Sociology of Science
Ralte, Rodinmawia. The
Interface of Science and Religion: An Introductory Study. New Delhi: Christian
World Imprints, 2017.
Murphy,
Raymond. The Sociological Construction of Science Without Nature, Sociology,
(Vol.28, No. 4, November, 1994), 57.
Henry,
Sarojini. The Encounter of Faith and Science in Inter-Religious Dialogue. New
Delhi: ISPCK, 2005.
Sociology
of science deals with the social conditions and effects of science and with the
social structures and processes of scientific activity. Science is a cultural
tradition, preserved and trans
mitted from generation to generation partly
because it is valued in its own right and partly because of its wide
technological applications. The Sociology of science seeks to establish as
specifically and precisely as possible the social conditions under which
science makes maximal progress. Sociologist of science has concentrated on this
characteristic of science as a tradition and as an institution.
Science
can err and it has erred. We have seen that science is not free from the
influence of society, religion and personal inclination and emotion of
scientific researches which make scientific research subjective at least
partially. Both science and religion are the products of human beings and by
nature limited thence should be taken together as complementing rather than
competing, enriching one another than encroaching, having dialogical
relationship as both are attempts to unearth the inexhaustible reality of God
and his creation.
According
to Pierre Bourdieu, a French Sociologist, and Philosopher, the sociology of
science rests on the postulate that the objective truth of the product- even in
the case of that very particular product, scientific truth- lies in a particular type of social conditions of production, or more precisely, in s
determinate state of the structure and functioning of the scientific field. The
pure universe of even the purest science I a social field like any others, with
its distribution of power and its monopolies, its struggles and strategies,
interests and profits, but it is a field in which all these invariants take on
specific forms.
Development of Sociology of Science
The Sociology of science has undergone considerable growth and
diversification in recent years. Early sociology of science was developed
within philosophical debates regarding the nature of science and the social
bases of knowledge in general. Karl Mannheim and Max Scheler in the 1920s gave these
discussions on especially sociological bent. In the 1930s, the theme was made
into explicit sociology of science both by Marxists and by the functionalist
Robert Merton, and both approaches were followed up during the next 30 years.
Sociology of science became flourishing research area in the early the 1960s, with the publication of works by a number of scholars, such as Derek
Price, Thomas Kuhn, Joseph Ben-David, and Warren Hagstrom. In the 1970s,
sociology of science burgeoned into a variety of approaches: citation and
network studies, conflict theory, social constructivism,
ethnomethologically-influence studies of laboratory life and others.
The idealized functionalist image of science has largely given way
more to the critical, relativist, and highly empirical approaches to science. Today, sociology of science is becoming one
of the blooming disciplines in sociology, and its contributions in terms of
estimating the influence of science on social conditions and vice versa is
commendable.
Social Construction of Science
The social construction of science means the social influences on
science and scientific theories, research and discoveries, and on the content of
scientific knowledge. The predominant conception of science has been one of the
accumulations of impartial, objective knowledge of nature by disinterested
scientists. This conception is associated with an image of science as conflict-free and as the reflection of natural reality. In reaction to this conception,
contemporary studies in the sociology of science have drawn attention to the
was scientific knowledge is socially constructed and to the relative rather
than the absolute character of that knowledge. The age-old view that science is
objective, rational and the only reliable path to knowledge is now challenged
by many sociologists of science. However, the use of the term ‘social
construction’ in science studies started to become common in the mid-1970s.
The philosopher Ian Hacking has discussed and criticized different
uses of the concept of social construction. Hacking (1999) takes apart and
analyzes the many and varying meanings of social construction. According to
Hacking, the concept is routinely used in a way that makes it devoid of
meaning. ”The phrase has become code. Hacking found three main types:
contingency, nominalism, and external reasons for stability (Sismondo 2004).
The first kind of social constructivism essentially comes to mean that things
could have been different – there was nothing inevitable about the current
state of affairs and it was not determined by the nature of things. The second
kind of social constructivism focuses on the politics of categories and points
to how classifications are always human impositions rather than natural kinds.
The third kind of social constructivism points to how stability and success in
scientific theories are due to external, rather than evidential, reasons.
“Society” has been ruined by sociologists and social constructivists,
as they have made sure that it has been purged of what Bruno Latour calls not
objects, but ”nonhumans.” If the social constructivist is to be believed, says
Latour, only social relations exist in society. Furthermore, as nature is not
awarded a reality status in its own right, but is simply a series of social
inscriptions, the entire project becomes tautological. Latour thus disputes
what he calls a dualist paradigm and seeks to avoid a subject-object
distinction altogether. As ”society” has become tainted, he prefers instead the
notion of ”collective.” This collective is extended to include nonhumans as
well as humans. Latour’s society is constructed, but not socially constructed.
Sociologists insisted that our knowledge is socially constructed
and this shakes scientific foundations and religious beliefs as well. Scientific
research is also subject to dogma and clinging to old theories. Scientific
theories are theory-laden, not theory-free. Scientists are now talking less of
definite laws but more of probability, less determinism, more of hypothetical
theories, less of truth, and more of models and metaphors.
Get This Book
The Interface of Science and Religion
An introduction to the interface of science and religion. It includes a wide range of subjects related to science and religion, such as, scientific explanations of the universe, scientific discoveries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; theories on the origin of the universe; philosophy and sociology of science with the highlights on the contributions of some of the philosophers and sociologists of science. At the end, it presents the whole crux of the topic with a discussion on the theological responses to science and religion dialogue.
Interfaith dialogue has today become an existential necessity for global peace and prosperity. Such dialogue requires some basic common ground. In this fascinating book, Indian Christian scholar Sarojini Henry proposes the encounter between religion/theology and science as a common basis for dialogue between people from different faith backgrounds. Henry remarks that for a long time, under the influence of modern thinking, science was assigned a cognitive superiority, because its tenets were said to be subject to verification, while religion, which was often taken to be subjective, was dismissed by many as irrational. But things are changing today. Henry notes that in recent decades, the conversation between science and religion has become a prominent discourse, engaging the attention of scientists, philosophers and theologians.
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