How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment

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  1. See Knorr-Cetina (1999). Epistemology refers to theories of knowledge
    that are part of the philosophy of science tradition. Standard epistemological
    positions include positivism, realism, constructivism, etc. The epistemological
    styles I describe are related to these positions, but are also “spontaneous phi-
    losophies” adopted by respondents.

  2. Abbott (2001); Bourdieu (1988); Merton (1972); Weber (1984).

  3. For the former view, see DeVault (1999) and Smith (1990a); for the lat-
    ter, see Nagel (1961).

  4. On the value of formal models and hypothesis testing, see, for example,
    Nagel (1961); Ragin (1987); Singleton and Straits (1999); Stinchcombe (2005);
    and Tilly (1984). Clifford and Marcus (1986) offer what has become a classic
    argument against such approaches.

  5. For a study of inquiry beliefs in psychology, see Martin (1994); for soci-
    ology, see Abend (2006). For an excellent analysis of the literature on research
    practices within sociology, see Leahey (2008).

  6. Fiske (2002). On the relational dimensions of identity, see Jenkins (1996).

  7. Whitley (1984).

  8. The fields not discussed here are art history (two respondents), geogra-
    phy (two respondents), musicology (three respondents), natural sciences (one
    respondent), and sociology (six respondents). I have omitted sociology be-
    cause all interviewees from this field knew me personally. Their representa-
    tions of sociology were directly influenced by their understanding of my own
    identity as a sociologist and an academic—factors that seemed of little or no
    interest to respondents from other disciplines. I do draw on these sociologists’
    views of other disciplines.

  9. I gained access to several social science panels at the National Science
    Foundation, but was ultimately denied access by the general counsel’s office.
    Lawyers evoked the Privacy Act to justify the decision.

  10. This comparison concerns how panelists describe the arguments they
    made during deliberations, as well as the criteria they use to evaluate research
    in general. For details, see Mallard, Lamont, and Guetzkow (2007). A system-
    atic comparison of the epistemological styles at the discipline level did not re-
    veal statistically significant differences, although the population of respon-
    dents is too small to support conclusive statistical analysis.

  11. Munch (1975).

  12. In this study, “social scientists” include anthropologists, economists,
    political scientists, sociologists, a geographer, and an evolutionary biologist.


270 / Notes to Pages 54–57

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