Local Ideas and Global Networks

Author(s):  
James Livesey

This chapter talks about the aftermath of the collapse in authority of positivist models where scholars became highly sensitized to the implication of strategies of inquiry and interpretation with strategies of control. Even in areas of the social sciences that did not commit to discourse as a master category, the suspicion that the claim to a form of truth, or knowledge, entirely distinct from power, was in fact nothing more than a mystification that had explosive consequences. The history of science in its many forms has been transformed. In turn, the challenge to an easy universalism in the sciences has been foundational to the emergence of global intellectual history. The philosophical and methodological challenges of even the most mediated and subtle kinds of constructivism create dual fundamentalist temptations, toward a self-refuting reductivism or an overstated idealism. The “strong program,” associated with the Edinburgh University Science Studies Unit, pursued a wholehearted sociology of science and argued that the truth-value of particular scientific ideas was itself social in origin, thus collapsing the discovery/validation dichotomy.

2000 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reiner Grundmann ◽  
Nico Stehr

The elimination of nature from social science discourse is one of the most noteworthy features of the intellectual history of the social sciences of this century. Proposals to overcome the prohibition to (re-)introduce nature into the social sciences are on the increase, and practical and theoretical justifications are offered in support of them. In this article we critically examine several sociological approaches that have attempted to respond to the ecological crisis. In the end, these approaches remain overly tied to questions of epistemology and fail to offer a satisfactory alternative. On the basis of a discussion of theories and research in the sociology of science and work on decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, we propose to develop an alternative basis for “bringing nature” into social science discourse. We explore extreme climate events to illustrate how natural phenomena appear as real, yet at the same time constructed.


2015 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-210
Author(s):  
Dimitri Ginev

The problem of how to access and estimate the proliferation of receptions of Ludwik Fleck’s work in domains as diverse as social geography, history of clinical medicine, and cognitive sociology has long remained vexing. The approach suggested in this paper combines the hermeneutics of effective-historical reception with a version of epistemic reconstruction of intellectual history. Special emphasis is placed upon the forms of political contextualization of Fleck’s comparative sociology of thought styles. The author argues that the heterogeneity of receptions is essentially informed by the specificity of the ‘implicit reader’ Fleck assigned to his work. Interestingly enough, it is a ‘reader’ congruent with the post-metaphysical turns in the social sciences. This claim is defended by analyzing particular trajectories of reception of Fleck’s work.


2004 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Eddy

When Jan Golinski's Making Natural Knowledge was published in 1998 it was generally applauded for its ecumenical stance between the empirical ‘art’ of historians and the theoretical focus of the social sciences. Indeed, such a middling position was a unique approach to be taken in wake of the ‘science wars’ and this, in combination with the book's clear organization and (for the most part) forthright prose, quickly earned it a place upon HPS, STS and SSK postgraduate reading lists. Now, five years since its first edition was published (hardback, 1998), the work has become a standard introduction to historically minded scholars interested in the constructivist programme. In fact, it has been called the ‘constructivist's bible’ in many a conference corridor. Since the book has attained such a status (and since it has not been reviewed in the BJHS), it is perhaps worth reflecting on whether or not such canonical text (to use a biblical analogy) is fallible or inerrant – especially in relation to its content and pedagogical efficacy.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS RENWICK

AbstractHaving coined the word ‘eugenics’ and inspired leading biologists and statisticians of the early twentieth century, Francis Galton is often studied for his contributions to modern statistical biology. However, whilst documenting this part of his work, historians have frequently neglected crucial aspects of what motivated Galton to establish his eugenics research programme. Arguing that his work was shaped more by social than by biological science, this paper addresses these oversights by tracing the development of Galton's programme, from its roots in a debate about political economy to his appeals for it to be taken up by sociologists. In so doing, the paper not only returns Galton's ideas to their original context but also provides a reason to reflect on the place of the social sciences in history-of-science scholarship.


Author(s):  
Н.Н. Губанов ◽  
Н.И. Губанов

В статье предлагается метод, который наводит мост между историей науки и историей философии – метод параллельной реконструкции истории становления научной теории и её философского прообраза, под которым понимается совокупность философских предпосылок и оснований этой теории. Метод основан на концепции, согласно которой актуальное бытие философских идей представляет собой, помимо возможностей собственного развития, потенциальное бытие научных идей. Из обширного и многомерного резервуара философских идей развитие науки актуализирует лишь некоторые смыслы и только в исторически специфической конкретно-научной интерпре-тации. Мы не знаем заведомо, какие новые преломления в научном сознании может получить та или иная старая философская идея: теоретически количество таких интерпретаций бесконечно. Но в имеющейся научной теории мы в состоянии проследить её философскую подоплёку до самых базовых её предпосылок. По мнению авторов, рассмотрение истории науки в таком ключе способствует видению интеллектуальной истории как единого процесса, в котором постоянно перекликаются история философских идей и история научных идей, взаимно стимулируя друг друга и сливаясь в процессе интеллектуального прогресса. Нахождение философских оснований какой-либо современной научной теории позволяет провести её определённое философское обоснование, что в ситуации конкуренции с другой научной теорией, при прочих равных условиях, может служить дополнительным аргументом в пользу данной теории. The article proposes a method that builds a bridge between the history of science and the history of philosophy - a method of parallel reconstruction of the history of the formation of a scientific theory and its philosophical prototype, which is understood as a combination of philosophical premises and foundations of this theory. The method is based on a concept, according to which the actual being of philosophical ideas is, besides the possibilities of their own development, the potential being of scientific ideas. From the vast and multidimensional reservoir of philosophical ideas, the subsequent development of science actualizes and develops only some meanings and only in a historically specific concrete scientific interpretation. We certainly do not know what new reflections in the scientific consciousness one or another old philosophical idea can receive: theoretically, the number of such interpretations is infinite. But in the existing scientific theory, we are able to trace its philosophical background to its most basic premises. According to the authors, the consideration of the history of science in this vein contributes to the vision of intellectual history as a single process in which the history of philosophical ideas and the history of scientific ideas constantly resonate, mutually stimulating each other and merging in the process of intellectual progress. Finding the philosophical foundations of any modern scientific theory allows us to carry out its certain philosophical justification, which in a situation of competition with another scientific theory, ceteris paribus, can serve as an additional argument in favor of this theory.


1969 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel M. Halpern ◽  
E. A. Hammel

As anthropologists turn increasingly to the study of complex societies, they are led to reflect on the role that social science plays in national ideologies and the ways in which the current state and development of social science reflect other cultural states and processes. Indeed, such reflections can usefully be turned on our own society. One sees that it is much more appropriate to discard old notions of the distinction between ‘science’ and ‘folklore’ and to regard the social science of a particular society, however sophisticated and presumably objective, as an important part of its subjective ideology about itself and the world and thus a part of its own folk theory about the relations of man to society and of men to men. This paper is a sketch of some of the interrelationships between Yugoslav social science and other aspects of Yugoslav culture, with primary emphasis on ethnology.


Author(s):  
Annette M. Kim

This article discusses the concept of institutions and explains why it is of central importance to planning. It outlines the intellectual history of institutions and describes current events that surround the resurgence of this vital concept. The article suggests that, despite the conflict among new institutionalist projects across the social sciences, planning as an interdisciplinary enterprise has been particularly adept at incorporating the various concepts for its purposes. It also identifies the problems with new institutionalism and stresses the need for new institutionalist projects to study how institutions change; how power relations are renegotiated in this process; and how these cognitive, social-construction processes might be connected with material conditions and outcomes that can inform current planning practice.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document