Doctoral Dissertation Research: A Sociological Study of a Social Movement at the Interface of Science and Religion

本奖项支持科学社会学领域关于科学与宗教关系的博士论文研究。它将分析的焦点从涉及宗教和科学的长期争议，从法庭之争和教科书采用的争论转移到2007年在肯塔基州开幕的展览的新背景上。研究人员将以一种新的方式审视这种可信度和文化权威的斗争，通过关注宗教信仰的物化，特别是用于为游客合法化这些信仰的展览技术。这一科学社会学案例研究利用了对参与新环境的举报人的访谈、对相关原始文件和文献的内容分析、二次媒体报道以及在连续访问现场期间准备的大量实地笔记。智力价值科学、技术和社会学者对知识生产场所有着持久的兴趣，如绅士的房子、实验室、田野、法庭和展览厅。到目前为止，展览厅主要被视为再现主流科学的文化权威的场所，而不是挑战科学理解的场所。科学、技术和社会学者们最近把注意力转向了社会运动组织，如病人权利倡导团体和科学家活动家，但这些研究所产生的日益增加的理解尚未应用于一个明确寻求挑战科学世界观的宗教社会运动组织。这篇论文将科学，技术和社会的兴趣扩展到知识生产的场所，通过询问博物馆等地方如何参与社会运动组织的努力，以确保被主流科学广泛谴责的信仰的可信度和合法性。分析宗教社会运动的目标、策略和结果将揭示一个被科学界边缘化的运动是如何影响公众对科学的理解的。科学的文化权威是由以科学世界观是“正确的”为前提设计和建造的展厅网络所支撑的。当自然历史博物馆使用类似的展品和文物来说服游客另一种世界观的合法性时，公众对科学的看法会产生什么后果？这个项目对科学教育政策和公共领域知识多元化的谈判提出了相当重要的问题。

Introduction This award supports doctoral dissertation research in the sociology of science on relations between science and religion. It shifts the focus of analysis away from longstanding controversies involving religion and science from courtroom battles and textbook-adoption squabbles to a new setting for exhibitions that opened in Kentucky in 2007. The researcher will examine this struggle for credibility and cultural authority in a new way, by focusing on the materialization of religious beliefs and in particular on the exhibition technologies used to legitimate those beliefs for visitors. This sociology of science case study draws on interviews with informants involved with the new setting, content analyses of pertinent primary documents and literatures, secondary media coverage, and on extensive field notes prepared during successive visits to the site. Intellectual Merit Science, Technology, and Society scholars have an enduring interest in sites of knowledge production, such as gentleman's houses, laboratories, field sites, courtrooms, and exhibition halls. Until now, exhibition halls have been examined primarily as places where the cultural authority of mainstream science is reproduced, not as places where scientific understandings are challenged. Science, Technology, and Society scholars have recently turned their attention to social movement organizations such as patient-rights advocacy groups and scientist-activists, but the increased understandings resulting from those studies have not yet been applied to a religious social-movement organization that seeks unequivocally to challenge scientific worldviews. This dissertation extends Science, Technology, and Society interests to sites of knowledge-production by asking how places such as museums get implicated in social movement organization efforts to secure credibility and legitimacy for beliefs widely denounced by mainstream science. Potential Broader Impacts Analyzing religious social-movement goals, tactics, and outcomes will shed light on how a movement that is marginalized by the scientific community can nevertheless have an impact on public understandings of science. The cultural authority of science is buttressed by a network of exhibition halls designed and built on the premise that scientific worldviews are "right." What are the consequences for popular opinions about science when a natural history museum uses similar displays and artifacts to convince visitors of the legitimacy of an alternative worldview? This project raises issues of considerable importance for science education policies and for the negotiation of epistemic plurality in the public sphere.