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Integrating the Philosophy and the Social Psychology of Science or a Plague on Two Houses Divided

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Ian I. Mitroff
Ian I. Mitroff*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

A few years ago at the conclusion to one of his papers, Norwood Russell Hanson wrote:

… scientific observation and scientific interpretation need neither be joined nor separated. They are never apart, so they need not be joined. They cannot, not even in principle, be separated, and it is conceptually idle to make the attempt. Observation and interpretation are related symbiotically so that each conceptually sustains the other, while separation kills both. This will not be news to any practicing scientist, but it may seem heretical indeed to certain philosophers of science for whom Analysis has, alas, become indistinguishable from Division (1967, p. 99).

While not everyone would agree with Hanson regarding the role of observation and interpretation, I have often wondered what would have happened had Hanson attempted to make the same argument regarding the philosophy and the social psychology of research, if indeed he would have been inclined to attempt such an argument at all.

Type
Contributed Papers: Session IV
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1974 , 1974 , pp. 528 - 548
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht-Holland

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