Czy socjologowie są w stanie budować maszyny społeczne? Rekonceptualizacja różnicy między przyrodoznawstwem a naukami społecznymi

Abstract

The last three decades have witnessed a dynamic development of science and technology studies, which have shown science in a way completely different from that presented by the traditional philosophy of science and methodology of social sciences. The authors accept that the findings of those studies concerning the mechanisms of functioning of science are correct and attempt to address again the problem of the difference between those disciplines and the social sciences. Their analysis concerns: the role and importance of laboratories in the social sciences; the “transition” of social phenomena to those laboratories; the possibility of popularization by the social sciences of technological solutions prepared by those laboratories; an incorrect approach to experiment and the acceptance of false ideas of the function of natural sciences by social scientists.

Not a mirror but a tool: User experience research and the production of useful social knowledge

“…Here, the central argument was that what is commonly considered as epistemologically privileged techno-scientific knowledge is in fact a result of a mundane process of 'tinkering' with materials and research technologies in laboratories, aimed at obtaining replicable effects rather than discovering the 'truth'. In line with this account, the social sciences have predominantly been interpreted by STS as trailing the natural sciences; not in achieving their standards of 'objectivity' and 'truthfulness', however, but in imitating their capabilities of building laboratories, creating 'black boxes' and developing research technologies (Afeltowicz and Pietrowicz, 2013;Collins, 1994;Latour, 2000). In contrast to constructivism, this perspective treated social and material elements as not only intertwined but equally important and mutually constitutive.…”