Synergy through Disunity, Science as Social Practice

Comments on Vanpool and Vanpool

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7097410
AutoresR Hutson (0000-0003-4907-2876, University of California, Berkeley, autor correspondente), Scott R Hutson
Ano2001
Volume66
Fascículo2
Páginas349-360
Data de publicação2001-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Antiquity (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-7316 • E-ISSN: 2325-5064
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2694613
OpenAlexW2314527852
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas53

In “The Scientific Nature of Postprocessualism”, VanPool and VanPool (1999) attempt to demonstrate that the sometimes hostile debate between processualist and postprocessualist archaeologies disguises substantive intellectual similarities. The most important similarity is their conformity to a refined definition of science. This definition is based on seven criteria that, as a group, demarcate science from nonscience. VanPool and VanPool pay inadequate attention to critiques of the notion that science can be clearly separated from other forms of inquiry. These critiques come from both within the literature VanPool and VanPool cite as well as from bodies of literature that they do not acknowledge, such as recent sociological, philosophical, and anthropological studies of science. Many of the demarcation criteria can be shown to suffer from overly simplistic accounts of the connections between evidence and hypothesis. Other demarcations do not recognize the social nature of scientific inquiry and the consequent incorporation of interests at various scales. Although VanPool and VanPool believe their criteria of science will promote synergy between processual and postprocessual, this paper questions the conceptualization of these schools and argues that synergy is better accomplished through the appreciation of difference among the various archaeologies and openness to alternative epistemologies

Conceptualization · Conformity · Epistemology · Nature of Science · Openness to experience · Science education · Similarity (geometry · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology