Conceptual Displacement and Migration in Science: A Prefatory Paper

Social Studies of Science

Volumn 4, Issue 3, 1974, Pages 205-234

  Mulkay, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84976984241     PISSN: 03063127     EISSN: 14603659     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030631277400400301     Document Type: Article

References (23)

1. See B. Barnes (ed.), Sociology of Science (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972)
2. D. Crane, Invisible Colleges (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1972).
3. For example: S. Cole and J. Cole, ‘Scientific Output and Recognition: A study of the Operation of the Reward System in Science', American Sociological Review, 32 (June 1967), 377-90
4. J. Gaston, ‘The Reward System in British Science', American Sociological Review, 35 (August 1970), 718-32.
5. A good idea of the philosophical approach can be obtained from I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). Kuhn, of course, has been concerned with social as well as intellectual processes.
6. M. J. Mulkay, The Social Process of Innovation (London: Macmillan, 1972).
7. Displacement of Concepts (London: Tavistock, 1963). This book has since been reissued as a Tavistock Social Science paperback, under the title of Invention and the Evolution of Ideas.
8. M. Hesse, Forces and Fields (London: Nelson, 1961)
9. M. Black, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1962)
10. M. Hesse, ‘The Explanatory Function of Metaphor', in Y. Bar-Hillel (ed.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1965), 249-59.
11. Forces and Fields note 6, 3.
12. The idea of there being ‘positive' and ‘negative' analogies involved in displacement is developed by M. Hesse in Models and Analogies in Science (London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963).
13. Models and Analogies in Science note 6, 58.
14. See G. Holton, ‘Models for Understanding the Growth and Excellence of Scientific Research', in S. R. Graubard and G. Holton (eds.), Excellence and Leadership in a Democracy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962).
15. The notion that the transfer of technology is usually brought about by the movement of people among establishments is discussed in W. H. Gruber and D. G. Marquis (eds.), Factors in the Transfer of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.:?.I.T. Press, 1969). See in particular the contributions by Bums, Price and also Schon.
16. For studies of the formation of research networks as a result of migration see J. Ben-David and R. Collins, ‘Social Factors in the Emergence of a New Science: The Case of Psychology', American Sociological Review, 31 (August 1966), 451-65; and N. Mullins, ‘The Development of a Scientific Specialty: the Phage Group and the Origins of Molecular Biology', Minerva, 10 (1972), 51-82.
17. It seems likely that there is a connection between migration and conceptual displacement in many social areas other than science. For an illustration of the consequences of movement between societies, see D. Fleming and B. Bailyn (eds.), The Intellectual Migration: Europe and America, 1930-60 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969).
18. For a more complete account of the development of radio astronomy see M. J. Mulkay and D. O. Edge, ‘Cognitive, Technical and Social Factors in the Growth of Radio Astronomy', Information sur les Sciences Sociales, 12(6), (December 1973), 25-61, and A Preliminary Report on the Emergence of Radio Astronomy, I and II, Technical Reports 7 and 8 (Cambridge: University Department of Engineering, 1972).
19. A. C. B. Lovell, The Story of Jodrell Bank (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 2.
20. R. L. Meier, ‘The Origins of the Scientific Species', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 7 (1951), 172. Meier's study is based upon informal interviews with ‘more than a thousand' American scientists. Although Meier stresses the importance of mobility he gives no indication of how many of his sample had been mobile.
21. Lovell, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists note 23, 14.
22. R. McGinnis (Cornell University) and V. P. Singh (University of Pittsburgh), ‘Mobility Patterns in Three Scientific Disciplines', a paper presented to the American Sociological Association, New Orleans, August, 1972. The sample was made up of 3,428 physicists (32 per cent of whom changed sub-field between 1960 and 1966), 1,652 mathematicians (25 per cent of whom were similarly mobile) and 8,861 chemists (35 per cent of whom changed sub-field).
23. W. D. Garvey and K. Tomita, ‘Continuity of Productivity by Scientists in the Years 1968-71', Science Studies, 2 (October 1972), 379-83.