====================== HES POSTING ============================ I'd like to offer an example of an alternative use of a social theory perspective in the history of the development of scientific knowledge which constitutes a rival & alternative to the various brands of SSK story-telling. In the writing of intellectual history it is impossible not to make choice and judgments regarding the significance of various researchers and research efforts. In focusing on Newton or even Descartes in telling the history of physics rather than some other figures we can't help but be making evaluations of the intellectual qualities of the figures involved and their work. But a problem arises -- what to make of situations where folks vary in their efforts, e.g. modern-day creationists and the professional biologists, or Darwin and Agassiz? An SSK story might tell the tail exclusively in terms of individual or class interests, motives, or general cultural views. There is no room here for judgments of intellectual merit or individual or social rationality. By contrast, in the social account of science found in Kuhn, you do find room for judgments of intellectual standing and individual or social rationality. (I discuss these issues at some length in my working paper "Science Without Planning: The General Economy of Science" on the web at: http://members.aol.com/gregransom/scienceplan.htm). Specifically, Kuhn identifies scientific rationality with a specific social process and structure which provides the conditions for scientific advance. Kuhn also identifies the conditions under which an individual can be identified as a scientist, and the conditions under which a scientist can and cannot be identified as irrational. In a nutshell, Kuhn suggests that "No process essential to scientific development can be labelled 'irrational'." (see my working paper for the footnote). Kuhn suggests also that the risks inherent in alternative theory development will be borne by the various members of a scientific community spontaneously as a direct result of the fact that individual scientists will vary in their judgments of the virtue and promise of rival scientific paradigms during periods of scientific crisis. As I show in my working paper, the upshot of Kuhn's argument is that it must be considered scientifically rational for the members of a scientific community to display a diversity of theory choices during a period of crisis in science. The application of this insight for an historian of economics would appear to be quite straight-forward. The strategy would be to identify periods in which the standard picture of theory is observably recognized to be riddled with anomalies -- in identifiable crisis. As examples we might think of the anomalies identified in the classical British picture among German economists in the mid-1800's -- the picture of British economics generally recognized to be in crisis among German academics. In this period, then, we can recognize diversity in theory choices among German-language economists, (e.g. Menger, Smoller, Weber, etc.) as part of a rational social process, and none of these scientists as irrational in persuing alternative frameworks. Similarly, in the current period, Clower and many others identify a period in which macroeconomic theory is racked with anomaly (R. Clower, "Economics as an Inductive Science", _Southern Economic Journal_, April, 1994, 804- 814). It is part of a rational scientific process, and contemporary economists cannot be identified as irrational, for present-day economists to be pursuing a variety of alternative frameworks in macroeconomics and monetary theory -- this is just what a period of crisis in a science calls for. If we didn't find this in contemporary economics, we could identify the social process within economics as disfunctional, unscientific, not part of a rational scientific process -- i.e. no longer engaging in science. Greg Ransom Dept. of Philosophy UC-Riverside http://members.aol.com/gregransom/ransom.htm ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]