Feel free to refer to it by any of the following titles, working titles, joke titles, and/or subtitles:
This project began with my interest in the realist/antirealist debate in the epistemology of science. The traditional view of science is realist, and certainly most--if not all--practicioners of science are realists about the activity they engage in. Intuitively, it seems that there would be no point in spending all the time and money on science if it were not doing what it claims to be doing--that is, finding out about the world. Why should we do science if the realist picture is not correct? Of course there are various flavors of antirealism, many of which attribute some kind of success to science. The view that seems to me to be, in many ways, the most antithetical to scientific realism is social constructivism. Versions of constructivism often entail global skepticism and cognitive relativism. These kinds of claims make the activity of science seem the most useless. We really must be wasting our money and effort if science affords no description of the world and is only a social construction, on an epistemological par with any other world view possible.
In the late 1970s, it became common for constructivists to do microsociological case studies of science in which they attempted to gather empirical support for the social constructivist view. Many sociologists and some philosophers have taken the findings of these studies as the final word on the issue. The microsociologists show us a world of scientists guided by social concerns rather than purely epistemic factors. It is tempting to say that we no longer need to pay any attention to the armchair reasoning of philosophers of science. But are the sweeping conclusions of these case studies really justified by the data gathered? Or can the spirit of the traditional view be saved in the face of social constructivist criticisms?
Electronic Baccalaureate Announcement . . . Anybody interested in this project should come to my oral defence of the thesis on Friday, April 6 at 10 am in HCL2. It will be really fun. Check it out!
Part II: Giving Credit This section examines the strength of the threat of social constructivism to views which see science as an activity which finds out about an independent, real world--views which I call credit-giving views. A sketch of a positive defense of credit-giving views, which include versions of scientific realism and empiricism, is also offered. Check out the official Part II allegorical drawing!