First Post: Theorists and Taxonomisers

Hello!
Welcome to my first post. I intend to write something- substantial, semi-coherent - around once a week. The theme will generally be quite 'academic', focussing on particular, relatively long-standing and atemporal, rather than topical and ephemoral, issues, but this is not strictly an 'academic blog'.


Last week here at York was the 'British Association for the Advancement of Science's annual 'Festival of Science'. Perhaps attending academic lectures isn't most people's idea of a fun activity, and they've got a point, but I attended five seminars during the week, on topics ranging from anthropology to psychology to sociology, and certainly didn't feel afterwards like it was a waste of time.

What is 'science'? Going by the previous week's experience, it seems to mean something quite different to the anthropologists and the psychologists than the sociologists. (Some of the sociologists called themselves 'anthropologists', but I don't think the anthropologists presenting would: they didn't use enough statistics).
Of course the question is fuzzy and the answer will always be contentious, but I think there are two important aspects to most forms of scientific enterprise:

1. Hitherto implicit, fuzzy, and only locally-accessible knowledge is made explicit, exact, and (more) globally accessible. In short, 'facts' are generated, stored, amassed. The magnitude of the available data grows and grows. [Such enterprise generates knowledge]
   
2. The massive proliferation of data is then 'reduced' in magnitude through formal, replicable analyses. This data-reduction occurs through a process of generalisation. Similarities between datums are identified, abduced through pattern-recognition schemas, and inferences made about associations between data items, which can then be described more concisely than can the data itself ( data -> theory). Furthermore, the theories developed to link data can be used to make plausible guesses about phenomena which have not been recorded and observed. More prosaically, this part of the scientific enterprise allows people to use knowledge about things that have been observed can be used to make guesses about things that haven't. (And these things that haven't been observed may be unobserved because they haven't happened yet: i.e. science can be used to made predictions!) [Such enterprise generates understanding]
   

Of course, it's a lot more complex and nuanced than this - for one thing there's a lot of reflexivity between the 1. and 2. - but I find this a good way of thinking about the question.
Moreover, I think this is a good way of starting to think about the sociology (as it were) behind science, because my feeling is that the sort of people who tend to focus on the first part of science - the Taxonomisers - tend to be quite different to the sorts of people who focus on the second aspect - the Theorists. Taxonomisers like facts for the sake of having facts; for Theorists facts are just grist for the mill, and the less facts they have to deal with directly, the better. Facts for Theorists are just 'instances' of a general pattern, 'cases' for testing general rules. By contrast, for Taxonomisers, facts are the reason to wake up in the morning, and fact-generation is what puts food on the table.

Another way of thinking about this is to consider the differences between and gaining knowledge and gaining understanding. Very often, gaining knowledge is much more important. Consider a London black cab driver: to have (the) knowledge of the city's routes allows them to do their job; if they had deeper understanding of the generative mechanisms which begot the city road network they need to memorise- perhaps an understanding of the fractal-like nature of city growth around small centres, and the propensity for urban centres to be start near sources of clean water - then this wouldn't help.

Perhaps you can tell: I'm more of a Theorist than a Taxonomiser. I find Taxonomisers dull, ignorant pedants, obsessed with semantics, unable to see the wood for the trees (or the trees for the bark). Taxonomisers, conversely, probably consider the Theorist's enterprise foolish reductionism. Within the social sciences, Historians are probably good Taxonomisers, and Social Psychologists seem good Theorists. (The Historical Sociologist Charles Tilly does a good job of combining the two enterprises.)

Ontological experience, however, is perhaps closer to Taxonomy than Theory: we don't experience 'patterns' or 'trends' of experience, but individual instances of experience. Most people are Taxonomisers, I believe, to a greater extent than they are Theorists: informal taxonomy - experience destined to remain only implicitly and locally known - is anecdote, and people love anecdotes. (Sociologists call anecdotes 'ethnographies'.)