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24-665: Founded in 1892, The Bibliographical Society is the senior learned society dealing with the study of the book and its history in the United Kingdom. Largely owing to the efforts of Walter Arthur Copinger , who was supported by Richard Copley Christie , the Bibliographical Society was founded in London in 1892; Copinger was the Society's first president, and held the post for four years. His own work in

48-565: A gold medal for "distinguished services to bibliography to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to the development of the subject and the furtherance of the Society's aims." Learned society Most learned societies are non-profit organizations , and many are professional associations . Their activities typically include holding regular conferences for the presentation and discussion of new research results, and publishing or sponsoring academic journals in their discipline. Some also act as professional bodies, regulating

72-488: A critical analysis of the biosciences and informatics. Studies of mathematical practice and quasi-empiricism in mathematics are also rightly part of the sociology of knowledge since they focus on the community of those who practice mathematics . Since Eugene Wigner raised the issue in 1960 and Hilary Putnam made it more rigorous in 1975, the question of why fields such as physics and mathematics should agree so well has been debated. Proposed solutions point out that

96-469: A journal since 1893, originally entitled Transactions of the Bibliographical Society . In 1920 it took over publication of The Library (issued since 1889) and adopted that as the main title of the Transactions . ( The Library was founded in 1889 by John Young Walker MacAlister .) The different series of the Transactions and The Library are: The Library ( ISSN   0024-2160 ; 1744-8581 )

120-496: A particular subject or discipline, provided they pay their membership fees. Older and more academic/professional societies may offer associateships and/or fellowships to fellows who are appropriately qualified by honoris causa , or by submission of a portfolio of work or an original thesis. A benefit of membership may be discounts on the subscription rates for the publications of the society. Many of these societies award post-nominal letters to their memberships. The membership at

144-575: Is a quarterly journal and is issued free to members who also receive a copy of all books published by the Society. In 1937, Harry Carter , Ellic Howe , Alfred F. Johnson , Stanley Morison and Graham Pollard started to produce a list of all known pre-1800 type specimens. The list was published in The Library in 1942. However, because of the war, many libraries at the European continent were no longer accessible. The Society occasionally awards

168-399: Is more of a description of an approach than an organised movement. The term is applied to historians, sociologists and philosophers of science who merely cite sociological factors as being responsible for those beliefs that went wrong. Imre Lakatos and (in some moods) Thomas S. Kuhn might be said to adhere to it. The strong programme is particularly associated with the work of two groups:

192-662: Is only useful in their practical everyday function to categorize and distinguish. Fundamental contributions to the sociology of mathematical knowledge have been made by Sal Restivo and David Bloor . Restivo draws upon the work of scholars such as Oswald Spengler ( The Decline of the West , 1918), Raymond Louis Wilder and Leslie Alvin White , as well as contemporary sociologists of knowledge and science studies scholars. David Bloor draws upon Ludwig Wittgenstein and other contemporary thinkers. They both claim that mathematical knowledge

216-434: Is socially constructed and has irreducible contingent and historical factors woven into it. More recently Paul Ernest has proposed a social constructivist account of mathematical knowledge, drawing on the works of both of these sociologists. SSK has received criticism from theorists of the actor-network theory (ANT) school of science and technology studies . These theorists criticise SSK for sociological reductionism and

240-455: Is the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing with "the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology of scientific ignorance (SSI) is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and

264-804: The American Association for the Advancement of Science , specific to a given discipline, such as the Modern Language Association , or specific to a given area of study, such as the Royal Entomological Society . Most are either specific to a particular country (e.g. the Entomological Society of Israel ), though they generally include some members from other countries as well, often with local branches, or are international, such as

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288-969: The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions or the Regional Studies Association , in which case they often have national branches. But many are local, such as the Massachusetts Medical Society , the publishers of the internationally known The New England Journal of Medicine . Some learned societies (such as the Royal Society Te Apārangi ) have been rechartered by legislation to form quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations . Membership may be open to all, may require possession of some qualification, or may be an honor conferred by election. Some societies offer membership to those who have an interest in

312-1410: The World Association in Economics is free of cost. Following the globalization and the development of information technology, certain scholarly societies—such as the Modern Language Association—have created virtual communities for their members. In addition to established academic associations, academic virtual communities have been so organized that, in some cases, they have become more important platforms for interaction and scientific collaborations among researchers and faculty than have traditional scholarly societies. Members of these online academic communities, grouped by areas of interests, use for their communication shared and dedicated listservs (for example JISCMail ), social networking services (like Facebook or LinkedIn ) and academic oriented social networks (like Humanities Commons, ResearchGate , Mendeley or Academia.edu ). Sociology of science 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville  ·  Marx ·  Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto ·  Tönnies · Veblen ·  Simmel · Durkheim ·  Addams ·  Mead · Weber ·  Du Bois ·  Mannheim · Elias The sociology of scientific knowledge ( SSK )

336-481: The sociology of science argue that learned societies are of key importance and their formation assists in the emergence and development of new disciplines or professions. In the form of professional associations, they can assist in the creation of pathways to leadership. The World Association in Economics provides help to the members of the WAE on the following issues: Societies can be very general in nature, such as

360-628: The ' Edinburgh School' ( David Bloor , Barry Barnes , and their colleagues at the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh ) in the 1970s and '80s, and the ' Bath School' ( Harry Collins and others at the University of Bath ) in the same period. "Edinburgh sociologists" and "Bath sociologists" promoted, respectively, the Strong Programme and Empirical Programme of Relativism (EPOR). Also associated with SSK in

384-506: The 1970s in self-conscious opposition to the sociology of science associated with the American Robert K. Merton , generally considered one of the seminal authors in the sociology of science. Merton's was a kind of "sociology of scientists," which left the cognitive content of science out of sociological account; SSK by contrast aimed at providing sociological explanations of scientific ideas themselves, taking its lead from aspects of

408-746: The 1980s was discourse analysis as applied to science (associated with Michael Mulkay at the University of York), as well as a concern with issues of reflexivity arising from paradoxes relating to SSK's relativist stance towards science and the status of its own knowledge-claims (Steve Woolgar, Malcolm Ashmore). The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) has major international networks through its principal associations, 4S and EASST, with recently established groups in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Latin America. It has made major contributions in recent years to

432-682: The Society's centenary was published in 1992. The objectives of the Society are: The Society's library was housed at Stationers' Hall in the City of London but moved to Senate House in January 2007. In 2017 it moved again to the Albert Sloman Library at the University of Essex . The Society's archive is housed at the Bodleian Library and may be used by scholars and members of the Society. The Society has published

456-591: The activities of their members in the public interest or the collective interest of the membership. Some of the oldest learned societies are the Académie des Jeux floraux (founded 1323), Sodalitas Litterarum Vistulana (founded 1488), Accademia della Crusca (founded 1583), Accademia dei Lincei (founded 1603), Académie Française (founded 1635), German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (founded 1652), Royal Society (founded 1660) and French Academy of Sciences (founded 1666). Scholars in

480-519: The field, however, lacked accuracy. The Society holds a monthly lecture between October and May, usually on the third Tuesday of the month at the Society of Antiquaries of London , at Burlington House . The first fifty years of the Bibliographical Society were documented in the book The Bibliographical Society, 1892–1942: Studies in Retrospect . The Book Encompassed , a volume of essays marking

504-457: The fundamental constituents of mathematical thought, space, form-structure, and number-proportion are also the fundamental constituents of physics. It is also worthwhile to note that physics is more than merely modeling of reality and the objective basis is upon observational demonstration. Another approach is to suggest that there is no deep problem, that the division of human scientific thinking through using words such as 'mathematics' and 'physics'

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528-1022: The scientific project; the objective of the researcher is to explain why one interpretation rather than another succeeds due to external social and historical circumstances. The field emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s and at first was an almost exclusively British practice. Other early centers for the development of the field were in France, Germany, and the United States (notably at Cornell University ). Major theorists include Barry Barnes , David Bloor , Sal Restivo , Randall Collins , Gaston Bachelard , Harry Collins , Karin Knorr Cetina , Paul Feyerabend , Steve Fuller , Martin Kusch , Bruno Latour , Mike Mulkay , Derek J. de Solla Price , Lucy Suchman and Anselm Strauss . The sociology of scientific knowledge in its Anglophone versions emerged in

552-419: The social context within which it arises. Sociologists of scientific knowledge study the development of a scientific field and attempt to identify points of contingency or interpretative flexibility where ambiguities are present. Such variations may be linked to a variety of political , historical , cultural or economic factors. Crucially, the field does not set out to promote relativism or to attack

576-496: The work of Ludwik Fleck , Thomas S. Kuhn , but especially from established traditions in cultural anthropology (Durkheim, Mauss) as well as the late Wittgenstein . David Bloor , one of SSK's early champions, has contrasted the so-called 'weak programme' (or 'program'—either spelling is used) which merely gives social explanations for erroneous beliefs, with what he called the ' strong programme ', which considers sociological factors as influencing all beliefs. The weak programme

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