Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Analytic social epistemology
- Common sense versus collective memory
- Consensus versus dissent
- Criticism
- Disciplinarity versus interdisciplinarity
- Epistemic justice
- Evolution
- Expertise
- Explaining the cognitive content of science
- Explaining the normative structure of science
- Feminism
- Folk epistemology
- Free enquiry
- Historiography
- Information science
- Knowledge management
- Knowledge policy
- Knowledge society
- Kuhn, Popper and logical positivism
- Mass media
- Multiculturalism
- Naturalism
- Normativity
- Philosophy versus sociology
- Postmodernism
- Progress
- Rationality
- Relativism versus constructivism
- Religion
- Rhetoric
- Science and technology studies
- Science as a social movement
- Science wars
- Social capital versus public good
- Social constructivism
- Social epistemology
- Social science
- Sociology of knowledge
- Translation
- Truth, reliability and the ends of knowledge
- Universalism versus relativism
- University
- Bibliography
- Index
Explaining the normative structure of science
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Analytic social epistemology
- Common sense versus collective memory
- Consensus versus dissent
- Criticism
- Disciplinarity versus interdisciplinarity
- Epistemic justice
- Evolution
- Expertise
- Explaining the cognitive content of science
- Explaining the normative structure of science
- Feminism
- Folk epistemology
- Free enquiry
- Historiography
- Information science
- Knowledge management
- Knowledge policy
- Knowledge society
- Kuhn, Popper and logical positivism
- Mass media
- Multiculturalism
- Naturalism
- Normativity
- Philosophy versus sociology
- Postmodernism
- Progress
- Rationality
- Relativism versus constructivism
- Religion
- Rhetoric
- Science and technology studies
- Science as a social movement
- Science wars
- Social capital versus public good
- Social constructivism
- Social epistemology
- Social science
- Sociology of knowledge
- Translation
- Truth, reliability and the ends of knowledge
- Universalism versus relativism
- University
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The biggest mistake that both philosophers and social scientists make when trying to explain a stable knowledge-producing activity such as science is to assume that the task requires that one explain science-as-successful or knowledgeas-true. Unlike explanations of, say, the capitalist economy, few explanations of science imply criticism of science as it normally is. Rather, a broadly functionalist explanatory logic is invoked to infer that science works as well as could be expected. (See truth, reliability and the ends of knowledge.) As these explanations have come to incorporate more of the actual history of science, the tendency – especially among epistemologists and philosophers of science – is to pursue invisible-hand strategies whereby even prima facie suboptimal day-to-day features of science, such as its ruthlessness, its drudgery and elitism, are said to be necessary for its overarching good features. Included here are the most recent generation of naturalistic (see naturalism) epistemology (e.g. David Hull, Philip Kitcher), as well as sociologists and economists who point to knowledge as a uniquely legitimizing or productive element in the modern world. (See knowledge society.)
Before turning to this functionalist explanatory logic – whose natural home is Talcott Parsons's social systems theory – three critical responses are worth noting. The first simply reinforces the boundary between how science is and ought to be, arguing that most science performs suboptimally most of the time.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Knowledge BookKey Concepts in Philosophy, Science and Culture, pp. 44 - 48Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2007