On Social Constructivist Accounts of the Natural Sciences

Barnes, S. Barry

doi:10.1007/978-3-662-08129-7_5

Cited by 10 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 12 publications

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“…Civil skepticism is not solely a matter of drawing on interpersonal trust relations or sharing a common skeptical attitude; it also results from the causal stimuli of our embodied engagements with objects in the physical world. In contrast with other approaches (Law, 2008; Barad, 2007), the kind of materialism I propose here retains a form of humanism – it values the epistemology of human communities and the ways we come to make sense of what is ‘real’ in the world (Calvert-Minor, 2014; Pinch, 2011) – and upholds the subject-object schema insofar as it seeks to investigate how humans work with, learn about, and represent a world ‘out there’ affecting humans’ senses and actions (Barnes, 2013; Bloor, 1999: 106). Østerlie et al (2012) offer the concept of ‘dual materiality’ to understand the relationship between knowing and materiality and argue that ‘[k]nowing arises from the emerging patterns of interaction between material phenomena, the material arrangements for knowing about these phenomena, and knowledge practices.’ To explicate the dual materiality of civil skepticism would, therefore, involve showing the interplay between two materials: the phenomenon or research material under study and the conventional tools and techniques (including theories) that render the phenomenon problematic.…”

Section: Civil Skepticism and Scientific Credibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Civil skepticism’ and the social construction of knowledge: A case in dendroclimatology

Ramírez-i-Ollé

2018

Soc Stud Sci

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Early Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars recognized that the social construction of knowledge depends on skepticism's parasitic relationship to background expectations and trust. Subsequent generations have paid less empirical attention to skepticism in science and its relationship with trust. I seek to rehabilitate skepticism in STS - particularly, Merton's view of skepticism as a scientific norm sustained by trust among status peers - with a study of what I call 'civil skepticism'. The empirical grounding is a case in contemporary dendroclimatology and the development of a method ('Blue Intensity') for generating knowledge about climate change from trees. I present a sequence of four instances of civil skepticism involved in making Blue Intensity more resistant to critique, and hence credible (in laboratory experiments, workshops, conferences, and peer-review of articles). These skeptical interactions depended upon maintaining communal notions of civility among an increasingly extended network of mutually trusted peers through a variety of means: by making Blue Intensity complementary to existing methods used to study a diverse natural world (tree-ring patterns) and by contributing to a shared professional goal (the study of global climate change). I conclude with a sociological theory about the role of civil skepticism in constituting knowledge-claims of greater generality and relevance.

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Section: Civil Skepticism and Scientific Credibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Civil skepticism’ and the social construction of knowledge: A case in dendroclimatology

Ramírez-i-Ollé

2018

Soc Stud Sci

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Science as Social Existence

Kochan¹

2017

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In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger’s early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing. By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger’s philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan’s ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject. Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger’s existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels. Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.

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Chapter One - The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Phenomenology, and the Problem of the External World

Kochan¹

2017

Science as Social Existence

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Chapter One begins with a nod to the so-called ‘science wars,’ a heated intellectual dispute which erupted in the 1990s. One battle in this multifaceted dispute was over the purported idealism of SSK practitioners. This charge of idealism was motivated by SSK’s alleged philosophical scepticism about the existence of the external world. However, as Kochan demonstrates, SSK practitioners have almost never denied the existence of the external world. On the contrary, they have often educed arguments against external-world scepticism, and they have usually insisted that a belief in the existence of the external world is central to SSK’s method of social-scientific explanation. Nevertheless, Kochan argues that SSK practitioners’ attempts to deflect external world scepticism are less successful than they could be, and hence that their method continues to be vulnerable to sceptical attack. At root, external-world scepticism presupposes the fundamentality of the modern subject-object distinction. Although SSK practitioners have sought, in various ways, to shake off the more troublesome aspects of this distinction, he argues that they nevertheless have remained committed to it at a basic, tacit level. This commitment is evinced in their acceptance of external-world scepticism as a legitimate problem of knowledge. Kochan helps SSK out of this bind by combining it with Heidegger’s phenomenology of the subject as ‘being-in-the-world.’ He suggests that by adopting Heidegger’s alternative account of subjectivity, SSK practitioners will no longer be vulnerable to the threat of external-world scepticism, since they will no longer be wedded to the model of subjectivity which fuels that threat.

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On Social Constructivist Accounts of the Natural Sciences

Cited by 10 publications

References 12 publications

‘Civil skepticism’ and the social construction of knowledge: A case in dendroclimatology

‘Civil skepticism’ and the social construction of knowledge: A case in dendroclimatology

Science as Social Existence

Chapter One - The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Phenomenology, and the Problem of the External World

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