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  1. The Professionalisation of Science – Claim and Refusal: Discipline Building and Ideals of Scientific Autonomy in the Growth of Prehistoric Archaeology. The Case of Georges Laplace's Group of Typologie Analytique, 1950s–1990s.Sébastien Plutniak - 2017 - Organon 49:105-154.
    The majority of analyses investigating the professionalisation of scientific domains tend to assume the linear and general features of this transformation. These studies focus on the shift from a non-professionalised state to a professionalised state. This dual approach, however, crucially lacks some other aspects of the process of professionalisation. This issue is discussed within the context of the growth of prehistoric archaeology in France from the 1940s, by observing scientific societies, national research organisations and their social networks. Looking at the (...)
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  2. Is an archaeological contribution to the theory of social science possible? Archaeological data and concepts in the dispute between Jean-Claude Gardin and Jean-Claude Passeron.Sébastien Plutniak - 2017 - Palethnologie 9:7-21.
    The issue of the definition and position of archaeology as a discipline is examined in relation to the dispute which took place from 1980 to 2009 between the archaeologist Jean-Claude Gardin and the sociologist Jean-Claude Passeron. This case study enables us to explore the actual conceptual relationships between archaeology and the other sciences (as opposed to those wished for or prescribed). The contrasts between the positions declared by the two researchers and the rooting of their arguments in their disciplines are (...)
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  3. What Makes the Identity of a Scientific Method? A History of the “Structural and Analytical Typology” in the Growth of Evolutionary and Digital Archaeology in Southwestern Europe (1950s–2000s).Sébastien Plutniak - 2022 - Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology 5 (1).
    Usual narratives among prehistoric archaeologists consider typological approaches as part of a past and outdated episode in the history of research, subsequently replaced by technological, functional, chemical, and cognitive approaches. From a historical and conceptual perspective, this paper addresses several limits of these narratives, which (1) assume a linear, exclusive, and additive conception of scientific change, neglecting the persistence of typological problems; (2) reduce collective developments to personal work (e.g. the “Bordes’” and “Laplace’s” methods in France); and (3) presuppose the (...)
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  4. Abstraction in Archaeological Stratigraphy: a Pyrenean Lineage of Innovation (late 19th-early 21th century).Sébastien Plutniak - 2021 - In Sophie A. de Beaune, Alessandro Guidi, Oscar Moro Abadia & Massimo Tarantini (eds.), New Advances in the History of Archaeology. Archaeopress. pp. 78-92.
    Methodological innovations have a special status in disciplinary histories, because they can be widely adopted and anonymised. In the 1950s, this occurred to Georges Laplace’s innovative use of 3-dimensional metric Cartesian coordinate system to record the positions of archaeological objects. This paper proposes a conceptual and social history of this process, with a focus on its spatial context, the Pyrenean region (Spain, Basque Country, and France). Main results of this research based on archives, publications, and bibliometric data, include: 1) a (...)
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  5. Assyrian Merchants meet Nuclear Physicists: History of the Early Contributions from Social Sciences to Computer Science. The Case of Automatic Pattern Detection in Graphs (1950s-1970s).Sébastien Plutniak - 2021 - Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 46 (4):547-568.
    Community detection is a major issue in network analysis. This paper combines a socio-historical approach with an experimental reconstruction of programs to investigate the early automation of clique detection algorithms, which remains one of the unsolved NP-complete problems today. The research led by the archaeologist Jean-Claude Gardin from the 1950s on non-numerical information and graph analysis is retraced to demonstrate the early contributions of social sciences and humanities. The limited recognition and reception of Gardin's innovative computer application to the humanities (...)
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  6. History and Sociology of Science.Géraldine Delley & Sébastien Plutniak - 2018 - In Sandra L. López Varela (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Archaeological Sciences.
    The relationship between archaeology and other sciences has only recently become a research topic for sociologists and historians of science. From the 1950s to the present day, different approaches have been taken and the aims of research studies have changed considerably. Besides methodological textbooks, which aim at advancing archaeological knowledge, historians of archaeology have tackled this question by exploring the development of archaeology as a scientific discipline. More recently, collaborations between archaeologists and other scientists have been examined as a general (...)
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  7. The Effects of Publishing Processes on Scientific Thought. Typography and Typology in Prehistoric Archaeology (1950s–1990s).Sébastien Plutniak - 2020 - Science in Context 33 (3):273-297.
    In the last decades, many changes have occurred in scientific publishing, including online publication, data repositories, file formats and standards. The role played by computers in this process rekindled the argument on forms of technical determinism. This paper addresses this old debate by exploring the case of publishing processes in prehistoric archaeology during the second part of the twentieth century, prior to the wide-scale adoption of computers. It investigates the case of a collective and international attempt to standardize the typological (...)
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  8. À distances raisonnables des structuralismes : logique, langage, formalisation et sciences de l’homme. Une dispute du 20e siècle finissant.Sébastien Plutniak - 2019 - Zilsel. Science, Technique, Société 6:70-115.
    1. Une dispute épistémologique 1.1 Quatre itinéraires à proximité puis à distance des structuralismes 1.2 Un différend sur les « usages réglés du rationalisme » en sciences de l’homme 2. Les mots et les descriptions en sciences de l’homme 2.1 Une commune limitation du déterminisme linguistique 2.2 Un problème philosophique implicite : descriptions définies et noms propres 2.3 L’usage des descriptions définies en sciences de l’homme 2.4 Les (semi-)noms propres des sciences historiques 2.5 Le degré de généralité des concepts employés (...)
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  9. Refrain from Standards? French, Cavemen and Computers. A (short) Story of Multidimensional Analysis in French Prehistoric Archaeology.Sébastien Plutniak - 2015 - In Oliver Schlaudt & Lara Huber (eds.), Standardization in Measurement. Philosophical and Sociological Issues. pp. 39-52.
    Focusing on the history of prehistoric archaeology in the 20th century, this papers shows (1) that statistical multidimensional analyses were carried out by a new kind of actors who challenged the previous common language shared by prehistorians. This fundamental change was important, considering that (2) language is a fundamental point for the epistemology of archaeology. However, a comparison of multidimensional analyses applications over time shall make clear that (3) the differences are mostly a generational matter: the transmission processes between them (...)
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