Добавил:
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз: Предмет: Файл:
Real Science - What It Is and What It Means (Ziman, 2000).pdf
Скачиваний:
49
Добавлен:
28.10.2013
Размер:
1.93 Mб
Скачать

Real Science

What it is, and what it means

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.

J o h n Z i m a n is well known internationally for his many scholarly and popular books on condensed-matter physics and on science, technology and society. He was born in 1925, and was brought up in New Zealand. He took his DPhil at Oxford and lectured at Cambridge before becoming Professor of Theoretical Physics at Bristol in 1964. His research on the electrical properties of metals earned his election to the Royal Society in 1967. After voluntary early retirement from Bristol in 1982 he devoted himself to the systematic analysis and public exposition of various aspects of the social relations of science and technology, on which he is a recognized world authority. He was for many years chairman of the Council for Science and Society, and between 1986 and 1991 he headed the Science Policy Support Group. He is currently Convenor of the Epistemology Group.

To Joan: In Heart, Mind and Spirit.

Real Science

What it is, and what it means

J o h n Z i m a n

p u b l i s h e d by t h e p r e s s s y n d i c at e of t h e u n i v e r s i t y o f c a m b r i d g e

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

c a m b r i d g e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge, cb2 2ru, UK http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk 40 West 20th Street, New York, ny 10011–4211, USA http://www.cup.org

10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain

© John Ziman 2000

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without

the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2000

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

Typeface Lexicon (The Enschedé Font Foundry) 9/13pt. System QuarkXPress[se]

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Ziman, J. M. (John M.), 1925–

Real science : what it is, and what it means / John Ziman.

p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0 521 77229 X

1. Science–Philosophy. 2. Science–Methodology. I. Title.

q175.z547 2000

 

501–dc21

99–38905 cip

isbn 0 521 77229 X hardback

Contents

Preface ix

1 A peculiar institution 1

1.1Defending a legend 1

1.2Science as it is and does 2

1.3A peculiar social institution 4

1.4A body of knowledge 5

1.5Naturalism in the study of Nature 6

1.6Keeping it simple 8

2 Basically, it’s purely academic 12

2.1Framing the indefinable 12

2.2Narrowing the frame 13

2.3Research as inquiry 14

2.4Science in the instrumental mode 15

2.5Basic research as a policy category 17

2.6Fundamental knowledge as an epistemic category 19

2.7Out of pure curiosity 22

2.8Academic science as a culture 24

2.9Many disciplines in one science 25

3 Academic science 28

3.1The republic of learning 28

3.2Elements of the scientific ethos 31

3.3Communalism 33

3.4Universalism 36

3.5Disinterestedness, humility 38

3.6Originality 40

viContents

3.7Scepticism 42

3.8CUDOS institutionalized 44

3.9Specialization 46

3.10Avocation 49

3.11Science in society 52

4 New modes of knowledge production 56

4.1The academic mode 56

4.2Is science to be believed? 58

4.3What is happening in science? 61

4.4The advent of post-academic science 67

4.5An undramatic revolution 68

4.6Collectivization 69

4.7Limits to growth 71

4.8Exploiting knowledge 72

4.9Science policy 74

4.10Industrialization 77

4.11Bureaucratization 79

5 Community and communication 83

5.1What sort of knowledge? 83

5.2What are the facts? 85

5.3Eradicating subjectivity 87

5.4Quantification 88

5.5Instruments 90

5.6Experiment 93

5.7Trust 96

5.8Verification 98

5.9The personal element 102

5.10We are not alone 105

5.11Empathy 107

5.12Modes of communication 109

5.13Networking intellectual property 113

6 Universalism and unification 117

6.1Generalization and abstraction 117

6.2Classifying the ‘facts’ 118

6.3Systematics 122

6.4Theories as maps 126

6.5Maps as theories 128

6.6Formalization 132

Contents vii

6.7Mathematics 137

6.8Rationality 141

6.9Systematization 144

6.10Models and metaphors 147

6.11Scientific domains 151

7 Disinterestedness and objectivity 155

7.1Striving towards objectivity 155

7.2What makes science ‘interesting’? 156

7.3What makes science reliable? 157

7.4Interests and values 161

7.5Social interests in the natural sciences 163

7.6But who sets the research agenda? 165

7.7Disinterestedness in the human sciences 166

7.8Free from interests – or free to be interested? 170

7.9Problem solving in the context of application 172

7.10Objectivity or emancipation? 177

8 Originality and novelty 182

8.1Problems 182

8.2Projects 185

8.3Specialties 189

8.4Disciplines and their paradigms 192

8.5Getting down to fundamentals 198

8.6Normal science 200

8.7Who sets the problems? 204

8.8Interdisciplinarity 209

8.9Discovery 213

8.10Hypotheses 218

8.11Prediction 225

8.12Hypothetical entities 229

8.13Constructivism 232

8.14What do scientists have in mind? 239

9 Scepticism and the growth of knowledge 246

9.1The agonistic element 246

9.2Consensus – or just closure 253

9.3Codified knowledge 258

9.4Getting things wrong 266

9.5Mysteries, marvels and magic 269

9.6Epistemic change 273

viiiContents

9.7The evolutionary analogy 276

9.8Complexity and progress 282

10 What, then, can we believe? 289

10.1Understanding and explanation 289

10.2Life-world knowledge 292

10.3The epistemology of the life-world 296

10.4Cultural contexts 302

10.5Sciences, religions, and other belief systems 306

10.6Science and common sense 313

10.7Realism 316

10.8Unified by reduction 321

10.9Post-academic knowledge 327

Endnotes 331

Bibliography and author index 356 Index 385