II.2 The Strengths of the Strong Programme

Philosophy of the Social Sciences

Volumn 11, Issue 2, 1981, Pages 199-213

  Bloor, David ^a  

^a Science Studies Unit   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84972658602     PISSN: 00483931     EISSN: 15527441     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/004839318101100206     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Arnold Thackray, ‘“The Business of Experimental Philosophy”. The Early Newtonian Group and the Royal Society’, Actes du XXIe Congrès Internationald’ Histoire des Sciences. 3, 1970-71, 153-59.
2. For a valuable analysis of the various responses to this dispute see S. Shapin, ‘Licking Leibniz’ (essay review of A. R. Hall, Philosophers at War), History of Science, Dec. 1981 (forthcoming).
3. See for example M. C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689-1720, Ithaca 1976.
4. S. Shapin, ‘Of Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes’, Isis, 72, 1981.
5. S. Schaffer, Newtonian Cosmology and the Steady State, unpublished PHD thesis, Cambridge University, 1980, Chap. vii.
6. Mary Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science, Brighton 1980, p. 190. Mary Hesse, The Structure of Scientific Inference, London 1974.
7. P. Forman, ‘Weimar Culture, Causality and Quantum Theory, 1918-1927. Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a Hostile Intellectual Environment’, in R. McCormmach.ed., Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, vol. 3, 1971,1-115.
8. P. Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. P. P. Wiener, Princeton 1954.
9. J. Farley and G. L. Geison, ‘Science, Politics and Spontaneous Generation in Nineteenth Century France: The Pasteur-Pouchet Debate’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 48, 1974, 161-98.
10. Dov Ospovat, ‘Perfect Adaptation and Teleological Explanation: Approaches to the Problem of the History of Life in the Mid-nineteenth Century’, Studies in the History of Biology, 2, 1978, 33-56.
11. J. Dean, ‘Controversy Over Classification: A Case Study from the History of Botany’, in B. Barnes and S. Shapin (eds.), Natural Order, Historical Studies of Scientific Culture, Beverly Hills and London 1979, Chap. 9.
12. For example see D. MacKenzie, ‘Statistical Theory and Social Interests: A Case Study’, Social Studies of Science, 8, 1978, 35-83.
13. S. Shapin, ‘The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy and Social Interests in the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes’, in R. Wallis (ed.), On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, Sociological Review Monographs, 27, 1979, pp. 139-78.
14. S. Shapin, ‘Phrenological Knowledge and the Social Structure of Early Nineteenth-century Edinburgh’, Annals of Science, 32, 1975, 219-43.
15. E. Frankel, ‘Corpuscular Optics and the Wave Theory of Light: The Science and Politics of a Revolution in Physics’, Social Studies of Science, 6, 1976, 141-84.
16. J. Harwood, ‘The Race-Intelligence Controversy: A Sociological Approach. I—Professional Factors; II—External Factors’, Social Studies of Science, 6, 1976, 369-94; 7, 1977, 1-30.
17. R. S. Turner, ‘University Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany, 1760-1806’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 3, 1971, 137-82.
18. R. S. Turner, ‘The Growth of Professorial Research in Prussia, 1818-1848—Causes and Contexts’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, 3, 1971, 137-82.R. S. Turner, ‘University Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany, 1760-1806’, in L. Stone (ed.), The University in Society, Oxford 1975, vol. ii, 495-531.
19. G. Allen, ‘Naturalists and Experimentalists: The Genotype and the Phenotype’, Studies in the History of Biology, 3, 1979, 179-209.
20. T. Brown, ‘The College of Physicians and the Acceptance of Iatromechanism in England, 1665-1695’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 44, 1970, 12-30.
21. T. Brown, ‘From Mechanism to Vitalism in Eighteenth-Century English Physiology’, Journal of the History of Biology, 7, 1974, 179-216.
22. D. W. Hamlyn, The Psychology of Perception, London 1969.
23. K. Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology, London 1936, p. 76.
24. L. Laudan, Progress and Its Problems. Towards a Theory of Scientific Growth, London 1977.
25. For a fuller account of why I speak of a contrast between causal and teleological styles of explanation, and my reasons for imputing teleological theories to Lakatos and others who treat rationality as a self-propelling phenomenon, see D. Bloor, ‘Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 4, 1973, 173-91.
26. I have taken the term ‘natural rationality’ from S. B. Barnes, ‘Natural Rationality: A Neglected Concept in the Social Sciences’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 6, 1976, 115-26.
27. R. L. Gregory, Concepts and Mechanisms of Perception, London 1974.
28. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande, Oxford 1937.
29. As evidence that this confusion is endemic and does not merely represent a momentary lapse, see the following review of Laudan's book: S. B. Barnes, ‘Vicissitudes of Belief, Social Studies of Science, 9, 1979, 247-63.
30. As well as the previous references to their work, see B. Bames, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge, London 1977.
31. D. Mackenzie, Statistics in Britain, 1865-1930. The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, Edinburgh 1981.
32. S. Shapin, ‘Social Uses of Science’, in G. Rousseau and R. Porter (eds.). The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-century Science, Cambridge 1980. Also, the very valuable collection of papers in B. Barnes and S. Shapin (eds.), Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture.
33. M. Hesse, The Structure of Scientific Inference, 1980, note 4, Chapters 1 and 2.
34. D. Bioor, ‘Polyhedra and the Abominations of Leviticus’, British Journal for the History of Science, 11, 1978, 245-71. This is a sociological reading of I. Lakatos’ brilliant book Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery, Cambridge 1976.
35. D. Bloor, ‘Klassifikation und Wissenssoziologie: Durkheim und Mauss neu betrachtet’, in N. Stehr und V. Meja (Hrsg.), Wissenssoziologie-Studien und Materialen, Sonderheft 22 der Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1980. An English version will, I hope, be published before too long. In this paper I develop the ideas first formulated in my review of Hesse's Structure of Scientific Inference, D. Bloor, ‘Epistemology or Psychology?’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 6, 1975, 382-95.
36. The slogan comes of course from E. Durkheim, and M. Mauss, Primitive Classification, trans. R. Needham, London 1963, p. 11.
37. The material from the history of science that I have used to illustrate the network model and, in particular, its capacity to provide a new theoretical underpinning for Durkheim and Mauss's ideas, is taken from the growing literature on Boyle and Newton's corpuscular philosophy. This work is one of the best sustained studies in the sociology of knowledge that is currently available. For a small sample see, for instance: P. M. Rattansi, ‘Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution’, Ambix, 11, 1963, 24-32;
38. P. M. Rattansi, ‘The Intellectual Origins of the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 23, 1968, 129-43;
39. J. R. Jacob, ‘The Ideological Origins of Robert Boyle's Natural Philosophy’, Journal of European Studies, 2, 1972, 1-21.
40. J. R. Jacob, ‘Robert Boyle and Subversive Religion in the Early Restoration’, Albion, 6, 1974, 175-93;
41. J. R. Jacob, ‘Boyle's Atomism and the Restoration Assault on Pagan Naturalism’, Social Studies of Science, 8, 1978, 211-33.