الاثنين، يونيو 30، 2008

The Sociology of Knowledge

Phil. Soc. Sci. 8(1978) 289-298
ROGER TRIGG, Philosophy, Warwick

The so-called ’sociology of knowledge’ is an ambiguous discipline. It might merely involve the investigation into why scientific discoveries should be made at one time rather than another. It might show the conditions necessary in society for fostering growth in scientific knowledge and explain why some societies have been more successful than others in furthering scientific rogress
The discipline could also show social pressures at work on individual scientists, encouraging or retarding their work. The availability of government aid, the production of specialist journals, or the career structure are all fit topics for what would be an interesting, but somewhat peripheral subject. It would be engaged in surveying the necessary surroundings for the growth of mpirical knowledge, but barred from looking at the nature of that knowledge.
There is another interpretation of the discipline that makes it more ambitious and more important. Indeed, if its proponents are right, the sociology of knowledge must take over many of the traditional functions of epistemology. In Knowledge and Social Imagery David Bloor puts forward what he terms the ’strong’ programme in the sociology of knowledge, whereby ociologists not only explain the context of scientific discoveries, but also their content and nature. The programme may begin by dealing with science, all too often regarded in our culture as the sole custodian of truth, but it threatens the whole notion of objective truth. Bloor even wishes to give a sociological explanation of mathematical and logical truth. A form of sociological ductionism is proposed, whereby belief is explained sociologically. Instead of attention being paid to the content of belief, all effort is diverted to a consideration of the mere fact of belief and the various causal factors at work in producing it. There is a corresponding shift in emphasis from what is believed to the more concrete notion of the man, or society, that believes it. The strong version of the sociology of knowledge is inherently anthropocentric. Bloor tells us (p. 139) that ’men are not governed by their ideas or concepts’. He adds that ’even in mathematics, that most cerebral of all subjects, it is men who govern ideas, not ideas which control men’. Sociology thus deals with men’s believing, rather than their beliefs.
The very name of the discipline cloaks some ambiguities. Bloor talks of the sociology of knowledge’, but it is soon apparent that he is revising what is normally meant by ’knowledge’. He admits (p. 2) that his definition is rather different from that of a philosopher, since the sociologist is concerned with knowledge as a ’natural phenomenon’. Thus he says that ’instead of defining it as true belief, knowledge for the sociologist is whatever men take to be knowledge’,
and it ’consists of those beliefs which men confidently hold to and live by’. He distinguishes knowledge from belief (p. 3) by reserving ’knowledge’ for what is collectively endorsed, leaving individual departures from the norm to count as ’belief. One response to this is to insist on a more traditional philosophic definition that brings in the notion of truth and distinguishes true belief and * A review of David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1976, pp. 156, £ 3.25.
في علم اجتماع العلم
1- "علم اجتماع المعرفة روجر تريج، 1978، فلسفة العلوم الاجتماعية، رقم 8، ص 289 - 298. (مقدمة)
الموضوع: معارضة النسخة القوية من علم اجتماع المعرفة المعروفة بـ"البرنامج الدقيق" والتي تفيد بإمكان تفسير، ليس فقط سياق التبرير، وإنما أيضا سياق الكشف العلمي سوسيولوجيا.
2- "هنا وفي كل مكان، علم اجتماع المعرفة العلمية"، ستيفن شابين، 1995، المراجعة السنوية لعلم الاجتماع، مجلد 21، صفحة 289-321
Here and Everywhere: Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Steven Shapin, Annual Review of Sociology volume 21, 1995, 289-321.
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Philosophy of the Social Sciences
The Sociology of Knowledge
Roger Trigg
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 1978; 8; 289
DOI: 10.1177/004839317800800309

The online version of this article can be found at: http://pos.sagepub.com

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