On Wed, 7 Feb 2001, Una McCormack wrote:
Sociology of science has changed radically since Popper was writing: there's a large body of ethnographic work which emphasizes the social practice of science and the way scientific method acts as a set of ideal principles than reflects day-to-day activity.
In fairness to Popper, he was mainly concerned with the logical problem of how science can, in principle, make progress.
Loren Graham writes very interestingly about science in the former Soviet Union (which I'm assuming constitutes a closed society). He tracks the way in which science was abused under the Soviet system (the devastating effect of Lysenkoism on Soviet biology is a particular case he uses), but makes the general conclusion that Soviet science had a number of successes in many fields, and that science can be remarkably robust under stress. The correlation between the 'Open Society' and scientific method is not so straightforward: science is not necessarily a 'Western' activity.
I'd agree with all of that except the last clause. McDonald's hamburgers are an American product, even though they're sold in Moscow.
Graham's work also raises some interesting questions about how
scientific method might operate as a sort of counter-ethic within societies like the Soviet Union (like Catholicism did in Poland).
Throughout the Cold War, the scientific community regarded itself as an international brotherhood, working together without regard for politics, promoting freedom, understanding and peace. This point was made very forcefully by elderly guest speakers at a space science conference in Warsaw which I attended last year.
What
would also be interesting, and which I haven't seen, would be comparative ethnographic work which studied the way in which the principles of scientific method were referred to and made 'up front' in the everyday talk of scientists in different societies. Practical problems for such a clearly fruitful body of research might include: 1. the non-existence of the Soviet Union robs us of perhaps the most significant counter-example of science operating successfully under stress; 2. the reliability of information gained from ethnographic studies in situations where people are in fear of their lives if they talk too freely.
But problem 2 is solved by problem 1. Get some of the old geezers and ask them what it used to be like. Of course, you'll have to be quick: they're dropping like flies.
Oh dear, B7 content... Well, I have no doubt that science would get on
OK under the Federation. I wouldn't hold out much hope for sociology, however.
Military and space science would get on just dandy. However, like in the USSR, more ideologically loaded fields could well become the preserve of loyal ideologues, in which science is blocked or falsified.
Iain