as certainly true nor even as 'probable'. Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes (...) it makes us understand the difficulties of the problems which we try to solve. This is how we become better acquainted with our problem, and able to propose more mature solutions: the very refutation of a theory - that is, of a tentative solution to our problem - is always a step forward that takes us nearer the truth. And this is how we can learn from our mistakes. As we learn from our mistakes our knowledge grows, even though we may never know - that is, know for certain. Since our knowledge can grow, there can be no reason here for despair of reason. And since we can never know for certain, the can be no authority here for any claim to authority, for conceit over our knowledge, or for smugness. The essays and lectures of which this book is composed apply this thesis to many topics, ranging from problems of the philosophy and history of the physical and social sciences to historical and political problems. (shrink)
If there is collective scientificknowledge, then at least some scientific groups have beliefs over and above the personal beliefs of their members. Gilbert's plural-subjects theory makes precise the notion of ‘over and above’ here. Some philosophers have used plural-subjects theory to argue that philosophical, historical and sociological studies of science should take account of collective beliefs of scientific groups. Their claims rest on the premise that our best explanations of scientific change include these collective (...) beliefs. I argue that Gilbert's account of collective scientific belief does not provide a better explanation of scientific change than a non-collective alternative. A different defence of collective scientific belief and knowledge is needed. (shrink)
I examine whether or not it is apt to attribute knowledge to groups of scientists. I argue that though research teams can be aptly described as having knowledge, communities of scientists identified with research fields, and the scientific community as a whole are not capable of knowing. Scientists involved in research teams are dependent on each other, and are organized in a manner to advance a goal. Such teams also adopt views that may not be identical to (...) the views of the individual members of the group. (shrink)
Pragmatic encroachment theories of knowledge may be characterized as views according to which practical factors may partly determine the truth-value of ascriptions that S knows that p – even though these factors do not partly determine S’s belief that p or p itself. The pros and cons of variations of pragmatic encroachment are widely discussed in epistemology. But despite a long pragmatist tradition in the philosophy of science, few efforts have been devoted to relate this particular view to issues (...) in philosophy of science. Consequently, a central aim of the present paper is to consider how the contemporary debates over pragmatic encroachment connect to philosophy of science. More specifically, I will set forth some arguments against the idea of pragmatic encroachment on scientificknowledge. Moreover, I will argue that it is not plausible to respond to these arguments by embedding pragmatic encroachment in the anti-realist framework of constructive empiricism. So, I conclude that there are good reasons to reject pragmatic encroachment theories of scientificknowledge. (shrink)
The paper examines one implication of pluralism, the view that all values are conditional and none are overriding. This implication is that since scientificknowledge is one of the conditional values, there are circumstances in which the pursuit of even the most basic scientificknowledge is legitimately curtailed. These circumstances occur when the pursuit of scientificknowledge conflicts with moral and political values which, in that context, are more important than it. The argument focuses (...) on the case for and against space exploration in search of intelligent extraterrestrial life. The widely held supposition that search for pure scientificknowledge cannot be reasonably curtailed is identified as the fallacy of overriding values. (shrink)
With increasing publication and data production, scientificknowledge presents not simply an achievement but also a challenge. Scientific publications and data are increasingly treated as resources that need to be digitally ‘managed.’ This gives rise to scientificKnowledge Management : second-order scientific work aiming to systematically collect, take care of and mobilise first-hand disciplinary knowledge and data in order to provide new first-order scientificknowledge. We follow the work of Leonelli, Efstathiou (...) and Hislop in our analysis of the use of KM in semantic systems biology. Through an empirical philosophical account of KM-enabled biological research, we argue that KM helps produce new first-order biological knowledge that did not exist before, and which could not have been produced by traditional means. KM work is enabled by conceiving of ‘knowledge’ as an object for computational science: as explicated in the text of biological articles and computable via appropriate data and metadata. However, these founded knowledge concepts enabling computational KM risk focusing on only computationally tractable data as knowledge, underestimating practice-based knowing and its significance in ensuring the validity of ‘manageable’ knowledge as knowledge. (shrink)
Scientificknowledge-building is the consequence of a relational process, not of an utilitarian socio-economic process. Translation theory expresses the way in which science is constructed and used as a social link. In fact, translation theory contends that scientificknowledge is somehow governed by the logic of exchange. This logic of exchange would ultimately be the source of science and well being and characterize the way in which science and technology work in our contemporary world especially regarding (...) healing processes through mobilising a kind of hidden energy. (shrink)
Science and scientificknowledge have been questioned in many ways for a long period of time. Especially, after the scientific revolution of 16th- and 17th-century Europe, science and its knowledge have been mainly accepted one of the most valuable and trustable information. However, in 20th century, autonomy of scientificknowledge and its dominant position over other kinds of knowledge have been mainly criticised. Social and other factors that were tried to be excluded before (...) have been incorporated into the work by the influence of the Strong Programme. In this article, it will be argued that while people are presenting scientificknowledge, their interests, beliefs and the communities they are involved in are also shown to be effective in producing this information. Thus, the desired result is that it is not reasonable to talk about the absolute autonomy of scientificknowledge. (shrink)
From its inception in 1987 social epistemology has been divided into analytic and critical approaches, represented by Alvin I. Goldman and Steve Fuller, respectively. In this paper, the agendas and some basic ideas of ASE and CSE are compared and assessed by bringing into the discussion also other participants of the debates on the social aspects of scientificknowledge—among them Raimo Tuomela, Philip Kitcher and Helen Longino. The six topics to be analyzed include individual and collective epistemic agents; (...) the notion of scientific community; realism and constructivism; truth-seeking communities; epistemic and social values; science, experts, and democracy. (shrink)
By taking the collective character of scientific research seriously, some philosophers have claimed that scientificknowledge is indeed collective knowledge. However, there is little clarity on what exactly is meant by collective knowledge. In this article, I argue that there are two notions of collective knowledge that have not been well distinguished: irreducibly collective knowledge (ICK) and jointly committed knowledge (JCK). The two notions provide different conditions under which it is justified to (...) ascribe knowledge to a group. It is argued that ICK and JCK need to be approached independently, each of which can shed light on different aspects of science, knowledge production, and acceptance. (shrink)
Representation of scientificknowledge in ontologies suffers so often from the lack of computational knowledge required for inference. This article aims to perform quantitative analysis on physical systems, that is, to answer questions about values of quantitative state variables of a physical system with known structure. For this objective, we incorporate procedural knowledge on two distinct levels. At the domain-specific level, we propose a representation model for scientificknowledge, i.e. variables, theories, and laws of (...) nature. At the domain-independent level, we provide an algorithm which, given a system S with known structure and a relevant scientific theory T, extracts a constraint network, whose variables are state variables of S defined by T, and whose constraints raise from relevant laws in T. The constraint network is then solved, to build a system of equations whose unknowns are the output variables of S. The proposed representation model and reasoning algorithm are evaluated by applying them to classic analysis examples. (shrink)
We track and analyze the re-situation of scientificknowledge in the field of human population genomics ancestry studies. We understand re-situation as a process of accommodating the direct or indirect transfer of objects of knowledge from one site/situation to other sites/situations. Our take on the concept borrows from Mary S. Morgan’s work on facts traveling while expanding it to include other objects of knowledge such as models, data, software, findings, and visualizations. We structure a specific case (...) study by tracking the re-situation of these objects between three research projects studying human population diversity reported in three articles in Science, Genome Research and PLoS Genetics between 2002 and 2005. We characterize these three engagements as a unit of analysis, a “skirmish,” in order to compare: the divergence of interests in how life-scientists answer similar research questions and to track the challenging transformation of workflows in research laboratories as these scientific objects are re-situated individually or in bundles. Our analysis of the case study shows that an accurate understanding of re-situation requires tracking the whole bundle of objects in a project because they interact in particular key ways. The absence or dismissal of these interactions opens the door to unforeseen trade-offs, misunderstandings and misrepresentations about research design and workflow and what these say about the questions asked and the findings produced. (shrink)
Causal pluralism is currently a hot topic in philosophy. However, the consequences of this view on causation for scientificknowledge and scientific methodology are heavily underexposed in the present debate. My aim in this paper is to argue that an epistemological-methodological point of view should be valued as a line of approach on its own and to demonstrate how epistemological- methodological causal pluralism differs in its scope from conceptual and metaphysical causal pluralism. Further, I defend epistemological-methodological causal (...) pluralism and try to illustrate that scientific practice needs diverse causal concepts in diverse domains, and even diverse causal concepts within singular domains. (shrink)
This book will be a rewarding reading for everybody who is interested in logical aspects of scientificknowledge acquisition. The presentation of the issues discussed in the book is exemplary. The author was able to present in parallel way three different perspectives under which the issues discussed in the book might be approached.
This unusually innovative book treats reflexivity, not as a philosophical conundrum, but as a practical issue that arises in the course of scholarly research and argument. In order to demonstrate the concrete and consequential nature of reflexivity, Malcolm Ashmore concentrates on an area in which reflexive "problems" are acute: the sociology of scientificknowledge. At the forefront of recent radical changes in our understanding of science, this increasingly influential mode of analysis specializes in rigorous deconstructions of the research (...) practices and textual products of the scientific enterprise. Through a series of detailed examinations of the practices and products of the sociology of scientificknowledge, Ashmore turns its own claims and findings back onto itself and opens up a whole new era of exploration beyond the common fear of reflexive self-destruction. (shrink)
Pragmatism of Peirce and James overcomed traditional dualism between mind and matter, sense data and conceptions, and the severe differentiation between philosophy, science, art and religion. They made three types of synthesis- epistemological, metaphysical and religious, based on relations between belief, thought, and action. Within the framework of these the problem of relation between science and religion is solved. Peirce founded science on essentially religious metaphysics in such context in which knowledge and thought are grounded and become meaningful. Science (...) exists as a part of evolution of the universe not as end in itself. Without solving the metaphysical problems scientificknowledge is fallible and incomplete. Religious belief is another sort of knowledge for the evolution and in the future it would converge with science. -/- . (shrink)
We have two theses about scientificknowledge in the age of computation. Our general claim is that scientificKnowledge Management practices emerge as second-order practices whose aim is to systematically collect, take care of and mobilise first-hand disciplinary knowledge and data. Our specific thesis is that knowledge management practices are transforming biological research in at least three ways. We argue that scientificKnowledge Management a. operates with founded concepts of biological knowledge (...) as explicated and computable, b. enables new outputs and ways of knowing within biology, and c. risks enforcing objectivist epistemologies of knowledge as some one objective thing. (shrink)
This book defends the constructivist view of science, namely, the view that scientific theories are mental constructions in the mind of the scientist, rather than the realist view that scientific theories are accounts of what nature itself is like. To prove this point, evolution theory is contrasted with "creation science" as two paradigms or extremely divergent theories, each of which, as a mental construct, explains the data or facts of the natural world equally well. Contents: Realism vs. Constructivism; (...) Meaning and Reference in the Natural Sciences; The Role of Paradigm in the Creationism Controversy; Science As Mental Construction. (shrink)
