IDEOLOGY AND SCIENCE

Open belief systems - Popper

Science is an open belief system, where every scientists theory is open to scrutiny, criticism and testing by others, due to it being governed by falsification. And theorys being able to be falsified allows for the scientific world to grow.

H:No theory can ever be definitely true, as theres always a chance somebody will provide evidence to disprove it.

The CUDOS norms(universal ‘ethos’) - Merton

Science only thrives as a major social institution if it recieves support from other institutions and values. Started with puritanism, where they studied nature to appreciate God’s work, and where they imrpoved welfare to improve conditions of life.

Communism - Scientific knowledge is not private property, it must be shared so knowledge can grow.

Universalism - The truth or falsity of scientific knowledge is judged by universal, objective criteria.

Disinterestedness - Being committed to discovering knowledge for its own sake, publishing fingings makes it harder for scientists to practice fraud.

Organised skepticism - No claim is ‘sacred’, every idea is open to questioning and criticism.

Closed belief systems - Horton

Religion, magic and many other belief systems are closed, as they make claims that cannot be successfully overturned. They claim a monopoly on the truth, and have defence mechanisms that reinforce it and prevent it from being disproved. Such as referring to a bible.

Witchcraft among the Azande - Evans-Pritchard

Believe that natural events have natural causes, but don’t believe in coincidence or chance, when a misfortune happens, they ask why it happened to them, ‘why me?’. And they explain it interms of withcraft, as someone is practicing against them. They may confront the supposed witch, or perform a ritual to end it. This has useful social functions, clearing the air, and encouraging people to behave socially to eachother, and performs social control as witchcraft runs in the family so parents want to protect their children, and children protect their parents.

This is a closed belief system, as they accept the systems assumptions and they cannot challenge it/

Closed belief systems - Self-sustaining beliefs(Polanyi)

3 devices to sustain themselves in the face of apparently contradictory evidence.

Circularity - Each idea in the system is explained in terms of another idea within the system and so on.

Subsidiary explanations - If something fails, it may be explained as incorrect use of that thing.

Denial of legitimacy to rivals - Reject alternate worldviews by refusing to grant any legitimacy to their basic assumptions.

Science as a closed system - Kuhn

Mature science such as geology, physics or biology is based on a paradigm(set of shared assumptions), which tells scientists what reality is like, what problems to study and what methods and equipment to use. A successful career depends on working within the paradigm, and when these people do it right, they are rewarded with Noble prizes and so on. So, any scientist who challenges the paradigm is ridiculed and hounded out of the profession.

The sociology of scientific knowledge - Interprevist

All knowledge including scientific is socially constructed, it is not the objective truth and is created by social groups using the resources available to them. So scientific ‘facts’ are the product of shared theories or paradigms that tell them what they should expect to see. Cetina - What scientists study in the lav is highly ‘contructed’ and far removed from the natural world, and instruments such as telescopes are used to construct new ideas.

Marxism + Feminism + Postmodernism view of science as a closed belief system

Info from science is far from the pure truth, and it serves the interests of dominant groups.

Post modernism - Lyotard - Meta-narrative(big story) that falsley claims the truth.

Ideology

A set of ideas and values - a belief system. Typically irrational and closed to criticism, prevent change, conceal the interests of other groups and contain false ideas about the world.

Hegemony and revolution - Gramsci

Refers to the ruling class’ ideological domination of soceity as hagemony. Argues that the W/C can develop ideas that challenge the ruling class hegemony, as they have dual consciousness - a mixture of ruling class ideology and ideas they develop about their own exploitation, so could develop class consciousness, but this requires organic intellectuals - workers who develop class consciousness through their struggles.

H:Existence of dominant ideology keeps workers in line and prevents attempts to overthrow capitalism, such as fear of unemployment.

The ideology of nationalism

A political ideaology that claims that nations are real, distinctive communities each with its own unique characteristics and a long shared history, every nation should be self-governing, national loyalty and identity should come before all other tribes, such as class.

H:Anderson - Nation is only an ‘imagined community’, as while we identify with it, we will never know most of its other members.

Marxism - Nationalism as false consciousness

Nationalism helps to prevent the overthrow of capitalism by dividing the international W/C, as nationalism encourages workers to believe they have more in common with the capitalists of their own country, over the workers.

Functionalism - Nationalism as cibil religion

It integrates individuals into larger social and political units by making them feel part of something greater than themselves. In modern societies, people may be unwilling to believe in supernatural beings, but are willing to see themselves as part of a nation, aswell as usually contain multiple religions, but nationalism is secular, uniting people regardless of class etc. Social solidarity.

Gellner:Nationalism and modernity

Nationalism is false consciousness, and a modern phenomenom, pre-industrial societies were held together by face to face relationships in small communities, but with modernisation, it created large scale impersonal societies connected by a national culture, and communication system.

Mannheim:Ideology and utopia

All belief systems are partial or have a onesided worldview, resulting from being the viewpoint of one particular group or class and its interests, Two types:

Ideological thought - justifies keeping things as they are, reflecting the position and interests of priviliged groups such as the capitalist class, maintaining the status quo.

Utopian thought - Justifies social change, reflecting the position and interests of the underpriviliged an doffers a vision for how society could be organised differently.

The organic intellectuals represent the interests of particular groups, not society as a whole, so they produce partial views of reality, which is a source of conflict.

Mannheim:Ideology and utopia - Free floating intelligentsia

The solution to these conflicts is to ‘detach’ the intellectuals from social groups they represent and create a non aligned person standing above the conflict, so they can form a ‘total’ worldview.

H:This is never possible as politics will always contradict eachother and there will always be conflict.

Feminism and Ideology - Marks

Ideas from science has justified leaving women out of education and reaffirming patriarchal ideologies. 19th century doctors, scientists and educationalists expressed the view that educating women would create a new race of ‘puny and unfeminine’ females. And religion promotes ideologies that place women as inferior.