February 17, 2011
by peter.taylor
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Discussion on WUMB Commonwealth Journal based on new exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science exhibit, Race: Are we so different? Broadcast on Sunday February 13, 2011. Speakers: Peter Taylor, Nina Nolan, Chair, RACE Education Team, Boston Museum of Science, … Continue reading
December 1, 2010
by peter.taylor
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This post begins by categorizing into three levels the gender dimensions of social structuredness in relation to science and technology. (Equivalent levels can be articulated for differences that refer to race, ethnicity, or Euopean descent vs. other othernesses.) 1) Under-representation … Continue reading
November 30, 2010
by peter.taylor
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During the 1960s Bookchin (1962), Carson (1962), and Commoner (1963; 1971) linked ecology-as-social-action to criticisms of the dominant directions of scientific research. Social responsibility in science was promoted by the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, the Union of … Continue reading
November 28, 2010
by peter.taylor
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David Hounshell characterizes Akera’s book Calculating a Natural World well when he says, as quoted on the book’s cover, that it “takes many of the familiar developments in the early history of digital electronic computing and recasts them so as … Continue reading
November 27, 2010
by peter.taylor
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There has been a long history in social theory of discussion of how to relate social structure and human agency (Dawe 1976; Giddens 1981; Sewell 1992; Vogt 1960; see Taylor 1996 for bibliography in context of interpretation of science). Concepts … Continue reading
November 25, 2010
by peter.taylor
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In the late 1980s Roberto Mangabeira Unger laid out a “constructive social theory,” which centered on “institutional and imaginative frameworks of social life [that] supply the basis on which people define and reconcile interests, identify, and solve problems.” He went … Continue reading
November 21, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Although the goals of mapping workshops were not fully met in the initial experiments described in the previous post, lessons can be drawn for the more general project of helping researchers reflect on their situatedness and act self-consciously to change … Continue reading
November 20, 2010
by peter.taylor
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According to the perspective of heterogeneous construction, scientists mobilize a diversity of resources and, in so doing, engage with a range of social agents. Similarly, when interpreters of science delimit the relevant resources and agents, they also mobilize resources and … Continue reading
November 18, 2010
by peter.taylor
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Attention to practice—to what scientists actually do—was a key development in the interpretation of science during the 1980s. This development is covered well by the collection of essays, Science as Practice and Culture (Pickering 1992a), and in the editor’s introduction … Continue reading
November 17, 2010
by peter.taylor
4 Comments
In its broadest sense, the claim that scientific knowledge is constructed amounts to saying that it is not simply drawn from nature. According to a minimal definition of constructionism, what counts as knowledge is contingent on the scientific method or … Continue reading