Ideology and Science

Science as an Open Belief System:

• Popper - science is an 'open' belief sytem, open to criticism & testing.
• It is falsifiable; it is not the absolute truth, it can be tested & falsified.
• Merton - Communism (knowledge must be shared with the scientific community), Universalism (knowledge is jusdged by universal, objective criteria), Disinteredness (seeking knowledge for tis own sake), Organised Sceptism (every theory is open to criticism & testing).

Closed Belief Systems:

• Horton - relgion is a closed belief system as it makes knowledge-claims that cannot be overturned - has 'get-out clauses' so cannot be disproved.
• Polanyi - circulatory; subsidiary; denying legitimacy to rival beliefs.

Science as a Closed System:

• Kuhn - science is based on paradigms.
• Scientists who challenge the paradign are likely to be ridiculed, accept during periods of scientific revolution, when accumulated evidence undermines it.

The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge:

• Interpretivists argue that scientifc knowledge is socially constructed.
• Knorr-Cetina - what scientists study in laboratories is highly constucted & far removed from the natural world they are supposedly studying.
• Woolgar - scientists have to persuade the scientifc community to accept their interpretations of the world; a scientific fact is simply a shared, socially constructed belief.

Marxism, Feminism and Postmodernism:

• Marxism & feminism see science as serving the interests of a dominant group (the ruling class or men).
• Many scientific developments are driven by capitalism's needs for knowledge to make profit.
• Postmodernists reject science's claims to have 'the truth'; some argue that science has become a technoscience, serving capitalist interests by producing commodities for profit.

Marxism and Ideology:

• In the workers' interests to overthrow capitalism by revolution & create classless communist society; cannot occur until class consciousness occurs.
• Ruling class ideology or hegemony prevents class consciousness by legitimating capitalism.
• Gramsci - the working class will eventually overthrow capitalism, led by a party of class-conscious 'organic intellectuals'.

The Ideology of Nationalism:

• Anderson - a nation is only an 'imagined community' but nationalism can bind millions together & create a sense of common purpose.
• Marxists - nationalism as false consciousness that helps to prevent the overthrow of capitalism by dividing the international working class.
• Functionalists - a secular civil religion that integrates everyone into a single community.
• Gellner - a key feature of modernity; uses education to impose a single standard, national culture on all, making communication & economic cooperation possible; elites use it as an ideology to motivate the population to endure hardships of industrialisation = modernisation.

Feminism and Ideology:

• Gender inequality is legitimated by patriarchal ideology.
• Religious beliefs and practices often define women as inferior.
• E.g. menstruating women are regarded as unclean and excluded from rituals.