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The article focuses on the Science and Technology Studies (STS) community's view toward politics which is offered by philosopher Gerard de Vries. The author states that de Vries' general critique against most of science studies is that people are so busy renewing some feature of scientific practice that people took off the shelf whatever political theory they had. The author explains that science studies has made people realize that politics has always been issue-oriented. It notes that the paper of de Vries reminds that people have been good at tracing the constant innovations of science and technology but have been lazy in expecting that all those new matters will find a place inside the vast dome of already assembled democratic politics.

Historians and sociologists have highlighted the importance of skills, local practices and material culture in their studies of experimental sciences. This paper argues that the acquisition and transfer of skills in theoretical sciences should be understood in similar terms. Using the example of Feynman diagrams - first introduced by the US theoretical physicist Richard Feynman in 1948 as an aid for making certain kinds of calculations - we study how physicists in the USA, Japan, and the Soviet Union learned how to use the new tools and put them to work. Something about the diagrammatic tools could be learned from written instructions alone, at a distance from those physicists already 'in the know', although this type of transfer proved to be very difficult slow, and rare. The rate at which new physicists began to use the diagrams in various settings, and the types of uses to which the diagrams were put, reveal the interplay between geopolitics, personal communication, and pedagogical infrastructures in shaping how paper tools spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was carried out to test Garfield's claim that citationcounting can be used to predict Nobel prizewinners. Using a sample of 83eminent chemists, it was found that receipt of the Nobel Prize is indeedcorrelated with citation counts, but that it is more strongly correlatedwith the number of papers coauthored in which the senior author's nameis not the first in the list of authors. This result was tested out onthe 1976 Nobel prizewinner, W.N. Lipscomb. It was found that a rankingby numbers of papers not first-authored predicted that Lipscomb wouldreceive the Prize, whilst a ranking by citation counts would not havedone so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the response of Noretta Koertge to the recent discussion in the journal of the book she edited. She describes features of scientific method and explains that scientists devote much of their energies to trying to exclude their own biases from their observations, and she lists the familiar techniques that are used to accomplish a degree of what is commonly called objectivity. It is noted that those who work in the history and sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) not only know scientific method and its aspirations, they value and cleave to it. Thus, SSK tries to generalize so that its results can be repeated in other settings, historical details are checked with respondents and, where possible, sources are carefully documented so that they can be checked by others.

This paper traces the joint histories of poultry and rabbit breeding by fanciers, and for commercial and scientific purposes, in early 20th-century Britain. I show that the histories of the social worlds that bred for these different purposes are intertwined, as are the histories of poultry and rabbit breeding in general. To properly understand the history of scientific breeding we must therefore understand the general context of breeding in which this occurred. In the paper I show that as fancy poultry and rabbits were taken up for scientific research at the start of the 20th century they became scientific specimens and boundary objects between the social worlds. Their existence as boundary objects motivated the social worlds to coordinate their work through translators and trading zones. By the 1930s all three coordination methods were being used simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of a recent controversy among theoretical physicists modelled on case studies of experimental science conducted in recent times by sociologists and historians. The principal source is a series of interviews with leading participants in the controversy. I have also read published papers pertaining to the debate and the study is informed by my own experience as a researcher in the relevant field of theoretical physics during the earliest period of the controversy. I argue, on the basis of this study, that the work of theorists can be very like the work of experimentalists. Concepts such as 'tacit knowledge', and problems of replicability, may be just as relevant to the study of theorists as they are to experimenters. In analogy with Collins' 'Experimenters' Regress', I propose the existence of a 'Theoreticians' Regress' which expresses the difficulty theorists have in judging the correctness of rival calculations when the best or only test of their validity is their own result, which is itself in dispute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the effects of iconic, abstract representations of complex objects on our interactions with those objects through an ethnographic study of the use of the London Underground Map to tame and enframe the city of London. Official reports insist that the 'Tube Map's' iconic status is due to its exemplary design principles or its utility for journey planning underground. This paper, however, presents results that suggest a different role for the familiar image: one of an essential visual technology that stands as an interface between the city and its user, presenting and structuring the points of access and possibilities for interaction within the urban space. The analysis explores the public understanding of an inscription in the world beyond the laboratory bench, the indexicality of the immutable mobile's visual language, and the relationship between representing and intervening. It further suggests fruitful crossovers between Science Studies, Urban Studies, and Human-Computer Interaction by approaching the individual as a 'user' of a city and its graphical interface, applying the technique of cognitive mapping to overlapping virtual and analog spaces, and exploring the social and practical effects of strong and standardized visual languages on further narratives and interactions with scientific, technological, or everyday objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through ethnographic research at the Graduate School of East-West Medical Science (GSM) at Kyung Hee University in South Korea, this paper examines how a hybrid research team translates Korean medicine (KM) into scientific languages through the mobilization of laboratory science in a global knowledge-making field. Paying attention to the asymmetric power relationship between KM and science, I show that the richness and liveliness of KM is truncated as it enters the global scientific field. This lab study examines: (1) KM's double approach to local KM and global scientific fields; (2) the lab's political function in relation to biomedicine and science; and (3) the identity crisis and reconstruction of KM caused by its scientific translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a characterization of distributed cognition (d-cog) and explores ways that the framework might be applied in studies of science. I argue that a system can only be given a d-cog description if it is thought of as performing a task. Turning our attention to science, we can try to give a global d-cog account of science or local d-cog accounts of particular scientific projects. Several accounts of science can be seen as global d-cog accounts: Robert Merton's sociology of scientific norms, Philip Kitcher's 20th-century account of cognitive labor, and Kitcher's 21st-century notion of well-ordered science. Problems that arise for them arise just because of the way that they attribute a function to science. The paper concludes by considering local d-cog accounts. Here, too, the task is the crux of the matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much debate has taken place in science and technology studies (S&TS) regarding how to speak about the capacities of technology. Alternative approaches are bound up with questions over the merits of realist and relativist accounts of technology and their potential for analytical insight and practical engagement. This paper advances a basis for examining the link between politics and artefacts, one that draws on but reconfigures the work of post-essentialist authors. This is done by moving away from attempts to detail the social basis of technology to consider instead where the ambiguities associated with technology are resolved. These issues are examined through the case of a (re-)emerging class of devices called 'non-lethal' weapons and, in particular, the chemical incapacitant spray used by British police forces. In doing so, this paper reframes debates in technology studies over how far it is possible and desirable to pursue relativist lines of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the process whereby a scientist's research findings are transformed into accredited factual knowledge and primarily with the context of justification. The focus of this article is on the way in which research findings, whether theoretical or experimental, become accepted as constituting knowledge. The concepts of a model are connected by various forms of interrelationship, of which cause, correlation, equivalence and exclusion, are examples. Researcher's learn to order the esoteric world of their problem area with the aid of a model which they pick up from prior publications and from their new colleagues. A researcher's model provides an initial formulation of the research problem, indicates the theories and techniques which may be applied appropriately to the problem and eventually plays a crucial role in giving meaning to reports of the completed research.

There is a growing commitment within science centres and museums to develop exhibitions that engender new forms of participation that contribute to the public's understanding of science. Information and communication systems play an important role in this regard, enabling new forms of 'interaction' with and around exhibits. In this paper we consider how visitors respond to these exhibits and explore the forms of interaction that arise within these new exhibition areas. The analysis addresses the ways in which these so-called 'interactives' create highly constrained sequences of action that prioritize the individual user while undermining the opportunities for co-participation and collaboration. It examines the ecologies of participation that arise with, around and within different types of exhibit and exhibition. The paper suggests that many 'interactive' exhibits rely upon a model of 'interaction' and the 'user' that pervades computer-based systems, a model that has been subject to sustained criticism over some years. In other words, the paper points to the ways in which 'interactivity' is conflated with social interaction and how the seemingly innovative and entertaining exhibits may fail to engender the coparticipation and collaboration that is seen as critical to learning and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public participation in technological decision-making is increasingly seen as de rigueur, but the limits and purpose of such participation remain open to debate. In this paper we explore the tension between different rationales for widening participation and examine their implications for its practice. Taking debates about medical genomics in the UK as an illustrative example, we argue that more heterogeneous participation and debate have the potential to improve the scrutiny and accountability of science within representative democracies. In doing so we also argue that it is necessary to replace the language of `lay expertise' with a more systematic and rigorous treatment of the expertise or its absence that characterizes different participants. Drawing on the theoretical work of Collins & Evans (2002), we distinguish between those processes where expert knowledge is required and debate is conducted within the public domain, rather than by the public itself, and those where the views of non-expert lay citizens are needed and valued. The effect of adopting this approach is to permit a more inclusive treatment of the `technical' while also providing a positive role for non-expert citizens in the democratic control and oversight of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on the paper, The Third Wave of Science Studies, by H. M. Collins and Robert Evans, published in the 2002, Volume 32, Number 2 issue of the periodical Social Studies of Science. In this discussion paper the authors try to fit science studies within a three-fold schema. The stages in science studies now have become waves, but the authors' object is to position existing work within the first two waves and set the stage for the third one. The proposed Wave Three does not prefigure a leap toward a more ambitious research agenda. It seems very much a drawing in of the horns. The authors' primary concern is expertise. The bottom line advocated by Collins and Evans is that there can be too much as well as too little public involvement in technical decision-making, and social scientists need better conceptual tools with which to determine how much is just right in any given situation. To further this argument, the authors introduce an array of new terms, with several abstruse diagrams to supplement them. Expertise is divided into three types: interactional, contributory and referred. On the perennial challenge of democracy in the face of specialization, Collins and Evans offer two sets of reflections: one is to define and classify expertise more accurately, especially in relation to its counterpart of lay knowledge and abilities; the other is to prescribe for the field of science studies how it should organize future researchers into the problem of expertise, under the banner of Wave Three.

This paper is conceptual and methodological. On the basis of both empirical and explanatory considerations, I craft a number of analytic categories -- 'epistemic engines', 'meters', 'scopes', 'graphs' and 'chambers' -- through which to investigate and understand the character of key forms of the material culture of scientific practice. I argue that much of modern science can be understood in its specificity as 'engine science', a tremendously powerful and generative culture of inquiry. The analytic categories have stability across temporal and spatial localities and have broad applicability across the sciences. The analysis circumvents dualisms, such as those between science and technology, micro and macro, and science and society, and indicates a way to conceptualize the character of 'engineering cultures' and 'engineering states'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There seems to be a general penchant for dichotomous styles of thought in engineering, in which hierarchies and gender are often evident--both symbolically and organizationally. This paper explores these themes, drawing in part on a pilot ethnographic study of software developers. The technical/social distinction is strongly gendered inasmuch as it maps on to masculine instrumentalism and feminine expressiveness. Also, the two sides of this dualism are seen as mutually exclusive such that 'the technical', which defines the core of engineering expertise and identity, specifically excludes 'the social'. Still, the related distinction between specialist and heterogeneous rôles becomes valued, and gendered, in contradictory ways. The abstract/concrete dualism is even more contradictory. The privileging of analytical abstraction in science and education sits sometimes uncomfortably alongside the obvious practical importance of, and pleasures in, a hands-on relationship with technological artefacts--conflicting versions of masculinity. Multiple tensions coexist around such dualisms, yet they endure. The concluding discussion considers possible factors related to the co-existence of certainty and uncertainty around technology, and to the performance of gender more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Demands for research to generate impact, along with proliferating institutional regimes for evaluating impact, are a ubiquitous aspect of contemporary scientific practice. Based on participant observation at an agro-environmental research institute in southwest China, this article explores three iterations of a tool for planning and evaluating impactful science called 'theory of change' (TOC). Despite their ostensible common grounding in TOC, I show how an impact scientist's framework, a donor's monitoring and evaluation regime, and a communication consultant's branding strategy each suggest very different normative structures for scientific practice. These structures entail: particular horizons towards which scientific research is to be practiced, precise points in time at which the future effects of research are to be anticipated, and specific assumptions about how scientists' agency should play out across time. Taking the peculiar sensibilities of TOC as a comparative framework, I illuminate IFF scientists' implicit imaginations of how contemporary science does and should generate effects in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explicates a central conflict that can affect science research organizations, the conflict between the anti-bureaucratic stance believed to advance science and concerns for gender equity rooted in the universalist ethos of science. We present a case study of a science research organization, using employment and publication records, a survey of 308 employees, and qualitative interviews with 60 employees. We show how anti-bureaucratic organizational structures perpetuate gender inequities for both female scientists and non-scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this special issue, we focus on the particular impacts of neoliberalism as a regime of scientific management. Drawing on a wide range of studies from other fields, as well as the four cases in this issue, we argue that while there are important differences in how neoliberalism has been implemented across nations and disciplines, there are a set of key principles and common outcomes that can serve a heuristic function for STS scholars attempting a more careful examination of neoliberalism. These common outcomes include: the rollback of public funding for universities; the separation of research and teaching missions, leading to rising numbers of temporary faculty; the dissolution of the scientific author; the narrowing of research agendas to focus on the needs of commercial actors; an increasing reliance on market take-up to adjudicate intellectual disputes; and the intense fortification of intellectual property in an attempt to commercialize knowledge, impeding the production and dissemination of science. Taken together, these shifts suggest that the impact of neoliberal science policy and management extends far beyond the patent system into the methods, organization, and content of science. We thus urge STS scholars to undertake a detailed exploration of exactly how the external political-economic forces of neoliberalism are transforming technoscience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents results from a qualitative study of perceptions of science careers in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the main research institution in France. Its aim is to understand the 'glass ceiling' effect, which reduces the proportion of women at the higher levels of the career hierarchy. Long interviews were carried out with men, as well as women, support staff and researchers. Factors such as tension between individual and collective dimensions of research activity, and long-term time-management problems, were identified: these affect both men and women but in different ways. Organizations bear an important responsibility through the way they reinforce or alleviate difficulties that women and men face in contributing to scientific research at all levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the study of the distribution and integration of knowledge in a small control system development project called the Automation System for Agricultural Implements (AGRIX). The activity of integrating socially distributed knowledge is called knowledge networking. We distinguish between three modes of knowledge networking — modular, integral and translational — and argue that the project team's task-specific selection of a knowledge networking mode depends on the nature of the problem to be solved. We propose that groups tend to select different kinds of knowledge networking strategies, depending on whether the problem is perceived as well- or ill-defined. We found that the AGRIX team worked with well-defined problems in modular and translational ways, while treating ill-defined problems with integral knowledge networking. We also observed that, in the absence of major constraints, the networking mode co-evolved dynamically with the problem structure, even though the organizational core of the project remained unchanged. This suggests that our proposal is plausible and should be investigated more systematically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the content, form and function of popularized accounts of primatological research in the field. Based on the textual analysis of 11 popular accounts published from 1964 to 2001, it demonstrates that a key element of such scientific writing is the construction and presentation of the primates themselves as knowledgeable actors within particular social, ecological and moral landscapes. It places these accounts in the context of the problem of anthropomorphism within the history of the behavioural sciences, and argues that, given the importance of avoiding anthropomorphism in primatological research, the presentation of primate research subjects as persons must serve some significant function. It suggests that while one reason for this might be the severely endangered status of many primates, another might be found in the development of particular methodological strategies for conducting field site research, strategies that may help researchers form individualized relationships with their research subjects. However, such public productions of primate personality have political consequences, consequences that the science studies community needs to consider more carefully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divisions between variable oriented and person-oriented approaches in social and behavioral research are newly drawn. Yet few person oriented approaches have been fully articulated; those that have are predominantly quantitative This work presents an argument for a qualitative, person oriented study of careers; an approach identified as careers in context Based on a national study of scientists, this contextualist approach is grounded by three interacting, but analytically distinct, emphases to suggest how careers can be studied in and beyond science: (1) an emphasis on time and place as under-utilized dimensions on which to direct further study of careers; (2) an emphasis on the subjective career as a concept that qualitatively encapsulates temporal and spatial dimensions; and (3) an emphasis on career study in life course perspective. Subjectively (and objectively), careers are, of course, not static. By situating subjective careers in the times and places in which they occur, we are drawn to how those careers ‘play out’ over the course of the lives of the people leading them. This paper concludes by stressing ways in which contextual studies of careers in and beyond science will advance our understanding in five larger domains of social process: identity construction; institution building; social psychological differentiation; job satisfaction; and mystification of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a framework for understanding social movements that address issues related to science, technology and expert knowledge. ‘Democratizing science movements’ contest, reframe, and engage in the production of official scientific research in order to achieve their goals. They contest the seeming objectivity and neutrality of science and seek to legitimate lay perspectives. In order to empirically explore why such movements arise and how they work, I discuss two cases: the anti-dam movement in Brazil and the environmental breast cancer movement in the USA. While there are obvious internal and contextual differences between these two movements, they both exemplify similar characteristics of democratizing science movements. In this sense, these cases are representative of a broader, transnational phenomenon. Qualitative data in the form of interviews, ethnographic observations and document collection were used to study these cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific laboratories can sometimes be dangerous places to work, and safety concerns can have a significant impact on the scientific research process. Because safety practices specify both behavioral norms and technical standards, they provide an opportunity to better understand the relationships between the organizational and epistemic aspects of scientific culture. This paper presents a case study of a `pulsed-power' facility at the US Los Alamos National Laboratory, where electrical hazards are a major concern. Drawing on work by Mary Douglas and others, I show how safety in the pulsed-power laboratory can be understood in terms of concepts of order and pollution. In particular, I argue that the laboratory is a cultural setting that generates both material and social order in science. The concept of `traceability' - the ideal of being able to trace visual and logical connections between system components - is the central metaphor for material order in this setting. This metaphor is enacted in the design of pulsed-power systems and through various safety procedures that function as rituals. These rituals, and the concept of traceability itself, also contribute to social order by helping to shape norms of conduct in the laboratory, which in turn structure relationships between the laboratory work group and the larger institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University Technology Licensing Offices (TLOs) are strategic sites for examining efforts to concretize, frame, and market early stage technologies. This paper draws on 18 months of fieldwork in a private university TLO to analyze collective decision-making efforts during licensing meetings. I describe three processes - docket description, deal framing, and problem resolution - that highlight the central roles that locally sensible strategies and languages play in describing and comparing disparate technologies. Such approaches reflect the collective experience of licensing associates and, when rationalized through organizational learning, represent the processual underpinnings of ongoing transformations in the institutional arrangements of US universities. Close examination of meeting discussions reveals multiple `conceptual spaces' that support TLO decision-making and more closely connects theoretical work in science and technology studies with theories of organizational learning and with economic sociology's growing emphasis on commensuration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper presents the history of Belgrade numerical weather prediction models as 'assemblages' shaped by the cognitive, social and material circumstances of Tito's Yugoslavia. It looks at how local researchers customized their model to suit the Balkan weather, IBM computers and socialist science policy, and how they managed to 'export' the product internationally. Accommodating the lack of computing power and mountainous topography, the model at first attracted the users with similar concerns. When it was later tested at the US National Meteorological Center, it showed a skill and potential for rapid improvement that led to its implementation in the USA and other national weather services. The success of the Eta model illustrates the ways in which a regional research travels into an `alien' institutional and cognitive territory and how it bears upon the issues of the production and circulation of technoscientific knowledge. It is argued that the difference between the perceptions of international 'frontier' technoscience and the local `backwater' adaptation is that the former implies a representational notion in which what matters is a black-boxed `fund' of knowledge, while the latter implies an agenda in which what matters is exactly that - what matters locally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the ways in which popular science books, through their explicit insertion of science into the public domain, act to reinforce a distinct demarcation between scientists and their publics. It is argued that these books acquire a distributed media presence by acting as nodal points in an intertextual web. The intertextuality of popular science books causes images of science which are supportive of scientists' interests to continue to circulate in public discourse despite the alternative images thrown up by public scientific controversies reported in the news. The paper looks at examples of popular physics books which, like many other popularizations of physics, draw explicitly on science fiction. Since these texts do not respond to any specific controversy within or around science, they provide examples of `routine' boundary work. It is argued that by working at multiple boundaries, texts such as these are able to claim potentially contradictory attributes for science at the same time as sustaining its place at the top of a hierarchy of ways of knowing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how different scientific regimes have contributed differently to the way two Western Australian islands are managed. Rottnest Island and Garden Island are located off the coast of Perth, the capital of Western Australia. This paper contrasts the way science was conducted on Rottnest from the 1950s to 1970s, and this is contrasted with the way it was done on Garden Island in the 1970s and 1980s. On Rottnest, zoology and medicine were detached from the island management, yet impacted upon the island landscape. On Garden Island, ecology and geography were integrated with, and served, management. Differences in the social and political context of the times, and between the philosophical approaches and cultures of the scientists, are shown to have created different rôles for scientists in the management of the islands, and illustrate the on-going dialectic between two scientific cultures, one a culture of biomedical abstraction on Rottnest0 and the other a culture of pragmatic holism on Garden Island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of technoscientific regulatory controversies is now an established genre within science studies, with a small but important methodological and meta-literature. That literature has only rarely noted how published accounts of particular controversies inevitably employ narrational strategies, including decisions about emplotment, time-frames, character-motivation, and the use of tropes, to endow these stories with political and epistemological meaning. In an exercise designed to recover these narrational elements and promote narrative consciousness, this paper presents two separate accounts of a single important controversy: Canada's recent regulatory experience with the Monsanto Corporation's recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST). The discussion points out the different narrational strategies employed in each account, and analyses how these strategies interact with explicit or theory-based interpretive approaches to determine how the accounts contribute to 'public moral argument' about regulatory affairs. It concludes with broader speculations on the advantages that a greater reliance on narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT Charismatic authority flourishes in places where some social scientists evidently do not expect to find it -- in late modernity and in highly complex and instrumentally orientated technoscientific organizations. This paper documents and interprets participants' testimony about the workings of wartime Los Alamos in relation to the charisma of its Scientific Director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. We treat charisma as an interactional accomplishment, and examine its role in technoscientific organizations. Los Alamos was a hybrid place, positioned at the intersection of military, industrial and academic forms. Everyday life there was marked by a high degree of normative uncertainty. Structures of authority, communication and the division of labour were contested and unclear. The interactional constitution of Oppenheimer as charismatic enabled him to articulate, vouch for and, finally, come to embody a conception of legitimate organizational order as collegial, egalitarian and communicatively open. We offer concluding speculations about the continuing importance of charismatic authority in contemporary technoscientific organizations. Just as normative uncertainty is endemic in late modernity, so too, we argue, is charisma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the aspects of science which touch the public most deeply involve some degree of modelling (for example, the dispersion of pollutants, predicted climate change or the spread of flood waters), yet explicit analyses in the public understanding of science tradition (PUS) have seldom examined computerized scientific models. However, scientific models of all sorts are increasingly run on computers, often raising new obstacles to public understanding and participation. The availability of increasing computer power at declining cost makes the possibility of modelling all the greater; recently, UK local authorities and other regional executive bodies, as well as lobby groups, have been able to carry out their own modelling activities. Though the practicalities of modelling have received some attention from social scientists, it is clear that there are comparatively neglected questions about PUS in relation to public judgements of the accuracy and legitimacy of such models, and to their reception and use by the public. This paper examines the significance of these issues through a recent case study of a local authority-operated air-quality model in the British city of Sheffield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison between the development of cognitive science in France and the USA enables us to analyze some national differences linked to specific connections between the scientific, military, economic and political worlds. The influence of new practices and tools developed during World War II and the Cold War appears to be of crucial importance in understanding the development of this new field, as well as that of cybernetics, computer science, artificial intelligence and molecular biology. This paper can be considered as a study in how the differing contexts in France and the USA shaped the history of the construction of cognitive science in each of these two countries. In spite of various differences, some common aspects may be pointed out: in both cases, computer experts and psychologists using a computational modelling approach were those first engaged in the construction of cognitive science. If in France neuroscience-oriented cognitive science research was stronger than in the USA, it seems that the artificial intelligence orientation is also of growing importance in France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The citations to a citation classic dealing with the classification of citations according to their contexts were analyzed using the method of that citation classic. It was found that (a) the ratio of conceptual to operational citations is very much larger than in the cases studied before in the natural sciences; (b) the ratio of evolutionary to juxtapositional citations is much smaller than in the cases studied before in the natural sciences. The results are interpreted in terms of the following conclusions: (1) the technique of the original paper has been little used directly; (2) the specific results of the original applications of the original paper have been used to some extent as evidence; and (3) the conceptual idea of the original paper has been used in general to stimulate further, refined, and alternate investigations in scientometrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the work of sociologists John Irvine and Ben Martin that has provided a wealth of statistical data to be taken into account by future science policy makers and historians. Those analysts will interpret the data in terms of the significance of what has been counted. Irvine and Martin sensitively recognized this need for careful interpretation in the methodological introduction to their paper on progress in radio astronomy. Even then they were to underestimate a fundamental problem, and its difficulties have been magnified as the sensitivity shown in the methodological introduction has been abandoned. The article is a response, which focuses on their recent paper on "Basic Research in the East and West." The object of that work was to evaluate the scientific outputs of high-energy accelerators in the Eastern bloc compared to those in the United States and Western Europe. But if one is to evaluate science, performance must be matched to goals. Objectives of science are explored by Irvine and Martin themselves in their recent book, "Foresight in Science," it is explained that the conventional differentiation of basic research, applied research and experimental development may be useful for statistical purposes, but not for science-policy. Within basic research one can distinguish in terms of the patron's objectives between pure or curiosity oriented research and strategic research. The former is promoted for no long term economic or social benefits other than the advancement of knowledge, whereas the latter is expected to produce a broad base of knowledge likely to form the background to the solution of recognized current or future practical problems. The article explains in more detail the character of strategic research.

In making decisions about the reality of alleged anomalous events, scientists are likely to weigh both the a priori plausibility of what is alleged and the credibility of the reports which reach them. The present paper is an attempt to examine the anomaly reporting processes which led to the scientific recognition of the reality of meteorites in the eighteenth century. It is shown that scientists fail to make realistic assumptions about anomaly reporting, and that this failure affects the accuracy of the decisions made about anomalies. The treatment of reports about alleged anomalous events is further shown to be related to the scientific community's concerns about protecting its internal processes from external interference. The recognition of meteorites took place only when the savants of the eighteenth century 1) found a way of evaluating the reports, 2) devised a theory to explain them, and 3) received unimpeachable eyewitness testimony of their occurrence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1961, a prestigious group of medical researchers called on their colleagues to stop using the language of 'Mongolism' to describe people with what we now call 'Down's syndrome' (or Trisomy 21). This call responded to new knowledge about the biological basis of Down's syndrome: rather than the product of racial degeneration, as had been hypothesized in the 19th century, the condition was the result of an extra chromosome, dubbed '21'. Yet, despite this plea, the terms 'Mongol' and 'Mongolism' continued in scientific use through the 1960s. Drawing on published and archival materials, I argue that the new knowledge about chromosomes did not rupture older patterns of scientific practice or interpretation, and with them, older terminological habits. The persistence of the language of Mongolism reflects the continuity of a network of older approaches to interpreting the condition within the community of human and medical geneticists, including an enduring diagnostic and interpretive technology, dermatoglyphics. Old networks were not supplanted; they were re-aligned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Might a rapprochement be desirable and possible between the more academic and the more activist wings of STS? What can each learn from the other? A promising trajectory for this purpose may be to reinterpret and extend research in the constructivist tradition, building on recent work that appears to constitute the beginnings of a reconstructivist scholarly tradition. Some of the necessary work would be explicitly prescriptive: given that technology and society are mutually and reciprocally constructing, how should technologies be constructed, which social groups deserve inclusion in which processes, and how should closure be reached? But other issues might be taken up by scholars motivated exclusively by curiosity, or by the intention of building a subfield: what factors slow or prevent the emergence of entire subfields of technoscientific endeavour, as arguably has occurred with 'green chemistry', 'alternative health', and alternatives to weaponry-oriented national defence? Our intention is not to prescribe, but to help catalyse a next round of friendly discussion in STS about these and related matters, encouraging greater reflexivity of the field as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies comparing the cognitive status of the sciences have long sought to identify the distinguishing features of 'hard' and 'soft' science. Attempts by philosophers of science to ground such distinctions in abstract principles and by sociologists of science to detect relevant differences (for example, in consensus levels) have met with limited success. However, recent investigations of scientists' concrete practices of data representation provide new leads on this problem. In particular, Bruno Latour has argued that graphs are essential to science due to their ability to render phenomena into compact, transportable and persuasive form. Applying Latour's notion of 'graphism' to the hierarchy of sciences, we found that the use of graphs across seven scientific disciplines correlated almost perfectly with their hardness, and that the same pattern held up across ten specialty fields in psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although studies of scientific practice are now common, relatively little attention has been given to the technical detail of the social objects of the sciences. That detail, and the ordinariness of that detail, establish the legitimacy of practitioners' work and make that work recognizable as the work of a discovering science. In particular, the close examination of mathematical proofs exhibits the embeddedness of mathematics within a surrounding culture of proving, and leads to an appreciation of what it means to be a member of such a culture and to be engaged in the work of doing mathematics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many researchers use citation counts to study science. But few studies explore the meanings of those citations. Oddly enough, least explored of all are judgements by the authors who cite them. This paper describes three empirical studies of citations in psychology journals that explored the judgements. In general, highly cited scholarly works are rated as exemplars and as being of higher quality, although there were differences between older and newer works in these ratings. More interestingly, works rated as highly created had mixed fates. Creative works were judged to be higher quality exemplars; but creative works also had the lowest citation counts once quality and exemplar ratings were taken into account. It may be that some creative works fit poorly into existing conceptual or methodological structures, and so are used less. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to the new discipline of cybernetics expended exponentially from the year 1943 to 1970. The practitioners of this new discipline, unlike traditional scientific disciplines, claimed that they were producing a new universal science. This paper anatomizes the claim to universality and examines some practical consequences for the general economy of the sciences argued by cyberneticians. Cybernetics is a universal discipline, and the author examines the rhetorical and practical tools used by cyberneticians in order to win credence and gain support for their new discipline. The author argues that the claim for universality was supported by a new reading of human history and that this new reading was bolstered by the development of a new universal language. This language was in turn used to suggest the validity of a new division of labor within the sciences. The author suggests that attempts were made to institute this new division of labor by deploying a disciplinary strategy complementary to the strategy of 'distributed passage points.'

Actor-network theory has, until recently, narrated the co-evolution of science and society in terms of dramatic triumphs and betrayals. This paper attempts to incorporate 'ambivalence' into the process of enrolment and black-boxing so central to the construction and continuation of actor-networks. Though ambivalence towards one's own and others' attributed roles in the network would seem to threaten the integrity of a given network, we suggest that it might reinforce it. Drawing upon fieldwork on the UK Cervical Screening Programme (CSP), we show how General Practitioners seriously problematize their own roles and the black-boxed status of the Cervical Smear Test within the CSP network. However, we also show that it is this very problematization that serves to render the network durable and workable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information related to the economy in lesser-developed countries. Economic development is a goal of all nation-states, and a life necessity for lesser, developed countries. Strategies for economic development stress the importance of science and technology in accomplishing such goals. The article examines the relationship between science and technology in the context of the economic conditions in lesser-developed countries. Two competing models conceptualize science, technology, and their, relationship, and predict their simultaneous effects on the economy. These models are referred to as the hierarchical model and the symmetric model. Using empirical analysis for the effects of published papers and patent applications on the Gross National Product, this note examines the applicability of these two competing models to lesser-developed countries during the 1970's and 1980's. On the basis of the results found, the note concludes that there is no support for the applicability of the hierarchical model to lesser-developed countries.

This paper examines the resurgence of interest in the interpretation of quantum theory which occurred in the late 1940s and 1950s, and seeks to uncover its political origins in a perceived clash between the post-War Stalinist interpretation of dialectical materialism and the 'Copenhagen' interpretation of quantum mechanics. In examining the debate that followed this renewed interest, certain issues concerning scientific argument are touched upon. These relate particularly to the progress of scientific dispute in a context in which no appeal to experiment can be made. This unusual state of affairs raises questions as to whether such disputes can be resolved, and if so, how. In order to explore these questions, the outcomes of the debates in the USSR and in the West are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to a recent descriptive account of the state of science studies in France, this Comment - which is a participant observer's account, not a research paper - seeks to contribute towards a sociological explanation of the observed state of affairs. The absence of specifically social studies of science in France is an aspect of the traditional French construal of science studies as consisting of (positivist or philosophically-minded) history of science. The reason why new approaches have difficulty in getting established is sought mainly in the structure of French institutions: decision- making bearing on intellectual choices is concentrated in very few hands, and these decisions affect, and streamline, most institutions throughout the country. Moreover, the large and overarching decision-making bodies, whose members have divergent preferences and interests, are inherently prudent and shun risk -taking: their very social structure favours conservatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author explore further aspects of the public understanding of science. Author's starting point is the paradoxical nature of public experiments- tests performed before the lay public in an attempt to show them that one state of natural affairs exists rather than another. Public experiments are meant to resolve issues such as doubts about the safety of technological innovations. The first paradox of public experiments is that the public are expected to draw conclusions with certainty as a result of witnessing an experiment at first hand, whereas recent work in the sociology of scientific knowledge suggests that proximity to the seat of creation of scientific facts usually has the effect of creating uncertainty. The public, one would expect, would be more sure of their scientific conclusions in their normal distanced state, without the direct evidence of the senses that is the subject of so much interpretation and re-interpretation among those who produce it. The second paradox is that public experiments require the general public to draw a firm conclusion on matters scientific whereas these are matters upon which scientific experts themselves cannot agree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A massive bibliography of works on physiological optics allows an approximate reconstruction of literature production in this science between 1840 and 1894. It shows how relative levels of productivity varied in over seventy constituent problem areas and challenges us to explain the shifting foci of research activity in terms of what is known about the institutional and theoretical development of the field. This paper describes the growth of the science and offers such an interpretation, arguing that physiological optics passed from a 'pre-paradigm' to a 'paradigm' stage between 1850 and !870. The elements of the paradigmatic formulation affected literature production in various problem areas differently, depending on the nature of the consensus they imposed, and the formulation did not prevent chronic disagreements on important theoretical questions from re-emerging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern science, which was an indigenous product of Western culture, is now being practised in many non-Western countries. This paper discusses the peculiar social, cultural and intellectual problems which scientists of these non-Western countries face in adopting Western science in their situations, with special reference to India. It is pointed out that, in addition to money and communication, it is necessary to have a proper psychological gestalt to practise science satisfactorily. The author analyzes his experience as a physics student in India and in the United States to clerify the nature of this psychological gestalt, and to explain what makes it difficult for non-Western scientists to acquire it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring children's reactions to a subject which is both close to school learning and also dependent upon personal evaluation, requires consideration of many external influences. Television learning, for example, although clearly important, generates a kind of para-social knowledge that does not marry easily with more formal school learning. Personal influences, such as the growing child's identification with society, success at school learning, gender, and perception of school science, may also affect how pupils respond when asked to form a science-based opinion. The project on which this paper is based was carried out in the classroom, between a physics teacher and some of her regular school classes. Such a natural setting allowed the use of a wide variety of research methods in exploring children's views on the social uses of energy, and the relationship between their informal understanding and formally taught knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]