Science and Ideology

- science has had a huge impact in society in the past few centuries

- revolutionised economic productivity and raised our standards

- faith in science is diluiting - causing problems as well as solving them

- science gives us cognitive powers - explain, predict and control the world

• Popper - science is an open belief system
• every scientist is under constant scrutiny
• falsification is the basis of science

Mertons - CUDOS norms

- Communism - scientific knowledge is not private property, we must share it

- Universalism - all knowledge is judged by the same characteristics

- Disinteresedness - commited to finding knowledge for its own sake

- Organised Scepticism -no knowledge is regarded as sacred

-science differs fundamentally from religion

- religion claims absolute truth, science does not

Kuhn

- science is a close system

- paradigmatic shifts

• natural events have natural causes
• do not believe in coincidence or chance
• witches are blamed for bad fortune
• oracles are used to determine if people are witches
• a benge - a chicken - is fed poison, if the person is a witch, the chicken dies