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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies
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Making Science - Between Nature and Society (Hardcover, New)
Loot Price: R2,770
Discovery Miles 27 700
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Making Science - Between Nature and Society (Hardcover, New)
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The sociology of science is dominated today by relativists who
boldly argue that the content of science is not influenced by
evidence from the empirical world but is instead socially
constructed in the laboratory. Making Science is the first serious
critique by a sociologist of the social constructivist position.
Stephen Cole begins by making a distinction between two kinds of
knowledge: the core, which consists of those contributions that
have passed the test of evaluation and are universally accepted as
true and important, and the research frontier, which is composed of
all work in progress that is still under evaluation. Of the
thousands of scientific contributions made each year, only a
handful end up in the core. What distinguishes those that are
successful? Agreeing with the constructivists, Cole argues that
there exists no set of rules that enables scientists to certify the
validity of frontier knowledge. This knowledge is "underdetermined"
by the evidence, and therefore social factors-such as professional
characteristics and intellectual authority-can and do play a
crucial role in its evaluation. But Cole parts company with the
constructivists when he asserts that it is impossible to understand
which frontier knowledge wins a place in the core without first
considering the cognitive characteristics of the contributions. He
concludes that although the focus of scientific research, the rate
of advance, and indeed the everyday making of science are
influenced by social variables and processes, the content of the
core of science is constrained by nature. In Making Science, Cole
shows how social variables and cognitive variables interact in the
evaluation of frontier knowledge.
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