Workshop on Cognitive Studies of Science and Technology

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

SES 00-00573 - Michael E. Gorman (University of Virginia) "Workshop on Cognitive Studies of Science & Technology" A small but growing community of scholars is conducting detailed cognitive studies of discoverers and inventors. The purpose of this award is to bring a core group of these practitioners together -- along with students and younger scholars who are showing interest in this area - to survey the "state of the art" and to begin to sketch an agenda for future research. The scholars who will participate in this Workshop identify themselves with a wide variety of disciplines, and individually belong to a wide range of formal societies; these include the Society for Social Studies of Science, the Cognitive Science Society, the History of Science Society, the Society for History of Technology, and the Philosophy of Science Association. No one belongs to all of these groups, and none attends all of the relevant society meetings. As a result, only a small portion of those interested in fine-grained cognitive studies of science and technology will meet and interact any one of these meetings. In addition, this disciplinary diversity, although intellectually exciting, places an especially heavy burden on students and young scholars. The Workshop is designed to prove especially beneficial to this precise group. No previous Conference or Workshop has addressed "Cognitive Studies of Science and Techmology" in precisely the manner that this Workshop will. For example, a 1990 NSF-funded workshop at the University of Minnesota on cognitive models of science focused almost entirely on theoretical explanations of scientific cognition. The Workshop supported by this award will build on the success of this early Workshop but will focus more on scientific discovery than hypothesis testing and will include the invention of new technologies as a major focus. The Workshop will emphasize the need to apply existing findings to detailed case studies of actual cognition. While the earlier Workshop focused on implications for philosophy, one goal of this Workshop is to contribute to developing a multidisciplinary agenda, consistent with the NSF's emphasis on crosscutting programs.