This article sets out to compare reconstructivism and critical theory as two possible avenues for a normative science and technology studies discipline “after constructivism”. This investigation is pursued through a case study of a wireless network community in the Czech Republic. The case study focuses on a schism that erupted after some users attempted to commercialise an invention for sending data with visible light. Their enterprise was partly motivated by a larger, political aspiration of creating a decentralised communication infrastructure. Other (...) members in the Czech wireless network community opposed this attempt as they perceived commercialisation as more of a threat than an aid for their politics. I will argue that these conflicting viewpoints over the role of markets can also clarify the different, theoretical assumptions behind reconstructivism and critical theory, and give some direction for a future, normative STS discipline. (shrink)

(1995). Theoretical issues surrounding interdisciplinary interpenetration. Social Epistemology: Vol. 9, Boundary Rhetorics and the Work of Interdisciplinarity, pp. 175-187.

Ethnomethodologists (or at least many of them) have been reticent about their theoretical sources and methodological principles. It frequently falls to others to make such matters explicit. In this paper I discuss this silence about theory, but rather than entering the breach by specifying a set of implicit assumptions and principles, I suggest that the reticence is consistent with ethnomethodology's distinctive research 'program'. The main part of the paper describes the pedagogical exercises and forms of apprenticeship through which Garfinkel and (...) Sacks aimed to develop ethnomethodology as a practice. These efforts were not entirely successful, partly because ethnomethodological 'practice' required an engagement with other fully-fledged practices. Aside from the difficulties of mastering such practices, it was unclear what an ethnomethodological study would add to, or take from, them. Whether successful or not, ethnomethodological research points to the specificity of discourse and action in any given practice which a general theory is bound to misconstrue. Current disputes about cultural constructivist versions of natural science illustrate the problems that arise when the terms of a general theory are used to describe and evaluate specific domains of practice. The paper concludes by recommending ethnomethodology as a way to dissolve an unbridgeable gap between cultural theories and socially located practices. (shrink)

The alleged emergence of a ‘post-truth’ regime links the rise of new forms of social media and the reemergence of political populism. Post-truth has theoretical roots in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies, with sociologists of science arguing that both true and false claims should be explained by the same kinds of social causes. Most STS theorists have sought to deflect blame for post-truth, while at the same time enacting a normative turn, looking to deconstruct truth claims and (...) subject expertise to criticism. Steve Fuller has developed a positive case for post-truth in science, arguing that post-truth democratizes science. I criticize this argument and suggest an alternative approach that draws on the prehistory of the field in the 1930s and 1940s, when philosophers and sociologists sought to define the social conditions necessary for reliable knowledge production that might stem mass media irrationalism. (shrink)

In his new book, Knowledge: The Philosophical Quest in History, Steve Fuller returns to core themes of his program of social epistemology that he first outlined in his 1988 book, Social Epistemology. He develops a new, unorthodox theology and philosophy building upon his testimony in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in defense of intelligent design, leading to a call for maximal human experimentation. Beginning from the theological premise rooted in the Abrahamic religious tradition that we are created in the (...) image of God, Fuller argues that the spark of the divine within us distinguishes us from animals. I argue that Fuller’s recent work takes us away from key insights of his original work. In contrast, I advocate for a program of social epistemology rooted in evolutionary science rather than intelligent design, emphasize a precautionary and ecological approach rather than a proactionary approach that favors risky human experimentation, and attend to our material and sociological embeddedness rather than a transhumanist repudiation of the body. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Social Epistemologists at the Crossroads:Authorizing Agents of ChangeJames H. CollierIn this issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric, Thomas Basbøll and Christine Isager and Sine Just provide a vital, constructive forum for discussing the first and second editions of Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge (PREK) and Steve Fuller's broader project of social epistemology. More specifically, both Basbøll's review and Isager and Just's suggest innovative proposals for applying and assessing (...) PREK's ideas and influence. In response, I analyze and counter Basbøll's and Isager and Just's conceptions of how agency is configured, and how criticism is authorized, at the level of textuality. I end by calling for deliberations to sort out what we, as social epistemologists and critical intellectuals, know and what we want to do about it.A Job for Social EpistemologistsIf the reader of PREK wants to "be" a social epistemologist, or "do" social epistemology, what would the job and its duties entail? Thomas Basbøll offers a job description for the social epistemologist as a "postmodern grammarian"—one "who corrects academic texts to suit them for strange times." This description strikes the dissonant chord of being at once pragmatic and abstract. On the one hand, correcting academic texts is a specific task reminiscent of the duties of writing instructors or editors. On the other hand, the specificity of the labor stands in juxtaposition to the surreal working conditions—the "strange times." And in the end, "postmodern grammarian" is hardly a position for which one could apply. Yet the specificity and dissonance in Basbøll's description reveals the difficulty and ambiguity of what Fuller asks the reader to do in PREK. Basbøll gets at this problem by [End Page 269] shifting the subject position of the social epistemologist to the postmodern grammarian. This move is necessary to bring social epistemology down from "the highest level" and make it task oriented. Interestingly, the job that Basbøll describes offers a return to textuality and, I would argue, critical intellectualism. Yet these positions appear somewhat removed from the role of the rhetorician as portrayed in PREK.In proposing a specific job for the social epistemologist, Basbøll develops a microlevel application of Fuller's macrolevel vision. Basbøll's task is not easy: "One of the greatest difficulties encountered in reading PREK is its willingness to make a great many philosophical commitments for openly rhetorical purposes. Not the least of these is the concept of knowledge that a research program and policy platform that calls itself 'social epistemology' is obviously dutybound to provide." The willingness of social epistemologists to occupy many philosophical positions also obscures what labor and service commitments they might make. Moreover, since PREK's initial publication (1993) Fuller has continued to multiply social epistemologists' roles regarding scientific conduct (Science, 1997; The Governance of Science, 2000a; Knowledge Management Foundations, 2002). Further, these commitments shift as Fuller has continued to reinterpret the historical record and to recast philosophical debates (Thomas Kuhn, 2000b; Kuhn vs. Popper, 2003). The ability to both destabilize and maintain such a fluid intellectual environment is something only Fuller, or the postmodern grammarian, could—or would want to—accomplish. More on that idea in a moment.Despite the moving target, defining the subject position of the social epistemologist has been a parallel conversation accompanying much of Fuller's work. I proposed the less "stylish" idea of the social epistemologist as technical communicator in PREK's first edition and in Scientific and Technical Communication (1997). Contemplating the social epistemologist's position as rhetorician, or vice versa, has been taken on by Keith (1995; 1996), Zagacki (1995), and Campbell and Benson (1996) (as summarized by Isager and Just). In contrast to these previous configurations, Basbøll situates the labor of the social epistemologist on the level of reading and writing. As he puts it:And it is precisely because the social epistemologist assists the writer of academic texts in the difficult task of connecting utterances to particular conditions (under which they are read) that social epistemology becomes a critical force. It is not by reconfiguring the knowledge-producing practices themselves [End Page 270] that this... (shrink)

Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing by Henry PetroskiBut Is It Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy by Michael RuseImpure Science: Aids, Activism and the Politics of Knowledge by Steven EpsteinA purposeless history and a ‘ Brave New World’ for animalsCity of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn by William J. Mitchell and Telecommunications and the City: Electronic Spaces, Urban Places by Stephen Graham and Simon MarvinExpecting Trouble: Surrogacy, Fetal Abuse & New Reproductive Technologies (...) edited by Patricia BolingWhose science? Which justice?Beyond the diffusionist history of colonial science. (shrink)

In developing an "internal" sociology of science, the sociology of scientific knowledge drew on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy to reinterpret traditional epistemological topics in sociological terms. By construing scientific reasoning as rule following within a collective, sociologists David Bloor and Harry Collins effectively blocked outside criticism of a scientific field, whether scientific, philosophical, or political. Ethnomethodologist Michael Lynch developed an alternative, Wittgensteinian reading that similarly blocked philosophical or political critique, while also disallowing analytical appeals to historical or institutional contexts. I criticize (...) these Wittgensteinian sociologies and argue for the historical and contemporary significance of methodological criticisms of scientific practice that conjoin epistemological and political categories. I consider two such cases briefly: the Baconian criticism of Scholastic science in the early Royal Society and the criticism of AIDS drug testing protocols by activists. Key Words: Wittgenstein • sociology of scientific knowledge • ethnomethodology • scientific method • interpretive sociology. (shrink)

Protagonists in the so-called Science Wars differ most markedly in their views about the role of values in science and what makes science valuable. Scientists and philosophers of science have traditionally considered the principal aims of science to be explanation and application. Only cognitive values should influence what is taken to be explanatory. Social and political values affect the priority assigned to various scientific problems and the ways in which scientific results are applied. Ethical considerations may be brought to bear (...) on the treatment of human and animal subjects, and the manner in which scientific results are communicated. Recent critiques of science allege that the content of scientific explanations reflects the dominant ideology and interests of scientists and their patrons. Instead of calling for more value neutrality, some now urge that science take as a principal aim the emancipation of oppressed subcultures. Not only should progressive political values be allowed to set the problems attempted, they also should be used to constrain the types of answers which are pursued. Since scientific knowledge is constructed by us, we should take responsibility for its content. This paper argues that the project of Emancipationist science is impractical and self-defeating. There is good reason to believe that there would be unresolvable political disputes concerning which kinds of scientific theories are truly emancipiatory. Furthermore, just as placebos cease to work when recognized as such, so would a science known to be constrained by political considerations lose its special epistemic authority. (shrink)

The emergence of nanotechnology, with all its promises of economic, social, and medical benefits, along with dire predictions of environmental, health, and safety threats, has occasioned an active debate in the Science and Technology Studies field, in which we have seen five distinct conversations that frame the discussion. The topical threads include ethics, regulation, opportunities and threats including utopian/dystopian visions of the future, public perception, public participation. These conversational distinctions are not absolutes with firm borders as they clearly overlap at (...) many points. Nonetheless, common to all is a strong sense that control and consequence are significant problems that have yet to be addressed adequately by the promoters of nanotechnology. A final section addresses articles on nanotechnology that exemplify the social construction theory of technology. We include herein a selective summary of this recent body of science, technology, and society (STS) journal literature focused on the social and ethical interactions of nanotechnology (SEIN) that has emerged in the last few years. The intent is not to be encyclopedic in coverage, but rather to seek to understand, in a general way, the key issues and concepts STS scholars are discussing. It is clear that STS-oriented scholars are well poised to grapple explicitly with the cultural, socio-political, and ethical dimensions of nanotechnology. Drawing on understandings of earlier socio-technical areas of interest and concern—nuclear power, genetically modified organisms, the human genome—such scholars have moved well beyond the questions of whether and where nanotechnology intersects society. More important is their effort to seek an understanding in depth of exactly how they are socio-politically, culturally, and ethically interconnected. In doing so, SEIN studies have at the same time become increasingly diverse and more sophisticated and mature over the course of the past decade. Scholars have quite rightly recognized the inadequacies of blanket ideas of moratoria versus non-regulatory environments, utopian versus dystopian futures, and whether or not the public has a role to play in nanotechnology decision making. Rather, a more sophisticated, often case specific, flexible understanding of the societal context of a given issue or concern is called for. (shrink)

Recent rhetorical critiques of philosophy and science assume a contrast between rational argument and rhetoric that is inherited from an antirhetorical tradition in philosophy. This article rejects that assumption. Rhetoric is compatible with reasoned discourse in a strong sense originally outlined by Aristotle. Rhetorical analysis reveals the inadequacy of purely demonstrative accounts of rational argument and cognitive accounts of the conditions for rational assent to propo sitions. Social studies of the rhetoric of science, and in particular of credibility claims, need (...) not fall into the forms of relativism and global antirealism with which they have become associated. (shrink)

I should say at the outset that I actually like this book a lot, but I am not sure how comfortable I am with liking it. It is the sort of innovative, exciting, exasperating, infuriating, and provocative book that's good even when it's bad, because it sets everyone to talking and arguing about all kinds of things. Initially, I will give a brief gloss of the main points of the book and of its virtues. Then I would like to single (...) out two issues for brief discussion: Fuller 's conception of rhetoric and in what sense he is still a philosopher, in both his case studies and curriculum, despite advertising to the contrary. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoricians Identified:A Call to Interdisciplinary Action and How it Resonated in the Field of RhetoricChristine Isager and Sine Nørholm Just"I actually like this book a lot, but I am not sure how comfortable I am with liking it," wrote William Keith (1995, 488) in a review of the original 1993 edition of Steve Fuller's Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge (PREK), in which rhetoric is invited to participate (...) in the interdisciplinary reconfiguration of Science and Technology Studies (STS). This hesitant enthusiasm aptly exemplifies how an interdisciplinary invitation is likely to make its addressees squirm as they watch their professional aims being defined and then redefined by a disciplinary outsider who points out a place for them in a novel disciplinary constellation. Moreover, and more specifically, Keith's comment exemplifies how PREK was received by rhetoricians. On the surface, the reviews were glowing. In Philosophy and Rhetoric as well as in Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Keith expressed certain doubts about Fuller's work, but still he described it as "important," "exceptional," "superb" (1996; 1995). In the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Kenneth S. Zagacki called PREK both "excellent" and "exciting" (1995), and he was backed by John Angus Campbell and Keith R. Benson a year later when the same journal included PREK in an omnibus review entitled "The Rhetorical Turn in Science Studies" (Campbell and Benson 1996). Like Alan Gross, who reviewed the book in College English together with a number of works on workplace writing (1994), Campbell and Benson placed PREK at the cutting edge of rhetorical theory.The initial excitement over PREK forms a sharp contrast to the quite negligible impact that the book has had on the field of rhetoric in the decade that has passed since it was first published. In this essay we will undertake a close reading of the book along with the five above-mentioned reviews, looking for an explanation of the peculiar fate that met Steve [End Page 248] Fuller's proposal in the rhetorical disciplinary context. Our conclusion is that on reading the book, rhetoricians felt so flattered by Fuller's confident handling of rhetoric that the task of introducing and applying rhetorical theory in STS seemed, on the whole, to have been done for them. Furthermore, Fuller's attempts to construct a rhetorical agency are subverted by his idiosyncratic, i.e., inimitable, professional approach, which is also reflected in his style of writing. At once presumptuous and colloquial, his rhetoric serves to impress and entertain, but it fails to engage his audience substantially and to enact the interpenetrative stance that was intended to be the hallmark of PREK and that continues to be the commendable chief concern of Steve Fuller and his fellow social epistemologists.Text-Intertext and IdentificationInterdisciplinary invitations or, rather, interdisciplinary inspirational works of science were originally described as a noteworthy rhetorical genre by Leah Ceccarelli (2001). Ceccarelli explores how claims to scientific unity have handled a primary constraint: their multiple audiences. Fuller explicitly positions PREK within the genre of interdisciplinary inspiration by asserting that "the success of this book... should be measured in terms of its ability to persuade philosophers, theoretical humanists and social scientists, STS practitioners, and rhetoricians of science to see each other as engaged in a common enterprise" (1993, xii-xiii). We will not, however, be examining PREK's ability to be strategically opaque (as Fuller puts it), polysemous(Ceccarelli's term), or otherwise adapted to address its multiple audiences. Instead, we focus solely on Fuller's address to rhetoricians and study how he identifies with this particular audience. Ceccarelli recognizes the importance of ethical appeal in interdisciplinary invitations by positing the establishment of both an authoritative and personal authorial persona as a generic criterion. We follow this lead and add a Burkean emphasis on identification.According to Kenneth Burke, identification is a prior condition for persuasion "precisely because there is division" (Burke 1969, 22). The speaker's success depends on his ability to imitate the ways of his audience and to create a common ground or perspective that makes collective action possible. Burke's work allows us to distinguish three rhetorical strategies of identification. The first strategy... (shrink)

Discourses on Responsible Innovation and Responsible Research and Innovation, in short RI, have revolved around but not elaborated on the notion of critique. In this article, generative critique is introduced to RI as a practice that sits in-between adversarial armchair critique and co-opted, uncritical service. How to position oneself and be positioned on this spectrum has puzzled humanities scholars and social scientists who engage in interdisciplinary collaborations with scientists, engineers, and other professionals. Recently, generative critique has been presented as a (...) solution to the puzzle in interdisciplinary collaborations on neuroscientific experiments. Generative critique seeks to create connections across disciplines that help remake seemingly stable objects in moments when taken-for-granted ways of seeing and approaching objects are unsettled. In order to translate generative critique from the neurosciences to RI, socio-technical integration research is proposed as a practice of generative critique in interdisciplinary RI collaborations. These collaborations aim to account for societal aspects in research and technology development. For this purpose, a variety of approaches have been developed, including STIR and video-reflexive ethnography. STIR and VRE resemble each other but diverge on affective, collaborative, and temporal dimensions. Their juxtaposition serves to develop suggestions for how STIR could be modified on these dimensions to better enact generative critique in interdisciplinary RI collaborations. In this way, the article contributes to ongoing discussions in RI and in the engaged programme in science and technology studies more broadly on the dynamics of positioning in collaborative work. (shrink)

Abstract This paper is a close textual criticism of Theodosius Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species. It argues that the book succeeds as interdisciplinary communication by promoting polysemy. The professional goals of two scientific communities are embedded in the text in such a way that each audience reads the call for co?operative action as implicit support for their own methods.

This special issue of Science, Technology, & Human Values assembles papers that consider relations among science, ethics, and justice. The papers are drawn from a 2011 National Science Foundation-sponsored workshop that brought together interdisciplinary scholars to consider, incorporate, and attend to the meanings, uses, and social consequences of ethical questions and justice ideals in technoscientific projects. The papers included in this special issue examine key areas that emerged from this workshop, including public participation, the production of knowledge, what counts as (...) consent, ownership of biomaterials, and others. Together, the papers raise questions about new directions and articulations of power, justice, and inequalities in science and technology studies. (shrink)

This article argues that “technologies of culture” influence citizens’ conceptions of the American state. The technology of modernism educated citizens to manipulate machines and control nature. This influenced citizens’ views of government’s tasks and capacities. Postmodern technology focuses attention on the self and alters people’s conceptions of the tasks and capacities of government. The article discusses the political implications of postmodern citizenship and suggests possible remedies for postmodernism’s effects on democratic citizenship in the United States.

In the production of knowledge about social life, two social contexts come together: the context of investigation, consisting of the social world of the investigator, and the context of explanation, consisting of the social world of the actors who are the subject of study. The nature of, and relationship between, these contexts is imagined in philosophy; managed, rewarded, and sanctioned in graduate seminars, journal reviews, and tenure cases; and practiced in research. Positivism proposed to produce objective knowledge by suppressing the (...) nonlogical and nonobservational aspects of the contexts. Attacks on positivism disputed the effectiveness and rationality of this strategy. Thus " postpositivism " can be understood as a series of attempts to reconstitute the relation between the contexts as the basis for accurate social knowledge. Two of the most important of these attempts—grounded theory and postmodern anthropology—are considered, and a synthesis, which draws from the insights of cultural sociology, is proposed. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show that the proposition of 'double contingency' introduced by Parsons and defended by Luhmann and Habermas is insufficient under the conditions of contemporary communication societies. In the latter context, the increasing differentiation and organization of communication processes eventuated in the recognition of the epistemic authority of the public, which in turn compels us to conceptualize a new level of contingency. A first step is therefore taken to capture the role of the public in communication societies theoretically (...) by what may be called 'triple contingency'. Since the process of the definition of reality and its outcome, to which the response of the public is central, is best seen in constructivist terms, attention is also paid to relevant methodological and epistemological questions. Key Words: cognitive turn • communication • constructivism • double contingency • Habermas • Luhmann • observation • Parsons • situationalism • the third point of view. (shrink)

Postmodernist proposals for transforming science education would not only emphasize connections between science and society but also radically alter our conceptions of the value of experimentation and disinterested inquiry. I propose alternative loci for the study of science and society issues and argue for a less utilitarian vision of science literacy.

Two major science policy issues are the integration of knowledge across academic disciplines and the accountability of science to society. Instead of adding new or external criteria for research evaluation, I argue, these goals can be pursued by subjecting disciplinary priorities and procedures to broader scrutiny from the rest of academia. From a social epistemological perspective, the paper discusses interdisciplinarity as a mode of epistemic accountability across disciplinary boundaries, which promises to make academia more than the sum of its disciplinary (...) parts. Drawing on discussions of interdisciplinarity and accountability in knowledge production, as well as on empirical findings of the evaluation of research proposals, the paper unpacks the notion of academic accountability into three dimensions—the recipients, contents, and practices of accountability—and illustrates the difference interdisciplinarity makes in each dimension. The analysis shows that interdisciplinarity is not simply a category of.. (shrink)

This article examines various positions within science studies on scientific hegemony. After discussing the work of Stephan Fuchs and the “ epistemological chicken” debate, it proceeds to take issue with the claim that science is both locally accomplished and hegemonic. It offers the suggestion that critical accounts would better reconsider the ethos of their audience rather than simply worry about the objectivism of their own representations of science.

The classical conception of rhetoric as the method of reasoned political judgment survived into the Renaissance but was reduced to academic critiques of style and "empty" public rhetoric with the rise of modern science and its representationalist theories of language. Recently, however, rhetoric, textuality, and the "linguistic turn" generally, have become central metaphors in the human sciences. This renewed rhetorical perspective not only fosters a critique of positive philosophy and of scientism in public discourse, it also offers affirmative methods by (...) which persons can construct their civic lives. (shrink)

(1995). Synthesizing disciplinary narratives: George Gaylord Simpson's tempo and mode in evolution. Social Epistemology: Vol. 9, Boundary Rhetorics and the Work of Interdisciplinarity, pp. 113-150.

(1995). Theoretical issues surrounding interdisciplinary interpenetration. Social Epistemology: Vol. 9, Boundary Rhetorics and the Work of Interdisciplinarity, pp. 175-187.

El artículo menciona el giro en favor de los enfoques participativos o comprometidos políticamente en el campo CTS, realizando una propuesta para su profundización desde una senda alineada con la teoría crítica de la tecnología. Inspirado en los aportes de Andrew Feenberg y Johan Söderberg, el artículo emprende esta tarea mediante la conjunción de conceptos de la perspectiva de la construcción social de la tecnología con aquellos de una tradición hegeliano-marxista interesada en visiones del sistema capitalista como una totalidad que (...) limita la contingencia en el desarrollo tecnológico. Así, propone el rescate de conceptos como clase, capitalismo y lógica del capital, para la comprensión del desarrollo tecnológico. En el curso de esta tarea, el relativismo constructivista es considerado un problema central para profundizar este giro y se lo reemplaza por una evaluación de los códigos técnicos y del contexto social más amplio que el capitalismo representa. En el trascurso del texto, se expone una reutilización de los conceptos constructivistas con arreglo a los intereses de una posición alineada con la teoría crítica de la tecnología. Así, el concepto "marco tecnológico" se asociará con el de "código técnico", de Feenberg, y con el rescate de la lógica mercantil pregonada por la teoría crítica y Söderberg. The paper mentions the turn in favor of participatory or politically engaged approaches in the STS field, and outlines a proposal for deepening this turn within a critical theory of technology route. Inspired in the contributions of Andrew Feenberg and Johan Söderberg, the paper undertakes this task through a combination of concepts from the perspective of social construction of technology with those of a Hegelian-Marxist tradition interested in visions of the capitalist system as a whole posing limits to contingency in technological development. Thus, it offers to rescue such concepts as class, capitalism, market relations and logic of the capital, to better understand technological development. During this task, constructivist relativism is considered a central problem to deepen this turn and thus replaced by an assessment of the technical codes and the wider social context represented by capitalism. In the following parts the paper presents a reuse of constructivist concepts according to the interests of a position aligned with critical theory of technology. Thus, the concept of "technological frame" will be associated with Feenberg's "technical code" and with the rescue of the market logic advocated by critical theory and Söderberg. (shrink)

One of the major themes of Steve Fuller's project of social epistemology is a reconciliation of the normative concerns of epistemologists with the empirical concerns of sociologists of knowledge. Fuller views social epistemologists as knowledge policy makers, who will provide direction for improvements in the cognitive division of labour. However, this paper argues that Fuller's conception of knowledge production and his approval of a panglossian approach to epistemology fail to provide the normative force he claims, and leave us unable to (...) identify anything epistemic about our knowledge-seeking practices. (shrink)

From its inception in 1987 social epistemology has been divided into analytic and critical approaches, represented by Alvin I. Goldman and Steve Fuller, respectively. In this paper, the agendas and some basic ideas of ASE and CSE are compared and assessed by bringing into the discussion also other participants of the debates on the social aspects of scientific knowledge—among them Raimo Tuomela, Philip Kitcher and Helen Longino. The six topics to be analyzed include individual and collective epistemic agents; the notion (...) of scientific community; realism and constructivism; truth-seeking communities; epistemic and social values; science, experts, and democracy. (shrink)

When Bloor's Knowledge and Social Imagery was first published in 1976, it was not the first time that a “strong programme” in the sociology of knowledge was treated to a hostile reception by philosophers. But never before has such a dialectically unproductive encounter with philosophers led to such a methodologically fruitful response, for, when an array of positivist, historicist, Popperian, and realist philosophers argued against Bloor and his Edinburgh colleagues that normative accounts of scientific rationality could not be refuted by (...) empirical accounts of what scientists do, an entire line of research was launched that sought to explain science without having to make reference to the philosophers' cherished norms. This is the field now known as Science and Technology Studies. Although STS is normally taken to be intellectually centered in sociology, its main practitioners are just as likely to have been drawn from philosophy and the natural sciences as from the social sciences proper. The unmistakable mark of Bloor's influence is that, unlike the sociology of science most recognizable to sociologists, the STS practitioner is committed to studying science in the same spirit of analytic detachment and epistemic neutrality as she would any other aspect of society. In practice, this has amounted to a preference for methods that incorporate “ethnographic distance”, although in recent years theoretical debate has increasingly focused on the appropriate attitude that STS practitioners should adopt toward science, given their findings to date. I will return to this debate at the end of this essay. (shrink)