著者

椎野 信雄

出版者

文教大学

雑誌

文教大学国際学部紀要 (ISSN:09173072)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.11, no.2, pp.23-42, 2001-02

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Various research programs in the "new" sociology of scientific knowledge emerged in the latter half of 1970s. British sociologists such as Barnes, Bloor, Mulkay, Collins and so forth were challenging the Mertonian functionalist sociology of science. The aim of the new sociology of scientific knowledge has been to investigate and explain the "contents" of scientific knowledge per se. Ethnomethodological studies of scientific practices were surrounded by the emergence of these "new" programs in social studies of science. Although ethnomethodological studies of science have often been understood without being distinguished from these "new" programs, it seems that ethnomethodological studies differ from these programs in their perspective on language, science and action. In spite of their commitments to a supposedly "radical" view of scientific knowledge, the new sociologies use some conventional social science terminologies and explanatory formulae, and seem caught in a trap concerning the usage of ordinary language in social science and philosophy. Garfinke's ethnomethodology appears to advocate a complete departure from these conventional views of language and science which the new programs have taken over. We will make sense of ethonomethodological studies of science by reviewing how ethonomethodology sees the "new" programs. In this paper we would like to leave a port to the sea of argumentation by regarding ethnomethodologist M. Lynch's studies of science as leading light. Ethnomethodology's agenda is, according to Lynch, to reconsider what it means to produce observations, descriptions and explanations of something "actual." Garfinkel's program is not interested in explaining scientific facts by reference to the social context of their production. The program does not try to construct comprehensive models of activities and institutions. Its objective is to examine how scientific works are produced from the disciplinary-specific Lebenswelt of scientific projects. The aim is not to explain "discovery" as a matter of "social construction" but to try to gain a better understanding of scientific work.