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Knowledge Domains

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Realist nature of knowledge: world is completely objective (pure realism) ... and human behavior, genetics, race and IQ, psychobiology, or sociobiology) ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Knowledge Domains


1
Knowledge Domains Communities of Practice
  • Science TechnologySocial Sciences

2
the nature of knowledge
realist
social
3
Science TechnologySocial 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)

4
  • science objectively establishes truth, but does
    not control the context in which the scientific
    discovery will assist in the creation of
    knowledge

5
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • If scientific truth is objective, it is also
    blind because it ignores the social context in
    which knowledge is circulated
  • How individuals beliefs are formed is based on
    information supplied by others
  • social nature of knowledge
  • may be contentious regarding the nature of
    truth

6
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Scientific data may be used / misused
  • to justify social stratification and prejudice
  • so that certain groups will appear to be inferior
    (e.g. behavioral research, studies of heredity
    and human behavior, genetics, race and IQ,
    psychobiology, or sociobiology)

7
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • S/R Standards of evidence are not hopelessly
    culture-bound, though judgements of justification
    are always perspectival (e.g. knowledge is
    truth-indicative but not absolute)
  • Knowledge is built through the perspectives of
    disciplines (processes of cultural selection,
    institutional arrangements that shape knowledge)

8
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Important to understand how disciplines structure
    knowledge
  • Disciplinary domains are formed by communities
    of practice
  • how do they circulate information?
  • what are the rules of engagement?
  • need to recognize the social structure of research

9
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Knowledge entails cognitive effort within
    communities
  • Communities form consensus based on
  • attribution of authority
  • division of opinion

10
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Knowledge claims form an important part of
    journals content
  • Knowledge claims based on
  • Epistemology logical argument, testimony,
    empirical evidence
  • Rhetoricpersuasion

11
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Journal content analysis reliability
    attribution)
  • Reliability
  • Source of the claim (speaker)
  • Bodies of evidence supporting claims
  • 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)

12
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Journal content reliability attribution)
  • Attribution realized through citation of
    published work
  • epistemic (new idea is incorporated)
  • procedural (authors work is cited as proof that
    researcher has that knowledge -- association)

13
Science TechnologySocial 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)

14
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Accumulation of a body of recorded literature
    varies according to subject area (how older
    materials are incorporated in 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

15
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Comte (1798-1857) - taxonomy of sciences
  • science (physics, biochemistry)
  • soft science (social science)
  • non-science (humanities)
  • Price (1970) - Prices index
  • how references are distributed over an archive of
    material
  • hard sciences cite works in the last 6 years

16
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Cole (1983)
  • fundamental differences bw disciplines lie not in
    citation habits but in the structure of their
    knowledge systems (cognitive)
  • how empirical knowledge is codified into succinct
    and interdependent theoretical statements
  • Cozzens (1985)
  • periods of intellectual focus
  • reception - obsolescence of literature

17
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Bradford (1934)
  • core zones
  • core - scatter determine the structure of
    knowledge in a discipline (older,
    institutionalized have core)
  • Nadel (1980)
  • catholicity of interests is a function of the
    maturity of a specialty (institutionalization
    level)

18
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Other observations
  • 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 (coauthoring not
    practiced)

19
Science TechnologySocial Sciences
  • Other observations
  • degree of institutionalization (professional
    associations, specialist journals)
  • institutional arrangements support encourage
    research
  • debates over establishment of new forms of
    institutional knowledge and established academic
    fields
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