The Social Construction of Science

This book concerns the institutionalisation of the physical sciences. The book breaks with the established tradition in the history, philosophy and sociology of sciences by attempting to capture both the cognitive and social dimensions of institutionalisation in one unified analysis. This unifica tion has been achieved through a treatment of research as goal directed social action - a theme which has been developed both theoretically and empirically. The analysis presented is therefore unique in its breadth of focus and shows how the traditional concerns of sociology with generalised macro-structures of meaning and action can be related to the lifeworlds of individual scientists. The sociology of the sciences is still today a relative newcomer to the field of sciences studies which has traditionally been dominated by the history and philosophy of the sciences. I hope that this book reflects the excitement I experienced in being able to respond to the debates and concepts which erupted in that particularly fertile period follOwing the publication of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 - a period from which a cogni tively oriented sociology of the sciences was to emerge as a serious challenger to orthodoxies in the history, philosophy and sociology of sciences.

Résumé
`The book breaks with established tradition in the history, philosophy and sociology of science by attempting to portray in one unified analysis, both the cognitive and social dimensions of the institutionalisation of the physical sciences. The analysis is therefore unique in its breadth of focus and shows how the traditional concerns of sociologists with generalised macrostructures of meaning and action can be related to the life worlds of individual scientists.'
Scientia, 120 (April 1985)

Contenu

1. The Social Construction of Science.- 1.1. Introduction.- 1.2. The Theoretical Perspective Developed in this Book.- 2. What is Science?.- 2.1. The Need for Precise Definitions.- 2.2. Structure and Meaning in the Analysis of Science.- 2.3. Science and Its Sub-Universes of Meaning.- 2.4. Science as a System of Theoretical Production.- 2.5. Social Control in Science.- 2.6. Research.- 2.7. Types of Research: Basic Research vs. Practice Oriented Research.- 2.8. The Negotiation of Meaning in Science.- 2.9. Summary.- 3. Science and Professionalism.- 3.1. Introduction.- 3.2. Science and Professionalism.- 3.3. The Role of Autonomy in Science.- 3.4. Scientific Autonomy and Politics.- 3.5. The Inertia of Contemporary Science.- 3.6. The Professional Orientational Reference Group.- 3.7. The Context of Legitimation vs. the Context of Research.- 3.8. Professionalism and the Articulation of Beliefs in an Era of Resource Scarcity.- 4. Scientists Have Goals.- 4.1. Introduction.- 4.2. The 'Common-Sense' Notion of Goals in Scientific Research.- 4.3. The Institutional Context of Goal Direction in the Physical Sciences.- 4.4. The Political Receptivity of Scientific Fields.- 4.5. What is a Goal?.- 4.6. What Are the Goals of Science? An Australian Case Study.- 5. Cognitive and Social Dimensions in the Analysis of Science.- 5.1. Introduction.- 5.2. Cognitive and Social Institutionalisation.- 5.3. The Cognitive Field of a Scientist.- 5.4. Cognitive Structures in the Context of Research.- 5.5. Operationalising Social and Cognitive Concepts.- 5.6. Some Methodological Observations About My Own Research.- 6. Research and Its Legitimation: Two Cognitively Oriented Case Studies.- 6.1. Introduction.- 6.2. Some Methodological Details.- 6.3. Case Study 1: The Selective Surfaces Research Group(SSG).- 6.4. Case Study 2: The Dopamine/Octopamine Research Group (DOG).- 6.5. Comparing the Two Case Studies.- 7. General Conclusions.- 7.1. Suggestions for Future Work.- Notes.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.