Real Science: What it Is and What it Means

by John Ziman

• ISBN13: 9780521772297
• ISBN10: 052177229X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-05-01
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Scientists and 'anti-scientists' alike need a more realistic image of science. The traditional mode of research, academic science, is not just a 'method': it is a distinctive culture, whose members win esteem and employment by making public their findings. Fierce competition for credibility is strictly regulated by established practices such as peer review. Highly specialized international communities of independent experts form spontaneously and generate the type of knowledge we call 'scientific' - systematic, theoretical, empirically-tested, quantitative, and so on. Ziman shows that these familiar 'philosophical' features of scientific knowledge are inseparable from the ordinary cognitive capabilities and peculiar social relationships of its producers. This wide-angled close-up of the natural and human sciences recognizes their unique value, whilst revealing the limits of their rationality, reliability, and universal applicability. It also shows how, for better or worse, the new 'post-academic' research culture of teamwork, accountability, etc. is changing these supposedly eternal philosophical characteristics.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
A peculiar institution	1	(11)
Defending a legend	1	(1)
Science as it is and does	2	(2)
A peculiar social institution	4	(1)
A body of knowledge	5	(1)
Naturalism in the study of Nature	6	(2)
Keeping it simple	8	(4)
Basically, it's purely academic	12	(16)
Framing the indefinable	12	(1)
Narrowing the frame	13	(1)
Research as inquiry	14	(1)
Science in the instrumental mode	15	(2)
Basic research as a policy category	17	(2)
Fundamental knowledge as an epistemic category	19	(3)
Out of pure curiosity	22	(2)
Academic science as a culture	24	(1)
Many disciplines in one science	25	(3)
Academic science	28	(28)
The republic of learning	28	(3)
Elements of the scientific ethos	31	(2)
Communalism	33	(3)
Universalism	36	(2)
Disinterestedness, humility	38	(2)
Originality	40	(2)
Scepticism	42	(2)
CUDOS institutionalized	44	(2)
Specialization	46	(3)
Avocation	49	(3)
Science in society	52	(4)
New modes of knowledge production	56	(27)
The academic mode	56	(2)
Is science to be believed?	58	(3)
What is happening in science?	61	(6)
The advent of post-academic science	67	(1)
An undramatic revolution	68	(1)
Collectivization	69	(2)
Limits to growth	71	(1)
Exploiting knowledge	72	(2)
Science policy	74	(3)
Industrialization	77	(2)
Bureaucratization	79	(4)
Community and communication	83	(34)
What sort of knowledge?	83	(2)
What are the facts?	85	(2)
Eradicating subjectivity	87	(1)
Quantification	88	(2)
Instruments	90	(3)
Experiment	93	(3)
Trust	96	(2)
Verification	98	(4)
The personal element	102	(3)
We are not alone	105	(2)
Empathy	107	(2)
Modes of communication	109	(4)
Networking intellectual property	113	(4)
Universalism and unification	117	(38)
Generalization and abstraction	117	(1)
Classifying the `facts'	118	(4)
Systematics	122	(4)
Theories as maps	126	(2)
Maps as theories	128	(4)
Formalization	132	(5)
Mathematics	137	(4)
Rationality	141	(3)
Systematization	144	(3)
Models and metaphors	147	(4)
Scientific domains	151	(4)
Disinterestedness and objectivity	155	(27)
Striving towards objectivity	155	(1)
What makes science `interesting'?	156	(1)
What makes science reliable?	157	(4)
Interests and values	161	(2)
Social interests in the natural sciences	163	(2)
But who sets the research agenda?	165	(1)
Disinterestedness in the human sciences	166	(4)
Free from interests-or free to be interested?	170	(2)
Problem solving in the context of application	172	(5)
Objectivity or emancipation?	177	(5)
Originality and novelty	182	(64)
Problems	182	(3)
Projects	185	(4)
Specialties	189	(3)
Disciplines and their paradigms	192	(6)
Getting down to fundamentals	198	(2)
Normal science	200	(4)
Who sets the problems?	204	(5)
Interdisciplinarity	209	(4)
Discovery	213	(5)
Hypotheses	218	(7)
Prediction	225	(4)
Hypothetical entities	229	(3)
Constructivism	232	(7)
What do scientists have in mind?	239	(7)
Scepticism and the growth of knowledge	246	(43)
The agonistic element	246	(7)
Consensus-or just closure	253	(5)
Codified knowledge	258	(8)
Getting things wrong	266	(3)
Mysteries, marvels and magic	269	(4)
Epistemic change	273	(3)
The evolutionary analogy	276	(6)
Complexity and progress	282	(7)
What, then, can we believe?	289	(42)
Understanding and explanation	289	(3)
Life-world knowledge	292	(4)
The epistemology of the life-world	296	(6)
Cultural contexts	302	(4)
Sciences, religions, and other belief systems	306	(7)
Science and common sense	313	(3)
Realism	316	(5)
Unified by reduction	321	(6)
Post-academic knowledge	327	(4)
Endnotes	331	(25)
Bibliography and author index	356	(29)
Index	385