Integrating History of Sociology into History of Science: Language Analysis as a Tool for History of Sociology

This thesis focuses on methodological possibilities of language as a basis for history of sociology. Current professional history of sociology takes predominantly the form of institutional studies characterized by an attention to social context of knowledge production. Language orientation provides an unutilized opportunity for intellectual history - a supposedly stale alternative of institutional tradition. Development of language-based history creates a methodological position close to approaches common in history of natural sciences. Critical analysis of metaphor studies in sociology serves as an example of risks and challenges of language focus which assists us with articulation of our own methodological position. Following studies of Ladislav Kvasz, historian of natural sciences, the thesis offers methodological apparatus adapted to sociology. Key feature of the presented tool is a capability to distinguish between three levels of language of sociological theory: data, models and theory. These levels differ in functions which they ascribe to corresponding language elements and rising language powers (to constitute new objects and to integrate the ones positioned below). Application of our method is illustrated by two examples. Cursory excursion into history of mathematics in sociology..

Additional file 3: Figure S2. of Serotonin promotes exploitation in complex environments by accelerating decision-making

(A, B) The same assays and analysis as described in Fig. 2a, b were also performed on a mod-5 mutant background. (C) The velocity of wild-type animals, tph-1 mutants, mod-5 mutants, and transgenics in which the serotonergic neurons have been genetically silenced as measured up to 1,500 sec after the encounter with food. (D) The same assays and analysis as described in Fig. 2a, b are shown for the three independent transgenic lines. (E, F) The same assays and analysis as described in Fig. 2a, b were also performed on bas-1 mutants, lacking serotonin and dopamine, and cat-2 mutants, lacking dopamine. Dopamine in and of itself was not required for rapid decision-making upon encountering food. Comparisons were performed using an ANOVA test corrected post hoc for multiple comparisons using Tukey’s HSD test. Single and double asterisks denote significant differences (P <0.05 and P <0.01, respectively). (TIF 541 kb

Additional file 12: Figure S6 of Serotonin promotes exploitation in complex environments by accelerating decision-making

Histograms of preemptive slopes measured in individual animals during the 50 sec prior to encountering a large patch of food. Negative slopes are emphasized in red. Errors denote ± SEM and P values denote the probability that the measured distribution of slopes was obtained from a distribution with zero mean, as determined by a t-test. (TIF 507 kb

Additional file 11: Figure S5. of Serotonin promotes exploitation in complex environments by accelerating decision-making

(A) Mean values of NSM::GCaMP (grey) and ADF::GCaMP (black) fluorescence from animals assayed on a reversed patch (see Methods). The time in which the animal crawled directly above the edge of the bacterial lawn was defined as t = 0 . Mean fluorescence was measured during 20-sec periods, before and around the mock encounter. Baseline activity was measured in the same neurons 30–50 sec prior to the mock encounter. The change in fluorescence observed in ADF mirrored the change observed several seconds prior to the encounter. Bars depict mean ± SEM, the number of animals assayed for each strain is noted in parentheses, pairwise comparisons were performed using a t-test, and the asterisk denotes a statistically significant difference between the two periods (P <0.05). (B) The mean kinetics of the GCaMP fluorescence data from Fig. 4a and the mean velocities from Fig. 2a. The yellow shaded area denotes post-encounter times (see Discussion). (TIF 116 kb