[lbo-talk] Science wars -- a new twist

[Tim]

On Fri, 2006-10-06 at 16:05 -0700, Dwayne Monroe wrote:
> After all, Mr. Collins has, as the article notes, been
> studying the "field for more than 30 years".  This
> makes him an expert - an amateur expert but an expert
> all the same.  I've studied military affairs since I

And he hasn't exactly been studying the subject as an amateur, either:
the Slate article (which strikes me as pretty useless) doesn't point out
that Collins isn't just a sociologist, but a sociologist _of science_,
and one of the main areas he has done research on is the sociology of
the gravity wave physics community. So he doesn't have just an amateur
interest in physics, but a great deal of experience of the way in which
physicists discuss gravity waves. 

The Slate article looks like a fairly clueless attempt to re-fight the
science wars, which I suspect Collins isn't interested in doing. He's
much smarter than that: one of the books in which he discusses gravity
waves, _Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific
Practice_, is an excellent example of a sociological study of science
which is also sympathetic to the goals of scientists and the truth-value
of science.

-- 

    "Boredom is the threshold to great deeds."

                                              -- Walter Benjamin
------------------------------------------------- tim_boetie at fastmail.fm