History
Science studies can be understood as a moment in a steadily widening conversation, in which scholars with interests in the social, historical, and philosophical analysis of science and technology have achieved a succession of wider integrations. Numerous disciplines have contributed to this conversation, but two stand out: the history and philosophy of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge.
Drawing on the work of Thomas Samuel Kuhn, especially his Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), history and philosophy of science united scholars in both disciplines who shared interests in not only the history of science, but also its philosophical underpinnings. Kuhn's work established that the history of science was not necessarily a linear succession of discoveries, which bring us closer to the truth, but rather a succession of paradigms, which are broader, socio-intellectual constructs that determine which types of truth claims are permissible.
Meanwhile, the sociology of scientific knowledge developed at the University of Edinburgh, where David Bloor and his colleagues developed what has been termed the Strong Programme, which was based on what Bloor called the empirical programme of relativism and the principle of symmetry. In brief, the Strong Programme holds that science studies scholars should remain neutral with respect to the truth claims science makes: they should explain the success or failure of a scientific theory in the same terms. According to the Strong Programme, the outcome of all scientific controversies—successful or not—should be explained by social factors.
As science studies programs took shape, scholars were drawn into the conversation from other disciplines, including history of science and technology, sociology of science, philosophy of science, rhetoric of science, anthropology, literature, art history, cultural studies, gender studies, history of consciousness, medicine, law and computer science (see Scientific Community Metaphor).
In the 1980s, a turn to technology occurred as science studies scholars such as Trevor Pinch and Steve Woolgar argued that technology could be examined using the principle of symmetry. As a result, many science studies programs added "technology" to their names, and started calling their field Science, technology and society. This "turn to technology" brought science studies into communication with academics in science, technology, and society programs. More recently, a novel approach pioneered by Bruno Latour and known as Mapping controversies has been gaining momentum among science studies practitioners, and was introduced as a course for students in engineering, and architecture schools.
Read more about this topic: Science Studies
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)