Toward a Social Science of the Social Sciences

Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences, 2019

Theory and History in the Human and Social Sciences will fill in the gap in the existing coverage of links between new theoretical advancements in the social and human sciences and their historical roots. Making that linkage is crucial for the interdisciplinary synthesis across the disciplines of psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, semiotics, and the political sciences. In contemporary human sciences of the 21st there exists increasing differentiation between neurosciences and all other sciences that are aimed at making sense of the complex social, psychological, and political processes. Thus new series has the purpose of (1) coordinating such efforts across the borders of existing human and social sciences, (2) providing an arena for possible inter-disciplinary theoretical syntheses, (3) bring into attention of our contemporary scientific community innovative ideas that have been lost in the dustbin of history for no good reasons, and (4) provide an arena for international communication between social and human scientists across the World.

The Social Sciences in the Looking-Glass, 2023

Over the past decades, social scientists have conducted research on the worlds of science and technology, but similar investigation into their own disciplines have been relatively limited. In recent years, however, they have begun to examine various aspects of the social sciences, including their politics and practices, their epistemologies and methods, their institutionalization and professionalization, their national development and colonial expansion, their heterogeneous globalization and local contestations, and their public presence and role in society. Strikingly, this trend has been concomitant with a reconfiguration of the landscape in which the social sciences are inscribed, a reshaping of their borders with neighboring fields, and a contestation of some of their foundations. In particular, they have come under increasing pressure from cognitive and evolutionary sciences as well method-driven and big data approaches, while their funding, political support and social credibility have been threatened in many countries. It is therefore an interesting and challenging time to engage in what could be called a “social science of the social sciences”. The object of this volume is to offer current historical and social scientific perspectives on this reflexive moment, examining sociology, anthropology, philosophy, political science, legal theory, and religious studies. Beyond their diversity, the common thread of all contributions is a critical approach to the politics and practices of the social sciences. The social sciences are thoroughly entangled in the social facts they describe and analyze. It is therefore only by singling out the social sciences for study that we can understand why our world looks the way it does.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2022

2000

Nómadas. Revista Crítica de Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas, 2018

Science as an object of sociological study” presents a theoretical reflection about the attributes of science that makes it a sociological matter of interest. Since science operates in a world composed of strong territorial, linguistic, cultural and political / ideological differences, it has been in the midst of a controversy between those who maintain that it is determined by social factors and those who conceive it as an entity that develops with a relative autonomy of them. The article argues that the tension between one conception and another diminishes when conceiving the rigorousness that distinguishes scientific methodology, not only as cognitive rules but also as symbolic ways which have been created and shared socially to materialize the consubstantial ethical principles of scientific rationality.

Economic and political weekly, 2006

Sociologica, 2021

In this paper we start from Mark Solovey’s Social Science for What? to analyze the place and the role of the social sciences in the US National Science Foundation from the mid- 1940s to the end of the 1980s. The book highlights the tensions that built up around the epistemic status of the social sciences vis-à-vis the natural sciences and the reputational debates surrounding their role and fate during and after the postwar period. We mostly focus our attention on structures, actors and processes not addressed by Solovey: relationships, networks, and patterns of stratification within and across disciplines; the emergence of novel approaches outside the scientistic and positivistic framework sponsored by the NSF; alternative sources of funding, such as the National Endowment for the Humanities; and a set of broader, long-term processes in the macro-field of the social and behavioral sciences. We present some preliminary data suggesting that a wider, theoretically-oriented approach might be fruitful in casting a more complex and dynamic portrayal of the development of American social science.

ELK Asia Pacific journal of Social Sciences, 2021

This paper reviews the definitions of science put forward by different scholars, its myriad functions, its social duties and responsibilities, and the role played by science communication to the masses. It discusses the historical role played by science in ushering in social and intellectual revolutions particularly in the context of Europe and other developed societies, and the need to replicate them elsewhere. It also discusses the scope and the nature of work carried out in the fields of sociology of science as well as its limitations arising from its Eurocentrism and an ivory-tower approach. It also discusses how the 'Sociology of science' can be used to help the rapid intellectual and economic development of developing countries and tradition-bound societies by analysing differences between developed countries and developing countries as well as differences within developing countries, and can play a role in changing the lives of millions of people across the world. We believe the 'sociology of Science' encompassing fields such as historiography and sociology will go a long way in ensuring that the benefits of a scientific temper are properly communicated to millions of people across cultures, and that these can counter superstition, blind faith as well as traditional interpretations of various phenomena, besides aiding economic development. This field must, of course also be studied in the context of the latest advances in pedagogy, theories of pedagogical content, and even language acquisition patterns and language dynamics. The relevant aspects of other fields of social sciences must also, of course, be taken into consideration. Many fields of social sciences may remain enchained to Eurocentric paradigms and much work may need to be done to make them relevant for different cultures and societies, and tie them to global outcomes. Thus, this paper stresses the need for Sociology of science as a distinct cross-cultural and inter-disciplinary field of science in the twenty-first century with its own theories, methods and frameworks to which multi-cultural teams must contribute.

The contribution of the eld of science and technology studies (STS) to mainstream sociology has so far been slim because of a misunderstanding about what it means to provide a social explanation of a piece of science or of an artefact. The type of explanation possible for religion, art or popular culture no longer works in the case of hard science or technology. This does not mean, it is argued, that science and technology escapes sociological explanation, but that a deep redescription of what is a social explanation is in order. Once this misunderstanding has been clari ed, it becomes interesting to measure up the challenge raised by STS to the usual epistemologies social sciences believed necessary for their undertakings. The social sciences imitate the natural sciences in a way that render them unable to pro t from the type of objectivity found in the natural sciences. It is argued that by following the STS lead, social sciences may start to imitate the natural sciences in a very different fashion. Once the meanings of 'social' and of 'science' are recon gured, the de nition of what a 'social science' is and what it can do in the political arena is considered. Again it is not by imitating the philosophers of science's ideas of what is a natural science that sociology can be made politically relevant.