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Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Social science is the branch of science devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 19th century. In addition to sociology, it now encompasses a wide array of academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, human geography, linguistics, management science, media studies, political science, psychology, and social history.
Social epistemology refers to a broad set of approaches that can be taken in epistemology that construes human knowledge as a collective achievement. Another way of characterizing social epistemology is as the evaluation of the social dimensions of knowledge or information.
Robert King Merton was an American sociologist who is considered a founding father of modern sociology, and a major contributor to the subfield of criminology. He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University, where he attained the rank of University Professor. In 1994 he was awarded the National Medal of Science for his contributions to the field and for having founded the sociology of science.
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is "a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability".
Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in broad social, historical, and philosophical contexts. It uses various methods to analyze the production, representation and reception of scientific knowledge and its epistemic and semiotic role.
In the philosophy of science and epistemology, the demarcation problem is the question of how to distinguish between science, and non-science. It examines the lines between science, pseudoscience, and other products of human activity, like art and literature, and beliefs. The debate continues after over two millennia of dialogue among philosophers of science and scientists in various fields, despite a broad agreement on the basics of the scientific method. The debate has consequences for what can be called "scientific" in fields such as education and public policy.
The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology of scientific ignorance (SSI) is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises.
Sociology as a scholarly discipline emerged, primarily out of Enlightenment thought, as a positivist science of society shortly after the French Revolution. Its genesis owed to various key movements in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of knowledge, arising in reaction to such issues as modernity, capitalism, urbanization, rationalization, secularization, colonization and imperialism.
Donald Thomas Campbell was an American social scientist. He is noted for his work in methodology. He coined the term "evolutionary epistemology" and developed a selectionist theory of human creativity. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Campbell as the 33rd most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
In epistemology, and more specifically, the sociology of knowledge, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect, especially as embedded in human belief structures. A reflexive relationship is bidirectional with both the cause and the effect affecting one another in a relationship in which neither can be assigned as causes or effects.
Steven Shapin is an American historian and sociologist of science. He is the Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University. He is considered one of the earliest scholars on the sociology of scientific knowledge, and is credited with creating new approaches. He has won many awards, including the 2014 George Sarton Medal of the History of Science Society for career contributions to the field.
In science studies, boundary-work comprises instances in which boundaries, demarcations, or other divisions between fields of knowledge are created, advocated, attacked, or reinforced. Academic scholarship on boundary-work has emphasized that such delineations often have high stakes involved for the participants, and carries with it the implication that such boundaries are flexible and socially constructed.
The Merton thesis is an argument about the nature of early experimental science proposed by Robert K. Merton. Similar to Max Weber's famous claim on the link between Protestant work ethic and the capitalist economy, Merton argued for a similar positive correlation between the rise of Protestant Pietism and early experimental science. The Merton thesis has resulted in continuous debates.
In sociology of science, obliteration by incorporation (OBI) occurs when at some stage in the development of a science, certain ideas become so universally accepted and commonly used that their contributors are no longer cited. Eventually, its source and creator are forgotten ("obliterated") as the concept enters common knowledge. Obliteration occurs when "the sources of an idea, finding or concept, become obliterated by incorporation in canonical knowledge, so that only a few are still aware of their parentage".
In 1942, Robert K. Merton introduced "four sets of institutional imperatives taken to comprise the ethos of modern science... communism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism." The subsequent portion of his book, The Sociology of Science, elaborated on these principles at "the heart of the Mertonian paradigm—the powerful juxtaposition of the normative structure of science with its institutionally distinctive reward system".
Sociology is the study of human behavior. Sociology refers to social behavior, society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and culture that surrounds everyday life. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. Sociology can also be defined as the general science of society. While some sociologists conduct research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, others focus primarily on refining the theoretical understanding of social processes. Subject matter can range from micro-level analyses of society to macro-level analyses.
Michael Joseph "Mike" Mulkay is a retired British sociologist of science.
This bibliography of Sociology is a list of works, organized by subdiscipline, on the subject of sociology. Some of the works are selected from general anthologies of sociology, while other works are selected because they are notable enough to be mentioned in a general history of sociology or one of its subdisciplines.
A non-science is an area of study that is not scientific, especially one that is not a natural science or a social science that is an object of scientific inquiry. In this model, history, art, and religion are all examples of non-sciences.
References
- ↑ Gieryn, Thomas F. (1983). "Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists". American Sociological Review. American Sociological Association. 48 (6): 781–795. doi:10.2307/2095325. JSTOR 2095325.
- ↑ "Thomas F. Gieryn". Indiana University Department of Sociology. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
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