Science as collective knowledge

Diversity and Dissent in the Social Sciences

“…While some philosophers suggest that collective beliefs or acceptances cannot be attributed to scientific communities (Wray 2007), I argue that scientific communities have the capacity to form a collective belief or acceptance (see also Rolin [2008]). For a community to be capable of having collective belief or acceptance, it needs to be capable of forming a joint commitment to a certain view.…”

Processing Collective Knowledge from Autonomous Individuals: A Literature Review

“…There exist many conceptions for processing collective knowledge such as: collective knowledge is meant justified true belief or acceptance held or arrived at by groups as plural subjects [49]; the sum of shared contributions among community members [47]; the common state of knowledge of a collective as a whole [44], and etc. In the process of consumption and creation of collective knowledge, individual plays an important role in contributing the wealth of collective knowledge [24] while communities in the knowledge-building process aim at producing new collective knowledge by developing and improving ideas constantly [17].…”

“…In this kind, first of all we consider conceptions of authors Gilbert [10], Wray [67], Rolin [49], and Ridder [48] about collective knowledge in scientific activities. Gilbert has argued that scientific communities have collective knowledge.…”

Collective Belief, Kuhn, and the String Theory Community

“…2), but that communities of scientists associated with research fields (such as the community of astrophysicists or of biologists) and the community of scientists as a whole cannot. (For a compelling reply, see Rolin [2008].) It is not clear where string theorists fit into Wray's categorization of groups of scientists-surely string theorists are not systematically organized as a research team, and yet they are only a sub-group of high-energy physicists.…”

“…8 Gilbert (2000a) argues that postulating that certain scientific communities hold group beliefs explains certain features of scientific communities and theory change related to resistance to heterodoxy. This argument has been criticized by a number of authors, including Wray (2003Wray ( , 2007, Rolin (2008), andFagan (2011), on the grounds that it is not clear how generic the features Gilbert mentions are, and thus that it is not clear that such features stand in need of explanation. For present purposes, one can set this general discussion aside and focus on the specific explanatory question presented by Smolin's work, namely, does Gilbert's account provide a compelling explanation of the striking features of the string theory community?…”