Talk:Sociology of scientific knowledge

Untitled
Please note: There is a sociology of knowledge page AND a sociology of scientific knowledge page: please attempt to keep these pages distinct. If that's not possible, maybe both should be merged, and 'science' included as a subcategory? --Tomsega (talk) 16:11, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Sokal Affair
I'm not sure this is a fair example because Alan Sokal published his famous piece in an American journal called Social Text that didn't have much to do with SSK. Social text was more of a literary theory/cultural studies journal, but certainly not known for science studies. I suggest removing this section.--75.25.142.26 (talk) 04:15, 18 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I still think it is relevant. Although the piece appeared in Social Text, the Sokal Affair has been used extensively to discredit the SSK folks, and many SSKers took it upon themselves to respond to the hoax. SnehaNar (talk) 00:36, 17 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Alan Sokal wrote a follow up article in Lingua Franca called A physicist experiments with cultural studies, to explain his experiment in Social Text. I think this quote sums up his argument nicely: Social Text's acceptance of my article exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory--postmodernist literary theory, that is--carried to its logical extreme.
 * Sokal attacked critic of science coming from the humanities - literary theory and cultural studies, not the study of science coming from the social sciences.--80.163.17.92 (talk) 21:26, 10 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I am joining the two other editors who think that the Sokal affair does not relate directly to the SSK. However, Sokal was a critic of SSK and science more broadly. --Duncan (talk) 00:39, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

ANT theorists
I did make a few changes regarding whether the ANT theorists are to be included in the SSK-field. My view is that it should be kept separate since these theorists have diametrically different conceptions of ontology, and have also debated this widely. Instead I made a separate entry called "Criticism".

What about it? Christopher Kullenberg 20:46, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree - good correction. May I invite you to visit STS Wiki? This is a new site, very much in need of content development; it isn't intended to compete with, but rather to supplement, Wikipedia (guides to STS scholars, STS programs, etc.) Bryan 12:50, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Redirect page for Edinburgh School

Just to let you know I've changed this to a disambig page. HJMG 23:14, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I removed Bruno Latour from the list of SSKers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gurubanks (talk • contribs) 00:52, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

SSK is Strong Programme: article needs reworking
In general STS use, if I am not mistaken, SSK is synonymous with the strong programme, or actually, these are part of the description of one approach, "Strong Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge," that first emerged as the Edinburgh school.

SSK is not used generally to describe the field of sociology of science or STS. SSK is a subfield. Popper doesn't belong in this group. This article needs a rewrite, perhaps moving some material to the STS or other general science study page. Rubble 19:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

SSK and Sociology of Science
so far, i think both are so close that this article could be merged into sociology of science. do you disagree? capi 04:03, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
 * yes i disagree, ssk is closer to sociology of knowledge than sociology of science. it is separate from that too, significantly different in its focus. --Buridan 13:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

SSK and Sociology of Science are two different areas of the sociological study of science. SSK is generally a British phenomenon, while the Sociology of Science is an American phenomenon. They have different approaches to how to explain science sociologically. In the article there are several instances where a claim is made about SSK, and the reference given is actually about Sociology of Science. That is not right - one should use sources FROM the SSK camp of sociology to explain what the SSK is about. For example, Robert K. Merton did not practice sociology of scientific knowledge, he practiced sociology of science. I'm not an expert, I'm a student in Edinburgh who studies SSK. (source: personal communication with my teacher and also Collins (1983) [Annual Review of Sociology, Vol 9, pp. 265-285] originally from http://www.jstor.org/pss/2946066) Lehtv (talk) 14:04, 25 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Agree, they should be two separate articles. I also report here this comments from the Sociology of Science talk page:
 * The sociology of science and the sociology of scientific knowledge are two very different things. Sociology of science primarily looks at sociology of scientists and the organisations they work in. Sociology of Scientific knowledge however is interested in the actual content of scientific theories. So when people like David Bloor and Barry Barnes started writing about SSK they were careful to distinguish their 'strong programme' from the 'weak programme' of people like Robert K. Merton or Karl Mannheim. This merger should be reversed Lee Bunce (talk) 13:44, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
 * --OpenNotes1 (talk) 13:03, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Sociology of scientific knowledge as anti-scientific
Many scientists have criticized sociology of scientific knowledge, as well as much of sociology itself, for having allegedly contributed in undermining scientific knowledge in the United States. Many of these issues are mentioned in the article Sokal affair. The reason for this is that sociologists in general don't especially like using the methodology of philosophical realism, where the world is presented as it is or as it should be, such as what Descartes and Newton are mostly interested in. On the contrary, they tend to favour the teachings of Schopenahauer and Kant, who are more open to the idea that knowledge is constructed in a sociological sense. ADM (talk) 21:28, 2 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Generalisation, but perhaps largely true. One must always remember Sokal affair was targeted at some of the worst postmodernist sociologists/philsophers, and not sociologists in general. --Tomsega (talk) 17:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Criticism section
The criticism section currently possesses no references. I therefore recommend some of these paragraphs for deletion. --Tomsega (talk) 17:32, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

I see that nearly 4 months later this has still not been addressed. More specifically, there are three citations in this section, the first Epistemological chicken and last Anti-Latour can be easily remedied as these references are clearly identifiable by full references in the Further Reading list. They only need footnotes inserted and then moving the citations from Further reading to References (I'm not sure how to do all this, as I'm new to wiki).

The third (middle) citation is much less obvious. But the paragraph should not be deleted until an effort has been made to identify a suitable reference. An early paper by John Law might be suitable (internet version: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/papers/law-notes-on-ant.pdf) Jim Kemeny 10:45, 27 December 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim Kemeny (talk • contribs)

Sociology of science
Thanks to SA for reverting my dopey edit. I didn't realise sociology of science redirects here. Surely that is the generic article, and "sociology of scientific knowledge" can belong in it. That way we can present a range of different schools of thought alongside each other, from different countries too. Itsmejudith (talk) 21:16, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Other relevant materials
Surely inclusion of this "section" entitled "Other relevant materials" should be reconsidered ; the Becker book is an embarrassment except to his adepts and at best belongs in the reading section. One "resource" is here twice. Pick one and add another or just remove the section. If the Further Reading section is to include video resources, please rename that section as per wp guidelines.

This article itself need not reflect the state of SSK in this one respect: incoherence.

G. Robert Shiplett 20:17, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Links
The article lists this link that I've been trying to run down:
 * 

I've tried variations: ( and ) but am coming up empty. I've tagged the link as dead. RedJ 17 (talk) 15:39, 13 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I removed the reference as I couldn't find it either... --Cic (talk) 10:09, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Where is sociology of science?
Is there no article on the sociology of science?

This article isn't it -- it doesn't mention Weber, mentions Merton only in so far as the "sociology of knowledge" rejects Merton's "sociology of science". It doesn't even seem to actually be about sociology -- that is, the study of groups of people.

It seems to be about a late 20th century movement in the sociology of science, centered in England. Has no one tried to write an actual "sociology of science" article?

Judging by the talk page, this article seems to have been abandoned ten years ago or so. If anyone is still watching this, just drop a note. CharlesGillingham (talk) 06:50, 1 July 2021 (UTC)