Geschiedenis van de sociale wetenschappen
Lecture 1
Wetenschap is een geïnstitutionaliseerde praktijk ingebed in een wetenschappelijke context.
Themes according to Eller
“The best way to think of the project at hand is sociology of knowledge, that is, the social
organization of knowledge-making and knowledge-transmitting” (Eller,2017)
“Humans must organize themselves in some way to produce and disseminate knowledge
different disciplines know different things each is a practical way of knowing” (Eller,2017)
“An interesting and important question is whether science is the only way of knowing…
music, art, literature, and perhaps religion have their own way of knowledge and their own
unique and valuable ways of knowing” (Eller, 2017)
There are those who contend that only the natural sciences produce knowledge, in the form
of theories and laws. Such people may reject the “social sciences” as poor imitations” (Eller,
2017)
“Then there are those who assert that science is itself not a universal but al culturally-specific
way of knowing” (Eller, 2017)
“Finally, there are those who say that the current way of organizing knowledge- the
contemporary academic disciplines, the existing school and univesitu systems, and the
tradition of article writing and book publication- are not the best way to construct and
transmit knowledge”
Status of science
De status van de wetenschap kan hoog maar ook laag liggen, dit verschilt per casus. Dit gaat
in principe om het vertrouwen in de wetenschap en hoeveel invloed de wetenschap heeft.
Zo is er een voorbeeld geweest over de casus van de coronacrisis met Anthony Fauci,
Christian Drosten, Jaap van Dissel, Diederik Gommers en Roel Coutinho. Deze personen
waren heel groot tijdens de coronapandemie en stonden bekend om hun wetenschappelijke
kennis over corona. Daarnaast is er een voorbeeld geweest over de casus van de
Oostvaardersplassen, hierbij heeft de overheid niet naar de wetenschap geluisterd toen het
ging om het bijvoeren van de dieren. Toen ze uiteindelijk het gevolg merkte van de dieren
bijvoeren moest de overheid van de dieren afkomen, deze dieren werden afgeschoten.
Ook is er ingegaan op de quantitative measurement als het gaat om de status van
wetenschap, hieruit zijn de volgende cijfers gekomen:
90 = Judge
88 = Medical doctors
77 = Higher education teaching professionals
74 = Physicists, chemist
71 = Sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists
16 = Domestic helpers and cleaners
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,Geschiedenis van de sociale wetenschappen
Daarnaast is er ingegaan op de “post-truth society”
- Pre-modern society: given truth
- Modern society: found truth
- Posrtmodern society: made truth
- Post-postmodern society: truth as a marketable product
Source: Rob Wijnberg (Waar is wat klikt, de correspondent)
Definition of science
The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998): Science is ‘the intellectual and practical activity
encompassing the systematic study if the structure and behavior of the physical and natural
world through observation and experiment.”
Research is “the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to
establish facts and reach new conclusions.”
OECD Definition
“Any creative systematic activity undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge,
including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this knowledge to devise
new applications.”
Working definition of science for this course
Science is the more or less systematic for knowledge by experts, who react to earlier
knowledge and share their ideas with others.
Eller on science
- ‘scientific knowledge inexorably “progresses,” that is, each day science has more and
better knowledge than the day before
- Scientific knowledge is superior to other forms of (or spurious claimants to)
knowledge because of its “method”; and
- Scientists are particularly conscious of both’ (Eller, 2017)
Conclusion
- Premise of this course: science is, despite all its flaws, the best way of gaining insights
into the world.
- Status of science seems to be declining slowly
- But still high (Rathenau Institute) and it has received a boos by the Corona crisis
- Science is an institutionalized practice (see definitions of science)
- Exact sciences have a higher status, but social sciences is in some respects
fundamentally different because of the agency of our research subjects.
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,Geschiedenis van de sociale wetenschappen
Lecture 2
Institutionalisering
Artikel van Haack 1995 lezen.
‘Though there are no grounds for complacency, though, like all human enterprises, science is
far from perfect, it has been the most impressively….
Social science is an institutionalized practice. As an institutionalized practice it looks natural
and obvious to both people inside and outside academia.
Intuitive definition “institutions”
- Institutions are frozen answers to recurrent fundamental questions
- Actual cultures are themselves the frozen answers to ontological problems
Institutions
- Formal institutions that are an important part of society (state of law, education,
parliamentary democracy, free press, health care).
- More spontaneously grown, repetitive actions (things that have become a concept,
e.g. the soul pair of trousers.
Je hebt daarnaast grote en kleine instituties, ook kunnen objecten onder een institutie
vallen.
‘The basic contentions of the argument of this book are implicit in its title and sub-title,
namely, that reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyze
the process in which this occurs’ (Berger & Luckman 1967)
Thomas Theorem
- ‘If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences’ (William Isaac
Thomas & Dorothy Swain Thomas, 1928)
The social construction of reality, step by step
- ‘The sociology of knowledge is concerned with the analysis of the social construction
of reality’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘The problem is contained in nuce in Pascal’s famous statement that what is truth on
one side on the Pyrenees is error on the other’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘The reality of everyday life further presents itself to me as an intersubjective world
that I share with others. I know there is an ongoing correspondence between my
meanings and their meanings in this world’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘Social order exists only as a product of human activity.’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘All human activity is subject to habitualization.’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘Institutionalization occurs whenever there is a reciprocal typification of habitualized
actions by types of actors. The typifications of habitualized actions that constitute
institutions are always shared ones’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
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, Geschiedenis van de sociale wetenschappen
- ‘With the acquisition of historicity, these formations also acquire another crucial
quality… this quality is objectivity. This means that the institutions that now have
been crystallized are experienced as existing over and beyond the individuals who
“happen to” embody them at the moment.’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘Only at this point (then, is an) institutional world… experienced as an objective
reality’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘The institutions as historical and objective facticities, confront the individual as
undeniable facts. The institutions are there, external to him. They have coercive
power over him’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
Sanctions
- ‘The socialization into the institutional order requires the establishment of sanctions’
(Berger & Luckmann 1967)
Symbols
- ‘Intersubjective sedimentation can be called truly social only when it is has been
objectivated in a sign system of one kind or another.’ (Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘Language becomes the depository of a large aggregate of collective sedimentations.’
(Berger & Luckmann 1967)
- ‘Physical objects and actions may be called upon as mnemotechnic aids.’
Symbool van een institutie is bijvoorbeeld de Tweede Kamer
Roles
- ‘All institutionalized conduct involves roles. Thus roles share in the controlling
character of institutionalization. The roles represent the institutional order.’
- ‘The institutional order is real only in so far as it is realized in performed roles’.
The “expert” as an institution
- ‘Knowledge is not only socially constructed but also socially distributed. One of the
most important distinctions is the knowledge distribution, especially in regard to
science, is that between the “expert” and the novice’ (Eller, 2017)
- ‘Individuals who are recognized for possessing expert knowledge enjoy a certain
prestige and power: experts are often paid for their expertise, and ordinary people
often defer to and obey the recommendations of experts.’ (Eller, 2017)
- Being an “expert” is a performance (perhaps more than a status based on sound
knowledge of a topic)
Karl Mannheim, generation
- ‘One’s generation profoundly affects one’s individual knowledge… people of the
same age, having lived through the same events, have in common “possible modes of
thought, experience, feeling and action”, resulting in what he called “the
stratification of experience”. (Eller, 2017)
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