Barber's Sociology Of Science Ideas And The Subsequent Science And Sociology

Nobody can turn back to the fact that science and technology are developing at very high speed in modern time when they have permeated every corner of our society. Thus a great deal of attention is attracted to study the influence of science and technology. There is a tendency that science & technology are socialized and social life is depending on science & technology. In studying study & technology, many different theories have come into being.Since science & technology have shown different influence during the history, many ideas about them have also changed from time to time, from one to one. Among these ideas that concern science and technology, some schools have become outstanding as time goes on. To talk about all of these ideas is beyond my ability. That is the reason why I just refer to some of them, such as Sociology of knowledge, Sociology of science and Sociology of scientific Knowledge (SSK). Of cause, each of these schools has their own well-known guys and remarkable writings. Bernard Barber is one of them. His books have great influence on many of the authors who take science & technology as their studying duty. To this point, we can draw a conclusion from the fact that Barber's ideas have been extensive cited in vary fields and the frequency. Although Barber is so famous, quite many domestic authors seldom talk about him when they study the theories of science study. This is one of the reasons why I like to try to talk about Barber's ideas in this paper.I like to talk about this topic by dividing it into three parts in this article. Firstly, Sociology of knowledge, including its appearance and its contents, is discussed, in order to make clear that it is one of the sources of Bernard Barber's ideas. At the same time, Barber's theories of science study also counteracts to the development of Sociology of Knowledge by making it know that there is some shortcomings its own, namely, scientific knowledge is often excluded in its analysis. Secondly, there comes the analysis of Sociology of Knowledge, usually by comparing R·K·Merton with Barber to reveal how the difference between the two. Additionally, the shortcomings of Barber's ideas are discussed in this part. In Barber's opinion, science can be seen as a kind of social institution in which scientist can be influenced by the other kind of social factors. Unfortunately, scientific knowledge is ignored when Barber analyses science in the social system. On the contrary, the analysis of scientific knowledge is the most important part of Sociology of science Knowledge. Just in arguing this point, SSK has come into being from later part of this century. This topic is stated in the 3rd part of the paper. I also mention the predicaments of SSK in this part, as well as Philosophy of scientific practice and Science & Technology Study.When you read this part, you can catch sight of the track of SSK, including the turns of it, nowadays. The analysis of Merton and Barber's traditional Sociology of science, including the analysis of Sociology of scientific Knowledge and Science & Technology Study and so on, are the clue to understand the important influence of Bernard Barber's ideas. I'd like to make some further analysis about Barber's important role in the Social Study of Science, mainly by using analysis of citation. In doing so, the development track of the schools in Social Study of Science can be put in order.