Science as made by persons: Towards a (cultural) psychology of Science

The question about what is science, and how it should be done, has been a philosophical matter for centuries. From Aristotle to Kant, from Frege to Kuhn, it is not possible to detach our conception(s) of science from philosophy. Notwithstanding this influence, 20th century showed how these notions could be also shaped by social sciences. In this vein, sociology and anthropology definitely changed existing ideas on science through real world, institutional accounts of scientific activity. In contrast to the latter, psychology focused in becoming a ‘valid’ science (Valsiner, 2012) instead of inquiring what such activity is and what for it is done. Despite being a human sense-making process, psychology has remained silent on these matters besides seminal works like Polanyi’s “Personal knowledge” (1958) and Maslow’s “Psychology of Science” (1969). This presentation proposes ideas for breaking this silence. Departing from the theoretical tenets of cultural psychology (see Valsiner, 2014), I will discuss how life-courses studies, and its existentialist perspective, may offer a general framework for understanding scientists’ careers. Likewise, a value-oriented approach to human development could bridge the existing gap between scientific work and personal stances; thus determining how interweaved they are. As it will be shown, these ideas does entail neither downplaying nor disregarding social and cultural phenomena, but considering them from the lived perspective of scientists. In brief, this presentation sketches the theoretical grounds for a cultural psychology of science