Impact of science and sociology as scientific knowledge

3 positive impacts of science

1. Medicine → fewer fatal diseases

2. Facilitated transport/leisure/etc

3. Increased economic productivity and thus standards of living

1 impact of the positive impacts of science

• Increasing faith in science

3 negative consequences of science

1. Pollution

2. Global heating

3. Weapons of mass destruction

Dual faced impact of science

• Has both created manufactured risks AND protected us from natural dangers

Cognitive power of science

• Can explain/predict/control the world like nothing else

Creation of knowledge

• Created by groups using available resources

• NOT objective truth; is instead scientifically constructed

Scientific facts

• Product of shared theories, paradigms and instruments

Knoor-Cetina (1981; 1999)

• Invention of new instruments → new observations → fabrication of new facts

Reality v experiments

• Lab studies = v. far from reality

  • Water = purified

  • Animals = specifically bred

Woolar (1992) — process of discovery of scientific knowledge

• Scientists want to make sense of the rest of the world like everyone else!

  • Have to decide what their evidence means by deciding and applying theories and persuading others to accept their interpretation

Woolar (1992) — little green men

• Scientists originally annotated patterns as ‘little green men’ that they thought could be a form of life

  • This was unacceptable for the scientific community so…

• They decided they were a new type of star

  • A decade later, there is still disagreement as to what these patterns actually were/are

Woolar (1992) — what LGM saga shows

• Scientific facts are actually just a social construct that some persuade others to follow

PoMo perspective on science — Lyotard (1984)

• Simply a metanarrative

Marxist perspective on science

• Serves interests of B

  • E.g. may be driven by capitalist need for certain knowledge like ballistics and weaponry

Feminist perspective on science

• Serves interests of patriarchy

  • E.g. men use biological knowledge to justify their domination and oppression of women