School
Strong programme
Overview
The strong programme or strong sociology is a variety of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) particularly associated with David Bloor, Barry Barnes, Harry Collins, Donald A. MacKenzie, and John Henry. The strong programme's influence on science and technology studies is credited as being unparalleled. The largely Edinburgh-based school of thought aims to illustrate how the existence of a scientific community, bound together by allegiance to a shared paradigm, is a prerequisite for normal scientific activity.
The strong programme is a reaction against "weak" sociologies of science, which restricted the application of sociology to "failed" or "false" theories, such as phrenology. Failed theories would be explained by citing the researchers' biases, such as covert political or economic interests. Sociology would be only marginally relevant to successful theories, which succeeded because they had revealed a fact of nature. The strong programme proposed that both "true" and "false" scientific theories should be treated the same way. Both are caused by social factors or conditions, such as cultural context and self-interest. All human knowledge, as something that exists in the human cognition, must contain some social components in its formation process.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
It would be quite possible for a narrowly conceived scheme of vocational education to perpetuate this division in a hardened form. Taking its stand upon a dogma of social predestination, it would assume that some are to continue to be wage earners under economic conditions like the present, and would aim simply to give them what is termed a trade education--that is, greater technical efficiency. Technical…
John Dewey, Democracy and Education
States what Strong programme is.
This preparatory treatment consists in finding general propositions which express concisely what is common to large classes of observed facts; and these are called the empirical laws of the phenomena. We have, therefore, to inquire, whether any similar preparatory process can be performed on the facts of the social science; whether there are any empirical laws in history or statistics.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Strong programme is.
And the key is to be found only in Science. In the absence of the generalisations of biology and psychology, rational interpretation of social phenomena is impossible. Only in proportion as men draw certain rude, empirical inferences respecting human nature, are they enabled to understand even the simplest facts of social life: as, for instance, the relation between supply and demand. And if the most elementary…
Herbert Spencer, Essays on education and kindred subjects
States what Strong programme is.
Related ideas
- Gilles Deleuze
- Jacques Lacan
- Impartiality
- Underdetermination
- Paradigm
- Far-left politics
- Marxism
- Reflexive relation
- University of Edinburgh
- Postmodernism
- Phrenology
- Truth
- Alan Sokal
- Scientific community
- Bruno Latour
- Causality
- Bias
- Science and technology studies
- Relativism
- Paul Feyerabend
- Luce Irigaray
- Self-interest
- Sociology of scientific knowledge
- Joseph Agassi
Place in the tradition
Part of Relativism.