THE Sub-SPECIALTY INTEREST AND RESEARCH
TRAJECTORY OF THE SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE
Remember what bored you last time.
Pickering – trying to summarize the events in the social studies of science. The
whole first part of his essay is an outline of the history of the SSK.
 He points out that the issues targeted the MACRO sociological frame.
 Breakdown of the sub-dsiciplinary interests are around the micro-middle
range
 Whole range of different problems become interesting
Focus on scientific practice is a legitimate exercise. The critical issue is the lack
of data that produces a “thinness” of the theoretical formulations.
Collins appears to do the same thing – on the one hand he talks about the same
cast of characters as Pickering does (early history), and the how they
transformed the study of science and scientific knowledge.
Think about the issues –
Macro-Micro knowledge framework – you can construct the analysis of say the
accordion – on one hand it is a simple box, but when you pull it apart there is a
different level or amount of data.
DIVERSITY Study
Human Genome – in general, as a project, we had a vote that people thought it
was important. However, when we get into a discussion of specifics, things get
messy.
Remember the notion of data-instruments-theory. One needs to dissect both the
field of the social studies of science and the practice of the social studies of
science from this perspective.
1. You have a domain that consists of data.
2. You have certain data points that are visible
3. You have instruments that can enhance the data
4. You have theory or a perspective that allows you make sense of some of the
data and their relationships.
1 TRADITIONS
1.1
Philosophy of Science
Does science have an underlying ethic that determines or gives it an
inherent and natural “superiority” over other approaches to understanding
the world.
“positivist dispute” – on whether the understanding of science was
“positive” that is always in the interest of society (essentially interest in the
truth).
1.2
Historical Formulation
Studies of the Copernican Revolution in astronomy … are the classical
representations of this area.
Thomas Khun (paradigms) – universally recognized scientific achievement
that provides a model of problems and solutions to practitioners.
Issues rotate around the content and the function for the scientific
community. The analysis of molecular biology would constitute a
paradigm shift in the way biology is understood. MB – looking at DNA
structures – provides a content and offers a new set of functional
understanding about biological mechanisms.
Stephen Jay Gould, classic the mismeasure of man, offers another
version of history, which examines how “thinking” about phenomenon has
changed.
1.3
Social Theory
Historical formulation is situated by the social sciences … The primary
defining element for the area is Talcott Parsons (1930-1950s) and the
dominance of his perspective (Harvard) in the American social sciences.
This view, commonly called “normal science” looks at the social world in
terms of their normative and functional relationships. It does not ask
should it be there, it simply asks what is it and how does it fit.
Merton, a student of Parsons (at Columbia), is the primary representative
of the Parsonsian view of science.
Chicago (at University of Chicago) you have a group interested in what
happens at ground zero – what happens in the world. You have seminal
works such as “street corner society” and “Tally’s Corner” that are
grounded ethnographic accounts of living people. The theoretical
rendition of the Chicago school ends up becoming the social science
tradition of symbolic interactionism. The short story of the perspective, is
that the social order is constructed by the meanings we place on symbols
which enable people to respond.
Variants of the perspective include specific analyses of laboratory life and
A related development was the problem of language – discourse analysis.
2 METHODOLOGY
2.1
Macro-Micro Differentiation (level of analysis)
2.2
Data – Sources and Units
2.3
Time
2.4
Access
3 PROBLEM ORIENTATION
Individual investigations are driven by … what problems are interesting or
important.
3.1
Disciplinary Orientation
The disciplines (sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc.) have
orientations that “point” research in a particular direction. Thus in
anthropology you would look at medicine from that standpoint of “nonwestern” cultures. In sociology you would look at general institutions or
specific social relationships.
3.2
Social Organization
Social structure
3.3
Social Problems
Events, juvenile delinquency, … immigration (every 20 years) …
race/ethnicity
3.4
Specific Problems
Specific technological innovation or scientific problem. For example, AIDS
… or cancer oncogenes … reproductive testing (PAP smear,
mammography).
4 CONCEPTUAL COMPLICATIONS
4.1
Macro-Micro Integration
4.2
Dynamic Systems
4.3
Ethical Turn
4.4
Class-Race-Gender
5 TRAJECTORIES