Notes on SSK - N. Storer and The social system of science (1966)

You can find the notes here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xOr73EIyfI8tPUc1ox179Q7R-4FkFZixSjz8MARRr6k/edit?usp=sharing

Crawshay-Williams (1957) Methods and criteria of reasoning (notes)

Crawshay-Williams, R. (1957). Methods and criteria of reasoning. Routledge and Kegan Paul: London

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Notes on SSK - Znaniecki's 'man of knowledge'

Znaniecki, F. (1940). The social role of the man of knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press

The lectures given by Znaniecki on the role of ‘savants’ can be relevant for argumentation students in two ways. First, they represent an explicit attempt to describe the emic rules of the academic community irrespective of field or subject. That there are such rules, and that they pertain – amongs other factors – on a scholar’s specific role, these are claims which are supported by Znaniecki’s study. Second, they represent a claim for the possibility of systematizing these rules. In embarking upon such a study, that of describing in general terms the social role of the man of knowledge, Znaniecki is assuming that such an endeavour is not meaningless, that with some precision one can come up with a taxonomy of roles within academia. This belief is supported (albeit indirectly) by other studies who performed similar sociological analyses on other social systems (e.g. the factory worker)

1. Sociolgy and knowledge

- Z. begins with a description of purpose for the socilogy of knowledge. The sociologist of knowledge is not interested in evaluating systems of knowledge but in describing how they work

The sociologist is not entitled to make any judgments concerning the validity of any systems of knowledge except sociological systems. He meets systems of knowledge in the course of his investigation only when he finds that certain persons or groups that he studies are actively interested in them […] (5)

When he is studying their social lives, he must agree that, as to the knowledge which they recognize as valid, they are the only authority he need consider (6)

- thus ‘truth’ is ‘truth relative to community’, so he is interested in how truth functions as “norm of thinking”, how it imposes upon the conscious agent who recognizes it a distinctive selection and organization of some data of his experience (8); so of course the discussion in Z’s terms is highly internalized, but the translation from norms of thinking to the (community’s) norms of arguing seems sensible;

- scholars “participate” in a social system in the same way a leader or a member participates in a social group, a manager or a workman in that technical system which is called a factory or a workshop

- these men specialize in “cultivating knowledge” as distinct from those specializing in other cultural activities – technical, economic, artistic etc. Z calls these men “men of knowledge” from the French savants

[…] an individual in order to be a scientist must produce some work which will qualify positively when judged by definite standards of validity

- specialization (in the way it applies to other social structures, as argued by Spencer’s Principles of Sociology, and Durkheim’s De la division du travail social) also applies to science

- the term ‘social role’ is never explicitly defined, but we find affirmations like:

Every social role presupposes that between the individual performing the role, who may thus be called a ‘social person,’ and a smaller or larger set of people who participate in his performance and may be termed his ‘social circle’ there is a common bond constituted by a complex of values which all of them appreciate positively (14-15)

The person is an object of positive valuation on the part of his circle because they believe that they all need his cooperation (15)

- this means that there must be social circles to whom knowledge in general or systematic knowledge in particular appears to be positively valuable, thus the scientist

[…] must cultivate knowledge for the benefit of those who grant him social status.

- so the question is: what are these social roles? –> or rather, what have been these social roles in the past and how did they evolve to the present?

2. Technologists and sages

­- the chapter starts with the following question (familiar only to Meletus, probably):

How can it be that scientists, men who indulge in cultivating knowledge instead of being efficiently active like everybody else, are not only tolerated by men of action but granted a social status and regarded as performing desirable social functions by the communities in which they live? (22)

- Z starts with a distinction which is exemplified even by “simple communities”, i.e. that between specialized knowledge (which particular individuals need in their occupational roles) and common knowledge (which all adult individuals need as members of the community) (25)

- the first one is called “technical”; technical knowledge has a distinctive pragmatic character: the test of its validity is its practical application

- in these simple communities, scientists are not needed

No demand for a scientist as a bearer of superior knowledge can arise among the persons engaged in a practical occupation so long as those persons are convinced that any situation which appears in the performance of their roles can be fitted into some general pattern with which the best, if not all, of them are familiar (31)

- difficulties appear only when people face a kind of situation that does not fit the pattern; under such circumstances, doubts arise even among the best occupational authorities as to the proper way of defining[1] such unfamiliar situations (32)

- hence a demand for advisers (33): first the priest, whose main function is practical, then the lay adviser (usually a retired authority): this person is expected to know not merely how to deal practically with a specific kind of technical problem but what are the different ways in which various kinds of people define the situations they meet in the course of their occupational activities (35-36)

- such knowledge is termed technological

- eventually, some people will be regularly expected to possess technological knowledge; as we pass from relatively small and simple communities to societies of greater size and complexity, we find to different kinds of technological roles: the technological leader  (defines situations and makes plans) and the technological expert (specialized in diagnosis) (38)

- Z describes in quite some detail the two kinds of technologists (38 ff)

In short, in every diagnosis the technological leader is supposed to reduce whatever is new and uncertain in the complex situation he is facing to a practically safe combination of old and certain truths about things and processes (45)

In the social role of the technological expert, knowledge is completely separated from its practical applications (47)

But the task of the expert may go further [than the perfecting of existing knowledge]. If he finds that the kind of action which was planned will fail to produce the desired result, he may be asked to devise a more successful kind of action […] In a word, his social function may include attempts to invent alternative patterns of technical actions more effective for the achievement of the final purpose (51)

- the role of independent inventors is added, for those who specialize in discovering new patterns

The striking point is that until the second half of the nineteenth century no regular social role of independent “inventor” was recognized by any social circle (56)

- in all these ways a society develops common-sense knowledge; the only way in which this knowledge can be problematized is by collective opposition, i.e. ‘foreign’ standards and norms of conduct; when societies want to fight this battle they need people to special people support the standards the society is fighting for; if the standards are the ones opposing, then they need novationists, if the standards are the ones to be maintained, then they need conservatives => sages

Usually, however, active social leaders lack the time, the will or the ability to theorize for their followers about the cultural order. Somebody else from among the novationists or conservatives performs this function, being regardedas wiser than the others and being accepted by them as their guide in thinking about the social – or more generally – cultural problems which the actual conflict is raising (72)

- the function of the sage consists in rationalizing and justifying intellectual tendencies.

It is his duty to “prove” by “scientific” arguments that his party is right and its opponents are wrong (73)

There is no doubt that he can perform this task to the satisfaction of himself and his adherents, for in the vast multiplicity of diverse cultural data it is always possible to find facts which, “properly interpreted, prove that the generalization he accepts as true are true and those he rejects as false are false (75)

- however, sages sometimes go beyond their socially determined roles and fail to limit themselves to a mere justification and rationalization of the existing tendencies; they try to find higher, more comprehensive systems and axiological systems (+ examples 77-79)

3. Schools and scholars as bearers of absolute truth

- so the partial answer given so far to the question of “how is science acceptable” is:

[…] because and in so far as they specialized in cultivating a kind of knowledge which men of action regarded as useful for practical purposes (91)

- and yet along with the purely instrumental valuation, we find another attitude.

- there must be social circles which appreciate the scientist that does not work for practice, that is, that does not work to solve technological situations.

- this group is present in all advanced society – and it is a group which transmits the “sacred lore”, therefore sacred schools, and the people working within them, religious scholars

Under such conditions [priests being undercut by public pretenders], it becomes an essential public duty of the priests in each generation to train successors to whom their own sacred powers will be communicated and to whose care the entire religious system of which they are now the guardians will be transmitted. (95)

Holy knowledge [of this kind] requires no practical tests like technological knowledge. The very attempt to test it would be blasphemous, if it implied any doubt as to its validity (96)

- Z adds here something like a social explanation of a certain system of knowledge:

Here [in this break from empirical reality] lies, perhaps, an explanation of the peculiar phenomenon that in the evolution of the knowledge transmitted in sacred schools and claiming a divine origin there is a more or less marked tendency to separate the sensory from the spiritual world and to disqualify the former as illusory or only imperfectly real by contrast with the latter, which is viewed as ultimate reality (96)

- the distinction between exoteric and esoteric gradually forms

- the social circle of the religious scholars is … the other scholars; nobody but the members of the school (of thought) can judge his scientific qualifications; his function is the perpetuation of the sacred lore; the religious scholar can assume function of teacher while continuing to be a student of argumentation

- occasional bold innovations of rebels, all these penetrate into the sacred school, of course, but the religious scholar is expected to deal with them and he applies the same principle all the time:

Whatever in the domain of knowledge is verily true cannot be new; whatever is new must be false (105)

The growh of knowledge of sacred schools is thus essentially an accumulation of commentaries in which superior scholars interpret for the benefit of their contemporaries and successors either the original holy texts or the writings of earlier commentators (107)

- argument by reference to spiritual ancestor

- in any case, although they are dogmatic, they enforce upon the society the idea that there is

a realm of specific values permanently subsisting in its own right, with a distinctive systematic order irreducible to any practical criteria (111)

- in other words, even if they don’t conform to the norms, they do have a function: they give men the

possibility of living a distinctive kind of life, of having experiences they never had before, of performing ideational activities never performed on lower cultural stages (112)

Is man’s absorption in this domain of sacred knowledge a hindrance to practical adaptation to his environment, an obstacle in the way of efficient control of natural and social reality? Yes, indeed. But why must all men be ‘adapted’? Is there no place in a complex civilized society for a great variety of personal lives, for the inefficient speculative dreamer as well as for the sober, efficient leader in action? (112)

- gradually, schools get secularized, mainly due to the interpenetration of different cultures

- now, dialectical argumentation has to be employed (114)

[…] disagreements between religious schools are apt to stimulate among technologists and sages a general skepticism with regard to sacred tradition as the ultimate guarantee of truth (114)

The secular schjolar’s person is not expected to be endowed with positive sacredness, has no priestly characters; even if the role is performed by an individual who happens to also be a priest, this fact is supposed to be irrelevant to his status as a scholar (116)

- Z distinguishes between the discoverer of truth, the systematizer, the contributor, the fighter for truth, the disseminator, the historian, the discoverer of problems etc.

­- all these people cannot appeal to tradition anymore; so what source do they have? rational evidence (120), which, according to scholarly epistemology, is treated as: not only as superindividual but as supersocial (120), in a word, objective

- systematization is the most important prerequisite of the scholar’s teaching role (125) since students want more certain and more complete knowledge than what they would find from other sources

- schools prefer thoroughness to originality, but

The highest achievement of a scholar, after years of contributions is to make one or two important discoveries which make the systems of his predecessors inadequate and then with the help of those discoveries to construct a better system (135)

---

[1] Maybe cross-reference could be made to Crawshay-Williams’ idea of controversies being centered around methodological statements pleading for this or that definition for this or that purpose – perhaps the role of men of knowledge is not that different throughout history.

Notes on SSK - Merton's sociology of science (V)

The following two papers are concerned with what Merton calls the ethos of science, “the emotionally toned complex of rules, prescriptions, mores, beliefs, values and presuppositions that are held to be binding upon the scientist” (p. 223) They are concerned explicitly with science as a social institution (rather than as a type of knowledge) governed and kept by conventions which stipulate active norms and values. In the first paper, the viewpoint is historically concerned with the “birth” of the norms of science from … religion! As the editor (N. W. Storer) summarizes Merton’s explanation:

In explaining  how it was that religion could both encourage science and also find itself threatened by science, [Merton] invokes the distinction between a religious ethos and an explicit theology and points out that as long as action reflects “proper” motivations (that is, so long as it is congruent with the religious ethos), there is little concern for its concrete historical consequences until after they have appeared. (p. 225)

The second paper is a definition of four major norms, or “institutional imperatives”, that comprise the ethos of science and a statement of their functional relationship (p. 227).

6. The Puritan Spur to Science (1938)

What we call the Protestant ethic was at once a direct expression of dominant values and an independent source of new motivation. It not only led men into particular paths of activity; it exerted a constant pressure for unswerving devotion to this activity. […] If the scientist had hitherto found the search for truth its own reward, he now had further grounds for disinterested zeal in this pursuit (p. 228)

Moreover, the changing class structure of the time reinforced the Puritan sentiments favoring science since a large proportion of Puritans came from the rising class of bourgeoisie, of merchants. (p. 229)

- according to Merton, religion and science adapted to one another and even though religion was initially “dictating” the relevant value-complex to be observed; institutionalized values are conceived as self-evident and require no vindication;

- the “glory of the great author of nature” was the main driving motive for the natural philosophers of the seventeenth century.

John Wilkins proclaimed the experimental study of Nature to be the most effective mean of begetting in men a veneration for God (p. 232)

- the “confort of mankind” motive

Protestantism afforded further grounds for the cultivation of science. The second dominant tenet in the Puritan ethos, it will be remembered, designated social welfare, the good of the many, as a goal ever to be held in mind. (p. 234)

If Puritanism demands systematic, methodic labor, constant diligence in one’s calling, what, asks Spra, more active and industrious and systematic than the Art of Experiment. (p. 236)

­- the Puritan eschews idleness because it conduces to sinful thoughts

In short science embodies patterns of behavior that are congenial to Puritan taste. Above all, it embraces two highly prized values: utilitarianism and empiricism. (p. 237)

- the reward system was also provided by the Reformation:

The efforts of Sprat, Wilkins, Boyle, or Ray to justify their interest in science do not represent simply opportunistic obsequiousness, but rather an earnest attempt to justify the ways of science to God. The Reformation had transferred the burden of individual salvation from the Church to the individual, and it is this “overwhelming and crushing sense of the responsibility of his own soul” that accounts in part for both the acute longing for religious justification and the intense pursuit of one’s calling. (p. 238)

The Puritan insistence upon empiricism, upon the experimental approach, was intimately connected with the identification of contemplation with idleness, of the expenditure of physical energy and the handling of material objects with industry. Experiment was the scientific expression of the practical, active, and methodical bents of the Puritan. (p. 239)

­- Merton concludes by a deeper analysis of the paradoxical alliance between science and religion when the former was in its infancy:

Paradoxically but persistently, then, this religious ethic, based on rigid theological foundations, furthered the development of the very scientific disciplines that later seem to confute orthodox theology (p. 244)

­- of scoence and religion, Merton concludes:

Protestantism and science: in both there is the unquestionable basic assumption upon which the entire system is built by the utilization of reason and experience. Within each context there is rationally, though the bases are non-rational. (p. 252)

7. The normative structure of science (1942)

- Merton gives the term “Science” the following three-fold definition: (1) a set of characteristic methods by means of which knowledge is certified, (2) a stock of accumulated knowledge stemming from the application of these methods, (3) a set of cultural values and mores governing the activities termed scientific (p. 268). It is interesting that scientific communication wouldn’t fall under any of the three…

- the ethos of science:

The ethos of science is that affectively toned complex of values and norms which is held to be binding on the man of science. The norms are expressed in the form of prescriptions, proscriptions, preferences and permissions. (p. 269)

These imperatives, transmitted by precept and example and reinforced by sanctions are in varying degrees internalized by the scientist, thus fashioning his scientific conscience […] Although the ethos of science has not been codified, it can be inferred from the moral consensus of scientists as expressed in use and wont, in countless writings on the scientific spirit and in moral indignation directed toward contraventions of the ethos (p. 269)  

- Merton describes the institutional goal of science as “the exension of certified knowledge” (p. 270); the institutional goal is thus twofold: (1) make sure you extend knowledge, (2) make sure the knowledge is certified; in a later essay, this distinction becomes clear.

The community of science thus provides for the social validation of scientific work. In this respect, it amplifies that famous opening line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “All men by nature desire to know.” [which would fall under (1)] Perhaps, but men of science by culture desire to know that what they know is really so [i.e. (2)]. The organization of science operates as a system of institutionalized vigilance, involving competitive cooperation. (p. 339)

- the following “imperatives” comprising the ethos of science derive from the main institutional goal (not only because they are efficient, but because they are thought to be good and right).

A. Universalism (pp. 270-272)

- truth claims, whatever their source, must be subjected to pre-established impersonal criteria.

- they must be consonant with observation and with previously confirmed knowledge.

- acceptance does not depend on personal attributes

- bias is opprobrious

B.Communism (pp. 273-275)

- common ownership of goods

The substantive findings of science are a product of social collaboration and are assigned to the community (p. 273)

- the scientist’s claim to “his” intellectual “property” is limited to that of recognition and esteem (see phenomenon of eponymy)

- hence, institutional accent on originality even though the resulting products are “communized”

- one must communicate one’s findings and make it so that everyone can benefit from them (hence, e.g. the institutional accent on clarity)

- science is then “essentially cooperative” (p. 275)

The humility of social genius [see Newton’s epigram with the shoulders of giants] is not simply culturally appropriate but results from the realization that scientific advance involves the collaboration of past and present generations (p. 275)

C. Disinterestedness (pp. 275-277)

- the scientist must not have other motives interfere with his ascribed “passion for knowledge” for the benefit of mankind (see the previous essay for the source of this requirement)

- this norm is only glossed over by Merton…

D. Organized Skepticism (pp.277 – 278)

- the detached scrutiny of beliefs (of whatever kind)

- the systematic check of the peers whether one’s activity conforms to the criteria which apply to it

Notes on SSK - Merton´s sociology of science (IV)

4. Social and cultural contexts of science

- this is Merton’s preface to the 1970 reprint of his doctoral dissertation (Science, technology and society in Seventeenth-Century England, 1933).

- the thesis seeks to answer general questions concerning the “interplay between science and society” (p. 175) by focusing on the seventeenth century as a case-study.

- he also stresses the influence of military, economy and religion (environing social structures, p. 176) on the development of science

- the red-thread of his thesis is the influence of Puritanism upon the development of Science (p. 181)

- in particular, Puritanism provided the “set of values” which scientists could use (or refer to, or appeal to), when the “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” principle did not hold, e.g.:

1. the religious utility of exhibiting the wisdom of the divine handiwork

2. the economic and technological utility of enabling mines to be workable at increasing dephts;

3. the economic and technological utility of helping mariners to sail safely to ever more far-off places, in quest of adventure and trade;

4. the military utility of providing for ever more efficient and inexpensive ways of killing the enemy;

5. the self-development utility of providing a form of mental discipline

6. the nationalistic utility of enlarging and deepening the collective self-esteem of Englishmen (p. 184)

5. The neglect of the sociology of science (1952)

- this is Merton’s foreword to Bernard Barber’s Science and the social order (1952)

- the goal set by Barber was:

to get a better understanding of science by applying to it the kind of sociological analysis that has proved fruitful when directed to many other kinds of social activities (p. 210)

- Merton’s main point is to explain why there is no theoretical attempt in the field of sociology of science (p. 213); interestingly, he mentions:

In part, also, the field is the victim of existing programs of higher education. Physical and biological scientists have typically had their rigorous training confined to the specialized skills and knowledge of their field, and few have had more than a slight acquaintance with social science. Social scientists, similarly, have typically had little training in one or another branch of the more exact sciences or even in the history of science (p. 217)

Notes on SSK - Merton's sociology of science (III)

3. The perspectives of Insiders and Outsiders (1972)

- scientific thought in a society where groups are encouraged to separate from one another

As the society becomes polarized, so do the contending claims to truth. At the extreme, an active and reciprocal distrust between groups finds expression in intellectual perspectives that are no longer located within the same universe of discourse. The more deep-seated the mutual distrust, the more does the argument of the other appear so palpablz implausible, even absurd, that one no longer inquires into substance or logical structure to asses its truth claims. Instead, one confronts the other’s argument with an entirely different question: how does it happen to be advanced at all? (p. 100)

- Poliany (Personal knowledge, 1958), noted how the growth of knowledge

depends upon complex sets of social relations based on a largely institutionalized reciprocity of trust among scholars and scientists. (p. 101)

- thus, there emerge claims to “group-based truth”

Insiders truth that counter Outsider untruths and Outsider truths that counter Insider untruths (p. 101)

- affiliations are expressed in public behavior -> but every individual exhibits multiple group afiliations, it seems to follow that

Once this basic principle is adopted, the list of Insider claims to a monopoly of knowledge becomes indefinitely expansible to all manner of social formations based on ascribed (and, by extension, on some achieved) statuses. It would thus seem to follow that only women can understand women, - and men, men. On the same principle, youth alone is capable of understanding youth [...], proletarians alone can understand proletarians, and presumably capitalists, capitalists; only Catholics, Catholics; Jews, Jews [etc.] (p. 104)

- one ends in solipsism: “You have to be one to understand one!”

The Insider principle does not refer to stupidly designed and stupidly executed inquiries that happen to be made by stupid Outsiders; it advances a far more fundamental position. According to that position, the Outsider, no matter how careful and talented, is excluded in principle from gaining access to the social and cultural truth. (p. 106)

In structural terms, we are all, of course, both Insiders and Outsiders, members of some groups and, sometimes deliberatively, not of others [...] individuals have not a single status but a status set: a complement of variously interrelated statuses which interact to affect both their behavior and perspectives (p. 113)

Thus, the greater the number and variety of group affiliations and statuses distributed among individuals in a society, the smaller, on the average, the number of individuals having precisely the same sociological configurations (p. 115).

Notes on SSK - Merton's sociology of science (II)

Znaniecki’s The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge (1940)

- this is Merton’s book review of Znaniecki’s study

- main points of Znaniecki’s the book:

Znaniecki sets himself two main types of problems in this study of specialists in knowledge. [...] The first of these problems is taxonomic: what is te composition and structure of the various types of scientists’social roles: What are their interrelations; their lines of development? Secondly, how, if at all, are the systems of knowledge and methods of savants influenced by the normative patterns which define their behavior in a social order? (p. 41)

- as an end-result, Znaniecki comes up with a typology of social roles of men of knowledge (pp. 42-43)

A. Technological advisers

1. technological expert:

2. technological leader (devises plan, selects instruments)

B. Sages (provide intellectual justification of the collective tendencies of the group)

C. Scholars

1. Sacred scholar

2. Secular scholar: (a) discoverer of truth, (b) systematizer, (c) contributor, (d) fighter for truth, (e) disseminator of knowledge [e1. popularizer, e2. educating teacher]

D. Explorers

1. discoverer of facts

2. discoverer of problems

- Merton adds:

It should be noted at once that this is a classification of social roles and not of persons, and that individual men of knowledge may incorporate several of these analytically distinguishable roles. (p. 43)

- Znaniecki gives evidence for there being different roles in the different attitudes each role implies towards new facts