Reflexivity Problem Of Sociology Of Scientific Knowledge And Its Solutions

Since the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment rationality has brought the freedom of thinking and a large proliferation of ideas, especially promote the rapid development on natural science. The development of natural science not only changes the living style of human being but also the human society. For example the natural science research has evolved from the workshop of several people to the cooperation of large research institutions. The cooperation of many groups inevitably requires the change of society structure and social organization. In general most changes are good to the human society. But some changes do cause problems. The biggest one is the huge barrier between natural science and social science. This separation is the main reason that we have so many ecology and energy problems now. Many people have expressed the worries on the social effects caused by science development. Russell has explicitly stated his concern in the beginning of modern natural science. After the explosion of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki many people started to think about the solutions of the negative impacts of the modern science and technology.The social reconsideration of modern science rooted on the social research on positivism. The representative is the Merton school of thought. Robert K. Merton focused his scientific sociology research on the kinetics of science and its effects on the society. He took a close look at the scientific organization, scientific evaluation system and scientific rewarding system from the angle of utilitarianism. His scientific sociology does not consider the scientific theories and facts because he thinks those entities are the direct reflections of natural entities. The social explanations of those entities are against the preconditions of Epistemology and ontology. Research on scientific organizations, in his mind, possesses some generic scientific spirit. This spirit can accelerate the scientific advance. In general Merton's research still followed the direction and rules of traditional sociology. But his exploration on the natural science, the most influential and forceful contemporary knowledge form opened the doors for further research.The philosophical reconsideration of modern science comes from the positivism and logic empiricism. Its evolution to Thomas Kuhn's relativism, however, can only point to the ultimate destruction of all definite scientific topics and concepts. Thus from the 1960s the logic empiricism is under the attacks of Kuhn's Historicism, Quine's Holism, Feyerabend's Anarchism. These theories did not consider the experience is the most important factor in scientific development but acknowledges the experience's effect in social construction. They considered the effect of experience on scientific development in the perspective of the larger social and historical environment.The Edinburgh school of thoughts, lead by David Bloor, proposed the sociology of scientific knowledge in late 1970s. They think the scientific knowledge come only from the social construction and not from the nature. This radical theory aroused intensive influence and discussion in scientific society. The Strong Programme proposed by them believes all human knowledge and ideas are constructed socially. They use casual relation to explain the generation of knowledge in the sociology point of view. They emphasize the importance of knowledge's fairness, symmetry and reflexivity. However, as a part of human knowledge the sociology of scientific knowledge should also be social constructive. It inevitably ends into a dilemma of Dual opposition between relative methodology and positivism ontology.The Discourse Analysis proposed by York school of thoughts is an attempt to solve this dilemma. They studied the scientific conversation and text forms and discovered the text forms follow established paradigms. The empirical research and text forms used in sociology are emulations of scientific text and conversation paradigms. In order to avoid the dual opposition dilemma the traditional conversation and text paradigms used have to be abandoned. The new paradigms should allow both subject and object be put inside a single text. The discourse analysis theory, however, is not operational. It is hard to read because there are no established subject and object. Another flaw is that the analysis of text forms could not truly reflect the scientific development process and just becomes only rhetoric research.The latter attempt to solve the dilemma is to expand the object of research on science from the scientific theories only to both theories and the scientific practice. The practical sociology of scientific knowledge emphasizes the scientific activities and procedures. It proposes a mixed scientific ontology which includes many non-uniform factors. It also emphasizes dialectical methodology, irreversible property of practice and the locality of knowledge. The practical sociology of scientific knowledge is more close to the real scientific practice and understanding processes. Every form of knowledge is basically an expression of some practice. One single theory is not enough to illustrate various practical processes. The traditional view of scientific knowledge is a view of dual opposition. It either emphasizes the natural entities or the social existences. It never covers both. The practical view of scientific knowledge abandoned the preference on the scientific theories and took the view of Epistemological holism. It not only emphasizes the importance of real natural and social entities but also highlights the importance of people's initiative. The interaction between people and nature and society is bi-directional and irreversible.This thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter one introduces the theory and methods of research of sociology of scientific knowledge, Chapter two discusses the reflexivity dilemma faced by the sociology of scientific knowledge, Chapter three analyzes one solution of reflexivity dilemma -discourse analysis and new text forms, Chapter four analyzes another reflexivity dilemma solution - sociology of scientific knowledge focused on scientific practice, Chapter five gives the reviews of the reflexivity of sociology of scientific knowledge.