Social Construction of Science?
Last night, I was discussing with my room mate, an aspiring and studying geologist, his field of study. The topic turned to how easy it would be, with some amount of education in the field, to convince lay people of just about anything about rocks. He could make up subclassifications of rocks and arbitrarily assign them, and most would be none the wiser as he spoke. "See that?" he might ask Joe or Jane Businessperson, "it's slightly darker than the others, which means that it's not just a grain of sand, but a small piece of goobernatitious rock."
I thought then that the same could indeed be said of any field of physical science, and indeed a few other fields. If someone claims (rightfully) to be a physicist, or a linguist, or a historian (not to be mistaken for an historian), then none would question him or her as they spoke as voices of authority on laws of motion, or the mechanics of glottal stops in Koisan languages, or the events preceding the Prussian Social Reform (easily the most boring sounding social movevment ever named).
I, on the other hand, am a social scientist. I study society. As such, people tend to think that I am no more qualified to talk to them about my field than they are. After all, they are part of society. They can clearly see that everyone who is X does Y more than those filthy Zs. Nevermind that the Z turn out to be fabulous Yers, if one looks at the numbers, whereas the X types tend a lot more towards ∂.
Fun fact: before the work of August Comte (about 1830), sociology was called "social physics." Maybe if it weren't for Comte's egomaniacal renaming frenzy, the field would be taken more seriously by the public (but probably all the less seriously by physicists).
I thought then that the same could indeed be said of any field of physical science, and indeed a few other fields. If someone claims (rightfully) to be a physicist, or a linguist, or a historian (not to be mistaken for an historian), then none would question him or her as they spoke as voices of authority on laws of motion, or the mechanics of glottal stops in Koisan languages, or the events preceding the Prussian Social Reform (easily the most boring sounding social movevment ever named).
I, on the other hand, am a social scientist. I study society. As such, people tend to think that I am no more qualified to talk to them about my field than they are. After all, they are part of society. They can clearly see that everyone who is X does Y more than those filthy Zs. Nevermind that the Z turn out to be fabulous Yers, if one looks at the numbers, whereas the X types tend a lot more towards ∂.
Fun fact: before the work of August Comte (about 1830), sociology was called "social physics." Maybe if it weren't for Comte's egomaniacal renaming frenzy, the field would be taken more seriously by the public (but probably all the less seriously by physicists).
Labels: culture, sociology/demography
posted by Mephisto at 4:46 PM
3 Comments:
I think ‘social physics’ would better apply to anthropology than sociology, which I’ll bet also receives less uneducated criticisms.
I can see how this would be annoying, but instead try to think of it as just more research, more support for what you were trying to tell the objector in the first place. This is the only way I have kept my sanity at work (yesterday during the protest I had a lady say she wanted immigrants to “go home” because she didn’t want them bringing in “diseases and getting everybody sick;” when I asked her where her ancestors came from she said “Pfft! I have no idea!” without an inkling of realizing what I was really asking her, and then she sat down by the doors and glared out at the backed-up traffic; an added background bonus to this example is that she’s been on disability and hasn’t worked for a good 20 years and one of her sons just got sent to prison for trying to strangle his girlfriend to death in front of her 5-year-old son).
Oh those cunning linguists.
I saw an isotropic mineral in thin section today. Real or BS? Bahaha!
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