---
title: "Science studies"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:36:09.263367+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Donovan et al. (2012) used social studies of volcanology to investigate the generation of knowledge and expert advice on various active volcanoes. It contains a survey of volcanologists carried out during 2008 and 2009 and interviews with scientists in the UK, Montserrat, Italy and Iceland during fieldwork seasons. Donovan et al. (2012) asked the experts about the felt purpose of volcanology and what they considered the most important eruptions in historical time. The survey tries to identify eruptions that had an influence on volcanology as a science and to assess the role of scientists in policymaking.
A main focus was on the impact of the Montserrat eruption 1997. The eruption, a classical example of the black swan theory directly killed (only) 19 persons. However the outbreak had major impacts on the local society and destroyed important infrastructure, as the island's airport. About 7,000 people, or two-thirds of the population, left Montserrat; 4,000 to the United Kingdom.
The Montserrat case put immense pressure on volcanologists, as their expertise suddenly became the primary driver of various public policy approaches. The science studies approach provided valuable insights in that situation. There were various miscommunications among scientists. Matching scientific uncertainty (typical of volcanic unrest) and the request for a single unified voice for political advice was a challenge. The Montserrat Volcanologists began to use statistical elicitation models to estimate the probabilities of particular events, a rather subjective method, but allowing to synthesizing consensus and experience-based expertise step by step. It involved as well local knowledge and experience.
Volcanology as a science currently faces a shift of its epistemological foundations of volcanology. The science started to involve more research into risk assessment and risk management. It requires new, integrated methodologies for knowledge collection that transcend scientific disciplinary boundaries but combine qualitative and quantitative outcomes in a structured whole.

== Experts and democracy ==
Science has become a major force in Western democratic societies, which depend on innovation and technology (compare Risk society) to address its risks. Beliefs about science can be very different from those of the scientists themselves, for reasons of e.g. moral values, epistemology or political motivations. The designation of expertise as authoritative in the interaction with lay people and decision makers of all kind is nevertheless challenged in contemporary risk societies, as suggested by scholars who follow Ulrich Beck's theorisation. The role of expertise in contemporary democracies is an important theme for debate among science studies scholars. Some argue for a more widely distributed, pluralist understanding of expertise (Sheila Jasanoff and Brian Wynne, for example), while others argue for a more nuanced understanding of the idea of expertise and its social functions (Collins and Evans, for example).

== See also ==
Merton thesis
Public awareness of science
Science and technology studies
Science and technology studies in India
Social construction of technology
Sociology of scientific knowledge
Sokal affair

== References ==

== Bibliography ==
Science studies, general
Bauchspies, W., Jennifer Croissant and Sal Restivo: Science, Technology, and Society: A Sociological Perspective (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).
Biagioli, Mario, ed. The Science Studies Reader (New York: Routledge, 1999).
Bloor, David; Barnes, Barry & Henry, John, Scientific knowledge: a sociological analysis (Chicago: University Press, 1996).
Gross, Alan. Starring the Text: The Place of Rhetoric in Science Studies. Carbondale: SIU Press, 2006.
Fuller, Steve, The Philosophy of Science and Technology Studies (New York: Routledge, 2006).
Hess, David J. Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction (New York: NYU Press, 1997).
Jasanoff, Sheila, ed. Handbook of science and technology studies (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, 1995).
Latour, Bruno, "The Last Critique," Harper's Magazine (April 2004): 15–20.
Latour, Bruno. Science in Action. Cambridge. 1987.
Latour, Bruno, "Do You Believe in Reality: News from the Trenches of the Science Wars," in Pandora's Hope (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)
Vinck, Dominique. The Sociology of Scientific Work. The Fundamental Relationship between Science and Society (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010).
Wyer, Mary; Donna Cookmeyer; Mary Barbercheck, eds. Women, Science and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies, Routledge 200
Haraway, Donna J. "Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective," in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: the Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 183–201. Originally published in Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 575–599. (available online)
Foucault, Michel, "Truth and Power," in Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), 109–133.
Porter, Theodore M. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Restivo, Sal: "Science, Society, and Values: Toward a Sociology of Objectivity" (Lehigh PA: Lehigh University Press, 1994).
Medicine and biology
Dumit, Joseph (2003). Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691113982.
Fadiman, Anne (1997). The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Martin, Emily (1999). "Toward an Anthropology of Immunology: The Body as Nation State". In Biagioli, Mario (ed.). The Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge. pp. 358–71.
Media, culture, society and technology
Hancock, Jeff. Deception and design: the impact of communication technology on lying behavior
Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture. Penguin USA, 2004. ISBN 1-59420-006-8
MacKenzie, Donald. The Social Shaping of Technology Open University Press: 2nd ed. 1999.  ISBN 0-335-19913-5
Mitchell, William J. Rethinking Media Change Thorburn and Jennings eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press, 2003.
Postman, Neil. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin USA, 1985. ISBN 0-670-80454-1
Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge: Mass., Perseus Publishing. 2002.

== External links ==

Sociology of Science, an introductory article by Joseph Ben-David & Teresa A. Sullivan, Annual Review of Sociology, 1975
The Incommensurability of Scientific and Poetic Knowledge
University of Washington Science Studies Network