The Social Construction of Science
The Social Construction of Science

Author: T. Jagtenberg

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9400970102

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This book concerns the institutionalisation of the physical sciences. The book breaks with the established tradition in the history, philosophy and sociology of sciences by attempting to capture both the cognitive and social dimensions of institutionalisation in one unified analysis. This unifica tion has been achieved through a treatment of research as goal directed social action - a theme which has been developed both theoretically and empirically. The analysis presented is therefore unique in its breadth of focus and shows how the traditional concerns of sociology with generalised macro-structures of meaning and action can be related to the lifeworlds of individual scientists. The sociology of the sciences is still today a relative newcomer to the field of sciences studies which has traditionally been dominated by the history and philosophy of the sciences. I hope that this book reflects the excitement I experienced in being able to respond to the debates and concepts which erupted in that particularly fertile period follOwing the publication of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 - a period from which a cogni tively oriented sociology of the sciences was to emerge as a serious challenger to orthodoxies in the history, philosophy and sociology of sciences.

Esotericism and Deviance
Esotericism and Deviance

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-02-06

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 9004681043

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The concept of deviance has been central to the academic study of (Western) esotericism since its inception. This book, being the proceedings of the 6th Biennial Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), explores the relationship between esotericism and various forms of deviance (as concept, category, and practice) from antiquity until late modernity. The volume is the first to combine incisive conceptual explorations of the concept of deviance and how it informs and challenges the study of esotericism alongside a wide range of empirically grounded case discussions.

The Social Construction of Technological Systems, anniversary edition
The Social Construction of Technological Systems, anniversary edition

Author: Wiebe E. Bijker

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2012-05-18

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 0262300877

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An anniversary edition of an influential book that introduced a groundbreaking approach to the study of science, technology, and society. This pioneering book, first published in 1987, launched the new field of social studies of technology. It introduced a method of inquiry—social construction of technology, or SCOT—that became a key part of the wider discipline of science and technology studies. The book helped the MIT Press shape its STS list and inspired the Inside Technology series. The thirteen essays in the book tell stories about such varied technologies as thirteenth-century galleys, eighteenth-century cooking stoves, and twentieth-century missile systems. Taken together, they affirm the fruitfulness of an approach to the study of technology that gives equal weight to technical, social, economic, and political questions, and they demonstrate the illuminating effects of the integration of empirics and theory. The approaches in this volume—collectively called SCOT (after the volume's title) have since broadened their scope, and twenty-five years after the publication of this book, it is difficult to think of a technology that has not been studied from a SCOT perspective and impossible to think of a technology that cannot be studied that way.

Making Sense of Science
Making Sense of Science

Author: Steven Yearley

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 9780803986923

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This volume demystifies science studies and bridges the divide between social theory and the sociology of science.

Science and Social Science
Science and Social Science

Author: Malcolm Williams

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-10-02

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1134647816

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Is social science really a science at all, and if so in what sense? This is the first question that any course on the philosophy of the social sciences must tackle. In this brief introduction, Malcolm Williams gives students the grounding that will enable them to discuss the issues involved with confidence. He looks at: * The historical development of natural science and its distinctive methodology * the case in favour of an objective science of the social which follows the same rules * The arguments of social constructionists, interpretative sociologists and others against objectivity and even science itself * recent developments in natural science - for instance the rise of complexity theory and the increased questioning of positivism - which bring it closer to some of the key arguments of social science. Throughout, the book is illustrated with short clear examples taken from the actual practice of social science research and from popular works of natural science which will illuminate the debate for all students whatever their background.

A Social History of Knowledge II
A Social History of Knowledge II

Author: Peter Burke

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-17

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0745659616

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Peter Burke follows up his magisterial Social History of Knowledge, picking up where the first volume left off around 1750 at the publication of the French Encyclopédie and following the story through to Wikipedia. Like the previous volume, it offers a social history (or a retrospective sociology of knowledge) in the sense that it focuses not on individuals but on groups, institutions, collective practices and general trends. The book is divided into 3 parts. The first argues that activities which appear to be timeless - gathering knowledge, analysing, disseminating and employing it - are in fact time-bound and take different forms in different periods and places. The second part tries to counter the tendency to write a triumphalist history of the 'growth' of knowledge by discussing losses of knowledge and the price of specialization. The third part offers geographical, sociological and chronological overviews, contrasting the experience of centres and peripheries and arguing that each of the main trends of the period - professionalization, secularization, nationalization, democratization, etc, coexisted and interacted with its opposite. As ever, Peter Burke presents a breath-taking range of scholarship in prose of exemplary clarity and accessibility. This highly anticipated second volume will be essential reading across the humanities and social sciences.

A Question of Knowledge
A Question of Knowledge

Author: Richenda Power

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-11

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1317883756

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This book uniquely illustrates the key concepts and issues involved with recent examples drawn from empirical research, highlighting the practical relevance of difficult theoretical and philosophical concepts to the way in which we think and talk about knowledge both in an everyday and in an academic/ sociological context.

Routledge Revivals: Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science (1985)
Routledge Revivals: Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science (1985)

Author: Michael Lynch

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-20

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 135161858X

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First published in 1985, this book provides a descriptive study of social activities in a neurosciences laboratory. Based on fieldwork conducted by the author in the laboratory during 1975 and 1976, and taking an ethnomethodological approach, it focuses on the phenomenon of the social accomplishment of natural scientific order. Through the examination of shop work and shop talk in this environment, it identifies an analyzable social basis in the local production of accounts of natural objects in laboratory research. This work will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnomethodology and sociology.