Editing Philosophy of science (section)

===Sociology of scientific knowledge methodology===
{{Main|Sociology of scientific knowledge}}
According to Kuhn, science is an inherently communal activity which can only be done as part of a community.<ref name="KuhnPostParadigm">{{cite book | author = Kuhn, T.S.| chapter = [Postscript] | title = The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd. ed | publisher = [Univ. of Chicago Pr] | year = 1996 | isbn = 978-0-226-45808-3 | author-link = Thomas Samuel Kuhn|page = 176|quote = A paradigm is what the members of a community of scientists share, ''and'', conversely, a scientific community consists of men who share a paradigm.}}</ref> For him, the fundamental difference between science and other disciplines is the way in which the communities function. Others, especially Feyerabend and some post-modernist thinkers, have argued that there is insufficient difference between social practices in science and other disciplines to maintain this distinction. For them, social factors play an important and direct role in scientific method, but they do not serve to differentiate science from other disciplines. On this account, science is socially constructed, though this does not necessarily imply the more radical notion that reality itself is a [[Social constructionism|social construct]].

[[Michel Foucault]] sought to analyze and uncover how disciplines within the social sciences developed and adopted the methodologies used by their practitioners. In works like ''[[The Archaeology of Knowledge]]'', he used the term ''human sciences''. The human sciences do not comprise mainstream academic disciplines; they are rather an interdisciplinary space for the reflection on ''man'' who is the subject of more mainstream scientific knowledge, taken now as an object, sitting between these more conventional areas, and of course associating with disciplines such as [[anthropology]], [[psychology]], [[sociology]], and even [[history]].<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia | url=https://iep.utm.edu/foucault/#H3 | title=Foucault, Michel |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=29 August 2022}}</ref> Rejecting the [[scientific realism|realist]] view of scientific inquiry, Foucault argued throughout his work that scientific discourse is not simply an objective study of phenomena, as both [[natural science|natural]] and [[social science|social scientist]]s like to believe, but is rather the product of systems of power relations struggling to construct scientific disciplines and knowledge within given societies.<ref>{{Cite magazine | url=https://philosophynow.org/issues/127/Foucaults_Elephant | title=Foucault's Elephant |issue=127 |magazine=Philosophy Now |last=Morrison |first=Thomas |date=2018 |access-date=29 August 2022}}</ref> With the advances of scientific disciplines, such as psychology and anthropology, the need to separate, categorize, normalize and institutionalize populations into constructed social identities became a staple of the sciences. Constructions of what were considered "normal" and "abnormal" stigmatized and ostracized groups of people, like the mentally ill and sexual and gender minorities.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.worldscientificnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/WSN-7-2015-15-29.pdf |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://www.worldscientificnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/WSN-7-2015-15-29.pdf |archive-date=2022-10-09 |url-status=live |title='Disciplining' Truth and Science: Michel Foucault and the Power of Social Science |last=Power |first=Jason L. |journal=World Scientific News |date=2015 |volume=7 |pages=15–29 |issn=2392-2192}} </ref>

However, some (such as Quine) do maintain that scientific reality is a social construct:
<blockquote>
Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer&nbsp;... For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as ''cultural posits''.<ref>{{cite book | author = Quine, Willard Van Orman| chapter = Two Dogmas of Empiricism | title = From a Logical Point of View | publisher = [[Harvard University Press]] | year = 1980 | isbn = 978-0-674-32351-3 | chapter-url = http://www.ditext.com/quine/quine.html}}</ref></blockquote>
The public backlash of scientists against such views, particularly in the 1990s, became known as the [[science wars]].<ref>{{cite book|editor1-last= Ashman|editor1-first= Keith M.|editor2-last= Barringer|editor2-first= Philip S.|title= After the Science Wars|date= 2001|publisher= Routledge|location= London|isbn= 978-0-415-21209-0|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=XImEAgAAQBAJ&q=After+the+science+wars&pg=PR1|access-date= 29 October 2015|quote= The 'war' is between scientists who believe that science and its methods are objective, and an increasing number of social scientists, historians, philosophers, and others gathered under the umbrella of Science Studies.}}</ref>

A major development in recent decades has been the study of the formation, structure, and evolution of scientific communities by sociologists and anthropologists – including [[David Bloor]], [[Harry Collins]], [[Bruno Latour]], [[Ian Hacking]] and [[Anselm Strauss]]. Concepts and methods (such as rational choice, social choice or game theory) from [[Economics of scientific knowledge|economics have also been applied]]{{by whom|date=October 2017}} for understanding the efficiency of scientific communities in the production of knowledge. This interdisciplinary field has come to be known as [[science and technology studies]].<ref>
Woodhouse, Edward. Science Technology and Society. Spring 2015 ed. n.p.: U Readers, 2014. Print.
</ref>
Here the approach to the philosophy of science is to study how scientific communities actually operate.