Opening Pandora's Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists' Discourse

Opening Pandora's Box: A Sociological Analysis of Scientists' Discourse
ISBN-10
0521254183
ISBN-13
9780521254182
Series
Opening Pandora's Box
Category
Social Science
Pages
202
Language
English
Published
1984-02-23
Publisher
CUP Archive
Authors
Michael Mulkay, G. Nigel Gilbert, Professor Nigel Gilbert

Description

This book proposes a fresh approach to sociological analysis and, in particular, to the analysis of scientific culture. It moves away from previous studies, which have tended to focus on scientists' actions and beliefs to show that analysis of scientific discourse can be productive and revealing. The book demonstrates that scientists produce varying accounts of their actions and beliefs in different social situations. Rather than attempting to extract one coherent interpretation from these diverse accounts, the study identifies two basic scientific repertoires and shows how scientists use them to create their discourse. This provides a point of departure for more complex analytical topics. Discourse analysis is applied to show how different degrees of 'consensus' can be ascribed to the same group of scientists at a given moment in time through the application of standard interpretive techniques. Finally, discourse analysis is used to explore scientists' humour, a neglected topic that is shown to provide important insights into the normally hidden interpretive regularities which underlie the cultural diversity of science.

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