The Social Dimensions of Scientific Knowledge

First published Fri Apr 12, 2002; substantive revision Mon Feb 9, 2015
Study of the social dimensions of scientific knowledge encompasses the effects of scientific research on
human life and social relations, the effects of social relations and values on scientific research, and the
social aspects of inquiry itself. Several factors have combined to make these questions salient to
contemporary philosophy of science. These factors include the emergence of social movements, like
environmentalism and feminism, critical of mainstream science; concerns about the social effects of
science-based technologies; epistemological questions made salient by big science; new trends in the
history of science, especially the move away from internalist historiography; anti-normative approaches in
the sociology of science; turns in philosophy to naturalism and pragmatism. This entry reviews the historical
background to current research in this area and features of contemporary science that invite philosophical
attention. The philosophical work can roughly be classified into two camps. One acknowledges that
scientific inquiry is in fact carried out in social settings and asks whether and how standard epistemology
must be supplemented to address this feature. The other treats sociality as a fundamental aspect of
knowledge and asks how standard epistemology must be modified from this broadly social perspective.
Concerns in the supplementing approach include such matters as trust and answerability raised by multiple
authorship, the division of cognitive labor, the reliability of peer review, the challenges of privately funded
science, as well as concerns arising from the role of scientific research in society. The reformist approach
highlights the challenge to normative philosophy from social, cultural, and feminist studies of science while
seeking to develop philosophical models of the social character of scientific knowledge, and treats the
questions of the division of cognitive labor, expertise and authority, the interactions of science and society,
etc., from the perspective of philosophical models of the irreducibly social character of scientific knowledge.

 1. Historical Background
 2. Big Science, Trust, and Authority
 3. Science in Society
 4. Social, Cultural, and Feminist Studies of Science
 5. Models of the Social Character of Knowledge
 6. Social Direction of Science
 7. Conclusion
 Bibliography
o Works Cited
o Further Reading
 Academic Tools
 Other Internet Resources
 Related Entries
1. Historical Background
Philosophers who study the social character of scientific knowledge can trace their lineage at least as far as
John Stuart Mill. Mill, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Karl Popper all took some type of critical interaction
among persons as central to the validation of knowledge claims.
Mill's arguments occur in his well-known political essay On Liberty, (Mill 1859) rather than in the context of
his logical and methodological writings, but he makes it clear that they are to apply to any kind of
knowledge or truth claim. Mill argues from the fallibility of human knowers to the necessity of unobstructed
opportunity for and practice of the critical discussion of ideas. Only such critical discussion can assure us of
the justifiability of the (true) beliefs we do have and can help us avoid falsity or the partiality of belief or
opinion framed in the context of just one point of view. Critical interaction maintains the freshness of our
reasons and is instrumental in the improvement of both the content and the reasons of our beliefs. The
achievement of knowledge, then, is a social or collective, not an individual, matter.
Peirce's contribution to the social epistemology of science is commonly taken to be his consensual theory
of truth: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by
truth, and the object represented is the real.” (Peirce 1878, 133) While often read as meaning that the truth
is whatever the community of inquirers converges on in the long run, the notion is interpretable as meaning
more precisely either that truth (and “the real”) depends on the agreement of the community of inquirers or
that it is an effect of the real that it will in the end produce agreement among inquirers. Whatever the
correct reading of this particular statement, Peirce elsewhere makes it clear that, in his view, truth is both
attainable and beyond the reach of any individual. “We individually cannot hope to attain the ultimate
philosophy which we pursue; we can only seek it for the community of philosophers.” (Peirce 1868, 40).
Peirce puts great stock in instigating doubt and critical interaction as means to knowledge. Thus, whether
his theory of truth is consensualist or realist, his view of the practices by which we attain it grants a central
place to dialogue and social interaction.
Popper is often treated as a precursor of social epistemology because of his emphasis on the importance
of criticism in the development of scientific knowledge. Two concepts of criticism are found in his works
(Popper 1963, 1972) and these can be described as logical and practical senses of falsification. The logical
sense of falsification is just the structure of a modus tollens argument, in which a hypothesis is falsified by
the demonstration that one of its logical consequences is false. This is one notion of criticism, but it is a
matter of formal relations between statements. The practical sense of falsification refers to the efforts of
scientists to demonstrate the inadequacies of one another's theories by demonstrating observational
shortcomings or conceptual inconsistencies. This is a social activity. For Popper the methodology of
science is falsificationist in both its logical and practical senses, and science progresses through the
demonstration by falsification of the untenability of theories and hypotheses. Popper's logical
falsificationism is part of an effort to demarcate genuine science from pseudo science, and has lost its
plausibility as a description of scientific methodology as the demarcation project has come under challenge
from naturalist and historicist approaches in philosophy of science. While criticism does play an important
role in some current approaches in social epistemology, Popper's own views are more closely
approximated by evolutionary epistemology, especially that version that treats cognitive progress as the
effect of selection against incorrect theories and hypotheses. In contrast to Mill's views, for Popper the
function of criticism is to eliminate false theories rather than to improve them.
The work of Mill, Peirce, and Popper is a resource for philosophers presently exploring the social
dimensions of scientific knowledge. However, the current debates are framed in the context of
developments in both philosophy of science and in history and social studies of science following the
collapse of the logical empiricist consensus. The philosophers of the Vienna Circle are conventionally
associated with an uncritical form of positivism and with the logical empiricism that replaced American
pragmatism in the 1940s and 1950s. According to some recent scholars, however, they saw natural
science as a potent force for progressive social change. (Cartwright, Cat, and Chang 1996; Giere and
Richardson, eds., 1996; Uebel 2005) With its grounding in observation and public forms of verification,
science for them constituted a superior alternative to what they saw as metaphysical obscurantism, an
obscurantism that led not only to bad thinking but to bad politics. While one development of this point of
view leads to scientism, the view that any meaningful question can be answered by the methods of
science; another development leads to inquiry into what social conditions promote the growth of scientific
knowledge. Logical empiricism, the version of Vienna Circle philosophy that developed in the United States,
focused on logical, internal aspects of scientific knowledge and discouraged philosophical inquiry into the
social dimensions of science. These came into prominence again after the publication of Thomas
Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1962). A new generation of sociologists of science, among
them Barry Barnes, Steven Shapin, and Harry Collins, took Kuhn's emphasis on the role of non-evidential
community factors in scientific change even further than he had and argued that scientific judgment was
determined by social factors, such as professional interests and political ideologies (Barnes 1977, Shapin
1982, Collins 1983). This family of positions provoked a counter-response among philosophers. These
responses are marked by an effort to acknowledge some social dimensions to scientific knowledge while at
the same time maintaining its epistemological legitimacy, which they take to be undermined by the new
sociology. At the same time, features of the organization of scientific inquiry compel philosophers to
consider their implications for the normative analysis of scientific practices.
2. Big Science, Trust, and Authority
The second half of the twentieth century saw the emergence of what has come to be known as Big
Science: the organization of large numbers of scientists bringing different bodies of expertise to a common
research project. The original model was the Manhattan Project, undertaken during the Second World War
to develop an atomic weapon in the United States. Theoretical and experimental physicists located at
various sites across the country, though principally at Los Alamos, New Mexico, worked on sub-problems
of the project under the overall direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer. While academic and military research
have since been to some degree separated, much experimental research in physics, especially high energy
particle physics, continues to be pursued by large teams of researchers. Research in other areas of
science as well, for example the work comprehended under the umbrella of the Human Genome Project,
has taken on some of the properties of Big Science, requiring multiple forms of expertise. In addition to the
emergence of Big Science, the transition from small scale university or even amateur science to
institutionalized research with major economic impacts supported by national funding bodies and
connected across international borders has seemed to call for new ethical and epistemological thinking.
Moreover, the consequent dependence of research on central funding bodies and increasingly, private
foundations or commercial entities, prompts questions about the degree of independence of contemporary
scientific knowledge from its social and economic context.
John Hardwig (1985) articulated one philosophical dilemma posed by large teams of researchers. Each
member or subgroup participating in such a project is required because each has a crucial bit of expertise
not possessed by any other member or subgroup. This may be knowledge of a part of the instrumentation,
the ability to perform a certain kind of calculation, the ability to make a certain kind of measurement or
observation. The other members are not in a position to evaluate the results of other members' work, and
hence, all must take one anothers' results on trust. The consequence is an experimental result, (for
example, the measurement of a property such as the decay rate or spin of a given particle) the evidence for
which is not fully understood by any single participant in the experiment. This leads Hardwig to ask two
questions, one about the evidential status of testimony, and one about the nature of the knowing subject in
these cases. With respect to the latter, Hardwig says that either the group as a whole, but no single
member, knows or it is possible to know vicariously. Neither of these is palatable to him. Talking about the
group or the community knowing smacks of superorganisms and transcendent entities and Hardwig shrinks
from that solution. Vicarious knowledge, knowing without oneself possessing the evidence for the truth of
what one knows, requires, according to Hardwig, too much of a departure from our ordinary concepts of
knowledge.
The first question is, as Hardwig notes, part of a more general discussion about the epistemic value of
testimony. Much of what passes for common knowledge is acquired from others. We depend on experts to
tell us what is wrong or right with our appliances, our cars, our bodies. Indeed, much of what we later come
to know depends on what we previously learned as children from our parents and teachers. We acquire
knowledge of the world through the institutions of education, journalism, and scientific inquiry. Philosophers
disagree about the status of beliefs acquired in this way. Here is the question: If A knows that p on the
basis of evidence e, B has reason to think A trustworthy and Bbelieves p on the basis of A's testimony
that p, does B also know that p? Some philosophers, as Locke and Hume seem to have, argue that only
what one has observed oneself could count as a good reason for belief, and that the testimony of another
is, therefore, never sufficient warrant for belief. Thus, B does not know simply on the basis of A's testimony.
While this result is consistent with traditional philosophical empiricism and rationalism, which emphasized
the individual's sense experience or rational apprehension as foundations of knowledge, it does have the
consequence that we do not know most of what we think we know.
A number of philosophers have recently offered alternative analyses focusing on one or another element in
the problem. Some argue that testimony by a qualified expert is itself evidential, (Schmitt 1988), others that
the expert's evidence constitutes good reason for, but is not itself evidential for the recipient of testimony
(Hardwig 1985, 1988), others that what is transmitted in testimony is knowledge and not just propositional
content and thus the question of the kind of reason a recipient of testimony has is not to the point
(Welbourne 1981).
However this dispute is resolved, questions of trust and authority arise in a particularly pointed way in the
sciences, and Hardwig's dilemma for the physics experiment is also a specific version of a more general
phenomenon. A popular conception of science, fed partly by Popper's falsificationism, is that it is
epistemically reliable because the results of experiments and observational studies are checked by
independent repetition. In practice, however, only some results are so checked and many are simply
accepted on trust. Not only must positive results be accepted on trust, but claims of failure to replicate as
well as other critiques must be also. Thus, just as in the non-scientific world information is accepted on
trust, so in science, knowledge grows by depending on the testimony of others. What are the implications of
accepting this fact for our conceptions of the reliability of scientific knowledge?
David Hull, in his (1988) argues that because the overall structure of reward and punishment in the
sciences is a powerful incentive not to cheat, further epistemological analysis of the sciences is
unnecessary. The structure itself guarantees the veridicality of research reports. But some celebrated
recent episodes, such as the purported production of “cold fusion” were characterized by the failure of
replication attempts to produce the same phenomenon. And, while the advocates of cold fusion were
convinced that their experiments had produced the phenomenon, there have also been cases of outright
fraud. Thus, even if the structure of reward and punishment is an incentive not to cheat, it does not
guarantee the veridicality of every research report.
The reward individual scientists seek is credit. That is, they seek recognition, to have their work cited as
important and as necessary to further scientific progress. The scientific community seeks true theories or
adequate models. Credit, or recognition, accrues to individuals to the extent they are perceived as having
contributed to that community goal. There is a strong incentive to cheat, to try to obtain credit without
necessarily having done the work.
Both Alvin Goldman (Goldman, 1995, 1999) and Philip Kitcher (1993) have treated the potential for
premature, or otherwise (improperly) interested reporting of results to corrupt the sciences as a question to
be answered by means of decision theoretic models. The decision theoretic approach to problems of trust
and authority treats both credit and truth as utilities. The challenge then is to devise formulas that show that
actions designed to maximize credit also maximize truth. Kitcher, in particular, develops formulas intended
to show that even in situations peopled by non-epistemically motivated individuals (that is, individuals
motivated more by a desire for credit than by a desire for truth), the reward structure of the community can
be organized in such a way as to maximize truth and foster scientific progress. One consequence of this
approach is to treat scientific fraud and value or interest infused science as the same problem. One
advantage is that it incorporates the motivation to cheat into the solution to the problem of cheating. But
one may wonder how effective this solution really is. Increasingly, we learn of problematic behavior in
science based industries, such as the pharmaceutical industry. Results are withheld or distorted, authorship
is manipulated. Hot areas, such as stem cell research or cloning have been subjected to fraudulent
research. Thus, even if the structure of reward and punishment is an in principle incentive not to cheat, it
does not guarantee the reliability of every research report.
Community issues have been addressed under the banners of research ethics and of peer review. One
might think that the only ethical requirements on scientists are to protect their research subjects from harm
and, as professional scientists, to seek truth above any other goals. This presupposes that seeking truth is
a sufficient guide to scientific decision-making. Heather Douglas, in her critical study of the ideal of value-
freedom (Douglas 2009), rejects this notion. Douglas draws on her earlier study of inductive risk (Douglas
2000) to press the point that countless methodological decisions required in the course of carrying out a
single piece of research are underdetermined by the factual elements of the situation and must be guided
by an assessment of the consequences of being wrong. Science is not value-free, but can be protected
from the deleterious effects of values if scientists take steps to mitigate the influence of inappropriate
values. One step is to distinguish between direct and indirect roles of values; another is the articulation of
guidelines for individual scientists. Values play a direct role when they provide direct motivation to accept or
reject a theory; they play an indirect role when they play a role in evaluating the consequences of accepting
or rejecting a claim, thus influencing what will count as sufficient evidence to accept or reject. The
responsibility of scientists is to make sure that values do not play a direct role in their work and to be
transparent about the indirect roles of values. A number of writers have taken issue with the tenability of
Douglas’s distinction between direct and indirect. Steel and Whyte (2012) examine testing guidelines
developed by pharmaceutical companies to point out that the very same decision may be motivated by
values playing a direct role or playing an indirect role. If the point is to prohibit practices such as withholding
negative results, then it shouldn’t matter whether the practice is motivated by values functioning directly or
indirectly. Elliott (2011) questions whether only harmful consequences should be considered. If science is
to be useful to policy makers, then questions of relative social benefit should also be permitted to play a
role. Finally the cognitive activities demanded by Douglas’s ethical prescriptions for scientists seem beyond
the capacities of individual scientists. This point will be pursued below.
Torsten Wilholt (2013) argues that the research situation is more complicated than the epistemic vs.
nonepistemic tradeoff implied by the decision theoretic approach. He argues that the reliance called for in
science extends beyond the veridicality of reported results to the values guiding the investigators relied
upon. Most research involves both results expressed statistically (which requires choice of significance
threshold and balancing chances of Type I vs. Type II error) and multiple steps each requiring
methodological decisions. These decisions, Wilholt argues, represent trade-offs among the reliability of
positive results, the reliability of negative results, and the power of the investigation. In making these
tradeoffs, the investigator is per force guided by an evaluation of the consequences of the various possible
outcomes of the study. Wilholt references arguments about inductive risk offered originally by Richard
Rudner and elaborated by Heather Douglas and discussed below. He extends those to propose that, in
relying on another’s results I am relying not only on his or her competence and truthfulness, but on her or
his making methodological decisions informed by the same valuations of outcomes as I have. This attitude
is more than epistemic reliance, but a deeper attitude: one of trust that we are guided by the same values in
a shared enterprise. For Wilholt, then, scientific inquiry engages ethical norms as well as epistemic norms.
Formal or mechanical solutions such as those suggested by the application of decision theoretic models
are not sufficient, if the community must be held together by shared ethical values.
Peer review and replication are methods the scientific community, indeed the research world in general,
employs to assure consumers of scientific research that the work is credible. Peer review both of research
proposals and of research reports submitted for publication screens for quality, which includes
methodological competence and appropriateness as well as for originality and significance, while
replication is intended to probe the robustness of results when reported experiments are carried out in
different laboratories and with slight changes to experimental conditions. Scholars of peer review have
noted various forms of bias entering into the peer review process. In a review of the literature, Lee,
Sugimoto, Zhang, and Cronin (2013) report documented bias along gender, language, nationality, prestige,
and content as well as such problems as lack of inter-reviewer reliability consistency, confirmation bias, and
reviewer conservatism. Lee (2012) argues that a Kuhnian perspective on values in science interprets lack
of inter-reviewer consistency as variation in interpretation, applicability, and weight assigned to shared
values by different members of the scientific community. Lee and colleagues (2013) argue that journal
editors must take much more action than is currently taken to require that researchers make their raw data
and other relevant trial information available to enable peer reviewers to conduct their work adequately.
One issue that has yet to be addressed by philosophers is the gap between the ideal of replication resulting
in confirmation, modification, or retraction and the reality. This ideal lies behind the assumptions of efficacy
of structures of reward and sanction. Only if researchers believe that their research reports will be probed
by efforts at replication will the threat of sanctions against faulty or fraudulent research be realistic. John
Ioannidis and collaborators (Tatsioni, Bonitsis, and Ioannidis 2007; Young, N.S. Ioannidis, and Al-Ubaydli
2008) have shown how infrequently attempts to replicate are actually made and, even more strikingly, how
contradicted results persist in the literature. This is an issue that goes beyond individuals and beyond large
research collaborators to the scientific community in general. It underscores Wilholt’s contention that the
scientific community must be held together by bonds of trust, but much more empirical and philosophical
work is needed to address how to proceed when such trust is not justified.
Winsberg, Huebner, and Kukla (2013) draw attention to a different kind of supra-empirical, ethical issue
raised by the contemporary situation of multiple authorship. What they call “radically collaborative research”
involves investigators with different forms of expertise, as in Hardwig’s example, and as is now common
across many fields, collaborating to generate an experimental result. For Winsberg, Huebner, and Kukla,
the question is not merely reliability, but accountability. Who can speak for the integrity of the research
when it has been conducted by researchers with a variety not just of interests, but of methodological
standards, most opaque one to another? Winsberg, Huebner, and Kukla argue that a model of the social
collaboration is needed as much as a model of the data or of the instruments. They argue further that the
laissez-faire Wisdom of Crowds model (according to which local differences in methodological standards
will cancel each other out), while perhaps adequate if the question is one of reliability, is not adequate for
addressing these issues of accountability. They do not themselves, however, offer an alternative model.
3. Science in Society
Work on the role of science in society encompasses both general models of the public authority of science
and analysis of particular research programs that have a bearing on public life. In their early work, Steve
Fuller and Joseph Rouse were both concerned with political dimensions of cognitive authority. Rouse in his
(1987) integrated analytic and continental philosophy of science and technology sought to develop what
might be called a critical pragmatism. This perspective facilitated an analysis of the transformative impact of
science on human life and social relations. Rouse emphasized the increased power over individual lives
that developments in science made possible. This can only be said to have increased with the development
of information technology. Fuller (1988) partially accepted the empirical sociologists' claim that traditional
normative accounts of scientific knowledge fail to get a purchase on actual scientific practices, but took this
as a challenge to relocate the normative concerns of philosophers. These should include the distribution
and circulation of knowledge claims. The task of social epistemology of science, according to Fuller, should
be regulation of the production of knowledge by regulating the rhetorical, technological, and administrative
means of its communication. While there has not been much uptake of Fuller's proposals as articulated,
Lee's work mentioned above begins to make detailed recommendations that take into account the current
structures of funding and communication.
One key area of socially relevant interdisciplinary science is risk assessment, which involves both research
on the effects of various substances or practices and the evaluation of those effects once identified. The
idea is to gain an understanding of both positive effects and of negative effects and a method of evaluating
these. This involves integrating the work of specialists in the kind of substance whose risks are under
assessment (geneticists, chemists, physicists), biomedical specialists, epidemiologists, statisticians, and so
on. In these cases, we are dealing not only with the problems of trust and authority among specialists from
different disciplines, but also with the effects of introducing new technologies or new substances into the
world. The risks studied are generally of harm to human health or to the environment. Interest in applying
philosophical analysis to risk assessment originated in response to debates about the development and
expansion of nuclear power-generating technologies. In addition, the application of cost-benefit analysis
and attempts to understand decision-making under conditions of uncertainty became topics of interest as
extensions of formal modeling techniques (Giere 1991). These discussions intersect with debates about the
scope of rational decision theory and have expanded to include other technologies as well as applications
of scientific research in agriculture and in the myriad forms of biological engineering. Essays on the relation
between science and social values in risk research collected in the volume edited by Deborah Mayo and
Rachelle Hollander (1991) attempt to steer a course between uncritical reliance on cost-benefit models and
their absolute rejection. Coming from a slightly different angle, the precautionary principle represents an
approach shifting the burden of proof in regulatory decisions from demonstration of harm to demonstration
of safety of substances and practices. Carl Cranor (2004) explores versions of the principle and defends its
use in certain decision contexts. Shrader-Frechette (2002) has advocated models of ethically weighted
cost-benefit analysis and greater public involvement in risk assessment. Philosophers of science have also
worked to make visible the ways in which values play a role in the research assessing the effects of
technoscientifically produced substances and practices themselves, as distinct from the challenges of
assigning values to identified risks and benefits. In addition to Douglas’s elaboration of inductive risk
(Douglas 2000, Lacey (2005) delineates the values informing conventional agriculture and agroecology. In
light of the potential impacts of technological developments on communities, Shrader-Frechette (1994,
2002) has argued for including members of the public in deliberations about health effects of and
reasonable exposure limits on environmental pollutants, especially radioactive materials.
In addition to risk assessment, philosophers have begun thinking about a variety of research programs and
methods that affect human wellbeing. Cartwright (2012), elaborated in Cartwright and Hardie (2012), is
primarily a critical analysis of the reliance on randomized control trials to support policy decisions in
economic development, medicine, and education. These fail to take account of variations in contexts of
application that will affect the outcome. Cartwright's focus on a particular methodological approach is an
extension of philosophers' traditional engagement in areas of controversy in which philosophical analysis
might make a difference. Philip Kitcher's (1985) which took on sociobiology and Elliott Sober and David
Sloan Wilson's (1998), an extensive argument for group level selection, are examples that focus on content
and methodology of extensions of evolutionary theory.
Climate change research has provoked several quite different kinds of analysis. As a complex
interdisciplinary field, its evidential structure leaves it vulnerable to challenge. Opponents of limits to carbon
pollutants have exploited those vulnerabilities to sow public doubts about the reality and/or causes of
climate change (Oreskes and Conway 2011). Parker 2006, Lloyd 2010, Parker 2010, Winsberg 2012 have,
respectively, investigated strategies for reconciling apparent inconsistencies among climate models, the
differences between model-based projections and strictly inductive projections, methods for assessing and
communicating the uncertainties inherent in climate models. Philosophers have also considered how to
interpret the (American) public’s susceptibility to the climate change deniers. Philip Kitcher (2012) interprets
it as lack of information amid a plethora of misinformation and proposes methods for more effective
communication of reputable science to the public. Anderson (2011), on the contrary, contends that
members of the public are perfectly able to evaluate the reliability of contradictory assessments by following
citation trails, etc., whether on the internet or in hard copies of journals. Her view is that the reluctance to
accept the reality of climate change is a reluctance to abandon familiar ways of life, which is what averting
climate-caused disaster requires all to do. Finally, there is an ethical and political question once the
inevitability of climate change is accepted: how should the burdens of taking action be distributed? The
industrialized West is responsible for most of the carbon pollution up to the end of the 20th century, but
developing nations trying to industrialize have contributed an increasing share, and will continue to do so, in
the 21st century. Who bears the burden? And if the effects will only be felt by generations in the future, why
should present generations take actions whose harms will be felt now and whose benefits lie in the future
and will not be experienced by those bearing the costs? Broome (2008) explores the intergenerational
issues, while Raina (forthcoming) explores the global dimensions.
Two additional areas of ongoing scientific controversy are the biological reality (or not) of race and the
biology of gender differences. Developments in genetics, and documented racial differences in health, have
thrown doubt on earlier anti-realist views of race, such as those articulated by Stephen J. Gould (1981) and
Richard Lewontin (Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin 1984). Spencer (2012, 2014) argues for a sophisticated
form of biological racial realism. Gannett (2003) argues that biological populations are not independent
objects that can provide data relevant to racial realism, while Kaplan and Winther (2013) argue that no
claims about race can be read from biological theory or data. The reality and basis of observed gender
differences were the subject of much debate in the late 20th century(See Fausto-Sterling 1992). These
issues have crystallized in the early 21st century in debates about the brain and cognition drawing the
attention of philosophers of biology and cognitive scientists. Rebecca Jordan-Young (2010), Cordelia Fine
(2010), and Bluhn, Jacobson and Maibom, eds. (2012) all explore, with an aim of debunking, claims of
gendered brains.
3. Social, Cultural, and Feminist Studies of Science
Kuhn's critique of logical empiricism included a strong naturalism. Scientific rationality was to be understood
by studying actual episodes in the history of science, not by formal analyses developed from a priori
concepts of knowledge and reason (Kuhn 1962, 1977). Sociologists and sociologically inclined historians of
science took this as a mandate for the examination of the full spectrum of scientists' practices without any
prior prejudice as to which were epistemically legitimate and which not. That very distinction came under
suspicion from the new social scholars, often labeled “social constructivists.” They urged that
understanding the production of scientific knowledge required looking at all the factors causally relevant to
the acceptance of a scientific idea, not just at those the researcher thinks should be relevant.
A wide range of approaches in social and cultural studies of science has come under the umbrella label of
“social constructivism.” Both terms in the label are understood differently in different programs of research.
While constructivists agree in holding that those factors treated as evidential, or as rationally justifying
acceptance, should not be privileged at the expense of other causally relevant factors, they differ in their
view of which factors are causal or worth examination. Macro-analytic approaches, such as those
associated with the so-called Strong Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, treat social
relations as an external, independent factor and scientific judgment and content as a dependent outcome.
Micro-analyses or laboratory studies, on the other hand, abjure the implied separation of social context and
scientific practice and focus on the social relations within scientific research programs and communities
and on those that bind research-productive and research-receptive communities together.
Researchers also differ in the degree to which they treat the social and the cognitive dimensions of inquiry
as independent or interactive. The researchers associated with the macro-analytic Strong Programme in
the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Harry Collins, Donald MacKenzie,
Andrew Pickering, Steve Shapin) were particularly interested in the role of large scale social phenomena,
whether widely held social/political ideologies or group professional interests, on the settlement of scientific
controversies. Some landmark studies in this genre include Andrew Pickering's (1984) study of competing
professional interests in the interpretation of high energy particle physics experiments, and Steven Shapin
and Simon Shaffer's (1985) study of the controversy between Robert Boyle and Thomas Hobbes about the
epistemological relevance of experiments with vacuum pumps.
The micro-sociological or laboratory studies approach features ethnographic study of particular research
groups, tracing the myriad activities and interactions that eventuate in the production and acceptance of a
scientific fact or datum. Karin Knorr Cetina's (1981) reports her year-long study of a plant science
laboratory at UC Berkeley. Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar's (1986) study of Roger Guillemin's
neuroendocrinology laboratory at the Salk Institute is another classic in this genre. These scholars argued
in subsequent work that their form of study showed that philosophical analyses of rationality, of evidence, of
truth and knowledge, were irrelevant to understanding scientific knowledge. Sharon Traweek's (1988)
comparative study of the cultures of Japanese and North American high energy physics communities
pointed to the parallels between cosmology and social organization but abstained from making extravagant
or provocative epistemological claims. The efforts of philosophers of science to articulate norms of scientific
reasoning and judgment were, in the view of both macro- and micro-oriented scholars, misdirected,
because actual scientists relied on quite different kinds of considerations in the practice of science.
Until recently, apart from a few anomalous figures like Caroline Herschel, Barbara McClintock, and Marie
Curie, the sciences were a male preserve. Feminist scholars have asked what bearing the masculinity of
the scientific profession has had on the content of science and on conceptions of scientific knowledge and
practice. Drawing both on work by feminist scientists that exposed and critiqued gender biased science and
on theories of gender, feminist historians and philosophers of science have offered a variety of models of
scientific knowledge and reasoning intended to accommodate the criticism of accepted science and the
concomitant proposal and advocacy of alternatives. Evelyn Keller (1985) proposed a psycho-dynamic
model of knowledge and objectivity, arguing that a certain psychological profile, facilitated by typical
patterns of masculine psychological development, associated knowledge and objectivity with domination.
The association of knowledge and control continues to be a topic of concern for feminist thinkers as it is
also for environmentally concerned critics of the sciences. In this connection, see especially Lacey's (2005)
study of the controversy concerning transgenic crops. Other feminists turned to Marxist models of social
relations and developed versions of standpoint theory, which holds that the beliefs held by a group reflect
the social interests of that group. As a consequence, the scientific theories accepted in a context marked by
divisions of power such as gender will reflect the interests of those in power. Alternative theoretical
perspectives can be expected from those systematically excluded from power. (Harding 1986; Rose 1983;
Haraway 1978).
Still other feminists have argued that some standard philosophical approaches to the sciences can be used
to express feminist concerns. Nelson (1990) adopts Quine's holism and naturalism to analyze debates in
recent biology. Elizabeth Potter (2001) adapts Mary Hesse's network theory of scientific inference to
analyse gendered aspects of 17th century physics. Helen Longino (1990) develops a contextual empiricism
to analyze research in human evolution and in neuroendocrinology. In addition to the direct role played by
gender bias, scholars have attended to the ways shared values in the context of reception can confer an a
priori implausibility on certain ideas. Keller (1983) argued that this was the fate of Barbara McClintock's
unorthodox proposals of genetic transposition. Stephen Kellert (1993) makes a similar suggestion
regarding the resistance to so-called chaos theory.
What the feminist and empirical sociological analyses have in common is the view that the social
organization of the scientific community has a bearing on the knowledge produced by that community.
There are deep differences, however, in their views as to what features of that social organization are
deemed relevant and how they are expressed in the theories and models accepted by a given community.
The gender relations focused on by feminists went unrecognized by sociologists pursuing macro- or
microsociological research programs. The feminist scientists and scholars further differ from the scholars in
empirical social and cultural studies of science in their call for alternative theories and approaches in the
sciences. These calls imply that philosophical concerns with truth and justification are not only legitimate
but useful tools in advancing feminist transformative goals for the sciences. As can be seen in their varying
treatments of objectivity, however, philosophical concepts are often reworked in order to be made
applicable to the content or episodes of interest (See Anderson 2004, Haraway 1988, Harding 1993, Keller
1985, Longino 1990, Nelson 1990, Wylie 2005)
In addition to differences in analysis of philosophical concepts like objectivity, rationality, truth, feminist
philosophers of science have also debated the proper role of contextual (sometimes called, “external” or
“social”) values. Some feminists argue that, given that values do play a role in scientific inquiry, socially
progressive values ought to shape not only decisions about what to investigate but also the processes of
justification. Philosophers of science should incorporate exemplification of the right values in their accounts
of confirmation or justification. Others are less certain about the identification of the values that should and
those that should not inform the conduct of science. These philosophers are dubious that a consensus
exists, or is even possible in a pluralistic society, on what constitute the values that ought to guide inquiry.
In an exchange with Ronald Giere, Kourany (2003a, 2003b) argues that not only science, but philosophy of
science ought to be concerned with the promotion of socially progressive values. Giere (2003) replies that
what counts as socially progressive will vary among philosophers, and that in a democracy, it is unlikely
that a unanimous or near unanimous consensus regarding the values to inform philosophical analysis or
scientific inquiry could be achieved either in the larger society or in the smaller social subset of
philosophers of science.
4. Models of the Social Character of Knowledge
Since 1980, interest in developing philosophical accounts of scientific knowledge that incorporate the social
dimensions of scientific practice has been on the increase. Some philosophers see attention to the social
as a straightforward extension of already developed approaches in epistemology. Others, inclined toward
some form of naturalism, have taken the work in empirical social studies of science discussed above
seriously. They have, however, diverged quite considerably in their treatment of the social. Some
understand the social as biasing or distorting, and hence see the social as opposed to or competing with
the cognitive or epistemic. These philosophers see the sociologists' disdain for normative philosophical
concerns as part of a general debunking of science that demands a response. They attempt either to rebut
the claims of the sociologists or to reconcile the demonstration of the role of interests in science with its
ultimate rationality. Others treat the social as instead constitutive of rationality. This division parallels to
some degree the division between macro-analyses and micro-analyses in the sociology of science
described above.
At least four issues have been discussed in the course of proposing models of the social character of
scientific knowledge: how to represent and understand the division of cognitive labor in the sciences;
whether scientific rationality and objectivity can be fully described independently of the social relations in
the sciences; whether the ultimate goal of scientific inquiry should be a single account of phenomena; and
what the locus of scientific knowledge is on a fully social account of science.
Division of cognitive labor. For philosophers who treat the individual knower as the primary locus of inquiry,
rationality, and knowledge, the phenomena of the coexistence, however uneasy, of difference (even
dissent) and of the ascendance of new ideas are the most salient features of a social community. But, it
seems hard to account for that diversity if the goal of science is understood to be the achieving of a single
encompassing and true theory. How can it be rational to adopt a research strategy other than the one
deemed at the time most likely of success? Philip Kitcher in his (1993) was concerned to offer an
alternative to the strong programme’s proposal that controversy and the persistence of alternative research
programs were a function of the varying social or ideological commitments of researchers. However, he
also acknowledged that if researchers followed only the strategy judged at the time most likely to lead to
truth, they would not pursue unorthodox strategies that might lead to new discoveries. He therefore labeled
the observed fact that researchers pursued different approaches to the same problem as the division of
cognitive labor and proposed a decision model that attributed the pursuit of a nonorthodox (maverick)
research strategy to a rational calculation about the chances of a positive payoff. This chance was
calculated on the basis of the likelihood of the maverick strategy being successful (or more successful than
the orthodox approach), the numbers of peers pursuing orthodox or other maverick strategies, and the
anticipated reward of success. A community can allocate research resources in such a way as to maintain
the balance of orthodox and maverick scientists most likely to facilitate progress. Thus, scientific progress
can tolerate and indeed benefits from a certain amount of “impure” motivation. Michael Strevens (2003)
argued that the pursuit of maverick research strategies was to be expected as a consequence of the priority
rule. The priority rule refers to the practice of referring to a law or object with the name of the first individual
to articulate or perceive and identify it. Think of Boyle’s Law, Halley’s comet, the Planck constant,
Avogadro’s number, etc. There’s no such reward attached to pursuing a research strategy devised by
another and “merely” adding to what that individual has already discovered. The rewards of research come
from being first. And to be first requires pursuing a novel problem or strategy. The division of cognitive
labor, understood as different researchers pursuing different research strategies, is a simple effect of the
priority rule. Muldoon and Weisberg (2011) reject both Kitcher’s and Strevens’s accounts as presupposing
unrealistically uniform and ideal agents. In reality, they observe, scientists have at best imperfect
knowledge of the entire research situation, do not know the entirety of the research landscape, and when
they do know, know different things. They do not have sufficient information to employ the decision
methods Kitcher and Strevens attribute to them. Muldoon and Weisberg propose agent-based modeling as
a means to represent the imperfect, non-overlapping, and partial knowledge of the agents deciding what
research problems and strategies to pursue. Solomon’s advocacy of dissensus discussed below can be
understood as rejecting the premises of the problem. From that point of view the aim of scientific
organization ought to be to promote disagreement.
Sociality, rationality, and objectivity.  Philosophers who treat the social as biasing or distorting tend to focus
on the constructivists' view that there are no universal principles of rationality or principles of evidence that
can be used to identify in any context-independent way which factors are evidential and which not.
Reconciliationists tend to argue that what is correct in the sociologists' accounts can be accomodated in
orthodox accounts of scientific knowledge. The key is sifting the correct from the exaggerated or misguided.
Integrationists read the relevance of the sociologists' accounts as supporting new accounts of rationality or
objectivity, rather than as grounds for rejecting the cogency of such normative ideals.
Philosophers concerned to defend the rationality of science against sociological misrepresentations include
Larry Laudan (1984) James Brown (1989, 1994), Alvin Goldman (1987, 1995) and Susan Haack (1996).
The details of these philosophers' approaches differ, but they agree in holding that scientists are persuaded
by what they regard as the best evidence or argument, the evidence most indicative of the truth by their
lights, and in holding that arguments and evidence are the appropriate focus of attention for understanding
the production of scientific knowledge. When evidential considerations have not trumped non-evidential
considerations, we have an instance of bad science. They read the sociologists as arguing that a principled
distinction between evidential and nonevidential considerations cannot be drawn and devote considerable
effort to refuting those arguments. In their positive proposals for accomodating the social character of
science, sociality is understood as a matter of the aggregation of individuals, not their interactions, and
public knowledge as simply the additive outcome of many individuals making sound epistemic judgments.
Individual rationality and individual knowledge are thus the proper focus of philosophers of science.
Exhibiting principles of rationality applicable to individual reasoning is sufficient to demonstrate the
rationality of science, at least in its ideal form.
Reconciliationists include Ronald Giere, Mary Hesse, and Philip Kitcher. Giere (1988) models scientific
judgment using decision theory. This permits incorporating scientists' interests as one of the parameters of
the decision matrix. He also advocates a satisficing, rather than optimizing, approach to modeling the
decision situation, thus enabling different interests interacting with the same empirical base to support
different selections as long as they are consistent with that base. Mary Hesse (1980) employs a network
model of scientific inference that resembles W.V.O. Quine's web of belief in that its constituents are
heterogeneous in character, but all subject to revision in relation to changes elsewhere in the network. She
understands the social factors as coherence conditions operating in tandem with logical constraints to
determine the relative plausibility of beliefs in the network.
The most elaborate reconciliationist position is that developed in Philip Kitcher's (1993). In addition to
modeling relations of authority and the division of cognitive labor as described above, he offers what he
terms a compromise between extreme rationalists and sociological debunkers. The compromise model
appeals to a principle of rationality, which Kitcher calls the External Standard. It is deemed external
because it is proposed as holding independently of any particular historical, cultural or social context. Thus,
not only is it external, but it is also universal. The principle applies to change of belief (or shift from one
practice to another, in Kitcher's broader locution), not to belief. It treats a shift (in practice or belief) as
rational if and only “the process through which the shift was made has a success ratio at least as high as
that of any other process used by human beings (ever) ...” (Kitcher 1993, 303). Kitcher's compromise
proposes that scientific ideas develop over time and benefit from the contributions of many differently
motivated researchers. This is the concession to the sociologically oriented scholars. In the end, however,
those theories that get accepted are those that satisfy Kitcher's External Standard. Kitcher thus joins
Goldman, Haack, and Laudan in the view that it is possible to articulate a priori conditions of rationality or of
epistemic warrant that operate independently of, or, perhaps one might say, orthogonally to, the social
relations of science.
A third set of models is integrationist in character. Integrationists use the observations of sociologists of
science to develop alternative account of scientific rationality and objectivity. Nelson (1990) focuses on a
slightly different aspect of Quine's holism than does Hesse. Nelson uses Quine's arguments against the
independently foundational status of observation statements as the basis for what she calls a feminist
empiricism. According to Nelson, no principled distinction can be made between the theories, observations,
or values of a community. What counts as evidence, in her view, is fixed by the entire complex of a
community's theories, value commitments, and observations. There is neither knowledge nor evidence
apart from such a shared complex. The community is the primary knower on this view and individual
knowledge is dependent on the knowledge and values of the community.
Miriam Solomon's social empiricism is focused on scientific rationality (Solomon 2001). It, too, involves
denying a universal principled distinction among the causes of belief. Solomon draws on contemporary
cognitive science literature to argue that what are traditionally called biases are simply among the kinds of
“decision vector” that influence belief. They are not necessarily undesirable elements from which science
needs to be protected, and can be productive of insight and rational belief. Salience and availability (of
data, of measurement technologies), also called cold biases, are decision vectors as much as social
ideologies or other motivational factors, “hot biases.” The distinctive feature of Solomon's social empiricism
is her contrast between individual and community rationality. Her (2001) urges the pluralistic view that a
community is rational when the theories it accepts are those that have unique empirical successes.
Individuals can persist in beliefs that are (from a panoptic perspective) less well supported than others on
this view, if the totality of available evidence (or empirical data) is not available to them, or when their
favored theory accounts for phenomena not accounted for other theories, even when those may have a
greater quantity of empirical successes. What matters to science, however, is that the aggregated
judgments of a community be rational. A community is rational when the theories it accepts are those with
all or with unique empirical successes. It is collectively irrational to jettison a theory with unique empirical
successes. Thus, the community can be rational even when its members are, as judged by traditional
epistemic standards, individually irrational. Indeed, individual irrationality can contribute to community
rationality in that individuals committed to a theory that accounts for their data keep that data in the range of
phenomena any theory accepted by the entire community must eventually explain. In addition to empirical
success, Solomon proposes an additional normative criterion. In order to secure appropriate distribution of
scientific effort, biases must be appropriately distributed in the community. Solomon proposes a scheme for
ascertaining when a distribution is normatively appropriate. Thus, for Solomon, a scientific community is
rational when biases are appropriately distributed and it accepts only a theory with all or theories with
unique empirical successes as the normative epistemological condition. Rationality accrues only to a
community, and not to the individuals constituting the community.
Finally, in Longino's critical contextual empiricism, the cognitive processes that eventuate in scientific
knowledge are themselves social (Longino 1990, 2002). Longino's starting point is a version of the
underdetermination argument: the semantic gap between statements describing data and statements
expressing hypotheses or theories to be confirmed or disconfirmed by that data. This gap, created by the
difference in descriptive terms used in the description of data and in the expression of hypotheses, means
that evidential relations cannot be formally specified and that data cannot support one theory or hypothesis
to the exclusion of all alternatives. Instead, such relations are mediated by background assumptions.
Eventually, in the chain of justification, one reaches assumptions for which no evidence is available. If
these are the context in which evidential relations are constituted, questions arise concerning how the
acceptance of such assumptions can be legitimated. According to Longino, the only check against the
arbitrary dominance of subjective (metaphysical, political, aesthetic) preference in such cases is critical
interaction among the members of the scientific community or among members of different communities.
There is no higher authority or transcendent aperspectival position from which it is possible to adjudicate
among foundational assumptions. Longino takes the underdetermination argument to express in logical
terms the point made by the sociologically oriented researchers: the individuals participating in the
production of scientific knowledge are historically, geographically, and socially situated and their
observations and reasoning reflect their situations. This fact does not undermine the normative enterprise
of philosophy, but requires its expansion to include within its scope the social interactions within and
between scientific communities. What counts as knowledge is determined by such interactions.
Longino claims that scientific communities do institutionalize some critical practices (for example, peer
review), but argues that such practices and institutions must satisfy conditions of effectiveness in order to
qualify as objective. She argues, therefore, for the expansion of scientific norms to include norms that apply
to communities. These are (1) the provision of venues in which critical interaction can take place, (2) the
uptake of critical intervention as demonstrated in change of belief distribution in the community over time in
a way that is sensitive to the cirtical discourse taking place within that community, (3) public accessibility of
the standards that regulate discourse, and (4) tempered equality of intellectual authority. By this latter
condition, perhaps the most controversial of her proposed norms, Longino means that any perspective has
a prima facie capacity to contribute to the critical interactions of a community, though equal standing can be
lost owing to failure to engage or to respond to criticism. In her 2002, Longino argues that the cognitive
processes of science, such as observation and reasoning, are themselves social processes. Thus the
interactions subject to community norms extend not only to discussion of assumptions in finished research,
but to the constructive processes of research as well.
Solomon and Longino differ on where they locate normativity and on the role and effectiveness of
deliberative processes in actual scientific inquiry. Solomon attends to the patterns of acceptance and to the
distribution of decision vectors, regardless of the interactions among community members, while Longino
attends to deliberative processes and interactions. They may also differ in their views of what constitutes
scientific success.
One set of issues that has yet to give rise to extended philosophical reflection is the question how
civilizational differences are expressed in scientific work (See Bala 2008). Here, too, there is a micro- and a
macro- version. At the micro level, one might ask how the interactional culture of individual laboratories or
theoretical subcommunities is or is not expressed in the outcome of their research. While at the macro level
one might be asking how large scale cultural features are reflected in the content and practice of science in
a given cultural formation. For example, Joseph Needham argued that features of the culture of ancient
China directed their technical and intellectual ingenuity into channels that foreclosed the development of
anything like the science that developed in Western Europe in the 14th through the 17th centuries. Other
cultures developed some aspects of what we now think of as a cosmopolitan or global scientific culture (for
example, the mathematics and astronomy of 10th through 14th century Islamic and South Asian scholars)
without the theoretical content of early modern physics, as that developed in Western and Central Europe.
The papers in Habib and Raina (2001) address aspects of these questions with respect to the history of
science in India.
Unity, Plurality and the Aims of Inquiry. The variety of views on the degree of sociality assignable to the
epistemological concepts of science lead to different views concerning the ultimate character of the
outcome of inquiry. This difference can be summarized as the difference between monism and pluralism.
Monism, as characterized in Kellert, Longino, and Waters (2006), holds that the goal of inquiry is and
should be a unified, comprehensive, and complete account of phenomena (whether all phenomena, or the
phenomena specific to a particular domain of inquiry). If this is so, then the norms of assessment should be
informed by this goal and there should be one standard by which theories, models, and hypotheses in the
sciences are assessed. Deviation from an accepted theoretical framework is problematic and requires
explanation, such as the explanations offered for the division of cognitive labor. Monism, with its
commitment to ultimate unity, requires ways to reconcile competing theories or to adjudicate controversy so
as to eliminate competition in favor of the one true or best theory. Pluralism, on the other hand, holds that
the observed plurality of approaches within a science is no flaw but rather reflects the complexity of the
phenomena under investigation in interaction with the limitations of human cognitive capacities and the
variety of human cognitive as well as pragmatic interests in representations of those phenomena.
Among pluralists, a diversity of views is to be found. Suppes (1978) emphasized the mutual
untranslatability of the descriptive terms developed in the course of scientific specialization. Such
incommensurability will resist evaluation by a common measure. Cartwright’s (1999) invocation of a
dappled world emphasizes the complexity and diversity of the natural (and social) world. Scientific theories
and models are representations of varying degrees of abstraction that manage to apply at best partially to
whatever phenomena they purport to represent. To the extent they are taken to represent actual process in
the real world, they must be hedged by ceteris paribus clauses. Scientific laws and models attach to
patches of the world, but not to a seamlessly law-governed whole. Mitchell’s (2002, 2009) integrative
pluralism is a rejection of the goal of unification by either reduction to a single (fundamental) level of
explanation or abstraction to a single theoretical representation, in favor of a more pragmatically inflected
set of explanatory strategies. The success for any particular investigation is answerable to the goals of the
investigation, but there may be multiple compatible accounts reflecting both the contingency and partiality
of the laws/generalizations that can figure in explanations and the different goals one may bring to
investigation of the same phenomenon. The explanations sought in any particular explanatory situation will
draw on these multiple accounts as appropriate for the level of representation adequate to achieve its
pragmatic ends. Mitchell’s defense of integrative pluralism rests on both the partiality of representation and
the complexity of the phenomena to be explained.
Kellert, Longino, and Waters advance a pluralism that sees multiplicity not only among but within levels of
analysis. Furthermore they see no reason to require that the multiple accounts be compatible. The
multiplicity of noncongruent empirically adequate accounts helps us appreciate the complexity of a
phenomenon without being in a position to generate a single account of that complexity. They do not hold
that all phenomena will support ineliminable pluralism, but that there are some phenomena that will require
mutually irreducible or incompatible models. Which these are is determined by examining the phenomena,
the models, and the match between phenomena and models. Like Mitchell, Kellert, Longino, and Waters
hold that pragmatic considerations (broadly understood) will govern the choice of model to be used in
particular circumstances. Both forms of pluralism (compatibilist and noncompatibilist) abandon the notion
that there is a set of natural kinds whose causal interactions are the basis for fundamental explanations of
natural processes. The noncompatibilist is open to multiple classification schemes answerable to different
pragmatic interests in classifying. To this extent the noncompatibilist pluralist embraces a view close to the
promiscuous realism articulated by John Dupré (1993). The compatibilist, or integrative pluralist, on the
other hand, must hold that there is a way that different classification schemes can be reconciled to support
the envisioned integration of explanatory models.
Pluralism receives support from several additional approaches. Giere (2006) uses the phenomenon of color
vision to support a position he calls perspectival realism. Like the colors of objects, scientific
representations are the result of interactions between human cognitive faculties and the world. Other
species have different visual equipment and perceive the world differently. Our human cognitive faculties,
then, constitute perspectives. We could have been built differently and hence perceived the world
differently. Perspectival realism leads to pluralism, because perspectives are partial. While van Fraassen's
(2008) does not take a position on pluralism vs. monism (and as an empiricist and antirealist van Fraassen
would not have to), its emphasis on the partiality and perspective dependence of measurement provides a
complementary point of entry to such diversity. Solomon (2006) urges a yet more welcoming attitude
towards multiplicity. In her view, dissensus is a necessary component of well-functioning scientific
communities and consensus can be epistemologically pernicious. In an extension of the arguments in
Solomon (2001) she argues that different models and theoretical representations will be associated with
particular insights or specific data that are likely to be lost if the aim is to integrate or otherwise combine the
models to achieve a consensus understanding. The activity of integrating two or more models is different
from the process of one of a set coming eventually to have all the empirical successes possessed
independently by the individual models. In her examination of consensus conferences called by the United
States National Institutes of Health (Solomon 2011), Solomon finds that such conferences do not resolve
existing dissent in the scientific community. Instead, they tend to take place after a consensus has emerged
in the research community and are directed more to the communication of such consensus to outside
communities (such as clinicians, insurers, health policy experts, and the public) than to the assessment of
evidence that might warrant consensus.
Researchers committed to a monist or unified science will see plurality as a problem to be overcome, while
researchers already committed to a deeply social view of science will see plurality as a resource of
communities rather than a problem. The diversity and partiality that characterizes both local and the global
scientific community characterize the products of those communities as well as the producers. Universalism
and unification require the elimination of epistemologically relevant diversity, while a pluralist stance
promotes it and the deeply social conception of knowledge that follows.
Sociality and the structure of scientific knowledge.  Attention to the social dimensions of scientific knowledge
and the consequent potential for plurality has prompted philosophers to rethink the structure of scientific
knowledge. Many philosophers (including Giere, Kitcher, and Longino) who advocate forms of pluralism
invoke the metaphor of maps to explain how scientific representations can be both partial and adequate.
Maps only represent those features of the territory mapped that are relevant for the purpose for which the
map is drawn. Some maps may represent the physical area bounded by state boundaries, others may
represent the population size, or the relative abundance/poverty of natural resources. But the map
metaphor is only one of several ways to rethink the structure of scientific knowledge.
Other philosophers draw more heavily on cognitive science to represent the sociality of cognitive agents.
Giere (2002) takes a naturalist approach to modeling, not so much the distribution of cognitive labor, but
the distribution of cognition. This approach takes a system or interactive community as the locus of
cognition, rather than the individual agent. Nersessian (2006) extends distributed cognition to model-based
reasoning in the sciences. Models are artifacts that focus the cognitive activity of multiple individuals in
particular settings. Knowledge is distributed across the minds interacting about the artifacts in that setting.
Paul Thagard draws on the increasingly interdisciplinary (and hence social) nature of cognitive science
itself to argue that not only does cognitive science (or certain lines of analysis in cognitive science) support
a conception of cognition as distributed among interacting agents, but that this conception can be turned
back upon cognitive science itself. (Thagard 2012). Finally Alexander Bird (2010) reflects on the sense of
knowledge required for attributions such as: “the biomedical community now knows that peptic ulcers are
often caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori.” Or “There was an explosive growth in scientific
knowledge in the twentieth century.” Bird faults other social epistemologists for still making such collective
knowledge supervenient on the states of individuals. Instead, he argues, we should understand social
knowing as a functional analogue of individual knowing. Both are dependent on the existence and proper
functioning of the relevant structures: reasoning and perception for individuals; libraries and journals and
other social structures, for collectivities.
5. Social Direction of Science
Modern science has been regarded as both a model of democratic self-governance and an activity
requiring and facilitating democratic practices in its supporting social context (Popper 1950, Bronowski
1956). In this perspective, science is seen as embedded in and dependent on its supporting social context,
but insulated in its practices from the influence of that context. As the reach of science and science-based
technologies has extended further and further into the economy and daily life of industrialized societies,
new attention is paid to the governance of science. Regardless of one's views about the social character of
knowledge, there are further questions concerning what research to pursue, what social resources to
devote to it, who should make such decisions, and how they should be made.
Philip Kitcher (2001) has opened these questions to philosophical scrutiny. While Kitcher largely endorses
the epistemological views of his (1993), in this work he argues that there is no absolute standard of the
significance (practical or epistemic) of research projects, nor any standard of the good apart from subjective
preferences. The only non-arbitrary way to defend judgments concerning research agendas in the absence
of absolute standards is through democratic means of establishing collective preferences. Kitcher, thus,
attempts to spell out procedures by which decisions concerning what research directions to pursue can be
made in a democratic manner. The result, which he calls well-ordered science, is a system in which the
decisions actually made track the decisions that would be a made by a suitably constituted representative
body collectively deliberating with the assistance of relevant information (concerning, e.g., cost and
feasibility) supplied by experts.
Kitcher's “well-ordered science” has attracted attention from other philosophers, from scientists, and from
scholars of public policy. Winning praise as a first step, it has also elicited a variety of criticisms and further
questions. The criticisms of his proposal range from worries about the excessive idealism of the conception
to worries that it will enshrine the preferences of a much smaller group than those who will be affected by
research decisions. Kitcher's proposal at best works for a system in which all or most scientific research is
publicly funded. But the proportion of private, corporate, funding of science compared to that of public
funding has been increasing, thus calling into question the effectiveness of a model that presupposes
largely public control (Mirowski and Sent 2002, Krimsky 2003). Kitcher's model, it should be noted, still
effects a significant separation between the actual conduct of research and decisions concerning the
direction of research and scholars who see a more intimate relation between social processes and values
in the context and those in the conduct of research will be dissatisfied with it. Kitcher himself (Kitcher 2011)
seems to relax the separation somewhat.
The counterfactual character of the proposal raises questions about the extent to which well-ordered
science really is democratic. If the actual decisions do not need to be the result of democratic procedures
but only to be the same as those that would result, from such procedures how do we know which decisions
those are without actually going through the deliberative exercise? Even if the process is actually carried
out, there are places, e.g. in choice of experts whose advice is sought, which permit individual preferences
to subvert or bias the preferences of the whole (Roth 2003). Furthermore, given that the effects of scientific
research are potentially global, while democratic decisions are at best national, national decisions will have
an effect well beyond the population represented by the decision makers. Sheila Jasanoff has also
commented that even in contemporary industrialized democracies there are quite different science
governance regimes. There is not one model of democratic decision making, but many, and the differences
translate into quite different policies (Jasanoff 2005).
In his (2011) Kitcher abandons the counterfactual approach as he brings the ideal of well-orderedness into
contact with actual debates in and about contemporary science. His concern here is the variety of ways in
which scientific authority has been eroded by what he terms “chimeric epistemologies.” It’s not enough to
say that the scientific community has concluded that, say, the MMR vaccine is safe, or that the climate is
changing in a way that requires a change in human activities. In a democratic society, there are many other
voices claiming authority, whether on presumed evidential grounds or as part of campaigns to manipulate
public opinion. Kitcher suggests mechanisms whereby small groups trusted by their communities might
develop the understanding of complicated technical issues through tutoring by members of the relevant
research communities and then carry this understanding back to the public. He also endorses James
Fishkin’s (2009) experiments in deliberative polling as a means to bring members of the public committed
to different sides of a technical issue together with the scientific exponents of the issue and in a series of
exchanges that cover the evidence, the different kinds of import different lines of reasoning possess, and
the other elements of a reasoned discussion, bring the group to a consensus on the correct view. The
pluralist and pragmatically inclined philosophers discussed in the previous section might worry that there is
not a single correct view towards which such an encounter ought to converge, but that a broader discussion
that incorporates deliberation about aims and values might produce sufficient (temporary) convergence to
ground action or policy.
6. Conclusion
Philosophical study of the social dimensions of scientific knowledge has been intensifying in the decades
since 1970. Social controversies about the sciences and science based technologies as well as
developments in philosophical naturalism and social epistemology combine to drive thinking in this area
forward. Scholars in a number of cognate disciplines continue to investigate the myriad social relations
within scientific communities and between them and their social, economic, and institutional contexts.
While this area first came to prominence in the so-called science wars, attending to social dimensions of
science has brought a number of topics to philosophical attention. The phenomenon of Big Science has
encouraged philosophers to consider the epistemological significance of such phenomena as trust and
cognitive interdependence and the division of cognitive labor. The increased economic and social
dependence on science-based technologies has prompted attention to questions of inductive risk and the
role of values in assessing hypotheses with social consequences. The controversies over health risks of
certain vaccines, over the measurement of environmental pollution, and over the causes of climate change
have expanded philosophy of science from its more accustomed areas of logical and epistemological
 analysis to incorporate concerns about the communication and uptake of scientific knowledge and the
ethical dimensions of superficially factual debates.
Partly in response to the work of scholars in the social studies of science, partly in response to the
changing role of scientific inquiry through the 20th and into the 21st centuries, philosophers have sought
ways to either accommodate the (tenable) results of the sociologists and cultural historians or to modify
traditional epistemological concepts used in the analysis of scientific knowledge. These investigations in
turn lead to new thinking about the structure and location of the content of knowledge. While debates within
philosophy of science between and among adherents to one or another of the models of the sociality of
knowledge will continue, an important future step will be a fuller encounter between individual-based social
epistemology with its focus on testimony and disagreement as transactions among individuals and the
more fully social epistemologies that take social relations or interaction as partially constitutive of empirical
knowledge.
Bibliography
Works Cited

 Anderson, Elizabeth, 2004. “Uses of Value Judgments in Science” Hypatia, 19, 1–24.

 –––, 2011. “Democracy, Public Policy, and Lay Assessments of Scientific Testimony,” Episteme,
8(2): 144–164.
 Bala, Arun, 2008, The Dialogue of Civilizations in the Birth of Modern Science , New York, NY:
Macmillan.
 Barnes, Barry, 1977. Interests and the Growth of Knowledge, New York: Routledge.
 –––, and David Bloor, 1982. “Relativism, Rationalism, and the Sociology of Knowledge,”
in Rationality and Relativism, eds. Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, pp. 21–47, Oxford: B. Blackwell.
 Bird, Alexander, 2010, “Social Knowing: The Social Sense of ‘Scientific Knowledge’” Philosophical
Perspectives 24: 23–56.
 Bronowski, Jacob, 1956. Science and Human Values, New York: Harper and Bros.
 Brown, James, 1989. The Rational and the Social, London: Routledge.
 –––, 1994. Smoke and Mirrors: How Science Reflects Reality , New York: Routledge.
 Cartwright, Nancy, 1999, The Dappled World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 –––, 2012, “Will This Policy Work for You?” Philosophy of Science, 79, 5: 973–989.
 –––, and Jeremy Hardie, 2012. Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing It Better , New
York, NY: Oxford University Press.
 –––, and Jordi Cat, Lola Fleck, and Hasok Chang, 1996. Otto Neurath: Philosophy Between
Science and Politics, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
 Collins, Harry, 1983. “An Empirical Relativist Programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge,”
in Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science , pp. 115–140, London: Sage.
 Cranor, Carl F., 2004. “Toward Understanding Aspects of the Precautionary Principle,” Journal of
Medicine and Philosophy, 29(3): 259–79.
 Douglas, Heather, 2000. “Inductive Risk and Values in Science,” Philosophy of Science, 67(4):
559–579>
 –––, 2009. Science, Policy, and the Value-Free Ideal , Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh
Press.
 Dupré, John, 1993, The Disorder of Things, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
 Elliot, Kevin, 2011, “Direct and Indirect Roles for Values in Science,” Philosophy of Science 78, 2:
303–324
 Fausto-Sterling, Anne, 1992, Myths of Gender, New York, NY: Basic Books.
 Fine, Arthur, 2007. “Relativism, Pragmatism, and the Practice of Science,” in New Pragmatists,
Cheryl Misak (ed.), pp. 50–67, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Fine, Cordelia, 2010, Delusions of Gender, New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
 Fuller, Steve, 1988. Social Epistemology, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
 Gannett, Lisa, 2003, “Making Populations: Bounding Genes in Space and Time,” Philosophy of
Science, 70(5): 989–1001.
 Giere, Ronald, 1988. Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach , Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
 –––, 1991. “Knowledge, Values, and Technological Decisions: A Decision Theoretical Approach,”
in Acceptable Evidence: Science and Values in Risk Management , Deborah Mayo and Rachelle Hollander
(eds.), pp. 183–203, New York: Oxford University Press.
 –––, 2002. “Scientific Cognition as Distributed Cognition,” in Cognitive Bases of Science Peter
Carruthers, Stephen Stitch, and Michael Siegal (eds.), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
 –––, 2003, “A New Program for Philosophy of Science?” Philosophy of Science, 70(1): 15–21.
 –––, 2006. Scientific Perspectivism, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
 –––, and Alan Richardson (eds.), 1996. Origins of Logical Empiricism (Minnesota Studies in the
Philosophy of Science, Vol. XVI), Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
 Goldman, Alvin, 1987. “The Foundations of Social Epistemics,” Synthese, 73(1): 109–144.
 –––, 1995. “Psychological, Social and Epistemic Factors in the Theory of Science,” in PSA 1994:
Proceedings of the 1994 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Richard Burian,
Mickey Forbes, and David Hull (eds.), pp. 277–286, East Lansing, MI: Philosophy of Science Association.
 –––,1999. Ch. 8 “Science”, Knowledge in a Social World, pp. 224–271, New York: Oxford
University Press.
 Gould, Stephen J., 1981, The Mismeasure of Man, New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
 Haack, Susan, 1996. “Science as Social: Yes and No,” in Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy
of Science, Lynn Hankinson Nelson and Jack Nelson (eds.), pp. 79–94, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers.
 Habib, S. Irfan and Dhruv Raina, 2001, Situating the History of Science: Dialogues with Joseph
Needham, New Delhi, IN: Oxford University Press.
 Haraway, Donna, 1978. “Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic (Part
II),” Signs, 4(1): 37–60.
 –––, 1988. “Situated Knowledges,” Feminist Studies, 14(3): 575–600.
 Harding, Sandra. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
 –––, 1993. “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology,” in Feminist Epistemologies, Linda Alcoff and
Elizabeth Potter (eds.), pp. 49–82, New York: Routledge.
 Hardwig, John, 1985. “Epistemic Dependence,” Journal of Philosophy, 82(7): 335–349.
 –––, 1988, “Evidence, Testimony, and the Problem of Individualism,” Social Epistemology, 2(4):
309–21.
 Hesse, Mary, 1980. Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science , Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
 Hull, David, 1988. Science As a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual
Development of Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 Jasanoff, Sheila, 2005. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United
States, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 Jordan-Young, Rebecca, 2010, Brain Storm, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
 Kaplan, Jonathan, and Rasmus Winther, 2013, “Prisoners of Abstraction? The Theory and
Measure of Genetic Variation, and the Very Concept of Race,” Biological Theory, 7(4): 401–12.
 Keller, Evelyn Fox, 1983. A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock ,
San Francisco: W.H. Freeman.
 –––, 1985. Reflections on Gender and Science, New Haven: Yale University Press.
 Kellert, Stephen, 1993. In the Wake of Chaos, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
 –––, Helen Longino, and C. Kenneth Waters (eds.), 2006. Scientific Pluralism (Minnesota Studies
in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. XIX), Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
 Kitcher, Phillip, 1985. Vaulting Ambition, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 –––, 1993. The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions ,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 –––, 2001. Science, Truth, and Democracy, New York: Oxford University Press.
 –––, 2011. Science in a Democratic Society, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press.
 Knorr-Cetina, Karin, 1981. The Manufacture of Knowledge, Oxford: Pergamon Press.
 Kourany, Janet, 2003. “A Philosophy of Science for the Twenty-First Century,” Philosophy of
Science, 70(1): 1–14.
 –––, 2010, Philosophy of Science After Feminism, New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
 Krimsky, Sheldon, 2003. Science in the Private Interest, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
 Kuhn, Thomas, 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
 –––, 1977. The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change , Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
 Lacey, Hugh, 2005. Values and Objectivity: The Controversy over Transgenic Crops , Lanham:
Rowman and Littlefield.
 Latour, Bruno and Steven Woolgar, 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts , 2d
ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 Laudan, Larry, 1984a. “The Pseudo-Science of Science?” in Scientific Rationality: The Sociological
Turn, James Brown (ed.), pp. 41–74, Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
 Lee, Carole J., 2012. “A Kuhnian Critique of Psychometric Research on Peer Review,” Philosophy
of Science, 79(5): 859–870.
 –––, Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Guo Zhang, and Blaise Cronin, 2013, “Bias in Peer Review,” Journal of
the American Society for Information Science and Technology , 64(1): 2–17.
 Lewontin, Richard, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin, 1984, Not in Our Genes, New York, NY:
Pantheon.
 Longino, Helen E., 1990. Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry ,
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 –––, 2002. The Fate of Knowledge, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 Mayo, Deborah, and Rachelle Hollander (eds.), 1991. Acceptable Evidence: Science and Values in
Risk Management, New York: Oxford University Press.
 Mill, John Stuart, 1859. On Liberty, London: John W. Parker and Son; reprinted 1974, 1982,
Gertrude Himmelfarb (ed.), Harmondsworth: Penguin.
 Mirowski, Philip, and Esther-Mirjam Sent (eds.), 2002. Science Bought and Sold, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
 Mitchell, Sandra, 2002. “Integrative Pluralism” Biology and Philosophy, 17: 55–70.
 Muldoon, Ryan, and Michael Weisberg, 2011. “Robustness and Idealization in Models of Cognitive
Labor,” Synthese, 183: 161–174.
 Needham, Joseph, 1954. Science and Civilization in China , Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
 Nersessian, Nancy J., 2006. “Model-Based Reasoning in Distributed Cognitive
Systems,” Philosophy of Science, 73(5): 699–709.
 Nelson, Lynn Hankinson, 1990. Who Knows: From Quine to Feminist Empiricism , Philadelphia:
Temple University Press.
 Oreskes, Naomi, and Eric Conway, 2011. Merchants of Doubt, New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press.
 Parker, Wendy, 2006. “Understanding Pluralism in Climate Modeling,” Foundations of Science,
11(4): 349–368.
 –––, 2010. “Predicting Weather and Climate,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science  (Part
B), 41(3): 263–272.
 Peirce, Charles S., 1868. “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities,” Journal of Speculative
Philosophy, 2: 140–157; reprinted in C.S. Peirce, Selected Writings, Philip Wiener (ed.), New York: Dover
Publications, 1958, pp. 39–72.
 –––, 1878. “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” Popular Science Monthly, 12: 286–302; reprinted in
C.S. Peirce, Selected Writings, Philip Wiener (ed.), New York: Dover Publications, 1958, pp. 114–136.
 Pickering, Andrew, 1984. Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics ,
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
 Popper, Karl, 1950. The Open Society and its Enemies, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 –––, 1963. Conjectures and Refutations, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
 –––, 1972. Objective Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 Potter, Elizabeth, 2001. Gender and Boyle's Law of Gases , Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
 Rose, Hilary, 1983. “Hand, Brain, and Heart,” Signs, 9(1): 73–96.
 Roth, Paul, 2003. “Kitcher's Two Cultures,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 33(3): 386–405.
 Rouse, Joseph, 1987. Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science , Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
 Schmitt, Frederick, 1988. “On the Road to Social Epistemic Interdependence,” Social
Epistemology, 2: 297–307.
 Shapin, Steven, 1982. “The History of Science and Its Sociological Reconstruction,” History of
Science, 20: 157–211.
 –––, and Simon Schaffer, 1985. Leviathan and the Air Pump, Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
 Shrader-Frechette, Kristin, 1994. “Expert Judgment and Nuclear Risks: The Case for More Populist
Policy,” Journal of Social Philosophy, 25: 45–70.
 –––, 2002. Environmental Justice: Creating Equality; Reclaiming Democracy , New York: Oxford
University Press.
 Sober, Elliott, and David Sloan Wilson, 1998. Unto Others, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press
 Solomon. Miriam, 1992. “Scientific Rationality and Human Reasoning,” Philosophy of Science,
59(3): 439–54.
 –––, 1994a. “Social Empiricism,” Noûs, 28(3): 323–343.
 –––, 1994b. “A More Social Epistemology,” in Socializing Epistemology: The Social Dimensions of
Knowledge, Frederick Schmitt (ed.), pp. 217–233, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
 –––, 2001. Social Empiricism, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 –––, 2006. “Groupthink versus The Wisdom of Crowds: The Social Epistemology of Deliberation
and Dissent,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy , XLIV: 28–42.
 –––, 2011. “Group Judgment and the Medical Consensus Conference,” Handbook of the
Philosophy of Science: Philosophy of Medicine , Fred Gifford (ed.), Amsterdam: Elsevier. pp. 239–254.
 Spencer, Quayshawn, 2012. “What Biological Racial Realism Should Mean” Philosophical Studies,
159: 181–204.
 –––, 2014. “Biological Theory and the Metaphysics of Race; A Reply to Kaplan and
Winther,” Biological Theory, 8: 114–120.
 Steele, Daniel and Kyle Whyte, 2012. “Environmental Justice, Values, and Scientific
Expertise” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 22(2): 163–182.
 Strevens, Michael, 2003. “The Role of the Priority Rule in Science,” Journal of Philosophy, 100:
55–79.
 Tatsioni, Athina, with Nikolaos Bonitsis, and John Ioannidis, 2007. “The Persistence of
Contradicted Claims in the Literature,” Journal of the American Medical Association , 298(21): 2517–26.
 Thagard, Paul, 2012. The Cognitive Science of Science: Explanation, Discovery, and Conceptual
Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 Traweek, Sharon, 1988. Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physicists ,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
 Uebel, Thomas, 2004. “Political Philosophy of Science in Logical Empiricism: The Left Vienna
Circle,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science , 36: 754“773.
 van Fraassen, Bas, 2008. Scientific Representation, New York: Oxford University Press.
 Welbourne, Michael, 1981. “The Community of Knowledge,” Philosophical Quarterly, 31(125): 302–
314.
 Wilholt, Torsten, 2013. “Epistemic Trust in Science,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science ,
24(2): 233–253.
 Winsberg, Eric, 2012. “Values and Uncertainties in the Predictions of global Climate
Models,” Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, 22(2): 111–137.
 –––, Bryce Huebner, and Rebecca Kukla, 2014. “Accountability and Values in Radically
Collaborative Research,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science  (Part A), 46: 16–23.
 Wylie, Alison, 2002. Thinking from Things, Los Angeles: University of California Press.
 Young, N.S., with John Ioannidis, O. Al-Ubaydli, 2008. “Why Current Publication Practices May
Harm Science,” Public Library of Science Medicine, 5(10): e201, doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050201
Further Reading

 Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison, 2010. Objectivity, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 Fleck, Ludwig, 1973. The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact , Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
 Hacking, Ian, 1999. The Social Construction of What?, Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.
 Latour, Bruno, 2004. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy , Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
 Levi, Isaac, 1980. The Enterprise of Knowledge, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
 Radder, Hans (ed.), 2010. The Commodification of Scientific Research , Pittsburgh, PA: University
of Pittsburgh Press.
 McMullin, Ernan (ed.), 1992. Social Dimensions of Scientific Knowledge , South Bend: Notre Dame
University Press.
 Sismondo, Sergio, 1996. Science Without Myth, Albany: State University of New York Press.