Social Constructivism The Major Argument Arising From The Ssk Can

Social Constructivism The major argument arising from the SSK can be termed as 'Social constructivism' of knowledge. If not all, but still majority of the researches done in the field of SSK assert the argument that Knowledge irrespective of whether they are everyday knowledge or scientific knowledge is manufactured in a social and political context. The historical perspective of Kuhn or the SSK perspectives of the Edinburgh school which professed 'strong program' in SSK (a 'weak program' is a view where scientific knowledge is considered to be affected by social and political factors minimally, whereas, a 'strong program' refers to the view that scientific knowledge is also produced or ‘manufactured’ by social factors) all adhered to the social constructivist idea of knowledge. This was further furthered by the notable works of ethnographic research of laboratory life applying anthropological methods by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar in a neuroendocrinology research laboratory at the Salk institute and Karin Knorr-Cetina in the plant science laboratory in the University of Chicago, Berkely. Kuhn's paradigm and SSK Kuhn's ' The Structure of Scientific Revolution' published in 1960 was one of the major works of the second half of the twentieth century. Though Kuhn's work was restricted mainly to the analysis of the nature of the scientific knowledge in the fundamental and natural sciences, it’s severest impact had been onwas felt in social sciences. Kuhn's idea of 'paradigm shift' in the history of scientific knowledge or science gave much more credibility to the social constructionist's argument of socially manufactured knowledge. Kuhn classified history of science in to two different periods which every stream of science and knowledge should undergo. According to this idea, science is characterized by a 'normal' science and 'revolutionary' science period. Normal period denotes the stage during which a single theory of truth has established it's hegemony as the most dominant theory without any serious contestations. But every normal period should end in a revolutionary period at which the theory comes under attack from a the rival theories for the claim of ultimate truth as aresult of which a new theory of science establishes it’s hegemony altering the world view of the scienific community. This shift in the context is termed as ‘paradigm shift’ by Kuhn. Following Kuhnian logic even disciplines which cannot claim to be dominated by a single paradigm can claim to be going through pre-paradigmatic stage where different schools of thought compete for scientific legitimacy. This argument has been extended by some radical social constructionist like Collins school that legitimacy of the scientific knowledge is actually decided by the existing power relations (Boyd, 2002). The debate on Climate change can be considered as a pertinent example. For too long the debate is going whether the phenomenon of global warming is real or not. The western countries who had much at stake tried to discredit it with various research and scientific evidences. Later when they accepted the relaity of the phenomenon and came with research results of Some accepted the phenomenon as real but differed in terms of it's effects in magnitude and extent. Every influential nation that are involved in the climate change discussion are coming with mutually contradictory statements depending on their position in the international power relations. While developed nations have come with reports of rapidly melting glaciers in Himalayas, Ministry of Environment and Forests of India has come with contradicting research results by geologists R.K. Ganjoo and M.N. Koul of Jammu University's Regional Centre for Field Operations and Research of Himalayan Glaciology that the melting of glaciers are not due to global warming. This claim comes at a time when India is being criticized for softening it's stand on climate change under increasing U.S pressure. Scientific Realism and it's Defense of Objective Foundation of Knowledge The arguments posed by this social constructivist school against the objectivity of knowledge has evoked sharp reactions from the school of Scientific

Realism and Objectivism. Scientific Realists opposed to Social Constructivists are of the view that the objective reality exists independent of the subject or perceiver. It believes in the possibility of discovering truths through the relation of theories with the objective reality. The realist perspective does not deny the falsifiability of theories or social dimensions of scientific knowledge but goes on to believe and argue that objective reality can be discovered through various mechanisms and methods like scientific observations, experiments, reasoning etc. Their bone of contention is the SSK's argument that objective reality is not identifiable though it might exist. It rather identifies the problem with the anti-realist stands of SSK to be a profound failure in their part to distinguish between 'intransitive' and transitive' existence of nature(Jayaraman 2007). The 'intransitive ' refers to the existence of the things and objects independent of one's conscious awareness whereas the ' transitive' refers to the conscious perception or the knowledge of the intransitive by the subject. Intransitive refers to the world that existed, exists, and will exist materially regardless of how one perceives it whereas transitive refers to the world as understood and explained by the subject i.e human mind through experience, intuition, observation, experimentation and reasoning. Responding to the SSK argument that objective knowledge is impossible as every knowledge is gained or produced within a limited social context i.e socially constructed, realists place their counter argument that the perception of knowledge as contextually dependent and variable is actually because of the ‘very’ stratified and differentiated existence of the 'intransitive' reality itself. Thus it means that the existence of intransitive real in stratified and differentiated form leads to the changes in the 'transitive' knowledge of the intransitive. The realists also make another differentiation between the socially constructivist viewpoint and realist view. The charge leveled against social constructivists by the realist is that the method they follow is explicitly externalist rather than internalist. Externalism refers, in the historiography of science, to the fact that knowledge is manufactured by the socio-political forces rather than intrinsic capability of unbiased-scientific approach to produce it. This approach can also be called as social determinism. Internalism, whereas refers to the independent and distinctive existence of science from the social and political influences of the external. Reference Knorr-Cetina, Karin D, ‘The Fabrication of Facts: Toward a Microsociology of Scientific Knowledge’, in Nico Stehr and Meja Volker, eds, Society and Knowledge: Contemporary Perspectives in the Sociology of Knowledge, pp.175–95, Transaction Books, New Brunswick and London, 2005. Bird, Alexander. ‘Thomas Kuhn’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/., 2004. Boyd, Richard, ‘Scientific Realism’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/., 2002. Dadachanji, Dinshaw K, ‘The Cultural Challenge to Scientific Knowledge’, The World & I, Vol. 13,pp, 172. 1998; available online at http://sciencewars.tripod.com/cult.html. Jayaraman.T, ‘Scientific Realism for the Contemporary Materialist’, The Marxist, Vol. 23, No.1, Jan.2007. available online at http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/19886606/200701-Marxist-Scientific-Realism-Jayram.

Longino, Helen, ‘The Social Dimensions of Scientific Knowledge’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-knowledge-social/., 2002. Thornton, Stephen, ‘Karl Popper’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, online at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/., 2009.