Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies

VOLUME 10 ISSUE 3

The International Journal of

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A Reflexive Calling Sociology and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge MARCELO FETZ AND LEILA C. FERREIRA

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A Reflexive Calling: Sociology and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge Marcelo Fetz, State University of Campinas, Brazil Leila C. Ferreira, State University of Campinas, Brazil Abstract: As a result of the classical sociological analysis of the scientific method as a way of consolidating the epistemic roots of social science rationality, sociology has developed a unique capacity of comprehending science through the scientific method. In this paper, we discuss the reflexive “vocation” of sociology, i.e., a special epistemic condition on the understanding of contemporary science held by sociologists. Sociology has initially pointed out the knowledge problem as an internal topic, a challenge to the development of a scientific way of thinking about society. Contemporary sociology has pointed out the knowledge problem as a general challenge for science as a whole, replacing the rational demarcation criterion for a new one, which is based on the social demarcation of knowledge. The Social Studies of Science, and specifically Edinburgh’s Strong Programme, have finally created a symmetrical sociology of scientific knowledge and have activated the classical reflexive expertise of sociology. Keywords: Axiological Neutrality, Social Demarcation, Expertise, Strong Program

Introduction

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his paper addresses the problem of methodological self-objectification in the social sciences and its possible impacts on contemporary sociological theories. Our main focus will be on the “knowledge problem” and on the ways in which sociologists have dealt with it from the classics onwards. We suggest the existence of a historical pathway for the rise and establishment of what we call the “critical vocation of sociology,”,i.e., an “epistemological calling” characterized by the presence of a special epistemological expertise concerned with the understanding of science by adopting scientific principles of investigation. The paper is organized as follows: the first section presents the rise of a critical vocation of sociology and the constitution of the knowledge problem in the classics of sociology; the second section addresses the diversification of the traditions of thought in sociology and the rise of what we call the crisis of traditional demarcation criterion; the third section presents sociology of scientific knowledge as being shaped by sociology’s critical vocation on science. The final section outlines the generalization of sociology’s reflexive vocation and the conceptualization of a demarcation criterion based on social boundaries.

The Critical Vocation of Sociology The search for objectivity, neutrality, and impartiality in the sociological field was an epistemological task faced mainly by classical theorists in the early days of sociology at the end of 19th century. Sociologists such as Max Weber (2006; 2014; 1947; 2001), Emile Durkheim (2002; 1938; 1995; 1984) and Karl Marx (1974; 1988; 1886) introduced the topic at the same time that they pointed out some possible answers to the “knowledge problem” in sociology. While understanding it as a theoretical-epistemological shortcoming of sociological reasoning, with impacts on the logical procedures, objectivity, and axiological neutrality of sociological ideas, the classics have taken the initial steps towards the development of a critical vocation of social science on science. Casual explanations, scientific verification of regularities, general theories and comprehensive studies of social actions were all subjected to the existence of a

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logical scientific foundation for the ideas of the new science of society.1As we see it, performing science in this historical context also meant performing a formal activity determined by systematic procedures usually coming from natural sciences. Without their use, there would be no science at all. Two central aspects should be mentioned about the classical knowledge problem in sociology. Firstly, the knowledge problem was initially related to the strengthening of social sciences’ objectivity in a period in which natural sciences were a model for scientific reasoning. Natural sciences appeared in the late 19th century as a pattern of thought to be followed by other scientists, including social scientists. Its logical procedures were general keys for scientific authority as well as an elementary “systematic boundary” for the collective acceptance of new social agents in the scientific community. Secondly, as a result of this first epistemological struggle for objectivity, sociology became aware of its singular “tacit expertise”, characterized by a especial way of understanding scientific knowledge as sociological and scientific matters. This second point, however, only achieved a final structure decades after the initial effort of classical sociologists’ inquiries about the rational foundation of social and natural sciences as a matter of fact. To deal with natural science’s scientific objectivity as a matter of fact was one of the outcomes behind the rise of a broad latent critical sense of sociology on science. Analytical epistemology was considered not only a foundational principle for social sciences rationale, but also a research subject which had to be comprehended by sociologists in its complexity and in its associations with the traditional subject/object dichotomy. It is important mentioning that there was no logical objection to analytical epistemology of natural sciences by sociologists, as traditionally imagined. The pioneers of sociology were mainly concerned with the “epistemological nature of sociological epistemology” rather than with the incapacity of sociology to epistemologically conceive the study of universal and a-historic phenomena, e.g., the capacity of sociology to deal with regularities and general laws of social phenomena. 2 The challenge was to manufacture an analogous or an equivalent rational foundational principle applied to the style of thinking proposed by the social sciences system of thinking and theories. Sociologists aimed to consolidate social science’s systematic epistemology at the same time they demanded full participation in the scientific “republic of letters”. Thus, the internal rational debate about the axiological neutrality in social sciences was experienced by sociologist not only as a theoretical challenge but also as a social laboratory for improving socialization and participation of sociologists in the scientific community. It was an open door for entering into a closed and restricted social world, i.e., a door to entering into a specific community of persons interested in the study of scientific matters of fact. Therefore, the existence of a “sociology of scientific epistemology” and a “sociology of philosophy of science” were the main results of a social struggle for recognition, credibility, and legitimacy of classical sociology as being a scientific way of thinking. Since they were far from novelist’s social circles and their style of thinking, social science’s “epistemological controversy” became an interesting way for sociologists to acquire scientific authority and credibility within the scientific community (Lepenies 1987). It was an important action towards the recognition of sociologists as social agents acting with legitimacy in the scientific circles. However, as the history of the field has shown us, it seems that this was not enough for sociologists to start a critical program of studies on science, since they were concerned with credibility issues rather than general scientific problems.

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S. Simon (1760-1825), A. Quetelet (1796-1984), and A. Comte (1798-1857) were also central characters for the emergence of sociology as a scientific discipline, especially for the constitution of the positivist sociological approach. For more details, see T. Bottomore and R. Nisbet (1979). 2 See Ringer (1969) for more details about the German intellectual environment, and Dolby (1971) for more details about dichotomies surrounding natural and social sciences.

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FETZ AND FERREIRA : A REFLEXIVE CALLING

The Reinvention of Demarcation and the Diversification of Science Studies Demarcation is one of the most traditional problems in the philosophy of science and, sometimes, sociology seems to be out of the boundaries limiting the space for science. Thus, sociology and sociologists reinvented some of the meanings of scientific demarcation between true beliefs and false beliefs in the twentieth century, demonstrating that science was also a place for politics, a marketplace of ideas, an exercise in meaning-making, an instrument of power, and a form of organized work (Jasanoff 2004). Differently from the classics, internal rational debates about the scientific status of sociological thinking have been replaced in contemporary sociology by strategies of reaching social credibility in the field of sociological studies. Resulting from the weakening of a “taken for granted” image of the validity of a rational demarcation criterion in science, sociology has opened new social spaces for the study of science, including both the social sciences and the natural sciences styles of thinking. Traditional examples of scientific precision, objectivity, and rationality have been evaluated predominantly as empirical research subjects instead of using normative principles. As a result, a scenario of “crisis” and a scenario of positive epistemological changes in sociology and in philosophy of science emerged simultaneously. The crisis of the so called positivism, the gradual strengthening of the critical rationalism after the set up of the Vienna Circle in 1922, the changes in the understanding of the scientific knowledge resulting only from rational choices, and the rise of new demarcation boundaries separating “science” from “non-science” are good examples of changes observed in the first half of the twentieth century.3For instance, Rudolf Carnap (1966; 1974), Karl R. Popper (1963; 1960), Imre Lakatos (1987; 1994), and A. F. Chalmers (1976; 1990) have claimed the existence of non-empirical singular a-historical universal principles as guiding scientific rationality. They have also pointed out the existence of new forms of formal demarcation between science and non-science while arguing that they have solved the classical problem of induction as initially presented by David Hume. Furthermore, they have highlighted the inexistence of rational explanations for the logic of scientific discovery or for the rise of scientific ideas, arguing that the “Eureka!” moment of science does not have any rational explanation and, as such, does not deserve special attention of scientists. According to them, scientific discoveries must result from the “exceptional genius” of some brilliant and isolated scientists. Popper, for instance, argued that no scientific discovery could be explained by scientific methods. Since they are products of a kind of “academic love”, scientific discoveries result from the exceptional commitment of scientists to science. In the following years, ideal images of science and idealized ways of thinking about science would be replaced by new collective and sociological ways of understanding science. Therefore, succeeding generations of sociologists and philosophers have gradually transformed the inflexibility of the theses supported by the Vienna Circle philosophers. In the 1930s, sociologists in the United States have emphasized the social ethos of science taking collective values, and both ethical and behavioral patterns of scientists living within a scientific community as a sociological dimension of analysis. The idea of a science understood as any other social institution, as pointed out by the first generation of sociologists concerned with science as a social sphere, although central to the reinvention of the meaning of traditional demarcation criterion, has not coped with the central importance of the role played by society in the process of shaping scientific ideas. Despite pointing out the existence of a science a bit closer to the dynamism of society, it seems to be that this first generation of sociologist has created a contradictory sociology of science or a weak demarcation principle of science in the sociological tradition, since the inexistence of tensions between science and society for that generation was unclear. Ludwik Fleck (1979) and his ideas about science are good examples of analysis 3

See Kraft (1966) for more details about the Vienna Circle.

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concerned with the tension between a science as being conditioned by social laws and the existence of scientific knowledge shaped by historical contexts. Consequently, traditions of thought such as sociology of science and sociology of knowledge conserved the exceptionality of science and the singularity of scientist’s genius conditions. Even though presenting a “weak programme” in sociology of science, Karl Mannheim (1985; 1974; 1957) and Robert K. Merton (1957; 1970) have played a central role in the process of sociologization of scientific activities and in the strengthening of a research program which has put science, scientists, and scientific community in the center of the sociological debate in the United States from the 1930s onwards (Fetz et al 2011). Later, philosophers such as Paul Feyerabend (2000; 1978; 1987) and Thomas S. Kuhn (1977; 1996; 2000) would radicalize the understanding of scientific knowledge and the analysis of scientific discovery processes. According to them, the understanding of scientific knowledge should be based on empirical observations and proved by historical facts and by the analysis of the social patterns shared by scientist living in community or specific research groups. Kuhn and Feyerabend argued that scientific discoveries were connected to specific historical conditions that actually shaped the ways in which reality was approached and represented by science and scientists. Moreover, they also pointed out that epistemology seems to be formally informed by science’s historiography. There is a huge diversity of possible explanations to the reasons behind why science has become one of the most fruitful academic issues in the first five decades of 20th century. Changes in the social organization of science in the years before the First World War (Kevles 1971); the professionalization of scientific activities during the years before and after the Second World War (MacLeod and MacLeod 1979); the impact generated by the publishing of Quantum Theory, as developed by Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Arnold Sommerfeld, and others (Jammer 1974); the big science of the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb (Hughes 2002); the introduction of science as a political tool as well as a basis for decision making processes (Rosenhead and Thunhurst 1982); post-war public sphere movements on ‘science for people’ reasons and purposes (Bell 2013). All these examples illustrate links between science and society and internal changes in science reasoning which impacted the organization of society, generating new sociological ideas about science. Therefore, sociology started to pay more attention to this new scientific phenomenon while expanding the classics conception about the origin and weak reliability of scientific objectivity and social neutrality. The Cavendish Laboratory set up in 1874 at The University of Cambridge is one of the best examples in the first decades of the 20th century. Names like J. D. Bernal, Joseph Needham and Conrad Hal Waddington deserve special attention from those who want to understand this interesting historical scenario. In Bernal’s (1939) “The Social function of science” scientists were acknowledged as being part of the fabric of the science-policy debate in contemporary society as Bernal argued that public and social usefulness of science were one of the conditioning elements of scientific activities and scientific ideas in the modern United Kingdom. The idea of social function of science was as innovative as it was controversial, as defended by Bernal and pointed out by some of his critics. Another scientist, Michael Polanyi (1962), criticized Bernal’s ideas by the clear connections with politics at the same time in which he was recreating an ideal image of science as being isolate from society: according to him, science was a kind of Republic governed by particular laws, stating that the autonomy of science and the autonomy of scientists had nonnegotiable principles. According to Polanyi, scientific activities must be kept inside internal laws in order for science to achieve a proper development of its ideas and knowledge. On the other hand, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1968; 1981) pointed out a different theory on the openness of science’s internal rationality. Wittgenstein’s mathematical philosophy introduced insights about how mathematical principles were related to the “outside world”. For him, the rationality of mathematics was to a certain extent opened to the empirical and behavioral everyday life reality, sometimes even conditioned by the life world. Moreover, his theory of

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meaning (or his picture theory of language) stated that scientific statements were meaningful only if they could be defined or empirically pictured in the real world. It was an early development of the theory of truth in philosophy, a very innovative theory of truth indeed, especially for sociologists. Impacts of his philosophy of mathematics on sociology are clear: mathematical statements could have their origins in empirical “forms of life”; they could be socially negotiated by real persons rather than shaped by reason or rationality. Furthermore, notions like “language games” and “forms of life” have introduced the opportunity of thinking about science as a place for social negotiation of ideas more than a place restricted to the application of theoretical knowledge. Back to the United States, topics like integrity and autonomy of science have also played an important role in the sociology of science. Robert Merton’s 17th century science and technology in England is a remarkable example of how this first generation of professional sociologists dealt with the links between science and society. Even though the scientific revolution has been analyzed as being a historical topic of research, social conditioning elements of science cannot be identified as sociological guiding dimensions for the comprehension of scientific knowledge in distant historical periods. A good example is Merton’s social norms of science, published in 1942. According to Merton (1957; 1970), four sets of institutional imperatives illustrate the social ethos of modern science: universalism, communalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. As we see it, Merton was not only presenting a description of science and its activities, but he was also proposing and supporting a specific kind of system of knowledge, a conception of what good science is. Social norms and social ethos of science, when stated by structural functionalism theories, seem to act not only as a theoretical outcome of sociology, but also as key elements to the consolidation and reproduction of specific scientific systems represented by individualistic and conservative theories. Thomas S. Kuhn (1957; 1977; 1996; 2000) presented his contributions on the genesis of scientific revolutions in the early 1960s. His ideas had central impacts on the formulation of a new demarcation criterion for science. Paradigmatic shifts and incommensurability within different scientific traditions has become a common place in history of science with Kuhn´s ideas, whose historical theory of knowledge had a side effect unimagined by the author. For example, Imre Lakatos (1987) and Karl Popper (1960) have dealt with new ways of demarcating science from non-science without guaranteeing active or positive roles to society on the development of true beliefs. Conversely, Kuhn has stated that science does not progress by linear accumulation of new knowledge. According to him, scientific changes are shaped by periodic revolutions called “paradigm shifts”, i.e., abrupt transformations in the nature of scientific enquiries characterized by the presence of new puzzle-solving games. Science generally presents three different stages, according to Kuhn: the first one characterizes the inexistence of any scientific paradigm; the second points out a stage called “normal science”, which is responsible for guiding scientists in their scientific enquiries; the third one highlights the rise of anomalous results which challenges the successful reproduction of normal science periods, originating what Kuhn called “revolutionary science”. During the revolutionary period, science is occupied by incommensurable rival paradigms, i.e., scientific paradigms with similar terminologies and equal conceptual frameworks, but with different aims and meanings for the same set of matters of fact. The central point here was how scientists must proceed with the evaluation of different scientific paradigms that cannot be compared with each other, given the incommensurability between them. In this way, relativism and irrationality have been presented as conceivable answers for the “kuhnian controversy”. In the first place, the possible ‘lack of rationality’ of Kuhn’s ideas highlights philosophical logic as a scientific principle, which is active for shaping science; conversely, in the second place, his potential relativism seems to highlight the possibility of new ways of understanding science, its knowledge and its systems of discovery without considering error and falsity as the only

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outcomes. Each answer had different implications on the meanings of the connections between science and society. Lack of rationality meant a closed door for new questions; relativism meant new possibilities for dealing with science reasoning and its systems of production and reproduction of ideas. Relativism and perspectivism were an open door for sociologists interested in the introduction of new explanation systems for science and its knowledge. Moreover, relativism meant more than the existence of “options available” for dealing with equal matters of fact following different analytical procedures. It also meant that social negotiation, scientific controversies, and subjectivity could play a decisive role in the process of scientific discovery, that what scientists do in their everyday life counts as constitutive elements of science. Thus, relativism was a kind of “irrational rational principle”. For sociology and for sociologists, relativism was a social turning point in the way that science could be comprehended as a social sphere producing reliable knowledge. The adoption of a relativistic principle by sociologists of science, therefore, was a reasonable way of solving the problem of scientific exceptionality and methodological idealism, a way of dealing with science without adopting a taken for granted image of the status of science in contemporary societies. As we can see, the crisis of scientific demarcation dominated the academic debate during the first half of 20th century. Sociologists, philosophers, historians and natural scientists, despite their divergences, undoubtedly have questioned the traditional ways of understanding science, its links with society and its exceptionality. Despite competing with traditional fields of scientific study of science, sociologists have introduced important innovations on the systematic study of science, demonstrating the relevance of non-rational facts and exterior factors of science as being active principles for the understanding of scientific ideas. In other words, attempts were made towards the recognition that the epistemic subject of science only makes sense when connected to the life world. It is under this perspective that the systematic study of scientific thinking may have been dissolved and pulverized into different conceptions and traditions of thought, transforming the science of science into different styles of knowledge which can be, at the same time, complementary and contradictory with each other, but never self-sufficient when taken as isolated analytical procedures.

Symmetry and Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Understanding scientific thinking and its connection with the social world adopting a different approach, a new sociological wave of studies claimed that the processes of scientific discovery should not be comprehended solely as a result of science’s internal logic.4The 1960s were definitely a turning point in the reorganization of the ways in which science was academically analyzed by social scientists. As pointed out previously, Thomas Kuhn’s “controversy” has reactivated an undeveloped sociological reflexive vocation, as initially observed in its classical period. New research groups, university departments, and research units dedicated to the study of science and society have flourished in different places all over Europe and United States. As a result of a new social and academic environment, making sense of science adopting a sociological perspective has developed new ways for the understanding scientific knowledge (Spiegel-Rosing 1977). Since the end of World War II, the role played by science in society as well as the changes in the public engagement of scientists have become a common fact in sociological debates (Salomon 1973; 1977). The role played by science in ‘world affairs’, for instance, was a central topic introduced by British scientists since the establishment of a committee of scientists in charge of developing Operational Research strategies for war purposes. Science has been applied as a tool for the improvement of war actions. Mathematical modeling, statistical analysis, 4

For details, see Fetz et al (2011a), Zuckermann (1988) and Yearley (1985; 2005).

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mathematical optimization on transportation, bombing, movement of troops, attack and defensive actions, and so on, were all fields of science dedicated to and conditioned by political and war attributions in the United Kingdom. Patrick Blackett, Cecil Gordon, Solly Zuckerman, C. H. Waddington, Owen Wansbrough-Jones, J. D. Bernal, Frank Yates, Jacob Bronowski, Freeman Dyson, and others, have worked directly on war affairs as well as advisers for decision-making processes regarding war issues based on scientific evidences. Therefore, a generation of scientists has learnt that ‘science’s white coats’ could be replaced by ‘political’ black suits’; politicians have also learnt the political advantages of wearing “science’s white coats”, especially into a democracy based on scientific (non)negotiable evidences. According to Simon Schaffer (1994; 1996; 1985) there were two standard images of what the sciences were at that time. The first image pointed out that scientists were absolutely especial people, that they were much more moral, much more virtuous, and much cleverer and that they could do things that nobody else could do. On the other hand, there was an equally powerful public image of science stating that sciences were organized by common sense, that they were just “cookery” raised to a fairly sophisticated art. Until the 1970s, the history of science only coped with biographies of remarkable scientists, understanding scientific discoveries as a result of the brilliant minds of extraordinary isolate scientists. Moreover, the procedures and axioms of science itself were not questionable by scientists and sociologists, since they were supporting an ideal image of what science was and on what science should be. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s “Leviathan and the air pump”, in a good example of a break down movement towards the self-evidence justification of science, introduced a new history of science based on empirical evidence.5 Pointing out questions like: “what happens when you apply the methods of scientific enterprises to themselves? What happens if you study what scientists do as scientifically as you possibly can? What happens if you apply to the most treasured beliefs the methods we use to make those very beliefs justifiable?”, a new science of sciences was about to be born and a new way for justifying the scientific enterprise was about to be created. Dialectical historical materialism and critical theory also played an important role in the emergence of new sociological insights on scientific knowledge and on scientists being recognized as social agents. Decades earlier, Karl Mannheim’s (1985; 1974; 1957) program on sociology of knowledge had shown that distinctions between true beliefs and false beliefs were rooted on social principles. Mannheim introduced the idea of ‘perspective’ in the treatment of knowledge, claiming that all sorts of knowledge should be determined existentially, even the true knowledge statements of sociology. Moreover, links connecting knowledge and the social world did not mean distortion or deformation of reality, as initially claimed by Marxist theories. Otherwise, it meant the existence of historical dimensions of determination shaping the function of thinking in the societal level structure. Nonetheless, Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge failed to provide a symmetrical analysis of scientific knowledge. According to him, science and its natural knowledge were not included in his historical model of understanding knowledge as being shaped by ideology. In this sense, if the reflexive calling of social science was a true fact of modernity, social studies of science were predestined to fulfill the task of understanding scientific knowledge adopting a symmetrical approach of analysis and finally satisfying the incomplete task suggested by the sociology of knowledge. C. P. Snow’s 1959 “two cultures controversy” appears as a second turning point in the activation process of the classical reflexive calling of sociology towards a new demarcation criterion of science. According to Snow (1998), the intellectual life of western societies was split into two cultures, the natural sciences and the humanities. Humanities were over-rewarded in the British culture since the Victorian era, according to him. Moreover, Snow aimed to highlight 5

Not only Shapin and Schaffer have introduced new ways of understanding science and its linkages with society during the 1970s. Barry Barnes, David Bloor, David Edge, Donald Mackenzie, Andrew Pickering, Harry Collins, Bruno Latour, and others, have published empirical studies about scientific controversies which showed the dark side of the moon of science.

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some contradictions about the public engagement of scientists, the role of science in world affairs and the lack of scientific knowledge demonstrated by British politicians. Scientists participating in political decision-making processes, according to Snow, had no idea about what they were doing since they had no idea of what public life and public engagement should be, nor did they know what science and the nature of its links with politics were. Politicians also were not enough skilled for dealing with the technical procedures presented by scientists and science endeavors (Ortolano 2009). Therefore, the 1960s were a proper moment for questioning science through the eyes of society, as we see it. On this subject, the University of Edinburgh has played an essential role by institutionalizing a new research Unit exclusively dedicated to subjects regarding science and society. The emergence of the Strong Programme in sociology of scientific knowledge demonstrates not only the development of the social studies of science in the 1960s, but it also symbolizes the historical scenario in which science came to be considered as a fundamental part of society. As pointed out by Harry Collins (2012), the existence of inseparable connections between science and society was not a direct result of Kuhn’s sociological imagination; neither was it the direct result of activities performed by the just founded Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh. It was the result of a widespread historical movement, a general and collective changing order which was taking place in the academic life after World War II. The classical vocation of sociology seems to be expanded to all domains of science after a massive historical event that reorganized the logic structuring science in the public sphere. The security of stable categories based on an ideal image of science has been replaced by the uncertainty of scientific definitions shaped by a changing social order. In this sense, the Science Studies Unit seems to be not the cause of a new system of thinking but the result of a new historical order. The Science Studies Unit (SSU) was set up in 1966 as an “experimental unit” in charge of dealing with the role of science in society adopting a broad critical sense. It was an experiment because no one knew exactly what should be the purposes behind the activities developed by the Unit and by its members. Initially, the SSU emerged as another natural science department section, just as another set of activities performed by a group of natural scientists. The role played by Conrad Hal Waddington (Robertson, 1977) is clear and well known by students and scholars working with social studies of science, especially at Edinburgh. Of course there is a significant difference between what Waddington had imagined as being the main tasks of SSU’s scholars and students and what David Edge, first director of the Unit, and colleagues have effectively done from 1966 onwards (Kelsey, 2013). David Bloor (2003), for instance, has said that he was not sure if Waddington in fact had what he had initially planned for the Unit. Waddington’s reasons as well as Waddington’s objectives for the Unit were also unclear, since he was participating in different scientific activities in which science was the main subject. In 1968, Waddington (1969) published a book exclusively dedicated to the study of possible connections between arts and science, stating general points about new ways for the understanding of science, but supporting the supremacy of science when compared to other spheres of society. The book was actually about the ‘impacts’ of science on arts, or about possible meaning connections between what he thought science should be and what he thought arts was. Regardless of his scientific desires for this new unit at Edinburgh, Waddington has created an ideal environment for interdisciplinary researchers interested in working with any kind of subject capable of putting science in contact with society – “science in world affairs” as he used to call the new group. “Knowledge and Social Imagery” summarizes the effort of the Edinburgh’ School in its experimental efforts. David Bloor (1991; 1983; 1997; 1973; 1982; 1981), together with his colleagues at Edinburgh University – and special attention must be directed to the ideas of Barry Barnes (1974; 1977) –, have established four analytical principles for the Strong Programme. They were created with the aim of providing a natural explanation for scientific ideas based on social, biological and psychological causes. The “causality principle” pointed out that the

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sociology of scientific knowledge should be based on causal explanation of true and false beliefs or on states of knowledge. According to Bloor, there will be a variety of explanations other than those exclusively based on social facts contributing to the production of beliefs. The “impartiality principle” emphasized that sociology of scientific knowledge should be impartial to true beliefs and false beliefs, to rational or irrational postulates, and to fruitful or sterile scientific ideas. The “symmetry principle” stated that the same sorts of causes must be applied to explanations of true beliefs and false beliefs. This principle distinguishes the Strong Programme from a “weak sociology of scientific knowledge”, i.e., a sociology of error which only explains scientific error as being caused by social interferences on the production of knowledge. Finally, the “reflexivity principle” stated that sociology of scientific knowledge should adopt a reflexive perspective. It is a logical principle which intended to avoid self-refutation of Strong Programme theoretical principles. Reflexivity was a component part of the rational basis of sociology of scientific knowledge: given that the Strong Programme was a scientific procedure, the sociology of scientific knowledge should be subject to the same analytical criteria used to explain any other kind of scientific rationale. Bloor’s four tenets gave rise to a new demarcation criterion useful to separate science from non-science: the “expertise criterion”. Later, Collins and Evans (2002) pointed out the existence of three waves of science studies: a positivistic wave, a social constructivist wave, and a reflexive wave. The first wave “began to run into shallow academic waters in the late 1960s with Kuhn’s book”. The second wave completely replaced the first wave and it emphasized that scientific knowledge was like any other forms of knowledge, and it continues to run today together with the third wave, according to them. The third wave appeared from the necessity of reconstructing scientific knowledge after the crisis of the internal logic of the classic demarcation criterion as presented by the philosophy of science. To the first wave, knowledge and truth were grounded in scientific and rational procedures; to the third wave, knowledge was based on expertise, and expertise is often grounded in experience and tacit knowledge. Expertise extends science into the public sphere, whereas access to knowledge and truth, according to the first wave, was strictly bound by scientists and science. The expertise model was based on different levels of public authority and on different levels of empirical practical recognition of authority and credibility of science and scientific activities. According to this wave, the “core-set” was made up of those scientists deeply involved in experimentation or theorization, which was directly relevant to scientific controversy debates. A core set is often a rather small group of scientists. The “coregroup” is a solidary group of scientists that usually emerges after a controversy has been settled for all practical purposes. The third wave of science studies, thus, highlights the scientific community as no longer playing any special part in the decision-making processes of science or in the definition of scientific discovery processes of science. Moreover, science and its knowledge are no longer an isolated institution of society. The third wave points out that political dimensions and technical dimensions of science are embedded with each other and certified specialists and uncertified specialists are at the same time members of the scientific community and of the public sphere. Finally, according to Collins and Evans, there are at least three types of expertise that characterize how deeply a sociological analysis could be: no expertise, interactional expertise and contributory expertise. In the first case, internalized expertise is not enough for sociologists interested in conducting sociological analysis on specialized scientific fields; in the second case, it means that there is enough expertise held by sociologists for interacting with the core set of experts into a specific field; in the third case, there is enough expertise to contribute to the science of the field being analyzed by sociologists. A good example is the gravitational wave research field (2013). Only few sociologists have enough expertise to interact and to contribute to the field as well as only few people have expertise to participate and to contribute to decisionmaking process based on the science of gravitational waves. In this sense, Collins has shown that public sphere participation in decisions informed by scientific knowledge is possible according to

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the expertise level held by individuals or group of agents. There is no rational boundary separating scientists from laypersons, rather there are social boundaries and social criteria defining the status of different kinds of possible contributions and suggestions when society faces a period of scientific controversy. As a result, sociology of scientific knowledge has blurred some frontiers that were usually built to demarcate the boundaries of science from non-science, claiming the existence of new frontiers based on the social life of science. The theoretical dimension of science was replaced by empirical everyday dimension of science, even though barriers separating science from other fields of society still remain operational. The rational dimensions of science have been replaced by the political dimensions of science, which are dynamically shaped by society. Certified specialists have faced the presence of authoritative non-certified specialists participating in political decision-making process based on scientific evidence, especially decisions regarding scientific controversies. Technical and political dimensions, thus, have become part of the vocabulary of science studies and the taken for granted logical demarcation criterion has been replaced by a phenomenological demarcation criterion permeated by contact zones between different fields of science and society. Science, in this way, has become a complex subject of analysis, and the centrality on its universality has been replaced by analysis concentrated on ambiguities, uncertainties, and complexities. Science and its ideas are, as shown by the sociology of scientific knowledge and by the expertise model, as alive as society is: a struggle between structure and agency.

Conclusions Classical sociology started a long-term tradition of analysis based on the reproduction of a constant concern on science in world affairs. Clearly, there was a “vocational calling” or a unique expertise guiding the sociological understanding of science and society since its foundation in the second half of 19th century. Sociology of scientific knowledge and the Strong Programme, as established in the 1960s at The University of Edinburgh, were academically ‘predestined’ to fulfil an old social science task: to deal with scientific knowledge using a symmetrical approach and to replace both the exceptionality of scientists and a taken for granted image of science by an empirical activity based on everyday life. In the end, science can also be a sophisticated art of cookery and sociology has also acquired the contributory expertise needed for dealing with science as a fact linked to society. This paper identifies the existence of two central turning points in the establishment of a science of sciences during the 20th century. The first turning point was created by the generation of scholars of the 1930s and it marked the emergence of a general crisis of modern science. The second turning point happened during the 1960s and it showed a variety of factors shaping the ways in which sociology and the philosophy of science have dealt with scientific knowledge. A new demarcation criterion based on social expertise was created years later by a new generation of social and natural scientists. Unable to differentiate experts from non-experts, expertise raised a new epistemological tool for sociologists, allowing them to deal with scientific activities adopting an analytical approach based on the uncertainty, the ambiguity, and the complexity of the relations of science and society. As shown by the expertise model, science cannot be separated from other social spheres such as politics, economy, and everyday life. Therefore, scientific boundaries have been blurred and a taken for granted image of science has been replaced by an empirical one, which was based on social negotiation of authority and on public engagement of non-experts in technical decision making processes. Surely, historical research, when applied to social sciences, has some important limitations that need to be properly addressed, and more empirical research is needed. Our aim in this paper was only to introduce new insights into old questions, such as the epistemological state of sociological knowledge and the status of scientific knowledge within sociological ideas. Further

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research is needed to reinforce some of the possible findings presented in this paper; we strongly recommend sociologists to pay more attention to sociology as an empirical and critical research subject, without direct support to taken for granted ideas and naturalized concepts that usually appear in the sociology of sociological perspectives. Moreover, we strong suggest the development of new sociological analysis of historical scientific subjects using the Strong Programme principles. Finally, the sociology of scientific knowledge has captured part of this prima facie hypothesis on the social demarcation of knowledge, an insight that has always been presented direct or indirectly in the sociological imagery since its foundation in the final quarter of the 19th century. As pointed out, the third wave of social studies of science has proposed a fruitful way of dealing with science not only as an isolated topic of research, but also as something permeated by society in its epistemological dimensions.

Acknowledgement The authors thank the reviewers for their comments and fruitful insights about this paper. We also would like to express gratitude to the São Paulo Research Foundation for funding this research (grant n. 2013/12895-2 and grant n. 2012/16899-0).

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS Dr. Marcelo Fetz: FAPESP Research Fellow, Sociology Department, State University of Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil Dr. Leila C. Ferreira: Full Professor, Sociology Department, State University of Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

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