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
Science and technology studies
- 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
Science and technology studies (STS) is the interdisciplinary field concerned with the study of science and technology mainly, but not exclusively, in contemporary society. The field's preferred methods are associated with social constructivism, although most of its leading practitioners were originally trained in the natural sciences and engineering but subsequently came to be disenchanted with how science's material entanglements compromised its normative integrity. In STS, social epistemology appears as a normative approach to science and technology policy.
STS characteristically treats science and technology as a composite entity, technoscience, which is thoroughly integrated in all social processes. Within STS, a “low church” and “high church” can be distinguished, depending on whether the focus is on turning STS into, respectively, a movement aimed at transforming the role of science and technology in society or an academic discipline pursued for its own sake. (See science as a social movement.)
Low church STS harks back to the original use of “technoscience” in the 1960s as a synonym for what C. Wright Mills called the “military-industrial complex”, in which the trajectory of scientific research was being shaped according to the imperatives of capital expansion and Cold War strategy. This became noticeable in terms of scientists' employment patterns, which reflected a scaled-up, specialized and targeted research culture, the fruits of which could have immediate impact on ordinary lives, be it as goods or weapons.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Knowledge BookKey Concepts in Philosophy, Science and Culture, pp. 152 - 156Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2007