On The Thoughts Of SSK Scientific Controversies

The research of scientific controversies started in the 1970 s and had since grown into the mainstream of research in the Sociology of scientific knowledge(SSK)field.Its representative research lines include the Interests Model and the Empirical Programme of Relativism(EPOR),one of both respectively attributed scientific knowledge to social interests from a macro perspective or revealed the negotiation and settlement mechanism of the controversy from a micro perspective to clarify their common knowledge constructivist claims.The entire process of the controversy was only analyzed descriptively.Although the research fruits of scientific controversy are outstanding,due to its many difficulties,its development had been slow in recent years.In view of this,it is more practical to respond to the controversies of the times,and turns to a normative research of scientific controversies,based on the "what" of scientific knowledge to conduct a normative research of “how”scientific controversies should be resolved.The purpose of this article is to briefly analyze and comment on the main work of SSK scientific controversies research.The article is mainly divided into four parts.The first part introduces the thought origin of SSK’s scientific controversies research,including a brief review of the Changes in the view of scientific controversies,the study of priority of scientific discovery serves as a prelude to scientific controversies research,and the rise of SSK scientific controversies.The second part which is the focus of this article mainly expounds the two representative programmes of SSK’s scientific controversies research—the Interests Model and EPOR.The Interests Model focused on the causes of scientific controversies,citing "interests" as its important explanatory resources to explain the cause and effect between scientific knowledge and broad social background.EPOR which given attention to the ending mechanism of scientific controversies,through a series of empirical case analysis,revealed the flexible characteristics of relevant interpretations in the early stages of scientific controversies and the social process of controversies resolution.The two programmes initiated the sociological deconstruction of scientific knowledge from the macro and micro approaches respectively,and the entire analysis process took an extremely strong descriptive position.The third part is a brief evaluation of the SSK scientific controversies,which can be regarded as the difficulty and innovation of this article.In turn,it carefully compares the differences(research perspective,method,position of relativism and attribution,etc.)and the similarities(sources of thoughts,"strong program" and society Realism,etc.)between the Interests Model and EPOR,points out the advantages and disadvantages of the SSK scientific controversies research,and summarizes and gives specific practical methods for conducting contemporary scientific dispute research,and further points out its many difficulties in theory and practice.Finally,in the concluding part,it is clearly pointed out that the descriptive research methods adopted by SSK’s scientific controversies research in the past are not enough to deal with the complex scientific controversy in the contemporary public domain.It needs to turn to a normative controversies research.And the author proposes his own related views.Needless to say,if we look at the development of scientific controversies research from a historical perspective,we will be surprised to find that it has undergone a dynamic process from normative to descriptive,and now begins to return to normative.From deductive syllogism in the Aristotelian era to logical positivism in the first half of the 20 th century,controversies over cognition or knowledge are clearly guided and resolved by normative principles(logic,experience,reason,etc.).This is an era of standardization and normalization.In the second half of the 20 th century,many normative principles were continuously deconstructed;in the 1970 s and 1980 s,some scholars who were represented by B.Barnes,D.Bloor,H.Collins and others SSK directly avoided the tradition of scientific philosophy,combined the history of science with sociology,only conducted descriptive research on scientific controversy,and did not make normative discussions.In the 21 st century,with the application of science and technology and the huge social impact brought by its own development,the current scientific controversies have become more complicated,and this descriptive research has been unable to meet urgent needs of contemporary society.At this time,it is necessary to advocate a normative controversies research.However,this does not mean that the previous descriptive research is negated.Only when the scientific controversy is described in sufficient detail,can we further draw reasonable normative principles.Therefore,the study on the SSK scientific controversies is undoubtedly of great significance to clarify the historical process of the development of scientific controversies research and to promote the normative shift of controversies research.