A happy medium: The sociology of Charles Horton Cooley

The career, teaching, and writing of Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929), sociologist at the University of Michigan, show that a middle ground between broadly integrative, general knowledge and specialized knowledge prevailed well into the early twentieth century, both at the level of professional social science and within the modern university curriculum. Cooley's social science rested upon introspection and the study of art and literature, and he eschewed the drift of social science toward behaviorism and quantification. As a university professor, he conceived of specialized knowledge within the context of general culture, not in opposition to it.     

再论我国心理学的分化现象

我国心理学正处于分化过程之中,其中两个明显的例证就是:基础心理学与应用及人文心理学的分化,以及对心理学研究和服务成果的评价标准摆脱SCI的束缚.这背后深层的原因在于,若以科学哲学认识论的视角,人类的知识大致可分为可靠有用的知识和无用虚幻(伪科学)的知识,可靠知识又可进一步分为科学的知识和非科学的知识.心理学从诞生之日起...     

EMBODIED SCIENCE: RECENTERING RELIGION-AND-SCIENCE

Neither religion nor science is first of all a realm of pure ideas, even though religion-and-science discussions often assume that they are. I propose that a concept of embodied science is more adequate and that religion-and-science should center its attention on science as enabler for improving the world (SEIW). This idea of science is rooted in Jerome Ravetz's concept of industrialized science and Donna Haraway's technoscience. SEIW describes the sociocultural context of science in commercial, government, and university settings. The chief focus of religion-and-science consequently takes into account five basic issues: (1) the kind of world we want, (2) liberating science, (3) human action and ethics, (4) religion and the world's possibilities, and (5) recovering myth. An underlying presupposition of the discussion is that understanding the world always involves as well an understanding of our being-in-the-world.     

Reframing the question of forbidden knowledge for modern science

In this paper I use the concept of forbidden knowledge to explore questions about putting limits on science. Science has generally been understood to seek and produce objective truth, and this understanding of science has grounded its claim to freedom of inquiry. What happens to decision making about science when this claim to objective, disinterested truth is rejected? There are two changes that must be made to update the idea of forbidden knowledge for modern science. The first is to shift from presuming that decisions to constrain or even forbid knowledge can be made from a position of omniscience (perfect knowledge) to recognizing that such decisions made by human beings are made from a position of limited or partial knowledge. The second is to reject the idea that knowledge is objective and disinterested and accept that knowledge (even scientific knowledge) is interested. In particular, choices about what knowledge gets created are normative, value choices. When these two changes are made to the idea of forbidden knowledge, questions about limiting or forbidding lines of inquiry are shown to distract attention from the more important matters of who makes and how decisions are made about what knowledge is produced. Much more attention should be focused on choosing directions in science, and as this is done, the matter of whether constraints should be placed on science will fall into place.     

The experience of the tacit in multi- and interdisciplinary collaboration

In exploring his concept of interactional expertise in the context of managers of big science projects, Collins identifies the development and deployment tacit knowledge as central, but acknowledges that sociologically, he cannot probe the concept further in developmental or pedagogical directions. In using the term tacit knowledge, Collins relies on the concept as articulated by Michael Polanyi. In coining the term, Polanyi acknowledges his reliance on Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world. This paper explores how Polanyi, and so Collins, fails to adequately ground the idea of the tacit in Heidegger’s hermeneutic phenomenology. In so doing, it employs a rereading of Being and Time to phenomenologically resituate the tacit. This resituating of the tacit allows us to go further than Collins in providing developmental and pedagogical approaches to the tacit in the context of the kind of interactional expertise that may be employed to enhance the effectiveness of collaborative, multi-and interdisciplinary teams like those found in team science and in professional settings like healthcare management. As illustrative, the paper provides an example of this resituated understanding of the tacit in the author’s work teaching in a multidisciplinary healthcare management program.     

THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOLED NARRATIVE COMPETENCE AMONG SECOND GRADERS

The ability to produce schooled narrative is closely related to students' literacy development and school success. This study examined young children's communicative competence in schooled narrative and the nature of its development. Participants were 21 second graders in a literature-based classroom. Four stories were collected from each child at equal intervals of the school year through a dictation procedure that taps their discursive knowledge of schooled narrative. These stories were analyzed for inclusion of a variety of linguistic markers that embody three essential features of schooled narrative - autonomy, conventionality, and specialized grammar. Results showed that participants demonstrated more familiarity with conventionality than with the other two features of schooled narrative. Their understanding of specialized grammar was particularly nascent. There was also considerable variation in their discursive competence in schooled narrative. Further, significant changes were observed during the school year in the children's knowledge of autonomy, but not conventionality or specialized grammar. Taken together, these findings suggest that the development of schooled narrative competence is non-uniform, feature-specific, unstable, and complex.     

What Does it Mean to Notice my Students’ Ideas in Science Today?: An Investigation of Elementary Teachers’ Practice of Noticing their Students’ Thinking in Science

Abstract

Efforts toward improving K-12 science education emphasize teachers noticing students’ thinking as they engage in disciplinary practices and reasoning. This noticing requires specialized teacher knowledge and skills as it involves attending to students’ ideas, as well as making sense of and responding to those ideas so that the disciplinary substance in them is recognized, made explicit, and supported. This study investigates three elementary teachers’ in-the-moment noticing of students’ ideas while teaching science and their thinking about what it means to engage in this teaching practice. Results indicate that teachers notice many different kinds of student science ideas, and also that teachers have different ways of thinking about which student ideas are substantive during a science lesson. This research contributes to our theoretical understanding of the nature of teacher noticing in science. Noticing students’ science ideas involves not only the presence of ideas and the ability to notice them, but also a teacher’s understanding of this teaching practice in the moment.     

THE ATHENS/JERUSALEM TEMPLATE AND THE TECHNO‐SECULARISM THESIS—KICKING THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD

Abstract. The publication of my article “Athens, Jerusalem, and the Arrival of Techno‐secularism” (2005) in Zygon was followed by twenty‐one responses, most of them critical. In this essay I reply by clarifying the earlier one, separating out its two major theses: the Athens/Jerusalem template and the techno‐secularism thesis. The Athens/Jerusalem template is a typology that provides a historical basis for understanding why religion/science conflicts persist by showing that the contrasts between intellectual knowledge and revealed knowledge are permanent features of Western cultural history. Postmodern criticisms often have a negative edge, rejecting “canonical” accounts but not presenting alternative explanations. Historical context is helpful in understanding religion/science conflicts, which continue to exist. The present cultural situation is that technology is replacing religion—and science—as the dominant condition and theory of our culture. Evidence for the techno‐secularism thesis can be seen in the nature of electronic entertainment, which invades the silence required for religious contemplation and obscures the scientific laws that are the basis for the new technology.     

But is it sociology of knowledge? Wilhelm Jerusalem’s “sociology of cognition” in context

This paper considers the charge that??contrary to the current widespread assumption accompanying the near-universal neglect of his work??Wilhelm Jerusalem (1854?C1923) cannot count as one of the founders of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge. In order to elucidate the matter, Jerusalem??s ??sociology of cognition?? is here reconstructed in the context of his own work in psychology and philosophy as well as in the context of the work of some predecessors and contemporaries. It is argued that while it shows clear discontinuities with the present-day understanding of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge, Jerusalem??s sociology of cognition was not only distinctive in its own day but also anticipated in nuce a much-discussed theme in current history of science.     

The Omniscienter: Beauty and scientific understanding

Science has more to offer than just knowledge of nature; it can give us understanding of nature as well. Epistemology of science is usually focused on knowledge and the criteria of justification, while paying little attention to understanding. In a reversal of this emphasis, this article is more about scientific understanding. I argue that the hallmarks of understanding are similar to an aesthetic feature associated with literature, music, and the visual arts. It is the feature described as coherence, harmony, and inevitability of fit. Aesthetics thus plays an epistemic role in science as an indication of understanding.     

Contributions of psychology to limiting climate change

Psychology can make a significant contribution to limiting the magnitude of climate change by improving understanding of human behaviors that drive climate change and human reactions to climate-related technologies and policies, and by turning that understanding into effective interventions. This article develops a framework for psychological contributions, summarizes what psychology has learned, and sets out an agenda for making additional contributions. It emphasizes that the greatest potential for contributions from psychology comes not from direct application of psychological concepts but from integrating psychological knowledge and methods with knowledge from other fields of science and technology.     

APPROACHING ACCOUNTABILITY IN PSYCHOTHERAPY

Abstract

Comprehensive construing refers to a process whereby events that have previously been construed in a variety of ways come to be subsumed within a superordinate construct. Occurring within a broadened perceptual field and incorporating existing specialized knowledge, comprehensive constructs may lead to an integrated understanding within a higher-order revised framework. Parallel processes can be seen in scientific discovery from the standpoint of Polanyi's conception of “personal knowledge,” in cognitive stage transitions outlined by Pioget's genetic epistemology, in Buckminster Fuller's “comprehensivism,” and in comprehensive approaches to education and science.     

REALISM WITHOUT TRUTH: A REVIEW OF GIERE'S SCIENCE WITHOUT LAWS AND SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVISM

An increasingly popular view among philosophers of science is that of science as action—as the collective activity of scientists working in socially‐coordinated communities. Scientists are seen not as dispassionate pursuers of Truth, but as active participants in a social enterprise, and science is viewed on a continuum with other human activities. When taken to an extreme, the science‐as‐social‐process view can be taken to imply that science is no different from any other human activity, and therefore can make no privileged claims about its knowledge of the world. Such extreme views are normally contrasted with equally extreme views of classical science, as uncovering Universal Truth. In Science Without Laws and Scientific Perspectivism, Giere outlines an approach to understanding science that finds a middle ground between these extremes. He acknowledges that science occurs in a social and historical context, and that scientific models are constructions designed and created to serve human ends. At the same time, however, scientific models correspond to parts of the world in ways that can legitimately be termed objective. Giere's position, perspectival realism, shares important common ground with Skinner's writings on science, some of which are explored in this review. Perhaps most fundamentally, Giere shares with Skinner the view that science itself is amenable to scientific inquiry: scientific principles can and should be brought to bear on the process of science. The two approaches offer different but complementary perspectives on the nature of science, both of which are needed in a comprehensive understanding of science.     

Science,spirituality and truth: acknowledging difference for spiritual dialogue and human well‐being

This article seeks to explain why spiritual education must be clear about the nature of spiritual knowledge and truth and how it differs from the knowledge and truth generated by science. The author argues this is important in order that spirituality and science are equally valued, and in order that spiritual pedagogy appropriately reflects the nature of spiritual truth in the context of spiritual diversity and commitment. Based on these arguments, and inspired both by the ideas of inter‐faith dialogue and the philosophy of Michael Bakhtin, the author then suggests a dialogical approach to spiritual pedagogy for spiritual development and wellbeing. The article suggests education will best enhance human wellbeing if it is positive about the contributions of both science and spirituality, and if it promotes understanding of spiritual difference and commitment.     

IS SCIENCE THE ONLY WAY TO TRUTH?

Abstract. In the context of contemporary life questions, especially that of world peace, this essay first develops the view that truth is essentially scientific truth. Although religion gives insights for living, as science encompasses more and more of human experience it reinforces and modifies religious truths with its own firm knowledge. However, because of several limitations, it is concluded that science alone cannot give a complete account of humanity and the universe. For our first beliefs and principles we must look to other kinds of truth, which are in accord with scientific truth but go beyond scientific method in their justification.     

The Art of Being Human: A Project for General Philosophy of Science

Throughout the medieval and modern periods, in various sacred and secular guises, the unification of all forms of knowledge under the rubric of ??science?? has been taken as the prerogative of humanity as a species. However, as our sense of species privilege has been called increasingly into question, so too has the very salience of ??humanity?? and ??science?? as general categories, let alone ones that might bear some essential relationship to each other. After showing how the ascendant Stanford School in the philosophy of science has contributed to this joint demystification of ??humanity?? and ??science??, I proceed on a more positive note to a conceptual framework for making sense of science as the art of being human. My understanding of ??science?? is indebted to the red thread that runs from Christian theology through the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment to the Humboldtian revival of the university as the site for the synthesis of knowledge as the culmination of self-development. Especially salient to this idea is science??s epistemic capacity to manage modality (i.e. to determine the conditions under which possibilities can be actualised) and its political capacity to organize humanity into projects of universal concern. However, the challenge facing such an ideal in the twentyfirst century is that the predicate ??human?? may be projected in three quite distinct ways, governed by what I call ??ecological??, ??biomedical?? and ??cybernetic?? interests. Which one of these future humanities would claim today??s humans as proper ancestors and could these futures co-habit the same world thus become two important questions that general philosophy of science will need to address in the coming years.     

In Praise of Natural Philosophy: A Revolution for Thought and Life

Modern science began as natural philosophy. In the time of Newton, what we call science and philosophy today ?C the disparate endeavours ?C formed one mutually interacting, integrated endeavour of natural philosophy: to improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe, and to improve our understanding of ourselves as a part of it. Profound, indeed unprecedented discoveries were made. But then natural philosophy died. It split into science on the one hand, and philosophy on the other. This happened during the 18th and 19th centuries, and the split is now built into our intellectual landscape. But the two fragments, science and philosophy, are defective shadows of the glorious unified endeavour of natural philosophy. Rigour, sheer intellectual good sense and decisive argument demand that we put the two together again, and rediscover the immense merits of the integrated enterprise of natural philosophy. This requires an intellectual revolution, with dramatic implications for how we understand our world, how we understand and do science, and how we understand and do philosophy. There are dramatic implications, too, for education, and for the entire academic endeavour, and its capacity to help us discover how to tackle more successfully our immense global problems.     

Developmentalism And The Child In Nineteenth-Century Science

In recent years, public science events have been designed as a means to foster a dialogue between science and the public and to contribute to ongoing policy processes. Regardless of their tangible outcome, such events rely on a certain framing, reconfigure scientific knowledge and conceptualise the public in specific ways. These constructs are exemplified by a science festival that was held in the train station hall in Zurich. Novel insights can be gained from a spatial, an object and an actor-related approach borrowed from the artistic context: the discussions about the White Cube can be adapted to contribute to the analysis of the science festival. When we look into the spatial situation created to foster exchange about scientific knowledge, we find how the exhibition display is taking care of minor details. While the organisers transformed the station hall into a laboratory, they created a kind of dialogic situation that filled an authority gap as it equally enabled exchange. The objects put in place in the exemplary case helped to design a customer–supplier relationship between the public and science. Under the umbrella of the science event, a range of diverse research endeavours was homogenised and unified. The audience, finally, was invited to familiarise itself with scientific knowledge. However, they were allocated a consumer role that obliged them to remain guests in the laboratory environment of the station hall. Thus, public science events may be successful in attracting large attendance and allowing more experiences with science, but while they create novel forms of familiarisation with science for visitors, they do not necessarily remedy public doubts about science and technology.     

Death: Bridge between science and spirit

It is argued that contemporary health science, being part of a general cultural trend toward the materialism of scientific rationality, has reduced human health to a system of machine-like events. This philosophical trend has had the indirect effect of excluding the human spirit from playing any significant role in our understanding of man's health and well-being. The recent effort of biomedical science to extend this materialist philosophy into the area of human death and dying is examined in the context of this ideological trend. It is suggested that the trend has brought about an ever-widening conceptual gap between the realms of spirit and matter. The issue of bridging this contemporary conceptual gap is discussed in terms of recent research findings that suggest that the human brain may be capable of intergrating the logic of two seemingly irreconcilable ways of thinking into a whole which is enriched from the presence of both. This holistic possibility is discussed in the context of the philosophies that support the existence of spirit and matter.     

Cultural Authority in Comparative Context: A Multilevel Analysis of Trust in Science and Religion

Science and religion are among the most influential forces for organizing social life around the world, yet we know little about how national context shapes perceptions of them. Using data from the 2008 International Social Survey Program, we begin to fill this gap by investigating cross‐national differences in public attitudes about science, religion, and society. We find that exposure to science is associated with more trust in science relative to religion whereas religiosity is associated with less trust in science relative to religion. Moreover, these relationships are amplified in secular societies and in those where science is prioritized. We argue that secular and scientific societies provide a context in which personal characteristics are more influential in the formation of social attitudes. These results highlight the importance of macro‐level factors for shaping trust in science and religion and for understanding the sources of their influence in society more broadly.