Архив метки НАУКА

Создание Р. Мертоном классических парадигм социологии науки: взгляд из XXI века

Мотрошилова Неля Васильвена

Учреждение Российской академии наук Института философии РАН, Москва, Россия

КЛЮЧЕВЫЕ СЛОВА: РОБЕРТ МЕРТОН, НАУКА, СОЦИОЛОГИЯ НАУКИ, НАУЧНАЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТЬ, ЭТОС НАУКИ, НОРМЫ, АНТИНОРМЫ

АННОТАЦИЯ: Статья является предпубликацией из новой книги. Презентируются идеи классической социологии науки, которые неразрывно связаны с творчеством выдающегося социолога XX столетия Роберта Мертона (1910-2003). Оценивается вклад Р. Мертона и его ближайших коллег в теоретическую культуру прошлого столетия, в научное и практическое понимание социального смысла науки.

ОПИСАНИЕ НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ:

Robert Mertons Formulation of the Classical Paradigms in the Sociology of Science: Looking Back from the 21st Century

Motroshilova Nelya V.

Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

This text is an advance publication related to the book “Russian philosophy in the 1950s–1980s and Western thought”. One of its parts concerns the fact that western sociology of science was assimilated in Russia by philosophers, some of whom later on began to work professionally in the sociology of science. The other scholars were those who remained in philosophy, writing papers on the philosophy of science, science studies, theory of knowledge and history of philosophy at the same time. These authors tried also to understand the practical side of sociology of science and knowledge. I belong to the second group of scholars. As early as the 1970s, I was familiar with some of R. Merton’s works that were available in our country. It was a big event for me to meet Robert Merton and Harriet Zuckerman at the 1972 congress of sociology in Bulgaria1 . Soon, Merton, on learning about my scientific pursuits, sent me his main publications on sociology of science with his good words written on them for me. I keep them as a treasure. I used them in my book “Science and scientists in conditions of modern capitalism” (1976) («Наука и ученые в условиях современного капитализма» (М. : Наука, 1976), which includes references for more than 300 sources. It has a section on Merton’s sociology of science. In the XXI century, again I have returned to summing up my experience in sociology of science and the results of the discipline’s development that has lasted for many years. I was also motivated to do this by the attempts of some scholars at the end of the XX century to get rid of the main concepts of sociology of science. The latter, of course, were associated with R. Merton and his followers. This is why the question stands high on the agenda of where Merton and his disciples were a success and where they failed. In the light of these research tasks I think it necessary to look carefully, given the XXI century perspectives and requirements, at the results of the scientific path paved by Merton and his followers. The present paper is devoted to this general goal.

A concise summary of R. Merton and his school’s contribution to the creation and development of sociology of science

Sociology of science as a distinctive sociological discipline came to model a classically developed, paradigmatic, comprehensive, well founded, self-critical, and constantly growing discipline, rather conceptual at the beginning, and later on involving the entire masses of concrete research. 1. Analyses have suggested the historical causes of Merton’s early works on the sociology of science and knowledge. Of particular importance were the responses given by democratic sociologists in protest against the National Socialism coming to power in Germany, the rise of fascism in other European countries, the racist ideology and suppression of science, and the persecution of scientists. 2. The social and historical conditions were used to explain why and how R. Merton started to explore scientific norms. A detailed analysis of scientific norms was conducted that did not agree with the opinions that Merton had worked out with regard to them being “too ideal,” and subsequently disconnected from real science. Actually, the situation, both historical and theoretical, was largely different. First, as early as the 1930–1940s, sociology of science made its first and quite successful steps. The concept of scientific norms was roughly formulated in the first works of the 1940s. Second, difficulties, contradictions and deficiencies in Merton’s original theory were best seen by the author himself and his close followers. So the most successful corrections to the concept of scientific norms were contributed by Merton and his group. Third, it would be wrong to say that the early Merton suggested only ideal, pure, bright scientific norms, and only later, under the influence of criticism from outside, did he pay attention to real scientific norms. As a matter of fact, his statements include: a) an ideal aspect that is normative and imperative; a1 ) an objective-orientated, argumentative aspect: what should be done and what a scientist does by all means because he or she achieves objective knowledge; b) warning statements that suggest what should not be done in science and why, and also what happens in real scientific environments and how scientists’ behave can be seldom observed in the ideal form. 3. What is important: when Merton identified, in a “pure form”, prescriptions, i.e. aspects of research activity “as they should be”, he presumed that the institution of science interiorizes norms in scientists due to their inherent need to fulfill the main function of science — acquiring verifiable, corroborative, that is, “genuine” knowledge. He was absolutely right in this and did it in a Kantian manner. Like Kant, Merton shaped scientific norms as a sum of requirements for what is necessary, as things should be (both for science and society). He demonstrated that an implementation of norms in real, everyday scientific practice must involve specific, pluralistic and contradictory features. And this was the second move, after the normative one, toward a system of research steps that related to general studies of scientific norms. These steps were also made by Merton and his school in the 1950s–1970s. 4. I consider the high theoretical level that is also a feature of Merton’s concrete and empirical research to be a proof and illustration of the “classical”, paradigmatic nature. 5. The following was demonstrated in the course of analysing terminological and other corrections and additions to the theory of norms that were done within Merton’s school: additions were not useless; though terminological corrections and system additions (CUDOS+) did not actually settle down in the end. 6. I suppose that claims to substitute Mertonian theory of scientific norms with the concept of anti-norms (R. Boguslav, I. Mitroff , S. Fuller) failed. The arguments are the following: a) complete dependence on a negative anti-concept of Mertonian theory (each anti-norm is just an antipode to a Meronian norm); b) the negative side of the real behavior of scientists had never been unknown to Mertonian teaching; Merton and his followers studied it thoroughly; c) should Mertonian norms be substituted with anti-norms it would be hardly possible to understand how, using them, scholars and their communities could produce objective scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, anti-norm theory has its important meaning — as a warning. 7. Assuming that research conducted by R. Merton and his school helped to work out “classical paradigms” in sociology of science, two questions arise. First, is it worth working on non-classical or post-classical paradigms in such a discipline? Has anybody observed such systematic studies as Merton’s recently? The answer to the first question in the Conclusion to the paper is positive, the second answer is negative. The author suggests some ideas about what theoretical approaches would be reasonable to choose in order to search for non-classical paradigms of sociology of science.

Человек в науке: социологические дискуссии XX века

Мирская Елена Зиновьевна

КЛЮЧЕВЫЕ СЛОВА: НАУКА, НАУЧНОЕ ЗНАНИЕ, НАУЧНОЕ СООБЩЕСТВО, ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНАЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТЬ УЧЕНЫХ, ЭТОС НАУКИ, Р. МЕРТОН, НОРМЫ И МОДЕЛИ, ТРАДИЦИИ И НОВАЦИИ

АННОТАЦИЯ: Когда в год столетия со дня рождения Р. К. Мертона в журнале по социологии науки появляется статья “Человек науки”, то естественно, большая часть читателей предполагают, что статья эта о Роберте Кинге Мертоне – о его жизни и научных достижениях. Автор же хочет рассмотреть не одного выдающегося человека, а феномен ученого: как он “делает науку”? в чем его функция в системе науки, в механизме порождения нового знания? Конечно, без обсуждения точки зрения и мнений Р. К. Мертона здесь не обойтись – ведь он первым поставил эти вопросы и дал на них свой вариант ответов. Но все- таки статья будет не о нем, а вообще о человеке науки и его специфической деятельности, точнее – об их моделях.

ОПИСАНИЕ НА АНГЛИЙСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ:

A Man in Science: Sociological Discussions in the 20th Century

Mirskaya. Elena Z.

Head, Department of Sociology of Science,
Institute for the History of Science and Technology named after Sergey I. Vavilov,
Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.

When exploring the problem of “a man in science” one can distinguish three stages that involve different approaches which in turn are connected with the dynamics of science itself. The first stage sees an attempt to understand activity in science — scientific creativity, through specific qualities of a creative individual outside of his or her social relations. But with this perspective it is impossible to identify causal links or to answer the question of why a scientist has a particular set of qualities, is interested in specific issues, is guided by distinctive motives, and so on. It looks like in order to understand a man in science one should analyze the relationships that tie people in their activity and the mechanisms that constitute the basis for development in a given fi eld. This perspective characterized the second stage of explorations of a man in science in the 1960s. Robert K. Merton and his school made activities regarding the social institute of science the main subject of their studies. This point of view led to the idea that science advances according to its own laws of motion independently of people who produce this movement by their everyday activity. The evolution of this type of a conception of a man in science resulted in “the loss of man”. Views on science, however, changed dramatically in the 1970s. Kuhn attracted the attention of those who studied science to the fact that in different paradigms scientists see things differently. With this he highlighted the relativity of scientific knowledge. This resulted in the field known as sociology of scientific knowledge, which led to a new understanding of the role of the human subject making a particular scientific inquiry. The Mertonian positivist sociology of science that excluded entirely an agent’s influence from the production of scientific knowledge was criticized sharply by advocates of interpretive sociology that placed the agent of knowledge in the priority. Interpretive sociology ignores structures that exist objectively; it only takes into account scientists who interact as they do science. We could thus say that we have seen a man of science in three mirrors: those of the psychological perspective, normative sociology of science and interpretive sociology of science. The first discipline that started to collect data on the progress of scientific knowledge was the history of science. From that perspective, the advancement of science was related very closely to the actions of particular scientists. The history of science created an image of scientists based on biographies and memoires. So by the beginning of the XX century, a traditional (classical) model of a scientist and his or her actions emerged that did not take into account comprehensive ties with social setting. The transition to “big science” highlighted the problems of scientific work in research teams, and the problem of a man in science came to be explored purely sociologically, and precisely from the perspective of normative sociology. An illusion then emerged that science can be efficient without bright individuals, thanks to good organization, that science is a mere sum of equipment, facilities, money, scientific programs and a set of research institutions where a certain number of scientists work who diff er only in positions and earnings. This view did not consider the activity of a hidden factor in the personality of a scientist, as a creator. Successful work in science needs not only appropriate education, equipment, salary, etc. Rather, a man must also pursue scientific values, his or her own advancement and recognition in science which means to have a scientist’s consciousness. A scientist’s personal research efficiency depends not merely on the level of motivation but on his or her “orientation” toward science. A “pro-scientific” orientation can be reinforced by the public prestige of science, traditional images and expectations (fascination with work, acquisition of new knowledge, deep internal work satisfaction). So, human activity in present-day science seems to be related to traditional patterns of scientific creativity. This “asocial” pattern is a significant part of scientists’ consciousness, which acquires a social meaning. When identifying further the mechanisms governing scientists’ behavior it is important to remember that science is created not as a “sum” of individual scientists’ actions but as a result of their interaction. Since this interrelationship is manifested in a wide range of scientific phenomena it seems promising to look at these issues from the ethos of a scientific point of view, drawing on an analysis of ethical regulators in scientific work. Like other social institutions science has its own code — a set of principles, rules and norms that scientists should follow — that is the scientific ethos that has been formed in the course of human history. Special attention must be paid to analyses of scientific community norms. ‘Norms of science’ — the concept that Robert Merton introduced into the sociology of science — are derivatives of scientific aims and methods: everything that is conducive to developing scientific knowledge is considered a norm. The first one, universalism, establishes scientific knowledge as universally valid irrespective of the place of a discovery and the personal characteristics of its author. The norm of communalism requires that scientists should submit their achievements to public use. The norm of skepticism requires that scientists should constantly pay critical attention to their colleagues’ findings. The norm of disinterestedness leads scientists in a certain direction. The Mertonian concept of the scientific ethos dominated throughout the 1960s. The first objections emerged in the early 1970s. In the most common version of criticism, the opponents, using a set of cases, pointed to the discrepancy between them and the real practice of scientists. But this kind of criticism results from a failure to understand the essence of norms: these norms do not describe mass behavior but its “ideal”. The main deficiency of this concept is that the rules of scientific work do not change in the course of scientific advancement, and they are presented as being immune to changes in social life. But since changes in working conditions lead to changes in human attitudes and values, in reality ethical norms in science are also unavoidably changing. When formulating the norms of the scientific ethos, Merton assumed that the institution of science was an autonomous community of career scientists who were engaged in research in a disinterested manner (on the model of the German university of the XIX century). The “traditional ethos” comes largely close to the “traditional model” of a scientist. New circumstances (the growing role of applied research) make it impossible, however, to observe certain rules for the majority of scientists. The demands for socially-oriented research and ‘humanizing science’ are currently of paramount importance. T. Kuhn advanced a new social-historical understanding of science which later became prevalent in the fi eld, namely, that norms came to be perceived much more widely. First, they were said to govern not only the social but also the substantive behavior of scientists as well; second, norms are not constant, they are subject to changes, so each paradigm has its own distinctive norms. The Kuhnian perspective rejected universal epistemological rationality. Nevertheless, Kuhn continued to think that within the “normal” science, knowledge was produced according to constant rules. This meant that on this point he remained in the normative approach tradition. In this sense, he did not refute, but instead complemented the Mertonian tradition. Ensuing developments of Kuhn’s understanding of the character of scientific knowledge led to the emergence of a radically new theoretical basis for the fi eld. Interpretive sociology of science that had come into existence in the late 1970s — early 1980s, adopted as its basis a form of analysis that lifted altogether the problem of “rules”, “norms” and “working to the rules”. So it was not just the details that this later work rejected in Kuhn, but also the essence of the Mertonian concept, i.e. the norms. The question of how regulative structures in scientific work emerge and their influence on science should be more fully examined in light of the background image of a gradual transition on-going in science to a “postindustrial” form of existence. A radically new quality in the information society leads to an “organic paradigm” that is likely to appear, not in the last instance, in science. At that time much will look absolutely different in the realm of sociology of science than it does now.