How to criticize science and maintain your sanity

This article was downloaded by: [Stony Brook University]On: 19 October 2014, At: 05:49Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Science as CulturePublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csac20

How to criticize science and maintain your sanitySal Restivo a c & Wenda Bauchspies b ca Professor of Sociology and Science Studies in the Department of Science and TechnologyStudies , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , Troy, New Yorkb Doctoral candidate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies , RensselaerPolytechnic Institute , Troy, New Yorkc STS Department , Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute , Troy, NY, 12180 E-mail:Published online: 23 Sep 2009.

To cite this article: Sal Restivo & Wenda Bauchspies (1997) How to criticize science and maintain your sanity, Science asCulture, 6:3, 396-413, DOI: 10.1080/09505439709526475

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09505439709526475

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in thepublications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representationsor warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Anyopinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not theviews of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should beindependently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses,actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoevercaused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csac20

http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/09505439709526475

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09505439709526475

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

HOW TO CRITICIZE SCIENCE ANDMAINTAIN YOUR SANITY

SAL RESTIVO AND WENDA BAUCHSPIES

• INTRODUCTION

A spectre is haunting the scientific community—the spectreof science studies (not to mention postmodernism and mul-

ticulturalism). On account of a peculiar property, this spectre alsohaunts itself. All the powers of the old and new science andscience studies have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise thisspectre: Hobsbawms and Kuhns, Mertonians and neo-Mertonians,relativists and evolutionary epistemologists, and most ignomini-ously, philosophers and physical scientists. Our objective is toshare with you some of our curiosity about science. In part, thatcuriosity is fed by nearly three decades (for the first author) oftraining, education, and practice in electrical engineering, theo-retical physics, and mathematics, and the nearly two decades (forthe second author) of involvement in studying and teaching sci-ence on two continents. The power of sociology and anthropologyto bring a certain clarity to those experiences has been the mostpowerful fuel of our curiosity. Sometimes this curiosity is viewedviciously, sometimes benignly, and sometimes it is labeled 'anti-science' and 'relativist'.

Some would argue that being a sociologist of science impliesmembership in the so-called 'School of Resentment' (HaroldBloom), or a belief in the Groucho Marxist's motto: 'Whatever itis, we're against it'. Others equate science studies with anti-science

Address correspondence to Sal Restivo and Wenda Bauchspies, STS Depart-ment, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, e-mail:[email protected]

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4

HOW TO CRITICIZE SCIENCE 397

Credit: from page 99, The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, by BillWatterson. Andrews and McMeel, Kansas City: 1995. Andrews and McMeel,4900 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64112

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4

398 SCIENCE AS CULTURE

and relativism because they find the idea of social construction ofscience morally threatening. It is threatening because it exploresthe relations of situations (Star, 1995, pp. 9-12). Using the toolsof the modern social and cultural sciences to study science is anact of inquiry, not one of aggression. There has been some confu-sion as to who qualifies as 'anti-science' or 'relativist' becausethere are some general sociologists and sociologists of science whoexhibit very little in the way of a sociological imagination. Thisconfusion deepens when old sociologists of science come out ofthe woodwork to join the physical and natural scientists in chal-lenging the idea of science as social relations and as a socialconstruction.

However, as Durkheimians, we have already divorced the soci-ology of knowledge and science from naive relativism and anti-science: 'From the fact that the ideas of time, space, class, causeor personality are constructed out of social elements, it is notnecessary to conclude that they are devoid of all objective value'(Durkheim, 1961, pp. 31-32). There is nothing particularly con-temporary about either the idea that science is socially constructedor the vulnerability of science to social criticism. Marx and Durk-heim, among others, were much clearer about the social construc-tion of knowledge and science than many contemporary sociolo-gists and their critics. And the science criticism of Rousseau,Goethe, William Blake, and others is widely known.

Whether or not science is a destructive or a progressive force inour culture, our history, and our world is not our debate. What isof concern to social scientists is the cognitive authority awardedto science and scientists. For if there is anything to fear, it is theunexamined exercise of any form of authority, cognitive or other-wise: 'Illegitimate politicization and rampant irrationality findtheir most fruitful soil when our activities are mystified andprotected from criticism' (Addleson, 1983, p. 182).

Recently, a scientist claimed that science cannot be a socialconstruct because it is independent of society. This is like claimingthat airplanes cannot be manufactured by humans or be part of the'natural world' because they are independent of gravity. The

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


difference here is that we as thoroughly social humans have notyet learned to understand and fully experience the social forces thatsurround us, that are us.

• POINT/COUNTERPOINTNear the beginning of what has come to be called the 'sciencewars', Mark S. Frankel (1993) published an article on 'Multicul-tural Science' in The Chronicle of Higher Education. A reply waspublished by E. L. Pattullo (1993), retired director of the Centerfor the Behavioral Sciences at Harvard. 'It is a pity', Dr. Pattullowrote, 'that Mark Frankel did not make explicit the fact that themulticulturalism he advocates has to do with the social setting ofscience rather than with the scientific process itself, which is asculture-free as any human activity can b e . . . . Careless readers,'he continued, 'may not recognize that many of his strictures applyto the clinical application of scientific findings, rather than scienceperse'.

Robert L. Sinsheimer (1993) responded to Lily Kay's book, TheMolecular Vision of Life by writing: 'The development of sciencedoes not fit your mold— Natural science has evolved in an orderlyfashion determined by the structures of nature itself and paced bythe genius and inspiration of talented scientists, not by the allegedsocial agendas or machinations of agencies such as the RockefellerFoundation.. . . Progress in science does not "escape history"; ithas its own historical logic'.

In Understanding Science, Arthur N. Strahler (1992), a geolo-gist, relies on Mario Bunge's (1992) somewhat frantic effort toshow 'very clearly the absence of any meaningful interrelation-ship of natural science with social structures'. Here's how Bungeachieves this: 'But of course, no one has ever discovered anythingabout social structures by studying, say Maxwell's equations orthe way in which electromagnetic field intensities are measured. . .natural science is supposed [n.b.!] to explore and representnature'.

What these criticisms of social analyses of science have incommon is first a conception of science as 'per se', or as a

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


phenomenon that can only be discussed in the grammar of theever-present tense—science is . . . ; second, a tendency to ignorethe best research in social and cultural studies of science; and third,virtually complete incompetence and ignorance in the area ofsocial science.

• ACT I: A LITTLE HISTORYIn nineteenth-century Europe, at the same time that the socialsciences were being fashioned in the molds constructed out of thesocial practices, ideologies, and mythologies of the physical sci-ences, the path was being cleared for a sociological theory ofscience. Thus both Kropotkin and Marx recognized in the midst offashioning human sciences that science was social relations; We-ber understood the cultural context of science, and the functionsof material resources and social structures in the development ofscience—and he realized as acutely as Marx the connection be-tween modern science and capitalism. Perhaps no one saw asclearly as Marx and Durkheim the fact that knowledge and con-cepts were social constructions. In the early decades of this cen-tury, Spengler, Mead, Gumplowicz, Wittgenstein, and Fleckhelped sustain and develop these ideas in their most radical forms.The tension caused by simultaneously (and to varying degrees)treating 'science' as the paradigmatic mode of inquiry amf as socialrelations generated an ambivalence about science that has lastedinto our own generation (Croissant & Restivo, 1995, pp. 67-86).This ambivalence about science has protected it from criticism bythe critics', theorists', and worshippers' desire to preserve thequalities of inquiry associated with science.

Whether we have been modern or not, postmodern or not,multicultural or not, perhaps for us the criticism of science is thebeginning of all criticism (for Marx, recall, it was the criticism ofreligion). The sociology of science—whether practiced by socialcritics or social theorists—will be experienced as a challenge byscientists, science watchers, science readers, and science worship-pers. Meanwhile, criticisms of science by scientists are part of thesocial process of science and are an accepted scientific practice.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


The early years of mountaineering in Switzerland: An Ascent of Mt. Blanc in1830. Credit: The Darwin Museum, Down House, and the Royal College ofSurgeons of England.

Many of us carry into our inquiries methods, goals, perspectives,and logics that we initially learned and internalized in physical-sci-ence laboratories, from physical-science textbooks, and in class-rooms under the tutelage of physical scientists or their surrogates.So what is the difference between the nonscientist's criticism ofscience and that of the scientist? It is not a criticism of individualscientists. Nor is it a criticism of the impulse to inquiry, to thinking,everyday practical rationality, or that stuff sometimes calledpraxis. It may be that we criticize science only because we attemptto criticize everything, and value criticism as a basic tool ofinquiry.

The idea that science is a social construction and a social processis clearly abroad in our intellectual milieu. However, a critical eye

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


needs to be applied to how the idea is being used. For example,Steven Weinberg (1996), a noted physicist, concedes that scienceis a social process, while staunchly objecting to the idea thatscientific theories are also social. We do not, as Weinberg sup-poses, observe that science is a social process and then logicallyconclude that scientific theories are social. Rather, we demonstratethis sociologically. Weinberg illustrates the absurdity of our claimsas sociologists of science with an apparently devastating example.His example is that the right path to a mountain peak is known toexist because it leads the mountain climbers to the peak, notbecause of the social factors of the expedition. In fact, Weinbergcommits what we call the Columbian fallacy by assuming thatthings, events, or processes are, or can be, simply, immediately,

SOCIAL

Resolving some issues of language usage might help to move forwardthe discourse on the social relations of science. One word in particularneeds to be considered carefully: 'social'. This will go a Jong way towardclarifying why the social analysis of truth, objectivity, rationality, andscience in general does not entail anti-science or naively relativisticconclusions. We cannot hope to resolve this complex linguistic andultimately cultural problem here. But perhaps we can help disputantsavoid some relatively simple errors. For example, the term 'social', as in'social construction', is not a synonym for 'political', 'religious', 'eco-nomic', or 'ideological', nor does it connote or denote 'false' or 'arbi-trary'. To say that facts (scientific or otherwise) are socially constructedis not to say that they are false, arbitrary, fabricated out of thin air, or thedirect causal product of 'external' political, religious, economic, or ideo-logical forces. The original so-called 'laboratory studies' (ethnographiesof science), for example, helped to document the moment-to-moment,day-to-day, night-to-night minutiae of social interactions that make up thesocial processes and institutions of invention and discovery. The 'social'is not only in the 'external' social andcultural milieu or context of science,but in the social organization of science, indeed in scientists themselves.The 'social' in this sense is pervasive, and no more transparent thanquantum or gravitational forces.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


transparently, phenomenally perhaps, and most importantly aso-cially discovered (see box).

Clifford Hooker recommended some two decades ago that inorder to think about science—or in more general terms, knowl-edge, inquiry, thinking—we must be at least prepared to criticize(1) particular facts, (2) specific theories, (3) types of theories, (4)conceptual frameworks and perspectives, and (5) the institutionsof research and criticism. Every theory of inquiry should includea theory of the intellectual milieu, a theory of critical culture(Hooker, 1975, pp. 102-3).

• ACT II: THE DISCOVERY OF SOCIETYThe discoverers of society carried out a Copernican revolution thattransformed our understanding of the social world. They identifiedthe group, the collectivity, or culture as the center of the humanuniverse. Copernicus helped move the sun to the center of our solarsystem and the earth to a peripheral position. The sociologistshelped move the group to the center of the human universe and theindividual to the periphery. This achievement does not politicallysubordinate the individual to the group. Rather, it reveals howvarieties of individual growth and development, and the formationof different types of persons, are dependent on forms of socialorganization and culture. Through its influence on the sociologyof science, the Copernican sociological revolution has also had animpact on our understanding of science and of natural and physicalrealities.

All of the ingredients of the invisible revolution we have beensketching here appear in the following excerpt from Marx's(1956), Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of1844:

Even when I carry out scientific work, etc., an activity which Ican seldom conduct in direct association with others—I performa social, because human, act. It is not only the material of myactivity—like the language itself which the thinker uses—whichis given to me as a social product. My own existence is a socialactivity, (p. 104)

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


Here, then, we have in the space of a few lines the ideas that theself, the mind, language, and science are social constructions. Thisperspective achieves its classical sociological form in the closingpages of Emile Durkheim's (1961) The Elementary Forms of theReligious Life (originally published in French in 1912), where heintroduces a non-obvious sociology of logical concepts. Havingalready analyzed what the gods and religions are, Durkheim'ssociology of logic completes one of the earliest signs of the modernrejection of transcendence. This critical analysis was extended inSpengler's (1926) analysis of mathematics as a cultural phenome-non, and George Herbert Mead's (1934) theories of self and mind.Spengler's analysis would go virtually unnoticed until the emer-gence of the new sociology of science and in particular the devel-opment of the sociology of mathematics in the works of DavidBloor, Sal Restivo, and Randall Collins. In 1939, C. Wright Millspointed out that Mead's sociology of mind had been ignored to thedetriment of the sociology of knowledge and science. Some 50years later, Randall Collins (1989) could still make this sameobservation about Mead's work. In the last few years, Collins andRestivo have begun to resurrect Mead's theories to help fashion asociological theory of mind and thinking.

Another important figure in the invisible revolution that is ourtheme here is Friedreich Nietzsche (1968,1974). His criticisms ofreligion and of philosophy were major contributions to the rejec-tion of transcendence. He warned us to be on guard against 'themyth of a "pure, willless, painless, timeless knower'". 'Let usbeware', he continued, 'of the tentacles of such contradictorynotions as "pure reason", "absolute knowledge", "absolute intelli-gence". All these concepts presuppose an eye such as no livingbeing can imagine, an eye required to have no direction, to abrogateits active and interpretative powers—precisely those powers thatalone make of seeing, seeing something. All seeing is essentiallyperspective, and so is all knowing. The more emotions we allowto speak in a given matter, the more different eyes we can put onin order to view a given spectacle, the more complete will be ourconception of it, the greater our "objectivity"'. Here is the starting

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


A Diirer woodcut showing a painter studying the first stages in the techniqueof reproducing a foreshortened view. Credit: The Mansell Collection.

point for the sociology of objectivity (Restivo, 1975,1994; Bloor,1984).

Meanwhile, Randall Collins (1997) has been working within theframework of this invisible revolution to fashion a causal sociol-ogy of philosophy that is generalizable to intellectuals (includingscientists).

The intellectual resources we have identified are not instancesof nostalgia for the classical theorists. Rather, they have helped usto fashion such counterintuitive notions as the sociology of god,truth, nature, reality, objectivity, mathematics, and logic. There isa masculine Euro-American bias in the selection of certain men torepresent this invisible revolution, but it is a revolution generatedand sustained by working class men and women (as E. P.Thompson helped to document), and by sociological theorists fromHarriet Martineau to W. E. B. Dubois and Dorothy Smith.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


What does science look like, then, from the perspective of theinvisible sociological revolution? We will sketch a portrait ofscience as a social construction based on the case of mathematics,a case Restivo (1992) has studied in some depth, sometimes incollaboration with Randall Collins (Collins & Restivo, 1983).

Explaining the content of mathematics is not a matter of con-structing a simple casual link between a mathematical object suchas a theorem and a social structure. The sociological problem isfirst to look to both 'external' contexts, etc. and 'internal' net-works, etc. One common error is to imagine that only 'external'milieux hold social influences.

Second, the sociological task is to unpack the social histories andsocial worlds embodied in objects such as theorems. Mathematicalobjects must be treated as things that are produced by, manufac-tured by, social beings through social means in social settings.There is no reason that an object such as a theorem should betreated any differently than a sculpture, a teapot, or a skyscraper.Only alienated and alienating social worlds could give rise to theidea that mathematical objects are independent, freestanding crea-tions, and that the essence of mathematics is realized in technicaltalk. Notations and symbols are tools, materials, and, in general,resources that are socially constructed around social interests andoriented to social goals. They take their meaning from the historyof their construction and usage, the ways they are used in thepresent, the consequences of their usage in and outside of mathe-matics, and the network of ideas they are part of.

Mathematics, science, and knowledge in general are crucialresources in all societies. Systems of knowledge therefore tend todevelop and change in ways that serve the interests of the mostpowerful groups in society. Once societies become stratified, thenature and transmission of knowledge begins to reflect socialinequalities. Once knowledge professions emerge, professionalboundaries tend to shield practitioners from the realities of theirbroader social roles even while they define a realm of systemati-cally (institutionally) autonomous work. Science and math curric-ula are certainly influenced by professional interests and goals, but

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


they are also conditioned by the social functions of educationalsystems in stratified societies.

• ACT III: ECHOES OF ZARATHUSTRACan it be that we are too serious about science, and that we nolonger know how to play with knowledge? How many times havewe been betrayed by the things we have taken seriously? Perhapsin order to exult in our wisdom, we must be able to love our follies,to be heroes and fools simultaneously. In this way, then, we mightbegin to see that the power of knowledge lies not in how true it isbut in the extent to which it becomes, or becomes part of, a formof life.

We do not recommend that we play the critic at every moment,nor that we question everything at once, only that we be preparedto play the critic at any moment and that we 'grant nothingpermanent immunity'. What if life was—or better, forms of lifewere—means to knowledge rather than simply or simplistically to'science'? Let us get over once and for all that prejudice that iflaughter and gaiety and lightness are near, thinking is in danger.

Not to laugh, not to lament, nor to detest, but to understand.SPINOZA

The old philologist, Nietzsche, remarked of his era 'This is surelyan evil age for a thinker'. We say this not only for today, but forall times. Science makes us overly optimistic; we should be a littlemore restless, a little more wary.

We teach scientists and ourselves with our criticisms and analy-ses. We teach perspectivism, sensual prejudices, social relations.We and they have almost learned that there is no 'thing in itself,when will we and they be ready for there is no 'knowledge in itself.In destroying illusions we do not produce truth. Through psycho-logical blunders, physiological confusions, and most of all socio-logical ignorance the 'true world', a world of reason, a 'divineworld', a denaturalized world, and a 'free world' are invented. For

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


these 'other' worlds to exist there would have to be a world withoutrelations. Thus spoke Nietzsche (1968,1974). In the end, the realworld of the realists may be a secularized medieval Heaven,companion to the mind as a secularized version of the soul.

There is a heady promise in various intellectual fields for theconditions of knowledge. With this promise an impossible kindof freedom is being proposed, a freedom from necessity of anykind. It is preached particularly in artistic and literary circles.These are the people who have shouldered the clergy's oldresponsibility to care for the symbols of society . . . the illusionof escape may well be a new kind of confinement. (Douglas,1970, p. 181)

• ACT IV: CONCLUSIONScience has provoked some of our most profoundly learned con-temporary and ancestral colleagues to describe it as a Machine (C.Wright Mills), a danger to democracy (Paul Feyerabend), and adanger more generally because of its 'impetuous demand forcertainty' (Nietzsche). It has a potential for divesting existence ofits 'rich ambiguity' and reducing life to 'a mere exercise for acalculator and an indoor diversion for mathematicians'. The oldphilologist continues to describe science as an idiotic crudity, amental illness, 'the most stupid of all possible interpretations ofthe world', interpretations of the most superficial aspects of exis-tence, the most apparent things that permit 'counting, weighing,seeing, and touching, and nothing more . . . ' (Nietzsche, 1974, p.335). Now we admit that in the end we might not want to echothese sentiments in just this way, but in the context of under-standing the institution of science (which has been the focus of thispaper), all of these labels seem reasonable.

As an alternative to 'science', we have 'thinking', the activity oftrying to find something out. In this activity, successes and failuresare above all 'answers'. Our inquiries here are guided by thefollowing sorts of queries: 'What did I really experience? Whathappened in me and around me at that time? Was my reason bright

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


enough? Was my will opposed to all deceptions of the senses andbold in resisting the fantastic?' No more convictions, no moreexcision of passion and even love. 'Objectivity' cannot mean'disinterested contemplation', a 'rank absurdity'. Let's look forthat immense capacity of thinking (and Nietzsche would not beaverse to using the term 'science' here) 'for making new galaxiesof joy flare up'.

• CODAScientists ' . . . are becoming the new villains of Western society'(Overbye, 1993). Twenty years ago, in a CIBA Foundation sym-posium, Hubert Bloch (1973), a physician and chair of the sym-posium, wrote: 'And in the minds of many, science . . . hasbecome a most dangerous evil'. Earlier still, Goethe, Schiller, andWilliam Blake were 'hostile' to Newtonian science. JonathanSwift scorned the Royal Society. Michel de Montaigne com-plained about the hubris attending theories of nature. And didn'tMontaigne in the sixteenth century echo Socrates' criticisms ofthe pre-Socratics and even of his pupil Plato? Steven Toulmin(1973), in fact, suggested that: 'Throughout the last half-millen-nium, at least, anti-scientific attitudes seem to have peaked atintervals of 130 years or so, if not every 65 or 30-35 years'. Itwould be a grave error to label these intellectuals 'enemies ofscience' or 'anti-science'. They all have a commitment to thosequalities of thinking and inquiry many educated elites tend toassociate exclusively with science but that do not necessarilycharacterize the institution of science.

At the heart of the matter, perhaps, is the resistance to thediscovery that we human beings are social through and through.There is widespread cultural resistance to this idea and to virtuallyall the great ideas of sociology and anthropology. Many people,many thinkers, and incredibly, many sociologists continue toconceive of individuals as individuals in the strong sense. Further-more, there is a methodological resistance. Just as Kelvin, forexample, resisted Maxwell's theory of light because he could notmodel it mechanically, so many people resist social construction-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


ism because they cannot model it after their own fashion andespecially because their very selves—their bodies—resist it.

There may also be a sort of religious resistance to social sciencebecause—despite Saint-Simon, Comte, and even Durkheim him-self—sociologists and anthropologists analyze God rather thanworship God. And finally, the various forms of social resistanceplay their part—the relatively low professional standing of thediscoverers, for example; Durkheim and Marx are virtually invis-ible in the overdrawn shadows of Newton, Galileo, and Einstein;the prevailing patterns of specialization that make physicists andastronomers experts on God and souls and spirit instead of anthro-pologists and sociologists; and then a host of organizational andstructural factors from age grading to schools and patterns ofauthority reveal the truth inT. H. Huxley's remark that 'authorities,disciples, and schools are the curse of science . . . ' According toBernard Barber (1961), 'As persons in society, scientists aresometimes the agents, sometimes the objects of resistance to theirown discoveries'.

Science worlds are social worlds, and we must ask what kindsof social worlds they are. How do they fit into the larger culturalscheme of things? Whose interests do they serve? What kinds ofhuman beings inhabit science worlds? What sorts of values doscience worlds create and sustain? How do science worlds change,how have they changed in the past, and how are they changingtoday? If we conceive science as some independent free-floatingset of methods, theories, and facts—instead of as a social world oran institution—we might fall into the trap of trying to adoptconventional scientific tools and ways of thinking and working tohelp solve social, personal, and environmental problems. It isunreasonable to suppose that social reformers and revolutionariescould eliminate science from society, and equally unreasonable tosuppose that they could force science as we know it today intosome 'alternative' shape independently of broader social andcultural changes.

Platonism, apriorism, and foundationalism (along with God) aredead. But the protective, awe-inspired, worshipful orientation to

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


science survives. This is understandable, readily as a vestigialhomage to the culture and conversation of the West (as in the worksof Richard Rorty, the John Wayne epistemologist, for example),less readily as a vestigial homage to the God of the West (asSpengler realized). One can see historically, from Mannheim andScheler to Donald Campbell, that the dialogue between the soci-ology of knowledge and epistemology has flirted with a radicalsociological reconstruction of our understanding of science andculture. It is futile to try to construct an epistemologically relevantsociology that falls short of a full-fledged world view analysis,critique, and reconstruction of science and culture.

It appears that until we fully extricate ourselves from the holdthat Plato has had on us, we will never be able to fully appreciatesociology and anthropology as the revolutionary sciences (orforms of life) they are. Here, Plato stands for a world that hastranscendent and foundational qualities. It is these qualities uponwhich Western science and religion have been constructed andsustained. When we leave Plato behind, when we finally give uptranscendence and foundationalism, we will find ourselves con-fronted with the end of a certain way of doing inquiry, and finallywith the end of a certain way of living. For the moment, sociologyand anthropology stand ready to take the place of epistemologyand philosophy and here we have in mind the social-scienceperspective emergent in the eighteenth-century European workingclasses, of the nineteenth-century anarchists and of the nineteenth-and twentieth-century feminists and multiculturalists (along withwhat is best in the social sciences of the industrial revolution).Attacks that promise the premature demise of the social sciencesare attacks that undermine our future as a culture capable ofmeeting the challenges of a global, multicultural society.

Kafka's assertion in The Trial 'Logic is doubtless unshakable,but it cannot withstand a man who wants to go on living' wouldfind ready endorsement from Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and others.These thinkers held such views not because they were 'relativists'or underappreciated the value of inquiry but rather because theyappreciated the cultural complexities of social structures and cul-

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


tures. They were critics of the 'Cult of Science' and the cult'sintense 'faith in science'.

In order to appreciate this, we must recognize that when we talkabout science, truth, logic, and related ideas, we are always talkingabout social relations. This way of seeing sensitizes us to theprogressive and regressive aspects and potentials of words, con-cepts, and ideas that as social relations can embody inequalities,destroy environments, inhibit individual growth and development,and undermine inquiry. The next time someone wants to ask anexpert about the nature of science or God, he or she had better turnto a sociologist or anthropologist instead of a physicist, astrono-mer, chemist, or biologist if he or she wants to escape Plato'sclutches and learn something.

• REFERENCESAddleson, K. (1983) 'The man of professional wisdom', in S. Harding & M.

Hintikka eds. Discovering Reality. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.Barber, B. (1961) 'Resistance by scientists to scientific discovery', Science,

134(3479): 596-602.Bloch, H. (1973) 'The problem defined', in Ciba Foundation, Civilization &

Science: In Conflict or Collaboration? New York: Elsevier.Bloor, D. (1984) 'A sociological theory of objectivity', in S. Brown ed. Objec-

tivity and Cultural Divergence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Bunge, M. (1992) 'A skeptic's beliefs and disbeliefs', New Ideas in Psychology,

199(9): 131-141.Collins, R. (1989) 'Toward a neo-Meadian sociology of mind', Symbolic

Interaction, 12: 1-32.(1997) The Social Causes of Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard Univer-

sity Press.Collins, R. & Restivo, S. (1983) 'Robber barons and politicians in mathematics:

A conflict model of science', Canadian Journal of Sociology, 8:199-227.Croissant, J. & Restivo S. (1995) 'Science, social problems, and progressive

thought', in S.L. Star ed. Ecologies of Science. Albany: State University ofNew York Press.

Durkheim, E. (1961) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York:Collier Books.

Douglas, M. (1970) Natural Symbols. New York: Pantheon.Frankel, M. (1993) 'Multicultural science', The Chronicle of Higher Education

(November 10): B1-B2.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4


Geertz, C. (1983) 'Art as a cultural system', in Local Knowledge. New York:Basic Books.

Hooker, C. (1975) 'Philosophy and meta-philosophy of science: Empiricism,Popperianism and realism', Syntheses, 32: 177-231.

Marx, K. (1956) The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Moscow:Foreign Languages Publishing House.

Mead, G.H. (1934) Mind, Self and Society, edited by C.W. Morris. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1968) The Will to Power. New York: Random House.(1974) The Gay Science. New York: Vintage.

Overbye, D. (1993) 'Who's afraid of the big bad bang?' Time, 141(17)(April26): 74.

Pattullo, E.L. (1993). Letter, in The Chronicle of Higher Education (December8): B5.

Restivo, S. (1992) Mathematics in Society and History. Dordrecht: KluwerAcademic Publishers.

(1994) Science, Society, and Values: Toward a Sociology of Objectivity.Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press.

Sinsheimer, R. (1993) Letter, Engineering & Science (Fall, 1993): 41.Spengler, O. (1926) The Decline of the West, vol. I. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Star, S.L. (1995) 'Introduction', in S.L. Stared. Ecologies of Knowledge: Work

and Politics in Science and Technology. Albany: State University of NewYork Press.

Strahler, A. (1992) Understanding Science. Buffalo: Prometheus.Toulmin, S. (1973) 'The historical background to the anti-science movement',

in Ciba Foundation, Civilization and Science: In Conflict or Collaboration?New York: Elsevier.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Ston

y B

rook

Uni

vers

ity]

at 0

5:49

19

Oct

ober

201

4

Documents

How to criticize science and maintain your sanity