Topic 7: Ideology and science Flashcards
Popper
Science is an open belief system governed by the principle of falsificationism. Scientific knowledge is cumulative and never taken as definitely true.
Merton
Since can only thrive if it receives support from other social institutions. This occurred when Puritans were attracted to technology to improve conditions of life.
The CUDOS norms that define how scientists act to increase knowledge:
Communism- knowledge must be shared
Universalism- truth of knowledge is judged by universal, objective criteria
Disinterestedness- being committed to discovering knowledge for its own sake
Organised scepticism- no knowledge-claim is regarded as ‘sacred’, every idea is open to questioning.
Horton
Science is an open belief system, religion is a closed system including get out clauses that prevent it being disproved in the eyes of believers.
Evans-Pritchard
Witchcraft among the Azande- give benge to chickens
This encourages neighbours to behave considerably to each other to reduce risk of accusation. Believers are trapped within their own idiom of belief
Polanyi
Belief systems have three devices to sustain themselves in the face of apparently contradictory evidence:
Circularity- each idea in the system is explained in terms of another
Subsidiary explanations- e.g. If the Azande’s oracle fails it may be explained away as due to incorrect use of the benge
Denial of legitimacy of rivals- reject alternative world views by refusing to grant any legitimacy to their basic assumptions.
Both science and religion do this.
Kuhn
Mature sciences are based on a set of shared assumptions called a paradigm. This tells scientists what reality is like and how they should study. He likens this to puzzle solving- filling in the outline of the paradigm. Those who do this successfully are awarded with grants, professorships and Nobel Prizes. Any scientist who challenges the paradigm is likely to be ridiculed and hounded out of the profession. The only exceptions are in periods of a scientific revolution where faith in the true paradigm has been undermined by an accumulation of anomalies.
Knorr-Cetina
Interpretivist view- all knowledge is socially constructed. New instrument,nets permit scientists to fabricate more facts. The laboratory is highly constructed and removed from the natural world they are supposedly studying.
Woolgar
Scientists are engaged in the same process of making sense of the world as everyone else. They do this by devising and applying theories to evidence but have to persuade others to accept their interpretation. For example the discovery of pulsars by researchers at Cambridge in 1967 were initially labelled as little green men, but as this would be unacceptable to the scientific community they settled that they represented signals of a star hitherto unknown to science. However more than a decade later there was still disagreement as to wha that signals really meant.
Marxists and Feminists
See scientific ‘knowledge’ as serving the interests of dominant groups- the ruling class and men. The advances of science are driven by capitalism’s need for certain types of knowledge. Biological ideas have been used to justify male domination and colloidal expansion. In respect science can be seen as a form of ideology
Lyotard
Post-modernist view- science is one of many meta-narratives that falsely claim to possess the truth. Others include religion, Marxism and psychoanalysis. Science claims to give means for the creation of a better society but is just one discourse used to dominate people. Many post-modernists argue that science has become technoscience; serving the capitalist interests by producing commodities for profit.
Marx(ism)
Ruling class ideology: inequality will never work, blaming victims for poverty, racism, nationalism. This creates a false consciousness is among workers
However Marx believes workers will be able unite to develop a class consciousness and overthrow capitalism.
Gramsci
Hegemony- the ruling class ideological domination of society
Workers have a dual consciousness- a mix of ruling class ideology and ideas they develop from their own experiences of and snuggles against exploitation. It is therefore possible for them to develop ideas that challenge hegemony. The overthrow of capitalism requires a political party of organic intellectuals- workers who have developed a class consciousness which they can spread.
Abercrombie et al
It is economic factors such as the fear of unemployment, not ideology, that keeps workers from rebelling.
Mannheim
All belief systems are a one-sided view, resulting from the viewpoint of one particular group and it’s interests. There are therefore two broad types of belief system:
Ideological thought- justifies keeping things as they are, reflecting the position of privileged groups who benefit from marinating the status quo. Tend to be conservative and favour hierarchy
Utopian thought- justifies social change. Reflects position of the underprivileged and offer vision of how society could be organised differently
These are croutons of intellectuals who attach themselves to particular social groups. Because they represent the interest of particular groups they only give partial views of reality. This is a source of conflict in society. The solution is to detach intellectuals from their social groups and create a free-floating intelligentsia standing above the conflict. Freed from representing interests they would be able to synthesise element of partial ideologies and Utopias to arrive at a total worldview that represented the interests of society as a whole.
Marks
Ideas from science have been used to exclude women from education. Religion has been used to portray women as impure or unclean.