Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T17:00:35.271Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Joint Acceptance and Scientific Change: A Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2012

Hanne Andersen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recently, several scholars have argued that scientists can accept scientific claims in a collective process, and that the capacity of scientific groups to form joint acceptances is linked to a functional division of labor between the group members. However, these accounts reveal little about how the cognitive content of the jointly accepted claim is formed, and how group members depend on each other in this process. In this paper, I shall therefore argue that we need to link analyses of joint acceptance with analyses of distributed cognition. To sketch how this can be done, I shall present a detailed case study, and on the basis of the case, analyze the process through which a group of scientists jointly accept a new scientific claim and at a later stage jointly accept to revise previously accepted claims. I shall argue that joint acceptance in science can be established in situations where an overall conceptual structure is jointly accepted by a group of scientists while detailed parts of it are distributed among group members with different areas of expertise, a condition that I shall call a heterogeneous conceptual consensus. Finally, I shall show how a heterogeneous conceptual consensus can work as a constraint against scientific change and address the question how changes may nevertheless occur.

Type
Research Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , October 2010 , pp. 248 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Andersen, H. 1996. “Categorization, Anomalies, and the Discovery of Nuclear Fission.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 27: 463–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, H. 2000. “Kuhn's Account of Family Resemblance: A Solution to the Problem of Wide-Open Texture.” Erkenntnis 52: 313–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andersen, H. 2009. “Unexpected Discoveries, Graded Structures, and the Difference between Acceptance and Neglect.” In Meheus, J. and Nickles, T. (eds.), Models of Discovery and Creativity, pp. 1–27. Dordrecht: Springer.Google Scholar
Andersen, H., Barker, P., and Chen, X.. 2006. The Cognitive Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fermi, E., Amaldi, E., D'Agostino, O., Rasetti, F., and Segrè, E.. 1934. “Artificial Radioactivity Produced by Neutron Bombardment.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences 146(857): 483–500.Google Scholar
Frisch, O. 1967. Interview by Charles Weiner. May 3. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics. Retrieved May 30, 2010, from http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4616.html Google Scholar
Giere, R. N. 2007. “Distributed Cognition without Distributed Knowledge.” Social Epistemology 21(3): 313–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, R. N. and Moffat, B.. 2003. “Distributed Cognition: Where the Cognitive and the Social Merge.” Social Studies of Science 33: 301–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, M. 1987. “Modelling Collective Belief.” Synthese 73: 185–204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, M. 1989. On Social Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Gilbert, M. 2000. “Collective Belief and Scientific Change.” In Sociality and Responsibility: New Essays in Plural Subject Theory, pp. 37–49. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Gilbert, M. 2003. “The Structure of the Social Atom: Joint Commitment as the Foundation of Human Social Behavior.” In Schmitt, F. F. (ed.), Socializing Metaphysics: The Nature of Social Reality, pp. 39–64. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Hahn, O. and Strassmann, F.. 1939. “Über den Nachweis und das Verhalten der bei der Bestrahlung des Urans mittels Neutronen entstehenden Erdalkalimetalle.” Naturwissenschaften 27: 11–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoyningen-Huene, P. 1992. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hutchins, E. 1995. Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. 1989. “Conceptual Change in Science and in Science Education.” Synthese 80: 163–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. 2005. “Interpreting Scientific and Engineering Practices: Integrating the Cognitive, Social and Cultural Dimension.” In Gorman, M., Tweney, R., Gooding, D., and Kincannon, A. (eds.), Scientific and Technological Thinking, pp. 17–56. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. 2006. “The Cognitive-Cultural Systems of the Research Laboratory.” Organization Studies 27(1): 125–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nersessian, N. J. and Resnick, L. B.. 1989. “Comparing Historical and Intuitive Explanations of Motion: Does ‘Naive Physics’ Have a Structure?” Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society 11: 412–20.Google Scholar
Rolin, K. 2008. “Science as Collective Knowledge.” Cognitive Systems Research 9: 115–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenwein, R. E. 1994. “Social Influence in Science: Agreement and Dissent in Achieving Scientific Consensus.” In Shadish, W. R. and Fuller, S. (eds.), The Social Psychology of Science, pp. 262–85. New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Rossini, F. A. and Porter, A. L.. 1979. “Frameworks for Integrating Interdisciplinary Research.” Research Policy 8: 70–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Segrè, E. 1967. Interview by Charles Weiner and Barry Richman. February 13. Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics. Retrieved May 23, 2010, from http://www.aip.org/history/ohilist/4876.html Google Scholar
Segrè, E. 1970. Enrico Fermi, Physicist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sime, R.L. 1989. “Lise Meitner and the Discovery of Fission.” Journal of Chemical Education 66(5): 373–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sime, R. L. 1996. Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sime, R. L. 2000. “The Search for Transuranium Elements and the Discovery of Nuclear Fission.” Physics in Perspective 2: 48–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staley, K. W. 2007. “Evidential Collaborations: Epistemic and Pragmatic Considerations in ‘Group Belief.’” Social Epistemology 21(3): 321–35.Google Scholar
Thagard, P. 1992. Conceptual Revolutions. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weart, S. R. 1983. “The Discovery of Fission and a Nuclear Physics Paradigm.” In Shea, W. R. (ed.), Otto Hahn and the Rise of Nuclear Physics, pp. 91–133. Dortrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wray, K. B. 2001. “Collective Belief and Acceptance.” Synthese 129: 319–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wray, K. B. 2003. “Is Science Really a Young Man's Game?” Social Studies of Science 33(1): 137–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wray, K. B. 2007. “Who Has Scientific Knowledge?” Social Epistemology 21(3): 337–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar