Concept
S. Barry Barnes
Overview
S. Barry Barnes (born 27 March 1943) was Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter.
Barnes worked at the 'Science Studies Unit' at the University of Edinburgh with David Bloor from the 1970s through the early 1990s, where they developed the strong programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. He moved to the sociology department in Exeter in 1992. Barnes is known for his naturalistic approach to science, a view elaborated in his book Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory (1974). He advocated a post-Kuhnian approach to scientific knowledge, and suggested that philosophers, historians and other researchers study scientific practice in a variety of fields as cultural traditions whose development could be given causal explanations. In this view conceptual change in normal science is a process unfolding through expert debate and negotiation. This latter perspective was developed in T. S. Kuhn and Social Science (1982).
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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It includes making distinctions, definitions, divisions, and classifications for the mere sake of making them--with no objective in experience. The view of thought as a purely physical activity having its own forms, which are applied to any material as a seal may be stamped on any plastic stuff, the view which underlies what is termed formal logic is essentially the scholastic method generalized. The doctrine of…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what S. Barry Barnes is.
This general Science of Society, as distinguished from the separate departments of the science (each of which asserts its conclusions only conditionally, subject to the paramount control of the laws of the general science) now remains to be characterized. And as will be shown presently, nothing of a really scientific character is here possible, except by the inverse deductive method.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what S. Barry Barnes is.
Knowledge of the process and conditions of physical and social change through experimental science and genetic history has one result with a double name: increase of control, and increase of responsibility; increase of power to direct natural change, and increase of responsibility for its equitable direction toward fuller good. Theory located within progressive practice instead of reigning statically supreme over…
John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, and other essays in contemporary thought
Close in meaning to S. Barry Barnes; the term itself is not named.
Related ideas
- Sociology
- University of Edinburgh
- University of Exeter
- Strong programme
- David Bloor
- Philosophy of the Social Sciences (journal)
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of science.