Tilting at imaginary windmills: a comment on Tyfield
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چکیده
In the inaugural issue of this journal, David Tyfield (2008) examined the connection between the economics of scientific knowledge (ESK) and the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). He argued that, pace Wade Hands, SSK can underwrite the claims of ESK. Indeed, for Tyfield, Hands’ argument itself is a bit stronger suggesting that SSK necessarily underwrites the claims of ESK. Consequently the weakness, or incoherence, of SSK must do great damage to any attempt to employ economics as explanatory for the development of science. Tyfield then re-presented SSK as seen by Hands, and recapitulated the reflexivity problems that were claimed by Hands to beset SSK. Tyfield argued that the issues are even more severe than Hands had suggested in 1994 and that, in particular, it is a necessary implication of SSK that it employ and commit to employing the idea of “meaning finitism”. Using some recent discussions about “meaning finitism” as it has appeared in the philosophical literatures, Tyfield concluded that SSK is an intellectually hopeless basis on which to erect an intelligible study of science.
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تاریخ انتشار 2009