Recluse, Interlocutor, Interrogator: Natural and Social Order in Turn-of-the-Century Psychological Research Schools

摘要

IN HIS 1981 ARTICLE "Scientific Change, Emerging Specialties, and Research Schools," Gerald L. Geison tried to bridge what he perceived as the gulf between the interests of sociologists of science and those of historians of science. As Geison saw it, sociologists leaned toward the study of "emerging specialties"—for example, the emer-gence of experimental psychology in the 1890s or of radio astronomy in the 1940s and 1950s—while historians tended to focus more on "research schools," that is, on "small groups of mature scientists pursuing a reasonably coherent program of research side-by-side with advanced students in the same institutional context and engaging in direct, con- tinuous social and intellectual interaction." Geison's paper tried to persuade sociologists of science to join historians in the study of research schools. To this end he discussed, at some length, David Edge and Michael Mulkay's book Astronomy Transformed, He found much to praise in this first book-length case study in the sociology of scientific knowledge, particularly its interest in different leadership styles and their effects on scientific knowl-edge.