Social Construction Of Scientific Knowledge Research Articles

Socio-Cultural Aspects of the Standard Model in Elementary Particles Physics and the History of Its Creation

The article соnsiders the socio-cultural aspects of the standard model (SM) in elementary particle physics and history of its creation. SM is a quantum field gauge theory of electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions, which is the basis of the modern theory of elementary particles. The process of its elaboration covers a twenty-year period: from 1954 (the concept of gauge fields by C. Yang and R. Mills) to the early 1970s., when the construction of renormalized quantum chromodynamics and electroweak theory wеre completed. The socio-cultural aspects of SM are explored on the basis of a quasi-empirical approach, by studying the texts of its creators and participants in the relevant events. We note also the important role of such an “external” factor as large-scale state projects on the creation of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons, which provided personnel and financial support for fundamental research in the field of nuclear physics and elementary particle physics (the implementation of thermonuclear projects took place just in the 1950s, and most of the theorists associated with the creation of SM were simultaneously the main developers of thermonuclear weapons, especially in the USSR). The formation of SM is considered as a competition between two research programs (paradigms) – gauge-field and phenomenological, associated with the rejection of the field concept. The split of the scientific community of physicists associated with this competition is going on during this period. It’s accompanied by a kind of “negotiations”, which in the early 1970s lead to the triumph of the gauge field program and the restoration of the unity of the scientific community. The norms and rules of the scientific ethos played the regulatory role in this process. The scientific-realistic position of the metaphysical attitudes of the majority of theorists and their negative attitude to the concepts of philosophical relativism and social construction of scientific knowledge are emphasized. Some features of the history of SM creation are also noted, such as the positive role of aesthetic judgments; “scientific-school” form of research (in the USSR), its pros and cons; a connection to historical-scientific “drama of ideas” with “dramas of people” who made a wrong choice and (or) “missed their opportunities”.

Investigating Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers’ Views on Science Technology and Society Issues in Turkey

It is important to develop people as scientifically literate to make them understand the connection among science, technology, and society (STS) and use their knowledge in their everyday decision-making. In addition, to empower college students as citizens, STS should be emphasized. To understand students’ view on STS, the Views of Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) (26 items form) instrument was used. The data was collected from total 341 sophomore early childhood education students in 2009, 2010, and 2011. Results of this study give researcher a chance to underline views of pre-service early childhood teachers on science and technology, influence of society on science/technology, influence of science/technology on society, characteristics of scientists, social construction of scientific knowledge, social construction of technology, and nature of scientific knowledge.

Learning to Argue and Arguing to Learn: Argument‐Driven Inquiry as a Way to Help Undergraduate Chemistry Students Learn How to Construct Arguments and Engage in Argumentation During a Laboratory Course

AbstractThis study examines whether students enrolled in a general chemistry I laboratory course developed the ability to participate in scientific argumentation over the course of a semester. The laboratory activities that the students participated in during the course were designed using the Argument‐Driven Inquiry (ADI) an instructional model. This model gives a more central place to argumentation and the role of argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge. The development of the students' ability to construct a scientific argument and to participate in scientific argumentation was tracked over time using three different data sources. These data sources included a performance task, which was administered at the beginning, middle, and end of the course, video recording of the students participating in episodes of argumentation, and the lab reports the students wrote as part of each lab activity. As time was the independent variable in this study, a repeated measure ANOVA was used to evaluate changes in the ways students performed on each task over the course of the semester. The results of the analysis indicate that there was significant growth in the quality of the students' written arguments and nature of their oral argumentation. There also was a significant correlation between written and oral arguments. These results suggest that the use of an integrated instructional model that places emphasis on argument and argumentation can have a positive impact on the quality of the arguments students include in their investigation reports, the argumentation they engage in during lab activities, and their overall performance on tasks that require them to develop and support a valid conclusion with genuine evidence. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 50: 561–596, 2013

Geography, Science, and Subjectivity: Farm Animal Welfare in the United States and Europe

AbstractIn the US and Europe, factory farm animal welfare has become a matter of significant public concern, leading to increased scientific research on animal welfare in order to guide public policy. In both locations, scientific opinion is growing that farm animals’ welfare is directly related to their capacities for subjective experiences and, as a result, increased research is on cognition, behavior, and emotions. The geography of science and animal geography literatures have broadly examined, respectively but with overlap, the social construction of scientific knowledge and ideas about animal subjectivity. This article argues that these literatures should be further employed to better understand the current construction and social negotiation of the concept of farm animal welfare in Europe and particularly in the US, specifically through the exploration of three significant spaces of knowledge production: the geopolitical environments of the US and Europe, the particular scientific research spaces, and animal spaces or the “locations” of their subjectivity.

The Devil is in the (Historical) Details: Continental Drift as a Case of Normatively Appropriate Consensus?

In Social Empiricism, Miriam Solomon proposes a via media between traditional philosophical realism and social construction of scientific knowledge, but ignores a large body of historical literature that has attempted to plough just that path. She also proposes a standard for normatively appropriate consensus that, arguably, no theory in the history of science has ever achieved, including her own ideal type—plate tectonics. And while valorizing dissent, she fails to consider how dissent has been used in recent decades as a political tool to challenge scientific evidence on diverse issues, including the link between tobacco and cancer and the reality of anthropogenic global warming.

From Chicken Little to Dr. Pangloss: William Nierenberg, Global Warming, and the Social Deconstruction of Scientific Knowledge

In recent decades, historians and sociologists of science have been largely concerned with the social construction of scientific knowledge. This paper examines an important historical episode in the social deconstruction of scientific knowledge. In the early 1980s, a consensus emerged among climate scientists that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels would lead to mean global warming of 2–3°C, probably by the mid-twenty-first century, and would have serious deleterious effects, including sea level rise of at least seventy centimeters. This consensus was challenged, however, by a committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, chaired by physicist William A. (Bill) Nierenberg, whose 1983 report arguably launched the climate change "debate." Drawing on perspectives provided by two economists on his committee, Nierenberg reframed the question not as a matter of climate change per se, but as a matter of the human capacity to adapt to change when it came, a capacity, his report asserted, that was very great. Thus, while accepting the scientific conclusion that warming would occur, Nierenberg rejected the interpretation that it would be a problem. In later years, he would play a major role in political challenges to the scientific conclusions themselves. Reframing was Nierenberg's first step on the road to the deconstruction of scientific knowledge of climate change.

The Phenomenon of Soviet Science

The grand "Soviet experiment" constituted an attempt to greatly accelerate and even shortcut the gradual course of historical development on the assumption of presumed knowledge of the general laws of history. This paper discusses the parts of that experiment that directly concerned scientific research and, in fact, anticipated or helped define important global changes in the functioning of science as a profession and an institution during the twentieth century. The phenomenon of Soviet, or socialist, science is analyzed here from the comparative international perspective, with attention to similarities and reciprocal influences, rather than to the contrasts and dichotomies that have traditionally interested cold war-type historiography. The problem is considered at several levels: philosophical (Soviet thought on the relationship between science and society and the social construction of scientific knowledge); institutional (the state recognition of research as a separate profession, the rise of big science and scientific research institutes); demographic (science becoming a mass profession, with ethnic and gender diversity among scientists); and political (Soviet-inspired influences on the practice of science in Europe and the United States through the social relations of science movement of the 1930s and the Sputnik shock of the 1950s).

So Long, Succor

Dr. Golem is the third in a series of books by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch that aim to make the insights of science and technology studies (STS) accessible to general readers.1 The Golem, the first of the series, consisted of a number of chapters based on prominent case studies in the social construction of scientific knowledge and highlighted the various contingencies and uncertainties inherent in the work of scientific knowledge production.2 The Golem at Large did the same for technology.3 Now Dr. Golem extends this formula to medicine. As Collins and Pinch acknowledge, however, the turn to medicine required them to confront a number of problems that they had not encountered in their previous volumes. We all come into contact with medicine many times in the course of our lives, and in ways that differ dramatically from we generally experience science and technology. As patients and as objects of pervasive medical surveillance and advice, we not only consume medicine but constantly find ourselves making or participating in medical decisions with profound implications for our health and our lives. Collins and Pinch intend Dr. Golem to help us make the best choices in our inevitable encounters with medicine. Hence its subtitle: where the first two Golem volumes told us what you should know about science and technology, this book tells us how to think about medicine. As in the previous Golem volumes, much of Dr. Golem is devoted to identifying and explicating the various kinds of uncertainty that beset tech-

Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms

Basing its arguments in current perspectives on the nature of the scientific enterprise, which see argument and argumentative practice as a core activity of scientists, this article develops the case for the inclusion and central role of argument in science education. Beginning with a review of the nature of argument, it discusses the function and purpose of dialogic argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge and the interpretation of empirical data. The case is then advanced that any education about science, rather than education in science, must give the role of argument a high priority if it is to give a fair account of the social practice of science, and develop a knowledge and understanding of the evaluative criteria used to establish scientific theories. Such knowledge is essential to enhance the public understanding of science and improve scientific literacy. The existing literature, and work that has attempted to use argument within science education, is reviewed to show that classroom practice does provide the opportunity to develop young people's ability to construct argument. Furthermore, the case is advanced that the lack of opportunities for the practice of argument within science classrooms, and lack of teacher's pedagogical skills in organizing argumentative discourse within the classroom are significant impediments to progress in the field. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 84:287–312, 2000.

Establishing the norms of scientific argumentation in classrooms

Basing its arguments in current perspectives on the nature of the scientific enterprise, which see argument and argumentative practice as a core activity of scientists, this article develops the case for the inclusion and central role of argument in science education. Beginning with a review of the nature of argument, it discusses the function and purpose of dialogic argument in the social construction of scientific knowledge and the interpretation of empirical data. The case is then advanced that any education about science, rather than education in science, must give the role of argument a high priority if it is to give a fair account of the social practice of science, and develop a knowledge and understanding of the evaluative criteria used to establish scientific theories. Such knowledge is essential to enhance the public understanding of science and improve scientific literacy. The existing literature, and work that has attempted to use argument within science education, is reviewed to show that classroom practice does provide the opportunity to develop young people's ability to construct argument. Furthermore, the case is advanced that the lack of opportunities for the practice of argument within science classrooms, and lack of teacher's pedagogical skills in organizing argumentative discourse within the classroom are significant impediments to progress in the field. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed84:287–312, 2000.

Partial Houses Built on Common Ground:

Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What Everyone should know about Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Chapter 3, 'The Sun in a Test Tube: The Story of Cold Fusion', 57-78 [hereafter CP T.J. Pinch, Confronting Nature: The Sociology of Solar-Neutrino Detection (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1986). 3. We note that Lewis' results were delivered in the context of the Baltimore APS meeting where, in conjunction with Koonin's results and the Petrasso results questioning the neutron measurements, they were presented with devastating effect. McKinney has a minor disagreement with us over whether Lewis's talk was indeed the 'knockdown blow', preferring to put most weight upon the results showing problems with the neutron measurements. But this is not the real quarrel between us. We meant that it was a 'knockdown' in the sense that half the physicists present left the meetings after Lewis' talk; that many commentators (for example, Frank Close) point to the importance of these 'back to back' talks in the demise of cold fusion; and that, furthermore, Koonin's claims of incompetence and delusion on the part of Pons and Fleischmann were widely quoted. 4. This is nicely detailed by Greg Myers, Writing Biology: Texts and the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990). 5. For more details, see Pinch (1986), op. cit. note 2, 163.

Death by Decapitation: A Case Study of the Scientific Definition of Animal Welfare

AbstractAssessments of animal experience and consciousness are embedded in all issues of animal welfare policy, and the field of animal welfare science has been developed to make these evaluations. In light of modern studies of the social construction of scientific knowledge, it is surprising how little attention has been paid to date on how crucial evaluations about animals are made. In this paper, I begin to fill that gap by presenting a historical case study of the attempt to define the pain and distress of one common practice in animal research-the use of the tabletop guillotine to decapitate laboratory rodents. I describe the negotiations involved in reaching consensus on the meaning of the available data and caution animal care and use committees that they should always work with the realization that our scientific knowledge of what animals experience is partial and provisional knowledge at best.

Social Theory and the Reconstruction of Science and Geography

Whereas discussions in human geography about the social construction of scientific knowledge have focused on theoretical discussions of representation, sociologists of scientific knowledge have made close empirical studies of the practices by which scientific representations are actually produced. Their social constructivism is much more convincing but it too has become mired in epistemological discussions of representation per se. Such debates depend upon the great modern divide between nature and society. By turning away from these dualisms, it might be possible to think through the anxieties about science, knowledge and nature raised by social constructivism. Attention to those scientific practices producing particular scientific representations of the world promises a much more effective critique of science than postmodern critiques of representation, so easily dismissed as simply 'anti-science'.

Writing Biology. Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge

Writing Biology. Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge

Hyper Text and Hypertension: Post-Structuralist Critical Theory, Social Studies of Science and Software

Hypertext - advanced software for organizing information according to webs of conceptual, rather than symbolic, links - has recently provoked humanists to reconsider post-structuralist semiotic concepts. Debates about the design and uses of hypertext, among both software developers and humanists, reflect a conflict between two problematic views of text: as a medium for social interaction, and as a replication of a cognitive structure. Post-structuralist critical theory (PSCT), in challenging concepts of authorship and univocal meaning, argued that semiotic products were more closely connected to each other than to `reality' or to their `original' producers. PSCT's notion of `intertextuality' captured this hyperactive, social aspect of language products. Theories of social construction of scientific knowledge (SCSK), I argue, have crucially relied upon similar, essentially semiotic concepts such as inscription devices, discourse repertoires and the textualization of heterogeneous resources. As SCSK's practitioners have articulated their programme, they have covertly imported cognitive abilities into ostensibly social processes, creating a kind of theoretical hypertension which surfaces in the similar debates over hypertext. Questions about the status of artificial intelligence, which concerns the capacity of a purely symbolic/syntactic structure - a hyper text - to perform as a social actor, sharply expose the tension between cognitive and social that underlies many of SCSK's key concepts.

Scientific literacy for decisionmaking and the social construction of scientific knowledge

AbstractCitizens are often required to make decisions about socioscientific issues in a climate characterized by conflict within both the scientific community and the larger society. Central to the process of decisionmaking is a critical examination of the relevant scientific knowledge involved. Individuals capable of performing this task can be considered scientifically literate in a decisionmaking sense. In this article we explore two ways of critically examining scientific knowledge in the context of a current socioscientific dispute: NASA's Galileo Mission to Jupiter. The two approaches we outline, termed the positivist and social constructivist positions, are examined in terms of their inherent views concerning the nature of scientific knowledge, in particular their use of constitutive and contextual values when evaluating knowledge claims. Because the social constructivist position acknowledges the importance of contextual values, it provides citizens with accessible standards for evaluating scientific knowledge claims. The positivist position, on the other hand, relies on constitutive values which we show are normally inaccessible to ordinary citizens. The positivist position, however, is most closely associated with the predominant social issues approach to science‐technology‐society (STS) education. Implications little consensus about which statements are fact (i.e., will remain stable when challenged) and which opinion, (i.e., will be modified when challenged). All knowledge is potentially unreliable when one is dealing with a socioscientific dispute.The adoption of a social constructivist view of scientific knowledge and its inherent way of evaluating knowledge claims clearly has implications for future approaches to STS education. Although one approach might be to offer a course in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science, this would not be useful without reference to the way in which such knowledge can help students to understand the context of a conflict within the society of scientists and the larger society. As Rosenthal (1989) argues, a synthesis is needed in which social issues are seen as a vehicle for studying the social studies of science and the social issues are seen as a way of making sense of social aspects of science. However, this way of teaching STS may be difficult to implement. In British Columbia, for example, science teachers have resisted efforts to include the social context of science within a traditional university‐oriented physics course (Gaskell, 1992) and to teach a grade 11 social issues oriented sicence and technology course (Gaskell, 1989). This may be because the current social issues approach is most compatible with traditional science content as it is now taught: it simply shows the relevance of textbook knowledge (ready‐made science) to contemporary probles. The shift to the approach suggested above will require a more drastic reorganization of the curriculum, one that may be resisted by the current stakeholders in science education (Duschl, 1988; Gaskell, 1989).

Book Reviews : Greg Myers, Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison,1990. Pp. 304. $37.50 (cloth), $15.75 (paper

Book Reviews : Greg Myers, Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison,1990. Pp. 304. $37.50 (cloth), $15.75 (paper

The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument: Historical Studies. Peter DearThe Rhetoric of Science. Alan G. GrossWriting Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge. Greg MyersA Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse. Lawrence J. Prelli

<i>The Literary Structure of Scientific Argument: Historical Studies</i>. Peter Dear<i>The Rhetoric of Science</i>. Alan G. Gross<i>Writing Biology: Texts in the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge</i>. Greg Myers<i>A Rhetoric of Science: Inventing Scientific Discourse</i>. Lawrence J. Prelli

Writing biology: texts in the social construction of scientific knowledge

Writing biology: texts in the social construction of scientific knowledge

Picking at/on Pickering: The Deconstruction of the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge

Picking at/on Pickering: The Deconstruction of the Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge