Social Discoveries
Breakthrough discoveries are not limited to labor-saving device that have been invented to save time in the kitchen or workroom. True "breakthrough" discoveries are social discoveries that affect how we live, think and interact. And each has made a significant difference. Much of it occurs mainly in academic thought and research. Because these are centrally-understood concepts, they reach into all of our lives through our comprehension of the world, and in our academic practice.
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Social Discovery in Learning
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These have made a difference to the methodology of academic learning, ranging from the discovery of the existence of the self-fulfilling prophecy, to new methods for psychological tests, the paradigm concept and theories about justice with its associated social phenomena. Here discoveries made by Thomas Kuhn, Paul F Lazarsfeld and Stanley Milgram, all pioneers of social discovery, are examples of ideologies that led to academic learning being improved by their existence.
Other Social Discoveries
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A research study group A study was done at Iowa State for the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences, or SBE, a branch of the National Science Foundation, or NSF, examining the possibility of errors in eyewitness identifications, and proposes methods of avoiding such errors, which should help avoid the possibility of convicting the wrong person in a criminal trial.
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Well-Known Social Discoveries
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Thomas Kuhn of Princeton University is attributed to the discovery of the paradigm. The word "paradigm" has crept into every day conversation and is used to express the idea of an accepted model or a distinct pattern to be followed. Kuhn's theory of scientific revolution was central to this scientific concept.
Survey analysis, causal analysis and studies about political elections were areas of study by the social scientist Paul F Lazarsfeld. Lazarsfeld studied the way people approached polling and was responsible for the widespread use of surveys, questionnaires and other empirical data collection techniques.
One of the most talked-about social scientists who did social research on the way that people approached something as basic as obedience was Stanley Milgram. His approach to this was radical; his study dared to make a detailed study of the banality of evil. His study approached the thesis that all perpetrated evils carried out throughout the course of history, and in particular, the Holocaust, were not the actions of sociopaths or fanatics, but by ordinary people just reacting to the prevailing circumstances, however gruesome.
Additional Social Discoveries
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The work of a leading American sociologist, Robert K. Merton was discussed at the outset. He was a theorist who studied ways of formulating questions so that they could be empirically tested. This led to the discovery of the self-fulfilling prophecy, a clever use of a false definition to create a prediction about something that comes "true" even though it is based on a false definition. This should well have been one of Robert H Thouless's 38 dishonest tricks in argument, cited in his book, "Straight and Crooked Thinking," a manual of the English language designed for truth in argument.
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References
- University Discoveries: Social & Behavioral Sciences and Humanities: Discoveries and Ideas that Have Changed the Way We Think and the Way We Live Our Lives
- University Discoveries: Social & Behavioral Sciences and Humanities: Discoveries and Ideas that Have Changed the Way National Science Foundation: Email this pagePrint this page Bookmark and Share People & Society Discoveries
- Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd Ed. Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-45808-3
- Milgram, S. (1974), Obedience to Authority; An Experimental View ISBN 0-06-131983-X
- Lazarsfeld, Paul. Radio and the Printed Page: An Introduction to the Study of Radio and Its Role in the Communication of Ideas. New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1940.
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