Cooperation and the Two Cultures: Response to Labinger.
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| Title: | Cooperation and the Two Cultures: Response to Labinger. |
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| Authors: | Collins, H.M.1 h.m.collins@bath.ac.uk |
| Source: | Social Studies of Science (Sage Publications, Ltd.). May95, Vol. 25 Issue 2, p306-309. 4p. |
| Subject Terms: | *Culture, Science & society, Cooperation, Realism, Philosophy of science |
| People: | Labinger, Jay |
| Abstract: | The article focuses on the concept of cultural sciences and co-operation. The cultural science organization SSK, wants to change only science's self-image and its relationship to other cultural endeavors, it harbors no ambition to change the practice or methods of science. Inorganic chemist Jay Labinger actually warns of the damage that talk of relativism will do to these prospects of collaboration with scientists such as himself. In an anthropology, it is a professional and political obligation to respect that which one's informants hold sacred, but this seems patronizing in the case of colleagues who are members of the same academic institutions. Consideration and application of various forms of relativism is a part of the stock in the trade of social analysis of science, just as realism is the stock in trade of chemistry. Several books have been written about cold fusion by scientists, but they have not referred them the sociological ideas that have come out of the earlier studies of scientific controversy. These books offer worn-out clichés about the need for independent replication and the dangers of "pathological science." |
| Database: | Education Research Complete |
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