Abstract
Popularisation has traditionally been considered as the transmission of scientific knowledge from scientists to the lay public for purposes of edification, legitimation and training. Typically, it is seen as a low status activity, unrelated to research work, which scientists are often unwilling to do and for which they are ill-equipped, as the two Dutch symposia mentioned by Bunders and Whitley (1) exemplify. Essentially, popularisation is not viewed as part of the knowledge production and validation process but as something external to research which can be left to non-scientists, failed scientists or ex-scientists as part of the general public relations effort of the research enterprise. The critical activity of the modern scientists in this view, commonly held by many researchers in the natural sciences, is to produce true knowledge about the world and communicate findings to fellow initiates. Dissemination to other groups is at best a subsidiary activity which does not enhance, and may actually decrease, a researcher’s scientific reputation and prestige.
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Note and References
Popularisation Within the Sciences: The Purposes and Consequences of Inter-Specialist Communication’, in this volume. In referring to contributions to the present book in this paper, I shall simply cite the author(s) name in the text.
As discussed in E. Yoxen, ‘Giving Life a New Meaning: The Rise of the Molecular Biology Establishment’ in N. Elias et al. (eds.) Scientific Establishment and Hierarchies, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 6, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982.
See, for example, the discussions in E. Katz and P. Lazarsfeld, Personal Influence, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1955; E. Katz, ‘The Two-Step Flow of Communication’, Public Opinion Quarterly 21 (1957), 61–78.
The reform of the secondary school system in many countries in the late 18th and 19th century, and related reform of teacher training and the universities, provided the basis for intellectuals to control access to jobs and set standards of intellectual competence. This is argued in more detail in R. Whitley, The Intellectual and Social Organisation of the Sciences, Oxford University Press, 1984, ch. 2. See also: R. Collins, Conflict Sociology, New York: Academic Press, 1975, pp. 487–492;C. E. McClelland, State, Society and University in Germany 1700–1914, Cambridge University Press, 1980, chs. 4 and 5.
As in T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, second edition, University of Chicago Press, 1970; ‘Second Thoughts on Paradigms’ in F. Suppe (ed.) The Structure of Scientific Theories, University of Illinois Press, 1975.
As characterised in many papers of Merton. See: R. K. Merton, The Sociology of Science, University of Chicago Press, 1973, ch. 13.
As in Kuhn, op. cit., 1970, note 5.
See, for instance, K. Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge, Oxford: Pergamon, 1981; B. Latour, ‘Is it Possible to Reconstruct the Research Process?: Sociology of a Brain Peptide’ in K. Knorr et al. (eds.) The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 4, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980; H. Martins, ‘The Kuhnian “Revolution” and its Implications for Sociology’ in T. J. Nossiter et al. (eds.) Imagination and Precision in the Social Sciences, London: Faber and Faber, 1972; E. Mendelsohn, ‘The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge’, in E. Mendelsohn et al. (eds.) The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook 1, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1977.
For a discussion of some recent literature on this and related points, see: R. Whitley, ‘From the Sociology of Scientific Communities to the Study of Scientists’ Negotiations and Beyond’, Social Science Information 22 (1983), 681–720.
As elaborated in P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958.
This has been extensively discussed in the context of trans-cultural notions of rationality and explanation. See, for instance, the papers in B. Wilson (ed.) Rationality, Oxford: Blackwells, 1970 and Steven Turner, Sociological Explanation as Translation, Cambridge University Press, 1980.
L. Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, University of Chicago Press, 1979, p. 111.
Latour, op. cit., 1980, note 8.
Yoxen, op. cit., 1982, note 2 and E. Yoxen, ‘Life as a Productive Force’, in L. Levidow and R. M. Young (eds.) Science, Technology and the Labour Process, London: CSE Books, 1981.
See, in particular, K. Knorr-Cetina, op. cit., 1981, note 8; B. Latour and S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life, London: Sage, 1979.
For an account of how the early leaders of the British Association for the Advancement of Science used its Annual Meetings to promulgate a particular conception of science and knowledge, see: J. Morrell and A. Thackray, Gentlemen of Science, Oxford University Press, 1981, ch. 5.
See the discussion by M. Mulkay, ‘Some Aspects of Cultural Growth in the Natural Sciences’, Social Research 36 (1969), 22–52.
See, for instance, D. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain, London: Allen Lane, 1976; R. Porter, The Making of Geology, Cambridge University Press, 1977.
Exemplified by the many recent empirical studies of laboratories and controversies as well as by historical accounts. In addition to the works cited in notes 8 and 18, see also: H. M. Collins, ‘Stages in the Empirical Programme of Relativism’, Social Studies of Science 11 (1981), 3–10; K. Knorr et al (eds.) The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980; R. Whitley, ‘Types of Science, Organisational Strategies and Patterns of Work in Research Laboratories in Different Scientific Fields’, Social Science Information 17 (1978), 427–447.
C. Jungnickel, ‘Teaching and Research in the Physical Sciences and Mathematics in Saxony, 1820–1850’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 10 (1979). On the institutionalisation of physics as a distinct field and its changing nature, see: J. L. Heilbron, ‘Experimental Natural Philosophy’ in G. S. Rousseau and R. Porter (eds.) The Ferment of Knowledge, Cambridge University Press, 1980; R. H. Silliman, ‘Fresnel and the Emergence of Physics as a Discipline’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 5 (1975), 137–162.
As emphasised by, among others, Knorr-Cetina, op. cit., 1981, note 8 and Latour and Woolgar, op. cit., 1979, note 15. See also the discussion in R. Whitley, op. cit., 1983, note 9.
Scientific fields are considered as particular kinds of work organisations in which research is controlled and coordinated through the competitive pursuit of public reputations for contributions to collective goals in Whitley, op. cit., 1984, note 4, ch. 1. Thus reputational organisations are seen here as constituting the primary social units of knowledge production and validation.
Fleck, op. cit., 1978, note 12, pp. 111–119.
On the parapsychologists’ battles for respectability, see: H. M. Collins and T. J. Pinch, ‘The Construction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific is Happening’, in R. Wallis (ed.) On the Margins of Science, Keele, Staffordshire: Sociological Review Monograph No. 27, 1979; S. H. Mauskopf and M. R. McVaugh, ‘The Controversy over Statistics in Parapsychology 1934–1938’, in S. Mauskopf (ed.) The Reception of Unconventional Science, Boulder, Colorado: Westview, 1979.
As well as Yearley in this volume, see: M. Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organisation, London: Heinemann, 1979, chs. 1, 2 and 3.
Morrell and Thackray, op. cit., 1981, note 16.
On the restricted and “arithmomorphic” nature of economics, see: N. Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, Harvard University Press, 1971, ch. 11; T. W. Hutchison, Knowledge and Ignorance in Economics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1977, chs. 3 and 4; P. Jenkin, Micro-economics and British Government in the 1970s, Manchester University, unpubl. Ph.D thesis, 1979, ch. 2; H. Katouzian, Ideology and Method in Economics, London: Macmillan, 1980, chs. 3 and 7. I discuss some of the peculiarities of modern economics in chs. 5 and 6 of my Intelectual and Social Organisation of the Sciences, Oxford University Press, 1984. See also, A. S. Eichner (ed.) Why is Economics not Yet a Science? London: Macmillan, 1983.
Yoxen, op. cit., 1982, note 2.
Emphasised by Collins, Latour and others referred to in notes 8, 15 and 19.
See, for example, the papers in D. Bell and I. Kristol (eds.) The Crisis in Economic Theory, New York: Basic Books, 1981; also: P. Deane, ‘The Scope and Method of Economic Science’, The Economic Journal 93 (1983), 1–12.
Kuhn, op. cit., 1970, note 5, pp. viii, 12, 42–43.
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Whitley, R. (1985). Knowledge Producers and Knowledge Acquirers. In: Shinn, T., Whitley, R.D. (eds) Expository Science: Forms and Functions of Popularisation. Sociology of the Sciences a Yearbook, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5239-3_1
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