Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (RLE Social Theory) by Michael Mulkay

Author:Michael Mulkay [Mulkay, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317651185
Google: -oM9BAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-08-07T05:57:27+00:00

THE DYNAMICS OF KNOWLEDGE-PRODUCTION

When we examine the overall growth of modern science one thing stands out clearly, namely, that there has been a continuous creation of new areas of investigation and new realms of knowledge (Price, 1963). In the seventeenth century, the entire physical world fell within the scope of ‘natural philosophy’; and one man could encompass in his studies the full range of available knowledge. By the end of the nineteenth century this had become quite impossible. Knowledge of the natural world had become much more extensive as well as more detailed and complex (Mason, 1962); and the major scientific disciplines had crystallised into more or less distinct intellectual domains, each of which was separately established in the centres of higher learning with control over professional training and over access to its own area of knowledge. This process of intellectual and social differentiation has continued up to the present day; so that now each discipline is further sub-divided into many specialties. Each of these specialties is composed, in turn, of numerous specific areas of research, most of which deal with phenomena unknown a generation before. It is true that some of the most well-known advances in scientific thought have not involved differentiation so much as the reconceptualisation of existing bodies of knowledge (Kuhn, 1962). Nevertheless, to a very considerable extent, scientific knowledge has developed by the identification and detailed investigation of phenomena which have not been known to exist previously or which have not been studied before in any depth. The typical pattern of growth, then, in science is not the revolutionary overthrow of an entrenched orthodoxy, but the creation and exploration of a new area of ignorance (Holton, 1973, ch. 12). Within many such areas there occurs a gradual movement through three discernible, although overlapping, stages; that is, from an initial phase of exploration, through a stage of unification and into a final period of decline (Mulkay, Gilbert and Woolgar, 1975). Although this sequence is by no means inevitable (Law, 1976), it is characteristic of most areas where consensus, and therefore certified knowledge, is actually achieved.

If we are to understand how scientific knowledge is socially produced, there are advantages in concentrating particularly on the early stages in the recurrent movement towards intellectual consensus in science. Collins elucidates this point with the help of an analogy.

When we consider the grounds of knowledge, we do it within an environment filled with objects of knowledge which are already established. To speak figuratively, it is as though epistemologists are concerned with the characteristics of ships (knowledge) in bottles (validity) while living in a world where all ships are already in bottles with the glue dried and the strings cut. A ship within a bottle is a natural object in this world, and because there is no way to reverse the process, it is not easy to accept that the ship was ever just a bundle of sticks. Most perceptions of the grounds of knowledge are structured in ways derived from this perspective. (1975, p.

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