Kuhn argued European science advanced through immersion in cultural projects
Evidence
Recent research in comparative ethnosciences has challenged the conventional contrast between real, modern, transcultural, European sciences and the mere ethnosciences of other cultures. This shift was already prefigured in Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn pointed to the importance for philosophy and history of science of the new social histories of European science that were learning “to display the historical integrity of that science in its own time” (Kuhn 1962:1). Crucial to the advance of European sciences, argued Kuhn and the generation of historians, sociologists, and ethnographers that have pursued this lead, has been (and remains) their immersion in cultural and political projects of their day. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1583
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Clarifies how comparative ethnoscience research redefines the boundary between ‘real’ science and mere ethnoscience.
- XREF: Connects to the strong programme in sociology of scientific knowledge and to scholarship challenging Western science’s universality.