Is The Science of Science As A Field of Study In Its Own Right Alive Or Dead?

[David Wojick]

Clifford,

I am puzzled by your question because much of the "no shortage of work" 
that you refer to is part of the science of science. These are well known 
sub-domains. So is most of the metrics work discussed by this group. 
Another example is the so-called science of science policy. See 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_science_policy which says "The 
science of science policy (SoSP) is an emerging 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interdisciplinary_research>interdisciplinary 
research area that seeks to develop theoretical and empirical models of the 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_enterprise>scientific enterprise."

What else do you have in mind when you say the questions are "what is 
science and the nature of science?" Many of us are working precisely on 
instances of these questions, often by developing theoretical and empirical 
models.

David

At 10:56 AM 2/16/2014, you wrote:
>Adminstrative info for SIGMETRICS (for example unsubscribe): 
>http://web.utk.edu/~gwhitney/sigmetrics.html
>I am trying to identify whether there is a core field of study in the 
>science of science as a field of study in its own right and if so what are 
>its main related works.  I am looking for published work which is the 
>product of scientific study of science and which is, unlike the philosophy 
>of science, based on observation and empirical evidence and is directed to 
>answering the questions "what is science and the nature of science?".
>
>There seems to be no shortage of work on the sociology of science, the 
>history of science, science policy, the philosophy of science, metascience 
>and epistemology.
>
>Or has everyone has given up on the science of science as a field of study 
>per se following the controversies in the philosophy of science since 
>Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", the disputes which 
>followed Popper's "Logic of Scientific Discovery" and the failure of 
>attempts at demarcation.  There is also a modern view that there is no 
>particular identifiable scientific method, which of course makes a 
>scientific approach to classification in a science of science a little 
>more difficult.
>
>Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is in a sense a work on 
>the science of science in that it relies on empirical evidence of Kuhn's 
>experience of what science is and his knowledge from his work on the 
>history of science.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigmetrics/attachments/20140216/df4416ff/attachment.html>