science as a belief system

the impact of science

science enables us to explain, predict and control the world in a way that non-scientific or pre-scientific belief systems cannot do

open belief systems

Popper

• science is an open belief system where every scientist’s theories are open to scrutiny and testing by others + is governed by the principle of falsificationism (when scientists set out to try and disprove existing theories)

• popper beliefs that this process is what allows the scientific understanding of the world to grow

• the key thing about scientific knowledge is that it is not sacred or the absolute truth.

the CUDOS norms

Merton identifies four norms that makes scientists act in ways that serve the goal of increasing scientific knowledge.

Communism - scientific knowledge is not private property, and scientists must share it with the scientific community (ie: by publishing their findings) otherwise, knowledge cannot grow

Universalism - the truth or falsity of scientific knowledge is judged by universal, objective criteria, not by the race, gender or status of the scientist.

Disinterestedness - scientists should be committed to discovering knowledge for its own sake, rather than being motivated by personal gain or fame

Organised skepticism - no knowledge claim is regarded as ‘sacred’, and every idea is open to scrutiny or questioning.

closed belief systems

Horton

• religion or magic are closed belief systems, that are fixed and cannot changed or be challenged.

• they make knowledge claims that can not be successfully overturned. when a closed belief is threatened r challenged, it has a number of ‘get out clauses’ that reinforce the system and prevent it from being disproved. one example of this is witchcraft beliefs.

witchcraft among the azande

Evans-Pritchard

• studied the Azande tribe in central Africa

• they believe that witchcraft causes bad things to happens such as illness and death

• even if there’s a natural cause, they say that witchcraft made it happen at that moment

• if there’s magic doesn’t work, they say the ritual was done wrong, thus, no matter what happens, the belief will always explain it (not testable or up for challenge)

science as a closed system

Kuhn - paradigms

• a paradigm is a set of shared ideas or assumptions that guide scientific work (like a framework)

• scientists are trained to accept the current paradigm and solve puzzles within it

• new or radical ideas are rejected is they don’t fit the current paradigm, making it a closed system most of the time

example: Velikovsky

• published a book called worlds in collision and suggested ideas that went against the fundamental assumptions within the scientific community

• his ideas were ridiculed and his publisher was threatened by other scientists

the sociology of scientific knowledge

interpretivist sociologists argue that scientific knowledge is socially constructed. rather than being the objective truth, it is created by social groups using the resources available to them (ie: paradigms)

little green men

Wooglar

• scientists are engaged in the same process of ‘making sense’ of the world as everyone else. when confronted by evidence from research, they have to figure out what it means through the use of theories or explanations, attempting to persuade others to accept their interpretation.

• ie: in the discovery of pulsars (pulsating neutron stars), the scientists initially annotated the patterns shown on their printouts from the radio telescope as ‘LGM1 and LGM2’ standing for little green men. then recognising that this was an unacceptable interpretation from the viewpoint of the scientific community, they eventually accepted the notion that the patterns represented the signals from a type of star unknown to science.

marxism and feminism on scientific knowledge

• they view scientific knowledge as far from pure truth

• they regard it as serving the interests of the dominant groups

• ie: many advances in science have been driven by the need of capitalism. the theoretical work on ballistics was driven by the need to develop new weaponry