editor, Administrators
2,020
edits
Changes
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Role of Sociocultural Factors in Scientific Change (view source)
Revision as of 05:01, 11 January 2018
, 05:01, 11 January 2018no edit summary
{{Descriptive Topic
|Question=What is the role of sociocultural factors, such as economics or politics, in the process of scientific change?
|Topic Type=Descriptive
|Description=According to Hakob Barseghyan in The Laws of Scientific Change[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 235]] the process of scientific change is affected by sociocultural factors in one of two ways: either changes occur in the mosaic due to sociocultural factors in accordance with the Laws of Scientific Change, or they occur in violation of the Laws of Scientific Change.
An example of a circumstance where the scientific mosaic is influenced by sociocultural factors in accordance with the Laws of Scientific Change is as follows: If the employed method of the time dictates relegating the task of theory appraisal to a political or religious authority, then the community will adopt beliefs according to what this singular authority tells them. This example circumstance is sometimes referred to as the “High Priest” scenario.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 235-236]]
Another circumstance where the influence of sociocultural factors may affect the scientific mosaic in accordance with the laws of scientific change is when the results of a theory assessment by the employed method of the time is inconclusive. In this case, sociocultural factors may be employed to select the theory which is preferable to the community according to political, economic, and religious standards, or other forms of individual and group motivations. In this case, the application of sociocultural factors to theory assessment does not violate the laws of scientific change.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 238-239]]
It is also possible that sociocultural factors influence the accepted scientific beliefs of a community in violation of the laws of scientific change, such as, for instance, during a period of social instability. An example of sociocultural factors influencing scientific change in violation of the mosaic could include a case where a government uses violence to impose beliefs on a community as a way to forward its own political agenda. There are numerous historical examples of such a scenario, the most famous being the case of Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union in 1940.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 238-239]]
Historical cases where the laws of scientific change are violated reaffirm that the theory of scientific change is still inevitably local, in accordance with the accepted “Nothing Permanent” principal. Under certain conditions such as societal instability, or the loss of the conditions necessary to form a scientific mosaic (such as for instance an adequate system of communication between individual members of the community), the theory of scientific change cannot apply. The specific circumstances under which the Theory of Scientific Change is not expected to hold have not yet been explicitly identified.
The process of scientific change is broken down into two elements, and therefore sociocultural factors can affect scientific change in two different ways. These two ways can be formulated as two different questions:
1. Can sociocultural factors affect the process of theory acceptance, and, if so, under what conditions can they affect the process?[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 235]]
2. Can sociocultural factors affect the process of method employment and, if so, under what conditions can they affect the profess?[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 235]]
At this stage, Scientonomy is excluding the question of what the role of sociocultural factors are in theory construction.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 234]]
|Parent Topic=Mechanism of Scientific Change
|AuthorAuthors List=Hakob Barseghyan,
|Formulated Year=2015
|DescriptionPrehistory=TODOWhether or not sociocultural factors are the sole agents in bringing about scientific change, whether they are partial agents, or whether sociocultural factors have no influence at all over scientific change has been a topic of contention throughout the history of philosophy of science. Currently, it is generally accepted that sociocultural factors possess the ability to influence scientific change. However, this has not always been the case. Sociologists of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) believe that scientific propositions are either fully or partially social constructions, rather than solely based on reason and evidence. The more radical version of this notion is referred to as the “Strong Programme,” which dictates that sociocultural factors are the cause of all changes in the scientific mosaic, and that evidence and reason play no part in the acceptance of scientific propositions. This is the view held by David Bloor, who was motivated by the search for a uniform approach to studying science. A more traditional version of sociology of science is the “Weak Programme,” championed by (among others) Robert Merton. According to the Weak Programme, when rational explanations fail to account for changes in scientific beliefs, we can use sociocultural influences to fill in the gaps.[[CiteRef: Description here:Brown (2001)|p. 121-123]]. What the two have in common is a naturalistic approach to science studies. Naturalists hold that the only type of knowledge in the world is scientific knowledge, and therefore that the only approach to understanding scientific change is by employing the methods of science themselves.[[CiteRef::Brown (2001)|p. 118-120]] Thomas Kuhn understood paradigm changes to be influenced by social factors. For Kuhn, this type of scientific change was different from that of the normal, every-day enterprise of science. It is only within the paradigm that reason and evidence drive changes in scientific beliefs.[[CiteRef::Brown (2001)|p. 144-145]] This is somewhat similar to how sociologists of scientific knowledge understand the role of sociocultural factors in scientific change. These sociologists believe that reason and evidence are purely context-specific concepts, and that their power as agents of scientific change are dependent on the sociocultural environment in which they are employed.[[CiteRef::Brown (2001)|p. 156-157]]|Page Status=Needs Editing
}}
{{Acceptance Record
|Accepted From Year=2015
|Accepted From Approximate=Yes
|Acceptance Indicators=The question became ''de facto'' accepted by the community at that time together with the whole [[The Theory of Scientific Change|theory of scientific change]].
|Still Accepted=Yes
|Accepted Until Approximate=No
}}
