Ideology and Science

Question 1

Impact of science

Answer 1

• Science has had an enormous impact on society
• Achievements in medicine have eradicated once fatal diseases
• Science and technology have revolutionized economic productivity and raised our standard of living
• Success has led to a widespread ‘faith in science’

Question 2

Negative effects of science

Answer 2

• Recently – faith in science has been dimmed by a recognition of the harms that science can cause e.g. pollution and nuclear weapons
• Both the good and the bad effects of science demonstrate the key feature distinguishing it from other belief systems – it has cognitive power (it enables us to explain, predict and control the world)

Question 3

Open belief systems

Answer 3

• Popper – science has been successful in explaining and controlling the world because it is an open belief system in which every scientist’s theories are open to scrutiny by others
• Science is governed by the principle of falsificationism – claims of knowledge live or die by evidence
• Popper – discarding falsified knowledge is what enables scientific understanding of the world to grow
No theory is ever to be taken as definitely true e.g. for centuries it was believed to be true that the sun revolved around the earth until Copernicus showed that this was false

Question 4

Popper - growth of science

Answer 4

• Merton – argues that science can only thrive as a major social institution if it receives support from other institutions and values
• This occurred in England as a result of the attitudes and values created by the Protestant reformation (especially Puritanism)
• Puritans’ industriousness and belief that the study of nature led to an appreciation of God’s works encouraged them to experiment
• Puritanism also stressed the importance of social welfare – attracted to the fact that science could produce technological inventions to improve the conditions of life
• New institution of science also received support from economic and military institutions as the value of the practical applications of science became obvious in areas such as mining, navigation and weaponry

Question 5

CUDOS norms

Answer 5

1. Communism – scientific knowledge is not private property (must be shared with scientific community or knowledge cannot grow)
2. Universalism – the truth or falsity of scientific knowledge is judged by universal, objective criteria e.g. testing and without bias
3. Disinterestedness – this means being committed to discovering knowledge for its own sake. Having to publish findings makes it harder for scientists to practice fraud since it enables others to check their claims
4. Organised skepticism – no knowledge claim is regarded as ‘sacred’. Every idea is open to questioning, criticism and objective investigation.

Question 6

Closed belief systems

Answer 6

• Scientific knowledge is provisional and open to challenge whereas religion claims to have special, perfect knowledge of the absolute truth (held on divine authority)
• Closed system – when fundamental beliefs are threatened, there are a number of ‘get – out clauses’ that reinforce the system from being disproved

Question 7

Azunde witchcraft

Answer 7

• Don’t believe in coincidence or chance so when misfortune strikes they may explain it in terms of witchcraft e.g. someone, probably a jealous neighbor, is practicing witchcraft against me

1. injured makes accusation
2. potion given to chicken - if it dies, sufferer can publicly demand the witchcraft to stop

Question 8

Azunde - Evans

Answer 8

belief system performs useful social functions (clears air and prevents grudges from festering, encourages neighbours to behave considerately towards each other to reduce the risk of an accusation, it also makes sure children keep their parents in line – witchcraft is hereditary

Question 9

Self - sustaining beliefs

Answer 9

• Polanyi – all belief systems have three devices to sustain themselves in the face of apparently contradictory evidence

1. Circulatory – each idea in the system is explained in terms of another idea within the system
2. Subsidiary explanations – if the oracle fails, it may be explained away as due to the incorrect use of the benge
3. Denial of legitimacy to rivals – system reject alternative worldviews by refusing to grant any legitimacy to their basic assumptions e.g. creationism rejects outright the evolutionists’ claim that the earth is billions of years old

Question 10

Science as a closed system - Velikovsky

Answer 10

• Dr. Velikovsky – published ‘Worlds in Collision’ in which he put forward a new theory on the origins of the earth
• Theory challenged some of the most fundamental assumptions of sciences
• Response from scientific community – instead of putting the new theory to the tests, scientists rejected it immediately
• Boycott of his publisher was organized and scientists who called for a fair hearing were victimized, some even losing their jobs
•

Question 11

Velikovsky - explanation

Answer 11

One explanation for this refusal comes from Kuhn – a mature science such as biology or geology is based on a paradigm (informs scientists what and how to study as well as what the answers should be)
• Most of the time, scientists are engaged in ‘puzzle – solving’ (scientist merely fills in details)
• Scientific education and training is a process of being socialized into faith into the truth of the paradigm
• Successful career depends on working within the paradigm
• Any scientist who challenges fundamental assumptions will be ridiculed

Question 12

Sociology of scientific knowledge

Answer 12

• All knowledge – including scientific knowledge – is socially constructed
• Rather than being objective truth, it is created by social groups using the resources available to them
• Scientific facts are the product of shared theories or paradigms that tell them what they should expect to see

Question 13

Knorr - Cetina

Answer 13

• Knorr – Cetina argues that the invention of new instruments e.g. microscopes permit scientists to make new observations to ‘fabricate’ new facts
• She points out that what scientists study in the laboratory is highly ‘constructed’ and far removed from the natural world

Question 14

Little green men - Woolgar

Answer 14

• Woolgar – scientists are engaged in the same process of ‘making sense’ or interpreting the world as everyone else
• When confronted with ‘evidence’, they decide what it means by applying theories or explanations
• Discovery of pulsars by Cambridge astronomy laboratory in 1967 – scientists initially annotated the patterns as LGM (little green men)
• Recognized that this would be an unacceptable interpretation
• Eventually settled on an explanation, showing that a scientific fact is simply a social construction that scientists are able to persuade their colleagues to share

Question 15

Marxism, feminism and postmodernism

Answer 15

• Serves the interest as serving the interests of dominant groups – men or ruling class
• Many advances in ‘pure’ science have been driven by the need of capitalism for certain types of knowledge e.g. on ballistics
• Biological ideas have been used to justify both male domination and colonial expansion – science can be seen as a form of ideology
• Postmodernists also reject knowledge claims of science as having the ‘truth’
• Lyotard – science is a meta narrative (science is merely a discourse – way of thinking used to dominate people)

Question 16

Ideology

Answer 16

• Ideology – worldview or set of ideas and values (a belief system)
Several meanings in sociology
1. distorted ideas about the world that is biased
2. ideas that conceal the interests of a particular group to legitimate their privileges 3. ideas that prevent change by misleading people about reality
4. a self – sustaining belief system that is irrational and closed to criticism

Question 17

Marxism and ideology

Answer 17

• In worker’s interests to overthrow capitalism by a socialist revolution in which the means of production are collectively owned
• To occur – WC must develop ‘class consciousness’
• But powerful control thought as well, legitimating inequality
• Ruling class ideology include – equality will never work because it goes against ‘human nature’, myth of meritocracy and racist ideas about EM inferiority
• Ideology creates a ‘false consciousness’

Question 18

Hegemony and revolution

Answer 18

• Ideological domination of society – hegemony
• WC can develop ideas to challenge this because they have dual consciousness
• Possible for WC to overthrow capitalism – need organic intellectuals
• EV – it is economic factors such as fear of unemployment that prevent rebellion

Question 19

Ideology of nationalism

Answer 19

• Important political ideology that has had a major impact on the world over the last 200 years
• Anderson – a nation is only an ‘imagined community’
• Although we identify with it, we will never know most of its members
• Community can bind millions of strangers together and create a shared sense of purpose

Question 20

Claims of nationalism

Answer 20

1. Nations are real, distinctive communities with its own unique characteristics and a shared history
2. Every nation should be self – governing
3. National loyalty and identity should come before all others such as tribe, class or religion

Question 21

Marx - nationalism as false consciousness

Answer 21

• Marx was an internationalist – communist manifesto ends with the words ‘workers of all countries, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win’
• Marxist – nationalism is a form of false consciousness that helps to prevent the overthrow of capitalism by dividing the international working class
• Nationalism encourages workers to believe they have more in common with the capitalists of their own country than with workers of other countries
• Has enabled the ruling class of each capitalist country to persuade the working class to fight wars on their behalf

Question 22

Nationalism as civil religion

Answer 22

• Like religion, it integrates individuals into larger social and political units by making them feel part of something greater than themselves
• In modern secular societies, people may be unwilling to believe in supernatural beings but may be willing to see themselves as part of a nation
• Modern societies contain many different faiths, so religion is likely to be a source of division (nationalism functions as a civil religion that unites everyone into a single national community, regardless of differences)

Question 23

Gellner - nationalism and modernity

Answer 23

• Pre – industrial societies were held together by small scale face to face interactions in communities with a fixed hierarchy of ascribed statuses
• Modern society – industrialization creates large – scale, impersonal societies with a complex division of labour, administered by vast bureaucracies with equal status
• Modern societies therefore need some means of enabling communication between strangers (especially in the economy)
• Nationalism makes it possible through mass state education to impose a single, standard, national culture and language on every member of society

Question 24

Mannheim - ideology and utopia

Answer 24

• Much of Mannheim’s work was done between the two world wars (time of intense political and social conflict)
• Sees all belief systems as a partial, one – sided worldview

Question 25

Mannheim - types of belief system

Answer 25

1. Ideological thought – justifies keeping things as they are. Reflects the position and interests of privileged groups. Benefits from maintaining the status quo. Conservative and favours hierarchy
2. Utopian thought – justifies social change. Reflects position and interests of underprivileged. Offers how society should be organized differently

Question 26

Mannheim’s free - floating intelligentsia

Answer 26

• Mannheim – solution is to ‘detach’ the intellectuals from the social groups they represent and create a non – aligned or ‘free floating intelligentsia’ who stand above the conflict
• Free from representing the interests of a group, they can synthesise elements of the different partial ideologies and utopias so as to arrive at a ‘total’ worldview that represents society as a whole
• However, many of the elements of different political ideologies are diametrically opposed to one another e.g. Marxist vs. New Right

Question 27

Feminism and ideology

Answer 27

• Feminists see gender inequality as the fundamental division in society and ideology legitimates it
• Because gender difference is a feature of all societies, there exists many different ideologies legitimating it
• Marks – ideas from science have been used to justify excluding women from education – ‘disqualify women from their true vocation’
• Also embodied in religious beliefs – women as inferior or unclean (menstruation)