Legitimate knowledge: the struggle for science (that most scientists don't know) Frank Fisher Aug 2nd, Sept 12th, Oct 8th, Nov 8th
Twenty years ago the great Deakin Uni. sociologist Max Charlesworth and colleagues wrote a book about Gus Nossal's Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of medical research. They sketched a comprehensive picture of the nitty gritty reality of the making of "legitimate knowledge". However, sadly, few scientists, few even of WEHI's own scientists would have read the book let alone reckoned that it might be worth reading, someday. And that, in a sense, is the greatest problem the scientific project has: a failure to understand its own nature even among its own practitioners. It means that the nexus between science and politics is not understood and that since the failure extends to scientists themselves, they "oversell" their science and thereby demean it - profoundly. ANU sociologist Eva Etzioni-Halevy wrote an excellent, if much unrecognised, piece on just this ... 25 years ago!
This course examines the nature of science as a human (social) project. It aims to make science stronger and more legitimate through the respect that understanding its nature as the most rigorous internally coherent body of knowledge yet developed, can give.