Barry Barnes
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 124838 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Barry Barnes |
| NOMBRES | Barry |
| APELLIDO | Barnes |
| FIRMA | BARNES B |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Exeter |
| VERIFICADO | No |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 73 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 345 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 73 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1974 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2020 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Sociological Theories of Scientific Knowledge
Sociological Theories of Scientific Knowledge
All societies make a systematic distinction between knowledge on the one hand and mere belief on the other. Knowledge is that which is entitled to general acceptance and trust; belief is that which one or more individuals, rightly or wrongly, happen to cleave to. In any given society knowledge may be described as true beliefs, or justified beliefs, or beliefs both justified and true. There will also be methods of identifying such beliefs, of asce…
Randall Collins on status groups and statuses
This paper focuses on what could be learned about statuses and status groups from the work of Randall Collins in the 1980s, and in particular from Weberian Sociological Theory (1986). I mention how I myself found this book useful at that time to further my own work in the sociology of science and in sociological theory, and emphasise its value in appreciating the fundamental and irremediable deficiencies of individualistic rational choice theory …
STS and the Importance of Being a Collective
Professor Barry Barnes was a key, founding member of the early Science Studies Unit (SSU) at the University of Edinburgh. In this interview with Gill Haddow he reflects on what is was like to be part of this fertile period of scholarly enterprise with David Bloor and others and describes some of the key influences that effected his thinking such as Thomas Kuhn. The eighties were a time of political unrest and SSU, was not outwardly political in v…
On The Social Construction of Reality
Interests and the Growth of Knowledge (RLE Social Theory)
Intriguingly different in approach from conventional works in the same area of inquiry, this study deals with the central problems and concerns of the sociology of knowledge as it has traditionally been conceived of. In other words, it is concerned with the relationship of knowledge, social interests and social structure, and with the various attempts which have been made to analyse the relationship. Barry Barnes takes the classic writings in the…
Interests and the Growth of Knowledge
The Elements Of Social Theory
A significant contribution to the development of social theory which provides a comprehensive summary of the various traditions. Barnes offers an accessible introduction for undergraduates which presents his own arguments along the way.; It is intended that this work will be adopted on undergraduate and postgraduate courses on social theory within social and political science. It will also appeal to students of social psychology, social anthropol…
Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory
Originally published in 1974. Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory centres on the problem of explaining the manifest variety and contrast in the beliefs about nature held in different groups and societies. It maintains that the sociologist should treat all beliefs symmetrically and must investigate and account for allegedly correct or beliefs just as he would incorrect or unscientific ones. From this basic position a study of scientific b…
Essentialisms in the sciences
Afterword
Genomes and What to Make of Them
The announcement in 2003 that the Human Genome Project had completed its map of the entire human genome was heralded as a stunning scientific breakthrough: our first full picture of the basic building blocks of human life. Since then, boasts about the benefits - and warnings of the dangers - of genomics have remained front-page news, with everyone agreeing that genomics has the potential to radically alter life as we know it.For the nonscientist,…
Catching up with Robert Merton
Sociologists of science today take it for granted that science is a collective activity in a profound sense, and it was above all Robert Merton who established this at a time when a misconceived individualistic perspective was generally used to address it. Current work on science, whether as institution, normative order, moral community, sub-culture, set of peers or status group, is indebted to Merton's account of the norms of science, or else to…
Measuring student satisfaction at a UK university
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on the design and use of a questionnaire to measure student satisfaction at Liverpool John Moores University's Faculty of Business and Law.
Global Assemblages
The credibility of scientific expertise in a culture of suspicion
Scientists and other technical experts in the UK increasingly complain that their credibility is being eroded and that the public is ever more reluctant to believe what they say. This is sometimes seen as a part of a larger 'problem of trust', afflicting all our major institutions: science attracts suspicion because it is no longer perceived as independent and is regarded instead as tied to the interests of those institutions. But it is suggested…
Elusive Memories of Technoscience
Technoscience” is now most commonly used in academic work to refer to sets of activities wherein science and technology have become inextricably intermingled, or else have hybridized in some sense. What, though, do we understand by “science” and by “technology”? The use of these terms has varied greatly, but their current use presumes a society with extensive institutional and occupational differentiation. Only in that kind of context may science…
Between the real and the reified
Introduction A burgeoning interest in knowledge has been one of the most striking and significant developments in the social sciences over the last quarter of a century. Nor has this shift in attention resulted merely in the relocation of the debates and controversies characteristic of these fields. Something close to an agreed conception of knowledge has emerged, even if how precisely knowledge should be analysed and understood remains hotly dis…
The Sociology of Norbert Elias
Norbert Elias has been described as a great sociologist and over recent years there has been a steady upsurge of interest in his work. Yet despite the fact that he was active for nearly sixty years from the 1920s to the 1960s it was only in the 1980s that English translations of his works became widely available and the importance of his contribution to the sociological endeavour was fully recognised in the English speaking world. This 2004 book …
Genes, agents and the institution of responsible action
The concern of this paper is with how the accounts of human beings and their behaviour now emerging from genetics, genomics and the new human biotechnology should be related to traditional accounts in which we identify ourselves as responsible agents, capable of choice, who normally act freely and voluntarily. The paper addresses these apparently competing accounts in terms of their functions and modes of use, and thereby arrives at a general sol…
Understanding Agency
PART ONE: MATERIALS AND ARGUMENTS Everyday Discourse `Choice' and `Agency' in Social Theory A Brief Digression on Attribution On Individualism in Social Theory Transcending Individualism PART TWO: SPECULATIONS AND EVALUATIONS `Agency' and `Responsibility' in Sociological Theory Agency, Responsibility and New Human Biotechnologies Rational Agents in Differentiated Societies On the Fine Line between State and Status
The Macro/Micro Problem and the Problem of Structure and Agency
The best of times, the worst of times
Tolerance as a Primary Virtue
Essay Review
The Elements of Social Theory
Over the past quarter century, social theory has moved in diverse and often seemingly incompatible directions, exaggerating differences of approach that existed even in earlier periods. In a strikingly original book, Barry Barnes uses this intellectual diversity not only to identify but also to unify the central ways of looking at the field. Barnes frames his task by addressing the most important problem confronting all students of society today:…
Social Life as Bootstrapped Induction
How people refer and how they infer are key empirical questions for the sociology of knowledge. In the present paper, I suggest that in the course of social interaction much referring activity is self-referring, and much inference self-validating. This occurs to the extent that our inductive inferences become permeated with feedback-loops or 'bootstraps': I offer a simple general form of representation to assist in thinking about bootstrapped ind…
Understanding Agency
PART ONE: MATERIALS AND ARGUMENTS Everyday Discourse `Choice' and `Agency' in Social Theory A Brief Digression on Attribution On Individualism in Social Theory Transcending Individualism PART TWO: SPECULATIONS AND EVALUATIONS `Agency' and `Responsibility' in Sociological Theory Agency, Responsibility and New Human Biotechnologies Rational Agents in Differentiated Societies On the Fine Line between State and Status
Agency” as a Red Herring in Social Theory
The central argument of this article is that there is no fact of the matter, no evidence, however tentative or questionable, that will serve adequately to identify actions “chosen” or “determined” for the purposes of sociological theory. This argument will be developed with reference to the two theorists of the greatest importance in advocating the sociological value of the concept of agency: Talcott Parsons, with his “voluntaristic theory of act…
Science, Nature and Control
The study of the Mechanics' Institute movement of Great Britain has always been marginal to three academic communities - the history of education, the history of science and the history of technology. The greatest quantity of empirical historical work on the Institutes, and some of the most relevant general orientations, comes from historians of education. Some of these scholars have made convincing cases for approaching the movement, alike with …
Power
On the 'Hows' and 'Whys' of Cultural Change (Response to Woolgar)
It is little more than a decade since the possibility of a thoroughgoing sociological analysis of scientific culture once more began to be taken seriously. But since that time developments have occurred with breathtaking speed. The view that scientific culture is constructed like any other is now well elaborated and exemplified. It is beginning to enter the third stage of William James' well-known theory of scientific research programmes: first i…
On the Conventional Character of Knowledge and Cognition
Status Groups and Collective Action
Max Weber's description of how status groups monopolise goods and opportunities is now widely used by sociological theory to understand the economic and political relationships between groups. However, it is rarely recognised that a problem of collective action must be solved if a status group is to operate in this way, that it is individually irrational for members of the group to support its monopolistic activities even if they profit from them…
Whatever should be done with indexical expressions
Catching up with Robert Merton
Sociologists of science today take it for granted that science is a collective activity in a profound sense, and it was above all Robert Merton who established this at a time when a misconceived individualistic perspective was generally used to address it. Current work on science, whether as institution, normative order, moral community, sub-culture, set of peers or status group, is indebted to Merton's account of the norms of science, or else to…
The Science-Technology Relationship
This Note draws attention to the emergence of what is generally acknowledged to be a very satisfactory interactive model of the science-technology relationship. It goes on to ask why such a model should not be extended to describe the relationship of science with other sub-cultures, besides that of technology
On the Extensions of Concepts and the Growth of Knowledge
Essay Review
On the Role of Interests in Scientific Change
Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory
Originally published in 1974. Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory centres on the problem of explaining the manifest variety and contrast in the beliefs about nature held in different groups and societies. It maintains that the sociologist should treat all beliefs symmetrically and must investigate and account for allegedly correct or beliefs just as he would incorrect or unscientific ones. From this basic position a study of scientific b…
On the causal explanation of scientific judgment
Research Note
Elusive Memories of Technoscience
Technoscience” is now most commonly used in academic work to refer to sets of activities wherein science and technology have become inextricably intermingled, or else have hybridized in some sense. What, though, do we understand by “science” and by “technology”? The use of these terms has varied greatly, but their current use presumes a society with extensive institutional and occupational differentiation. Only in that kind of context may science…
Oversimplification and the Desire for Truth
know that it has recently changed its character. Formerly, it played serious music. Presently, pieces of serious music are interspersed with extended discussions of why the music is so fine and remarkable, together with occasional excursions into what its composers liked to eat for dinner. According to critics, this represents the 'dumbing-down' of Radio 3. Nor, at least for some of the critics, is it the quality of the discussion that is at the …
Explaining Scientific Consensus
Macro-Economics and Infant Behaviour
A number of general issues in the social sciences are currently being addressed through consideration of the free-rider problem, also known as the problem of collective action. Many different ways of comparing and evaluating competing social theories can be co-ordinated as discussions of the problem. In attending to its relatively simple structure fundamental issues routinely arise, concerning the basis of social order, the nature of power, and t…
On Authority and its Relationship to Power
This paper suggests an alternative to the received view of the relationship between power and authority. It regards authorities as the passive agents of powers. Thus to possess authority is to possess less than to possess power in its own right. Contrast this with the received view where to possess authority is to possess more than to possess power: authority may be power plus legitimacy, or power plus consent. The paper goes on to consider some …
On The Social Construction of Reality
The credibility of scientific expertise in a culture of suspicion
Scientists and other technical experts in the UK increasingly complain that their credibility is being eroded and that the public is ever more reluctant to believe what they say. This is sometimes seen as a part of a larger 'problem of trust', afflicting all our major institutions: science attracts suspicion because it is no longer perceived as independent and is regarded instead as tied to the interests of those institutions. But it is suggested…
Sociology of Science
The Structure of Social Science
Whatever should be done with indexical expressions
Research Note
Where is the Edge of Objectivity
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Science, Nature and Control
The study of the Mechanics' Institute movement of Great Britain has always been marginal to three academic communities - the history of education, the history of science and the history of technology. The greatest quantity of empirical historical work on the Institutes, and some of the most relevant general orientations, comes from historians of education. Some of these scholars have made convincing cases for approaching the movement, alike with …
Varieties of Interpretation. Joseph Anthony Mazzeo
On the Role of Interests in Scientific Change
On the causal explanation of scientific judgment
On the 'Hows' and 'Whys' of Cultural Change (Response to Woolgar)
It is little more than a decade since the possibility of a thoroughgoing sociological analysis of scientific culture once more began to be taken seriously. But since that time developments have occurred with breathtaking speed. The view that scientific culture is constructed like any other is now well elaborated and exemplified. It is beginning to enter the third stage of William James' well-known theory of scientific research programmes: first i…
On the Conventional Character of Knowledge and Cognition
The Sociology of Belief
T. S. Kuhn and Social Science
The Science-Technology Relationship
This Note draws attention to the emergence of what is generally acknowledged to be a very satisfactory interactive model of the science-technology relationship. It goes on to ask why such a model should not be extended to describe the relationship of science with other sub-cultures, besides that of technology
On the Implications of a Body of Knowledge
Disturbing the Universe
On the Extensions of Concepts and the Growth of Knowledge
T. S. Kuhn and Social Science
Social Life as Bootstrapped Induction
How people refer and how they infer are key empirical questions for the sociology of knowledge. In the present paper, I suggest that in the course of social interaction much referring activity is self-referring, and much inference self-validating. This occurs to the extent that our inductive inferences become permeated with feedback-loops or 'bootstraps': I offer a simple general form of representation to assist in thinking about bootstrapped ind…
Problems of Intelligibility and Paradigm Instances
Mainly on `Mechanism
Science in Context
This collection of eighteen readings provides a basic text for undergraduates taking sociology of science courses. A general survey of articles published between 1961 and 1981, book is also a useful overview for students taking courses in and political studies of science; science, technology, and society; and social components of courses in environmental sciences, geography, philosophy, and history of science.The editors have organized book aroun…
On Authority and its Relationship to Power
This paper suggests an alternative to the received view of the relationship between power and authority. It regards authorities as the passive agents of powers. Thus to possess authority is to possess less than to possess power in its own right. Contrast this with the received view where to possess authority is to possess more than to possess power: authority may be power plus legitimacy, or power plus consent. The paper goes on to consider some …
A Case of Amnesia
Ethnomethodology as Science
Although this is an extended, a systematic and in some ways a sophisticated exposition of the work of Harold Garfinkel, it is nevertheless designed to serve as an introduction to that work and as a means of making it accessible to a wider audience. Hence it is sensible that the book should be reviewed by outsiders, as well as by specialists better placed to evaluate its scholarship and the plausibility of its interpretations. Sociologists of know…
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