Table Of ContentTHE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY
SOCIOLOGY OF THE SCIENCES
A YEARBOOK
Editorial Board:
G. B6hme, Technische Hochschule, Darmstadt
N. Elias, Universities of Leicester and Bielefeld
Y. Ezrahi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
L. Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
T. Lenoir, University of Pennsylvania
H. Martins, University of Oxford
E. Mendelsohn, Harvard University
H. Nowotny, European Centre for Social Welfare Training
and Research, Vienna
H. Rose, University of Bradford
Claire Salomon-Bayet, University of Lille
R. Schwartz-Cowan, State University of New York at Stony Brook
T. Shinn, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
P. Weingart, University of Bielefeld
R. D. Whitley, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester
Managing Editor: R. D. Whitley
VOLUME X - 1986
THE KNOWLEDGE
SOCIETY
The Growing Impact of Scientific Knowledge
on Social Relations
Edited by
GERNOTBOHME
Institute for Philosophy, Technical University of Darmstadt, West Germany
and
NICO STEHR
Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP
DORDRECHT/BOSTON/LANCASTER/TOKYO
library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The Knowledge society.
(Sociology of the sciences; v. 10-1986)
"The original essays collected here ... were first commissioned for a conference
held in the late fall of 1984 at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, West Germany"
Pref.
Includes indexes.
I. Science-Social aspects. 2. Knowledge, Sociology of. I. Bohme,
Gernot. II. Stehr, Nico. III. Series: Sociology of the sciences; v. 10.
QI75.55.K56 1986 306'.45 86-13922
ISBN-13: 978-90-277-2306-2 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-4724-5
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-4724-5
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
101 Philip Drive, Assinippi Park, Norwell, MA 02061, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed
by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland.
All Rights Reserved
© 1986 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1986
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface vii
Biographical Statements of the Contributors ix
PART I
The Design of Knowledge Society
Introduction 3
GERNOT BOHME and NICO STEHR - The Growing Impact
of Scientific Knowledge on Social Relations 7
MICHAEL HAMMOND - Finite Human Capacities and the
Pattern of Social Stratification in a Knowledge Society 31
PART II
The Social Role of Men of Knowledge
Introduction 53
GERNOT BOHME - Demarcation as a Strategy of Exclusion:
Philosophers and Sophists 57
THOMAS F. GIERYN and ANNE E. FIGERT - Scientists Pro-
tect Their Cognitive Authority: The Status Degradation
Ceremony of Sir Cyril Burt 67
AARON V. CICOUREL - The Reproduction of Objective
Knowledge: Common Sense Reasoning in Medical Decision
Making 87
vi Table of Contents
PART III
Processes of Scientification
Introduction 125
RICHARD V. ERICSON and CLIFFORD D. SHEARING-
The Scientification of Police Work 129
GORAN WALLEN - The Scientification of Architecture 161
ANGELA METROPULOS O'RAND - Knowledge Form and
Scientific Community: Early Experimental Biology and the
Marine Biological Laboratory 183
Index 203
PREFACE
The original essays collected here under the general title of The
Knowledge Society were first commissioned for a conference held in the
late fall of 1984 at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, West
Germany. The conference in Darmstadt saw a larger number of contribu
tions presented than could be accommodated in this edition of the Sociol
ogy of the Sciences Yearbook. However, all contributions were important
and affected those published in this collection. We are therefore grateful
to all participants of the Darmstadt conference for their presentations and
for their intense, useful as well as thoughtful discussion of all papers.
Those chosen for publication in the Yearbook and those undoubtedly to be
published elsewhere have all benefitted considerably from our discussions
in Darmstadt which also included a number of the members of the edito
rial board of the Yearbook. In addition, we are pleased that the authors
were able to read and comment further on each other's papers prior to
publication.
As is the case in every endeavor of this kind, we have incurred many
debts and are only able to acknowledge these at this point publicly while
expressing our sincere thanks and appreciation for all the intellectual sup
port and the considerable labor invested by a number of persons in the
realization of the collection.
We have to thank Mrs Kolberg, secretary to Gernot Bohme at the
Technische Hochschule Darmstadt, for her diligent support in organizing
the conference and in seeing to it that it was able to fulfill its primary
functions well. The clerical staff both in the Institut fUr Soziologie,
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitiit Miinchen, West Germany and espe
cially the Department of Sociology, the University of Alberta, Canada as
sisted us in the usual efficient manner. We owe a considerable debt for the
assistance given to us in the production of the book by Mrs Laura C.
vii
viii Preface
Hargrave. Without her efficient and cheerful help we would not have been
able to complete this task at all. Last but not least, we have to thank the
Volkswagen Foundation for its generous support of the conference which
preceded the publication of this book. The Foundation and particularly
Dr. Axel Horstmann must be thanked for supporting this kind of work,
which we hope will act as a promissory note for scholarly work to come,
on the ever-increasing relevance of scientific knowledge in all its forms
to contemporary and future social relations around the world.
BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENTS OF THE CONTRIBUTORS
GERNOT BOHME is professor of philosophy at the Technical Univer
sity of Darmstadt, Germany. His previous positions include a research fel
lowship at the Max-Planck-Institute in Starnberg, Germany, a visiting
professorship at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, a visiting fel
low at Harvard University, and at the University of Link6ping, Sweden.
For the time being he is Jan-Tinbergen Professor at the Erasmus Univer
sity, Rotterdam. His association with the Max-Planck-Institute resulted
in the publication, in the Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science Se
ries, of The Social Orientation of Scientific Progress (edited by W.
Schafer). Among his other major publications are Zeit und Zahl (Frank
furt: Klostermann, 1974), Alternativen der Wissenschaft (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1980), Das Andere der Vernunft (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1983, together with H. B6hme), and Anthropologie in pragmatischer
Hinsicht (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985). Aside from classical philosophy
his main interests are history, sociology, and philosophy of science.
AARON CICOUREL is professor of sociology in the Department of So
ciology and the School of Medicine at the University of California, San
Diego. Some of his publications include Method and Measurement in So
ciology (New York: Free Press, 1964); The Social Organization of
Juvenile Justice (New York: Wiley, 1968); Cognitive Sociology (London:
Penguin, 1973; New York: Free Press, 1974), and a series of papers on
medical communication and diagnostic reasoning. His recent work at
tempts to link organization structure and process to cognitive and linguis
tic aspects of knowledge production and reproduction.
RICHARD ERICSON is professor of sociology and criminology at the
University of Toronto. He has been a visiting fellow at Churchill College,
·Cambridge, and the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University
IX
x Biographical Statements of the Contributors
of Cambridge. He has also been a visiting fellow in the Faculty of Law,
University of Edinburgh. He is one of the founding co-editors of the Cana
dian Journal of Sociology. His recent books include Making Crime
(Toronto: Butterworths, 1981); Reproducing Order (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1982); and The Ordering of Justice (Toronto: Univer
sity of Toronto Press, 1982). His research interests include trends in polic
ing and social control, and news media reporting of crime and legal issues.
ANNE FIGERT is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology,
Indiana University at Bloomington. She is currently investigating the use
and perceptions of scientific expertise in public health crises.
THOMAS F. GIERYN is associate professor of sociology at Indiana
University. He is currently writing a book entitled Boundaries of Science:
Theoretical and Episodic Inquiries. He has recently published two papers
in the American Sociological Review: "Boundary-Work and the
Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in
Professional Ideologies of Scientists" (December, 1983) and
"Professionalization of American Scientists: Public Science and the
Creation/Evolution Trials" (with George Bevins and Stephen Zehr; June
1985). Ongoing research includes an examination of how social science
came to be part of the U.s. National Science Foundation, covering the
period 1945-1960.
MICHAEL HAMMOND is an associate professor of sociology at the
University of Toronto. His publications focus on the social history of
humanity's reconstruction of its own evolutionary past, and upon the im
plications for sociological theory in the evolution of human cognitive and
affective processes. He is currently completing a book concerning the so
ciological consequences of physiological limitations in cognitive and affec
tive capacities in different human historical contexts. In addition to his
historical and theoretical writings, he is studying the social effects of new
medical technologies in both hospital and non-hospital contexts.
ANGELA METROPULOS O'RAND is on the faculty of the Depart
ment of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA. She
was previously on the faculty of the University of Florida. Her research on
scientific organization and scientific change will appear in a monograph
tentatively titled: Microtubules and Macrostructure: Social Circles and
Disciplinary Agency in Modern Biology. She is extending her interests in
