The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK), closely related to the sociology of science, considers social influences on science. Practitioners include Gaston Bachelard, David Bloor, Paul Feyerabend, Elihu M. Gerson, Thomas Kuhn, Susan Leigh Star, Anselm Strauss, Lucy Suchman, Harry Collins, and others. Social interactions and their consequences are the subject of sociology. ... Sociology is a relatively new academic discipline among other social sciences including economics, political science, anthropology, and psychology. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Sociological practice. ... Map of countries by population Population growth showing projections for later this century Demography is the scientific study of human population dynamics. ... Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that explains behaviour in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviours. ... Social theory refers to the use of abstract and often complex theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze social patterns and large-scale social structures. ... Comparative Sociology Comparative sociology generally refers to sociological analysis that involves comparison of social processes between nation-states, or across different types of society (for example capitalist and socialist). ... Social Psychology is a subfield of sociology which looks at the social behavior of humans in terms of associations and relationships that they have. ... Sociolinguistics is the study of the effect of any and all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used. ... This is a list of terms in sociology. ... The sociology of religion is primarily the study of the practices, social structures, historical backgrounds, development, universal themes, and roles of religion in society. ... The sociology of deviance is the sociological study of deviant behavior, the recognized violation of cultural norms, and the creation and enforcement of those norms. ... An approach to law stressing the actual social effects of legal institutions, doctrines, and practices and vice versa. ... In academics, science studies (sometimes seen as science and technology studies) is an umbrella term for a number of approaches devoted to studying science, and as a discipline its participants often come from a wide variety of disciplines, usually history of science, sociology of science, philosophy of science, sociology of... Sociology of gender is a prominent subfield of sociology. ... Industrial Sociology (also known as sociology of industrial relations or sociology of work) is the study of the interaction of people within industry it includes the study of boss-subordinate, inter-departmental, and management / trade-union relationships´. Moreover, on a macrosociological scale, it is the study of the impact of... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... It has been suggested that Social development be merged into this article or section. ... This list presents representative scientific journals in sociology and its various subfields. ... // Foundations The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Max Weber Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, 1904 Online version Description: In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber puts forward a thesis that Puritan ethic and ideas had influenced the development of capitalism. ... In academics, science studies (sometimes seen as science and technology studies) is an umbrella term for a number of approaches devoted to studying science, and as a discipline its participants often come from a wide variety of disciplines, usually history of science, sociology of science, philosophy of science, sociology of... Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... Gaston Bachelard (June 27, 1884 – October 16, 1962) was a French philosopher and poet who rose to some of the most prestigious positions in the French academy despite his humble origins. ... David Bloor is the director of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh (see Edinburgh School). ... Paul Karl Feyerabend (January 13, 1924 - February 11, 1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science, who later lived in England, the United States, New Zealand, Italy, and finally Switzerland. ... Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ... Anselm L. Strauss (December 18, 1916_September 5, 1996) was a sociologist, who worked the field of medical sociology. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... Harry Collins in 2004 is a professor at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. ...

These thinkers (sociologists, philosophers of science, historians of science, anthropologists and computer scientists) have engaged in controversy concerning the role that social factors play in scientific development relative to rational, empirical, and other factors. Social interactions and their consequences are the subject of sociology. ... Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy that studies the philosophical assumptions, foundations, and implications of science, including the formal sciences, natural sciences, and social sciences. ... Science is a body of empirical and theoretical knowledge, produced by a global community of researchers, making use of specific techniques for the observation and explanation of real phenomena, this techne summed up under the banner of scientific method. ... Initiation rite of the Yao people of Malawi Anthropology (from the Greek word , man or person) consists of the study of humanity (see genus Homo). ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Rational may be: the adjective for the state of rationality acting according to the philosophical principles of rationalism a mathematical term for certain numbers; the rational numbers the software company Rational Software; now owned by IBM, and formerly Rational Software Corporation This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid... Empirical is an adjective often used in conjunction with science, both the natural and social sciences, which means an observation or experiment based upon experience that is capable of being verified or disproved. ...

Programmes and schools

David Bloor has contrasted the so-called weak programme (or 'program' — either spelling is used) which merely gives social explanations for erroneous beliefs, with what he called the strong programme, which considers sociological factors as influencing all beliefs. David Bloor is the director of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh (see Edinburgh School). ... The Strong Program/Programme is a variety of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) particularly associated with David Bloor, Barry Barnes, and Bruno Latour. ...

The weak programme is more of a description of an approach than an organised movement. The term is applied to historians, sociologists and philosophers of science who merely cite sociological factors as being responsible for those beliefs that went wrong. Imre Lakatos and (in some moods) Thomas Kuhn might be said to adhere to it. Sociology is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies. ... Lakatos – book by Brendan Larvor. ... Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ...

The strong programme is particularly associated with the work of two groups: the Edinburgh School (David Bloor and his colleagues of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh), and the Bath School (Harry Collins and others formerly from the Science Studies Unit at the University of Bath). In addition discourse analysis (associated with Michael Mulkay at the University of York) and reflexivity (associated with Malcolm Ashmore at Loughborough University) are often taken to be major strands of the programme. David Bloor is the director of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh (see Edinburgh School). ... The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a renowned centre for teaching and research in Edinburgh, Scotland. ... Harry Collins in 2004 is a professor at the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. ... The University of Bath is a campus university located near Bath, England at . ...

Sokal affair

Sociology of scientific knowledge became controversial in the 1990s after the publication of a hoax paper by Alan Sokal (Alan Sugar) in the journal Social Text, under the title Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity. The ensuing debate (the Sokal affair) led to SSK thinkers being accused of relativism. Germans dancing on the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the symbol of the cold war divide falls down as the world unites in the 1990s. ... Alan David Sokal (born 1955) is a physicist at New York University. ... Social Text is a postmodernist cultural studies journal published by Duke University Press. ... The Sokal Affair was a hoax by physicist Alan Sokal on the editorial staff and readership of a leading journal in the academic humanities. ... Compare Moral relativism, Aesthetic relativism and Cultural relativism. ...

Criticism

SSK has received criticism from the French school called Actor-network theory (ANT), which is not part of the Strong Programme, but belongs to the research field called Science and Technology Studies. The main theorists in the ANT-school are Michel Callon, Bruno Latour and John Law. SSK has been criticised for sociological reductionism and a human centered universe. SSK is said to rely too heavily on human actors and social rules and conventions settling scientific controversies. The ANT-school, instead, proposes that non-human actors (actants) play an integral role. For example instruments, measurement scales, laboratories and so forth have the unintentional capacities of closing a scientific controversy. This debate is widely discussed in the article "Harry Collins & Steven Yearley 1992. Epistemological Chicken. In A. Pickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 301-26." Actor-network theory, sometimes abbreviated to ANT is a social science approach for describing and explaining social, organisational, scientific and technological structures, processes and events. ... Science and technology studies (STS) is an interdisciplinary research area that is broadly concerned with the depiction of science and technology as socially embedded enterprises. ... Michel Callon is a Professor at the Ecole des Mines de Paris. ... Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (born June 1947, Beaune, France) is a French sociologist of science best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, and Science in Action, describing the process of scientific research from the perspective of social construction based on field observations of working scientists. ... John Law is a sociologist at Lancaster University and key proponent of Actor-network theory. ...

See also

• Sociology of knowledge
• Science and technology studies
• Social constructionism
• Consensus science
• Historiography of science
• Scientific Community Metaphor

The sociology of knowledge is the study of the social origins of ideas, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies. ... Science studies is an interdisciplinary research area that seeks to situate scientific expertise in its broader social, historical, and philosophical context. ... Social constructionism or social constructivism is a sociological theory of knowledge based on Hegels ideas, and developed by Durkheim at the turn of the century. ... The historiography of science is the historical study of the history of science (which often overlaps the history of technology, the history of medicine, and the history of mathematics). ... The Scientific Community Metaphor is an approach in computer science to understanding and performing scientific communities. ...

References

• Bloor, David (1976) Knowledge and social imagery. London: Routledge.
• Collins, H.M. (1975) The seven sexes: A study in the sociology of a phenomenon, or the replication of experiments in physics, Sociology, 9, 205-24.
• Collins, H.M. (1985). Changing order: Replication and induction in scientific practice. London: Sage.
• Edwards, D., Ashmore, M. & Potter, J. (1995). Death and furniture: The rhetoric, politics, and theology of bottom line arguments against relativism. History of the Human Sciences, 8, 25-49.
• Gilbert, G. N. & Mulkay, M. (1984). Opening Pandora’s box: A sociological analysis of scientists’ discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• William Kornfeld and Carl Hewitt. "The Scientific Community Metaphor" IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, SMC-11. 1981
• Latour, B. & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. 2nd Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (not a SSK-book, but has a similar approach to science studies)
• Latour, B. (1987). Science in action : how to follow scientists and engineers through society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (not a SSK-book, but has a similar approach to science studies)
• Pickering, A. (1984) Constructing Quarks: A sociological history of particle physics. Chicago; University of Chicago Press.
• Shapin, S. & Schaffer, S. (1985). Leviathan and the air-pump. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

For a recent sourcebook see:

• Jasanoff, S. Markle, G. Pinch T. & Petersen, J. (Eds)(2002), Handbook of science, technology and society, Rev Ed.. London: Sage.