Electronic Information Management in the Social Sciences

Abstract

The use of the computer and its capabilities in the social sciences – psychology, sociology, economics, political science and history – are here discussed. It is suggested that the computer is essential to research in these disciplines and examples are given where certain research projects could not be undertaken without the capabilities of the computer. Three uses which are common to all the social science are described. First, there is a discussion of several computer-based statistical packages which have been specifically developed for the social sciences. Next, there is a presentation of the development of models and particularly casual modeling. Finally, computer-based bibliographic methods and capabilitie are described. More specific applications are: on-line control psychological experiments stimulus presentation, data acquisition, the simulation of psychological functions and the computer a a surrogate clinician; also the application of information-processing model in cognitive psychology. In sociology, the computer is used in social science surveys and particularly in the recent development of computer-based telephone survey techniques. In economics, there is a discussion of econometric modeling and particularly of Project LINK, a worldwide economic model. Finally, a number of examples are given of the use of computers in political science and historical research. It is concluded that the computer is a basic tool in social science research.     

Science,sustainability and the establishment in a technological age

Abstract

Sustainable development, balancing economic and social development with environmental protection, has become a modern paradigm in our technological age. The British government, amongst others, regards science as being important in underpinning the move towards sustainability. However, many of the principles that bolster the three pillars of sustainable development – 'people, prosperity and planet' – are often viewed as being unscientific by sceptical natural and social scientists. But these principles are no different from the rules of thumb that engineers typically employ to design technological systems. The links between science, technology and the need to achieve environmental sustainability are explored here mainly in the context of the energy sector, which accounts for ninety-five per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in the UK. It is argued that the UK national academies of science and engineering tend to provide policy advice to government that favours 'advanced' technologies. They advocate support for such technologies often without regard for the results of science based integrated appraisal methods or for the need to engage in wider stakeholder dialogue. Greater attention is paid to 'hardware' than to, for example, energy efficiency or resource productivity more generally. The national academies could instead place themselves at the forefront of moves towards sustainability, by locating themselves more firmly in the vanguard of those devising a sustainability assessment framework.     

Political Science in Mexico: Cold War and Post-Cold War Context

Abstract

Through a critical consideration of recent proposals urging the use of “citizen forums” or “mini-publics” on issues involving science, this article reflects on the challenge posed to democracy and democratic decision making by the intellectual authority of modern science. Though the danger of a descent into technocracy is real and pressing, arguably the most serious challenge to democracy today, these novel “deliberative democratic” institutions are unpromising as a corrective beyond the local level, and may actually exacerbate the problem. The article concludes with a consideration of alternatives.     

The Egyptian “book of the two ways”

Abstract

Science and cartography have had an intimate history which has not been simply the creation of ever more accurate scientific maps but one in which science, cartography and the state have co‐produced the knowledge space that provides the conditions for the possibility of modern science and cartography. The central cartographic process is the assemblage of local knowledges and, as such, is a particular form of the assembly processes fundamental to science. The first attempts by the state to create a space within which to assemble cartographic knowledge were at the Casa da Mina and the Casa de la Contratación, and hence they can be described as the first scientific institutions in Europe. Their failure to create a knowledge space can be attributed to the nature of the portolan charts. The triangulation of France and the linking of the Greenwich and Paris Observatories established the kind of knowledge space that now constitutes the dominant form within which modem science and cartography are produced. However, resistance to the hegemony of modern scientific knowledge space remains possible through finding alternative ways of assembling local knowledge.     

Letter to the Editor

Abstract

The last decade has seen an increasing awareness of the global impacts on our environment of modern technological civilization. To understand and deal with these impacts, we need to develop a science of the biosphere – a science that views life on the Earth from a planetary perspective. Recent scientific and technical advances make this science possible now. These advances include the development and testing of satellite remote sensing of Earth resources; advances in computer-based data acquisition, storage, analysis and dissemination; development of interdisciplinary efforts among scientists who recognize the need for this science; and the development of mathematical theory and computer simulation methods appropriate for the study of the biosphere. This review describes the basic needs for this new science and the advances which make the science possible.     

Information Retrieval in Cultural Heritage

Abstract

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of applying modern information retrieval techniques to the cultural heritage domain. Although the field of information retrieval is closely associated with computer science, it originally emerged from library science — also one of the main disciplines concerned with access to cultural heritage material. Hence we are, in a sense, exploring what happens if we bring these strands of research back together again. The article consists of three parts. In the first part, we explain the field of information retrieval and its multidisciplinary nature. In the second part, we discuss how and why the problem of providing access to cultural heritage can be cast naturally as an information retrieval problem. In the third and main part, we present a detailed case study of applying the modern information retrieval approach in practice within a museum.     

Building the nation of the future,one waiting room at a time: hospital murals in the making of modern Mexico

Abstract

Mid-twentieth century Mexican hospitals – the buildings themselves and their interior and exterior walls – became stages that depicted national hopes and aspirations. Hospitals and clinics became ideal spaces that married science and medicine with the state’s version of a triumphant social revolution. Visitors and patients to hospital waiting rooms, lobbies and auditoriums would see, indeed be surrounded by, depictions of the complicated hopes placed on science and medicine as interpreted by politicians, architects, and artists. Hospital walls became contested spaces where art depicted Mexico’s embrace of modern technology and medical practices while also showcasing, in vivid color, citizens challenging the government’s broken revolutionary promises, especially the right of all to health and social security.     

18th‐Century pacific voyages of discovery, “big science”, and the shaping of an European scientific and technological culture

Abstract

The European exploration of the Pacific Ocean in the latter half of the eighteenth century is usually presented as part of the Enlightenment's quest for pure knowledge, knowledge which was shared freely in the “Republic of Letters”. In this essay, however, these expeditions are set against the background of a ferocious struggle between western European states to dominate the world, bringing together national political, commercial, military, and learned institutions, showing them to be more akin to today's “big science” than to an activity of free‐minded, autonomous, gentlemen. The holistic approach developed to apprehend “big science” in today's world is thus used to reexamine scientific cooperation as well as the circulation of men, objects, texts (including maps) and ideas in the politico‐economic context of early modern Britain, France and Holland, the relationship between this “big science” and eighteenth‐century, western European society, and how these shaped European scientific culture and identity. The paper ends with some reflections on the contrast between “big scientific” activity in the two periods.     

Science,geography, and nation: the global creation of Thumba

Abstract

The origins of the Indian space program are typically traced back to the founding of a rocket launch base in Thumba in the state of Kerala in India in the 1960s. In creating infrastructure at Thumba, Indian scientific elites used geography as an instrument to create a vast international network of scientific and political actors committed to the science that was possible within India, particularly cosmic ray studies. They were drawing on a long tradition of linking geography to science redolent of the colonial era but were inspired by their newly constituted political imaginary of independent India as a place where science, geography, and nation were perfectly mapped on to each other. NASA’s help was crucial in this regard, enabled as a tool in Cold War high politics, as American technocrats sought to steer India towards the West, while India itself was keenly aware of a more proximate phenomenon, Pakistan’s own burgeoning efforts to do the same. Concerned about domestic opprobrium to large Indian investments in space technology, Indian and American actors shielded the Thumba project from critique by installing it under the umbrella of the international order, in this case the United Nations. This internationalism was complemented by a deep and firm belief in the universalism of modern science as a portable instrument, capable of improving the social order anywhere, regardless of political or social context.     

Indigenous Island Empires: Yap and Tonga Considered

The indigenous social‐political‐economic spheres whose nexuses were located, respectively, in Yap and Tonga, and which included adjacent islands and archipelagoes, are frequently referred to as ‘empires’. This work summarises and examines historical and ethnographic data on these two cases, and then compares them both with one another and with more general concepts of empire. While stressing that these instances only remotely resemble modern empires, it concludes that for broader comparative purposes the Yap and Tonga spheres can usefully be termed empires.     

Illuminating the Victorians

ABSTRACT

From the beginning of the twentieth century, Japanese roboticists have observed specific features in the physical designs of humanoid robots that cause users to react with either fear or affection. Analyzing the sources of these reactions, robotics egineers eliminated from robots those features that might trigger negative associations, and instead embedded their designs with cues to norms, theories, and cultural references valued by their society. By analyzing Nishimura Makoto’s building of an affable artificial human named Gakutensoku, Mori Masahiro’s discovery of the phenomenon of the ‘uncanny valley’, and Ishiguro Hiroshi’s current employment of cognitive, social, and psychological sciences to overcome the ‘uncanny’ impression of his robots, this essay claims that the development of the field of humanoid robotics in Japan was driven by concern with human emotion and cognition, and shaped by Japanese roboticists’ own associations with the social and intellectual environments of their time.     

The Limits of Science and Trans-Science

Abstract

Many different limits to science have been identified, the most common being those between science and religion, or more generally between fact and value; between science and art; as well as the sociological limits imposed on science because it is becoming too large and unwieldy to be encompassed by a single mind. Here another realm is explored, lying beyond science: we call trans-science those questions which epistemologically are matters of fact, yet are beyond the proficiency of science. Trans-scientific questions consist of very rare occurrences and 'catastrophes' in the Thomian sense. It has been pointed out that unanswerable, trans-scientific questions are usually asked of science by policy makers. Consequently the scientist must concede that his proficiency is limited by this trans-scientific limit to science.     

Seeds: Contracting the Audience in a Play about Science

Abstract

In pursuing the question ‘what can scientists learn from theatre?’ Particularly, ‘what can scientists, as scientists, learn from theatre?’ this paper argues that science lacks a normative framework that theatre is capable of providing. Despite science’s well-earned epistemic reputation, there is adequate reason to question its ethical reputation, particularly at the point where cutting edge scientific technology impacts society. I consider science as operating in four categories: the scientific method; the scientific hypothesis; the scientific experiment; and the scientist’s personal character. The realms of the scientist’s hypothesis and personal character are those where social pressures are reciprocally exerted, where imaginative play mentality and epistemic values are most in evidence. Theatre can examine these realms effectively because it is able to use narratives that appeal not only to logical and social moral judgements but to emotional and visceral responses, so as to situate science in the social context in which the pressures of law, funding, experimentation, society, and personal ambition converge in ‘the game of life’.

This can be seen in the theatrical process known as ‘contracting with the audience’. I point out a spectrum of traditional narrative tropes by which science makes “contracts with” audiences. The paper draws on theories of entrainment and theatrical game-play from Peter Stromberg and Philippe Gaulier, as well as my own practice and research into the process of contracting with the audience, to propose how to reach beyond tradition and to shift normalising contracts “outside the box”. To illustrate my proposition, I examine the play Seeds by Annabel Soutar as directed by Chris Abraham for Crow’s Theatre and Theatre Porte Parole. Seeds follows the controversial court battles of Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser against agricultural-biotech corporation Monsanto, which sued him for patent infringement of its Genetically Modified Organism Roundup Ready Canola. Seeds helps its audience define a public arena for discourse even as it brings to our attention the factors that make this difficult to do, while making an excellent contribution to the genre of ‘Documentary Theatre’. It is a successful contract with the audience that creates a public forum for discussion about contemporary ethical debates in science, thereby merging artistic ambiguity and scientific theory.     

Sir Vivian Fuchs – in appreciation

Abstract

The productivity of modern agriculture is a result of a remarkable fusion of technology and science. The emerging skepticism about the role of science in society has led to a questioning of the benefits from technical change in agriculture and there is a rising demand for more effective social control over the development and use of agricultural technology. Agricultural science cannot evade responsibility for the costs as well as the benefits of technical change. But it is in society's interest to let the burden of responsibility rest lightly and to insist that agricultural science maintain its commitment to expanding the productive capacity of the resources used in agricultural production. But society should also insist that agricultural science embrace an agenda that includes a concern for the effects of agricultural technology on the health and safety of agricultural producers; a concern for the nutrition and health of consumers; a concern for the impact of agricultural practices on the aesthetic qualities of both natural and man-made environments; a concern for the quality of life in rural communities; and a concern for the implications of technical choices for the options that will be available in the future. The agricultural science community should, in turn, expect that society will acquire a more sophisticated perception of the contribution of agricultural technology to the balance between man and the natural world. It is also time for the general science community to begin to follow the lead of agricultural science in embracing the fusion of science and technology rather than continuing to hide behind the indefensible intellectual and class barriers that have been retained to protect its privilege and ego from contamination by engineering, agronomy and medicine.     

Social Science and the Discovery of a 'Post-Protestant People': Rowntree's Surveys of York and their other Legacy

Abstract

Despite the bitter criticism it evoked, both from clerical professionals and lay experts on its publication in 1951, Rowntree's and Lavers's English Life and Leisure survived to become an enduring classic of modern British social science. Yet, in many ways, the respectability it eventually achieved now masks the true radicalism of its findings. Building on fifty years of his own social survey work in York, Rowntree (and his collaborator) were able to show the full extent of the decline of church organization, affiliation and attendance in twentieth-century Britain. They also demonstrated just how these processes had particularly affected the Protestant community — most notably the Nonconformist Protestant community — in England. Finally, they went on to demonstrate how that — institutional — decline was increasingly related to changes in, and a diminution of, specifically Christian beliefs amongst the population as a whole. Their results anticipated many of the conclusions of the 'pessimistic' sociologists of religion in the 1960s. They also constitute a profound critique of 'optimistic' historical revisionism in more recent years. As such, they are perhaps more relevant than ever.     

Engineering as a Source of Scientific Ideas

Abstract

Engineering has discovered some laws of nature as limits to what can be done, from which have developed the sciences of thermodynamics, information theory and cybernetics. Considered as a science, engineering lies between physics and biology, because its machines have physical structures and properties but biological organizations and functions. The old idea of the living body as an engine retains its power in modern biology; and the reconsideration of various natural non-biological processes in terms of engineering and biological concept reveals inadequacies in modern physical theory.     

Social practices and lifestyles in Italian youth cultures

Abstract

In recent decades, social research on youth in Italy has explored a wide range of issues through different interpretative and methodological approaches. However, there are very few studies that seek to identify the keynote features of the juvenile condition. This article argues that collective identities and forms of identification among youth are shaped more and more frequently through the sharing of social practices, of the meanings connected to these practices, and of more comprehensive lifestyles. With reference to four main fields (sport, music, politics, religion) and focusing on youth cultures, it analyses the connections between behaviours, attitudes, values and representations of youth actively involved in each of these different fields. The aim is to identify transversal processes through which young people today elaborate and adopt social practices and cultural profiles, create new social forms, and develop innovative signification processes.     

Pictures of science

Abstract

The apparently minor art of scientific illustration raises questions that bear directly on the 'two cultures' confrontation of art and science. A marked shift in approach is discerned at the beginning of the twentieth century, from the incorporation of illustrations within the text to the use of 'enframed' figures, often with captions, as a separate entity. It is proposed that this change, which appears to have coincided with the introduction of bivariate plots in scientific journals, represents the transition from the essentially narrative structure of natural philosophy to the more adversarial mode of modern science. The link between the restraint required of the graphic artist and minimalist and functionalist aesthetics such as those of the Bauhaus is examined, together with the possibility that such a persimonious method of presentation can carry an implicit message. The different roles of abstraction in science and art are discussed with particular reference to the work of Paul Klee.