Ideology and Science Flashcards
Popper - why sociology isn’t a science
- Science can be falsified, religion cant.
Popper - open belief system, cumulative and sacred
- Science is an open belief system because it is open to new ideas.
- Scientific knowledge is cumulative as it grows.
- Scientific knowledge is not sacred as you can criticise it.
Falsificationism
Scientists should try to disprove theories. Other belief systems do not do this.
Cognitive power of science
- It has a greater cognitive power, science allows us to explain, predict and control the world in a way other beliefs do not.
Merton - why did science begin to develop when it did?
He argued that science can only thrive when it receives support from other social institutions, e.g.
- William the Conqueror = gave lots of money to the church to save his soul.
- 500 years later, Henry VIII takes loads of money from the church to create a scientific navy.
Merton - CUDOS
He identified four norms of ways that scientists behave:
- Communism means all knowledge is shared.
- Universalism means everything gets judged by the same objective criteria.
- Disinterestedness means science should be done for sciences sake.
- Organised Scepticism means you should question everything.
Evans-Pritchard’s study of the Azande people - why are the beliefs of the Azande a closed belief system?
- No matter what, you still believe you have been cursed by a witch.
Polanyi
Identified three devices that all belief systems have that make them resistant to contradictory knowledge claims:
- Circularity means each idea in a system is explained by another idea within a system.
- Subsidiary explanations mean if something doesn’t work, come up with another explanation (doomsday culture)
- Denial of legitimacy to rivals means won’t listen to critics, because those critics shouldn’t be listened to.
Rupert Sheldrake
- A crazy scientist, he had beliefs in telepathy, psychic dogs, the sun is alive, etc…
- The Journal Nature (a scientific journal) believed his book should be burned, was not allowed to publish a ted talk.
- This suggests science is maybe a closed system.
Kuhn (paradigms)
- Science has a paradigm just like religion.
- Anything outside the paradigm gets rejected.
- Science is not scientific as it doesn’t like ideas outside the paradigm (use Rupert Sheldrake’s case study as an example)
Karin Knorr-Cetina
Woolgar (little green men)
- Knorr-Cetina (interpretivist sociologist) says that scientific knowledge is socially constructed. Use Woolgar’s study to support.
- Says that scientists make sense of the world just as much as everyone else does.
- They have to persuade others though.
- So they adopt a dispassionate, scientific role, e.g. LGM.
What examples are there of how science has been used in the interests of the ruling class?
Marxists
- Military industrial complex spend loads on weapons.
- Scientific racism science has been used to justify imperialism and slavery.
What examples are there of how science has been used in the interests of male domination?
Feminists
- Women are seen as ‘too emotional’ to make decisions.
Why do Postmodernists reject scientific knowledge-claims?
- Science claims the truth, but who knows the truth?
- E.g. the photo of the pipe.
Technoscience
- Making things to make money rather than benefitting the human race.
- Science has become subordinated to capitalism.
Ideology & what it is used to describe.
Usually used by people to describe a belief system that is wrong. People rarely use it to describe their own belief systems.
Ha-Joon-Chang
The L’oreal principle, “because you’re worth it”
- Legitimises ruling class ideology.
Gramsci - ideology
- The ruling class prevent a revolution as they spread ideas through education, the media, religion, etc…
- They maintain control through coercion.
What is nationalism?
- The belief that nations are real.
- The belief that every nation should be self-governing.
- National loyalty & identity.
Marxist and functionalist views on nationalism
- Marxists don’t like it, it provides false consciousness and turns the W/C against itself.
- Functionalists think it is a good thing as it binds people together. Education should involve history and citizenship to bind us together with British values.
Gellner’s thoughts on nationalism
- Gets invented with modernity.
- With a complex, modern society we needed one idea which binds us together.
- Nationalism does this.
Mannheim
- Believed that all belief systems are one-sided.
- They’re always the viewpoint of one group or class.
- e.g. Capitalism and Communism, which one is true??
Two types of belief systems that Mannheim distinguished:
- Ideological thought means conservative, right-wing ideas, keeping things the same, e.g. capitalism.
- Utopian thought means revolutionary, e.g. communism.
How has science been used to justify the male domination of women? - Pauline Marks
- In the past, educating women would make them ‘too manly’.
- Ideas from science have been used to justify excluding women from education.
- 19th century male doctors expressed the view that educating females would lead to ‘a new race of puny and unfeminine females’ and disqualify women from their true ‘vocation’.
- Many other religious beliefs involved ideas that women are inferior e.g. impure and unclean due to menstruation.
How has religion been used to justify the male domination of women?
- Virgin-whore dichotomy
- Original sin - women will have pain in childbirth and experience menstruation because of Eve.
How has the family been used to justify the male domination of women?
- Women are the best at homemaking, e.g. Parson’s.
- Domestic violence.
