The Social Construction Of Scientific Exposition

Scientific text and discourse analysis is the latest empirical achievements of Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK for short). It's well known that all studies of SSK are developing the relativism-constructivism representation of science, and in this practice, text and discourse analysis carries out thoroughly such a constitutive standpoint as "there is nothing out of texts". That is, it no longer goes beyond scientists' texts and discourses and takes them as a medium which could transmit messages; it tries to describe and explain speaking actions as such with an aid of linguistics, semasiology and rhetoric, instead. By doing so. text and discourse analysis not only reveals how scientists use linguistic skills to construct their action characteristics and intellective world, but also oversets such a myth, i.e., "scientific proposition is inferred to be true whatever contexts are".The dissertation introduces and makes tentative comments on the studies of text and discourse analysis by Mulkay and Gilbert's York School, along the thread that shows this site's formation, development and trend. The frame is as follows:First of all, the dissertation demonstrates step by step the inevitability that text and discourse analysis becomes one site of SSK.① Before text and discourse analysis enters into the composition of SSK, three traditional ways for understanding science, which includes literary way, historic way and sociological way, hold that scientific knowledge enjoys the epistemological priority and scientific texts should be exempt from discourse analysis. This limitation then leaves space for text and discourse analysis to pioneer an approach under which scientific texts, equal to other narrative knowledge, are subject to discourse analysis.② Based on the examination of the postmodern linguistic philosophy and the theoretical and empirical evolvement of SSK, the author discusses the root causes that text and discourse analysis becomes one site of SSK.③ By examining the elaboration of York School on the discourse analysis approach, the dissertation proclaims the birth of this site.Secondly, the dissertation introduces the empirical study by Mulkay and Gilbert about the field of 'ox phos' in bioenergetics. They adopt delicate techniques in analyzing much literary products and data from interviews with scientists, showingscientists' linguistic pattern and rhetorical characteristics. They point out that scientists take two kinds of interpretative repertoires as tactics of organizing discourses. Besides, they identify the procedures and regulations applied when scientists construct discourse; therefore reveal how scientists construct their social world. By doing so, they implement the purport of "strong programme" exploring social base for scientific knowledge.Finally, based on the examination of text and discourse analysis, the dissertation evaluates its merits and insufficiency for SSK methodologically and theoretically. The author argues, its practice that brings scientific actions and beliefs into text and discourse is very succinct and skilful at showing the constructive nature of science. However, if the whole science is actually simplified to repertoires and words and analyzed in simple category of sociology, the rich and vivid process of scientific research would be concealed. Because SSK enters into the radical irony at the site of text and discourse analysis, the author then expresses her own view about the crux of the theoretical and practical dilemma of SSK and the trend of SSK. By discussing the contradiction between relativism core and empiricism methods of SSK, the author reveals the root of the dilemma that lies in the contradiction of SSK between the hermeneutics standpoint in ontology and the instrumental rationality in methodology. At the end of this dissertation, the author suggests, to propel the science studies forward, we'd better develop a kind of open rationality and an attitude of practice to understand science.