What effect, if any does the development of a new area of science and technology have on theories
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This chapter examines theories and empirical findings on the overlapping topics of progress in science and the factors that contribute to scientific discoveries. It also considers the implications of these findings for behavioral and social science research on aging. The chapter first draws on contributions from the history and sociology of science to consider the nature of scientific progress and the paths that lead to realizing the potential scientific and societal outcomes of scientific activity. It considers indicators that might be used to assess progress toward these outcomes. The chapter then examines factors that contribute to scientific discovery, drawing eclectically on the history and sociology of science as well as on theories and findings from organizational behavior, policy analysis, and economics.
THEORIES OF SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS
The history and sociology of science have produced extensive bodies of scholarship on some of these themes, generating in the process significant ongoing disagreements among scholars (see, e.g., Krige, 1980; Cole, 1992; Rule, 1997; Bowler and Morus, 2005). Most of this work focuses on processes and historical events in the physical and life sciences; relatively little of it addresses the social and behavioral sciences (or engineering, for that matter), except possibly subfields of psychology (e.g., Stigler, 1999). It is legitimate to ask whether this research even applies to the behavioral and social sciences (Smelser, 2005).1
We do not attempt an encyclopedic coverage nor a resolution of the debates, past and continuing, on such questions. Rather, we draw on this research to make more explicit the main issues underlying the tasks of prospective assessment of scientific fields for the purpose of setting priorities in federal research agencies, given the uncertain outcomes of research.
The history of science has produced several general theories about how science develops and evolves over long periods of time. A 19th century view is that of Auguste Comte, who argued that there is a hierarchy of the sciences, from the most general (astronomy), followed historically and in other ways by physics, chemistry, biology, and sociology. Sciences atop the hierarchy are characterized as having more highly developed theories; greater use of mathematical language to express ideas; higher levels of consensus on theory, methods, and the significance of problems and contributions to the field; more use of use theory to make verifiable predictions; faster obsolescence of research, to which citations drop off rapidly over time; and relatively fast progress. Sciences at the bottom of the hierarchy are said to exhibit the opposite characteristics (Cole, 1983).
Many adherents to this hierarchical view place the natural sciences toward the top of the hierarchy and the social sciences toward the bottom.2 In this view, advances in the “higher” sciences, conceived in terms of findings, concepts, methodologies, or technologies that are thought to be fundamental, are held to flow down to the “lower” sciences, while the reverse flow rarely occurs. Although evidence of such a unidirectional flow from donor to borrower disciplines does exist (Losee, 1995), there are counterexamples. Historians and sociologists of science have offered evidence against several of these propositions, and particularly dispute the claimed association of natural science with the top of the hierarchy and social science with the bottom (e.g., Bourdieu, 1988; Cetina, 1999; Steinmetz, 2005). The picture is more complex, as noted below.
By far the best known modern theory of scientific progress is that of Thomas Kuhn (1962), which focuses on the major innovations that have punctuated the history of science in the past 350 years, associated with such investigators as Copernicus, Galileo, Lavoisier, Darwin, and Einstein. Science, in Kuhn’s view, is usually a problem-solving activity within clear and accepted frameworks of theory and practice, or “paradigms.” Revolutions occur when disparities or anomalies arise between theoretical expectation and research findings that can be resolved only by changing fundamental rules of practice. These changes occur suddenly, Kuhn claims, in a process akin to Gestalt shifts: in a relative instant, the perceived relationships among the parts of a picture shift, and the whole takes on a new meaning. Canonical examples include the Copernican idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun, Darwin’s evolutionary theory, relativity in physics, and the helical model of DNA.
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