This award provides funds for the establishment of a Research Training Group in the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. The faculty group is a mixture of outstanding junior and senior investigators who come from each of these three areas. The funds provided by this award will provide stipends for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and will defray part of the cost of the trainees' research. In addition, funds will be used to purchase specialized library resources and research equipment to be used by trainees, and to bring investigators from other research and academic institutions for short term visits and seminars. The areas of research that the training program addresses include the constitution of scientific disciplines, the scientific workplace, authority and credibility in science, naturalistic epistemology, scientific and technological networks, and scientific controversy. As scientific research and its fruits have come to play an increasingly important, if not central, role in the everyday life of modern society, interest in understanding the methods and motivations of scientific researchers has also grown. Traditionally, such studies of science itself have been done by the scientists themselves; increasingly, the investigators of the phenomenon of science have come from ranks of those with formal backgrounds in history, philosophy or sociology. Though this has provided for more sophisticated analyses, the lack of individuals trained in more than one of these areas has resulted in an often narrow view of scientific practice and its evolution. This award will provide funds for the training of a new generation of investigators of science able to pose questions and investigate phenomena that cross the boundaries and elude the paradigms of these more traditional approaches to the study of science.
