Knowledge Domains & Communities of Practice Science & Technology Social Sciences

Science objectively establishes truth, but does not control the context in which the scientific discovery will assist in the creation of knowledge

the nature of knowledge realist social

Science & Technology Social Sciences Realist nature of knowledge: world is completely objective (pure realism) Social nature of knowledge: there is no foundation to knowledge apart from the perception of humans (purely socially determined)

Science & Technology Social Sciences If scientific truth is objective, it is also blind Prejudice against social and behavioral research on the grounds that it is ‘soft’ or concerned with trivial questions

Science & Technology Social Sciences Possible use or misuse of research findings Critics argue that scientific data may be used to justify social stratification and prejudice, or that certain groups will appear to be genetically inferior Behavioral research - human subjects used in studies of heredity and human behavior, genetics, race and IQ, psychobiology, or sociobiology

Science & Technology Social Sciences S/R: Standards of evidence are not hopelessly culture-bound, though judgements of justification are always perspectival = knowledge is truth-indicative but not absolute Knowledge is built through the perspectives of our disciplines

Science & Technology Social Sciences Individuals’ beliefs formed based on information supplied by others (social nature of knowledge) Cognitive effort within communities = condition upon which communities form consensus: attribution of authority division of opinion

Science & Technology Social Sciences Knowledge chains form an important part of journals’ content - reflecting social/realist nature of knowledge Knowledge chains: rhetoric & epistemology Rhetoric:persuasion, argument, discourse Epistemology: knowledge is produced through human action Journal content (reliability & attribution)

Science & Technology Social Sciences Reliability: Source of the chain (speaker) Bodies of evidence supporting chains Perspectival processes shaped by social forces (gender, national origin, social structures of scholarship and research - does it embrace multiple perspectives on which knowledge claims are based)

Science & Technology Social Sciences Attribution: realized through citation of published work: epistemic (idea); or procedural (author’s work) reporting of observed facts

Science & Technology Social Sciences Information policy literature (Rowland) ISI citation indexes to define document test collection Assumption: authors interact with existing knowledge through referencing behavior (use of the accumulating body of recorded literature)

Science & Technology Social Sciences Accumulation of a body of recorded literature varies according to subject areas: How older materials are knitted into the fabric of more recent publication through citation Science and technology: select nucleus of specific journals; brief span of time covering a few current years Social sciences & humanities: greater dispersion of publications in different forms, on different subjects & over a comparatively long span of time Ephemeral vs. classical literature

Science & Technology Social Sciences Price (1970) - Price’s index (how references are distributed over an archive of material) Comte (1798-1857): hard science (physics, biochemistry), soft science (social science), non-science (humanities)

Science & Technology Social Sciences Cole (1983) fundamental differences bw disciplines lie not in citation habits but in the structure of their knowledge systems, particularly in relation to how empirical knowledge is codified into succinct and interdependent theoretical statements Cozzens (1985) Periods of intellectual focus; reception - obsolescence

Science & Technology Social Sciences Bradford (1934) Core ‘zones’; core - scatter Nadel (1980) catholicity of interests is a function of the maturity of a specialty (institutionalization level)

Science & Technology Social Sciences Other observations disciplinary conventions & personal inclination determine the breadth of influences on a researcher (information-seeking patterns) less highly structured or specialized disciplines: people read widely outside their own current areas of concern (arts and humanities - information from a wide variety of sources) coauthoring: sciences (apparatus for experimentation); social sciences (division of labor as strategy); humanities (not practiced)

Science & Technology Social Sciences Other observations institutional arrangements supporting & encouraging research degree of institutionalization (professional associations, specialist journals) debates over establishment of new forms of institutional knowledge and established academic fields