On Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:08:52 -0700, Christopher D. Green wrote: >It is important not to confuse historians of science and sociologists >of science when discussing this matter. Although they briefly thought >they were doing similar things, it eventually became clear that they >were engaged in rather different projects. Lorraine Daston has recently >written explicitly on this matter in an article which is now being much >discussed among both groups: (2009) "Science Studies and the History >of Science," /Critical Inquiry, 35/, 798-813.
A few points: (1) I would encourage Tipsters to read the Daston article because it highlights certain issues: (a) my immediate reaction to her writing style and coverage of issues left me with the impression that she was verbose, slow to getting to the point (or was it that she used stylistic constructions that instead lead on a straight road forced one to climb through a honeycomb), and perhaps too clever in making her points by half, and (b) if memory serves, I believe she says at some point that the material written by workers in the science studies area and the history of science are not read by actual scientists [though the actual reasons are somewhat vaguely presented], and I would like to point to this article as an example of the type of writing that a scientist who is either interested in science studies or history of science would wonder "Now what was that all about? What relevance can this have to me?" (2) If Daston's article is being discussed on the lists that Chris is on, I wonder if there is any discussion of Hamid Ekbia's "Artificial Dreams"? I believe that Ekbia did his dissertation with Douglas Hofstadter (of "Godel, Escher, Bach" fame -- and no I'm not engaging in regression to authority or "fame by association") and is a science studies oriented cognitive scientist at Indiana University. Though Ekbia is a self-confessed science studies-type, I would not recognize him as such if I were to use Daston's description of such folks, indeed, he appears to be much more of a critical science history type and I think that his book, a critical history of the development of AI, would be of interest to AI researchers, cognitive scientists, and cognitive scientists. "Artificial Dreams" is available on Amazon and would suggest people take a look at it (and, yes, that's a quote from my review of the book for PsycCritiques). Contrary to Daston's portrayal of the relationship of science studies and history of science, I find Ekbia's book a balanced use of critical analysis (e.g., examining the role of how economic factors force AI researchers to engage in big budget science because of the costs of getting and maintaining computer hardware, attracting people capable of writing sophisticated software, and justifying the research enterprise by making outlandish claims about what their AI products will do) and consideration of the current historical factors (e.g., automatic machine translation was initially funded because the U.S. Department of Defense didn't want to rely upon human translators of Russion science journals, especially those relevant to nuclear science -- an enterprise that was initially claimed to be successful in a few years but ultimately funding was cut because the problem of translating between language was far more complicated than simply finding and substituting the translation equivalent in a text). So, who is giving a better accounting of the status of science studies and the history of science area: Daston or Ekbia? Frankly, after reading the one article by Daston, I have significant doubts that science studies or history of science have any relevance to psychologists. However, after reading Ekbia, I would recommend it to psychologists because it gives an interesting parallel history of cognitive studies and research including some of the same characters that have influcenced cognitive psychology (e.g., Schank, Minsky, Newell & Simon, et al.). However, AI researchers operated under different constraints from "pure" psychologists: psychologists merely had to conduct experiments and obtain data that would allow them to support or reject a particular theory or model while AI researcher had to produce a computer program that embodied the theory and behaved in accordance with the assumptions and principles embodied by the theory. If the computer simulation or robot/cyborg failed, then one had a high-cost failure because of the expenses involved in doing such work (cognitive psychologists can also do expensive research, especially with costly neuroimaging devices but there is no obligation to do so; insights can still be obtained with low cost equipment like PCs). Or, outside of Ekbia, do people in science studies and history of science not study psychology? -Mike Palij New York University m...@nyu.edu --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly (bsouthe...@frostburg.edu)
