SCIENCE AS SOCIAL AND THE ARGUMENT FOR VALUE-FREEDOM
3.3 A good, sober sociology of science: A different suggestion
3.3.1 Good science without good philosophy?
Haack’s alternative to radical interpretations of science as social, is a moderate proposal of a
“good, sober sociology of science” (op.cit.: 99). Her proposal is, however, too restrictive.
Haack does not acknowledge that social and cultural studies of science may provide us with a more accurate empirical picture of scientific practices, even if some of the philosophical
229 In the way outlined in Chapter 2.
assumptions some or more of these studies are based on, are indefensible.230 According to Longino, there are today, roughly speaking, “two main streams” of contemporary “social and cultural studies of science”, one focusing on “the relationship between scientific knowledge and relatively large-scale professional and ideological social formations”,231 the other “often identified as laboratory studies or micro-sociology” focusing on “the interactions within and between laboratories and research programs and on the efforts required to export laboratory work into the non-laboratory world”232 (Longino 2002a: 7). It is misconceived and scientistic to claim that these studies of science show the irrelevance of philosophical concerns. On this point Haack is correct.
It is, however, also unreasonable to assume, like Haack does, that cultural and social studies of science have to be false and insignificant if some of their philosophical assumptions are questionable. Whether a particular empirical study of science ends up with theories that are significantly true, is a question for investigation.233
Several kinds of significant questions may be asked in empirical studies of science, moreover.
Haack argues that genuine investigators of science should restrict themselves to studying how
“the internal organization” and the “external environment” of science facilitate or hamper an
“adequate correlation” between acceptance and warrant in particular cases (1998: 108). And such studies may, obviously, be significant. How to facilitate genuine inquiry, and how to hamper pseudo-inquiry, are, however, not the only significant questions sociologists, historians, social anthropologists and social psychologists can ask when investigating state of affairs in science. The scientific institution and scientific practice can be studied from several different interesting points of view, just as other social institutions and practices can.
Science can, furthermore, be studied from other perspectives than the perspectives prescribed by the two streams identified by Longino. This follows from the non-exceptionalist approach
230 See for example Martin Hollis’ (1982), Harald Grimen’s (1990) and Adrian Haddock’s (2004) critical discussions of philosophical assumptions of the Edinburgh-school, the so-called Strong Programme.
231 Longino exemplifies this stream with Barry Barnes, David Bloor and the Edinburgh-school, the so-called Strong Programme, and picks out Andrew Pickering’s Constructing Quarks and Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air Pump as paradigmatic examples.
232 Longino picks out Karin Knorr-Cetina’s The Manufacture of Knowledge (1981) and different works by Bruno Latour (such as Laboratory Life and Science in Action) as paradigmatic examples of this stream.
233 The relationship between an inquirer’s philosophical commitments and the quality of the empirical studies she pursues is far from simple. Note for example how several critics of Michel Foucault’s philosophical presuppositions anyway appreciate his social and cultural analysis (Fraser 1989: 17-68, 161-190, Kitcher 2001:
53, Longino 2002: 86-87).
to science both Longino and Haack defend: If scientific practice is a social practice among other social practices, the scientific institution an institution among other institutions, and scientific knowledge is not essentially different from other kinds of knowledge,234 then investigators of science have, several ‘streams’ developed within several disciplines to draw upon in their studies.235 A commitment to non-exceptionalism implies linking theoretical and conceptual developments in empirical studies of science to theoretical and conceptual developments in the study of other social practices and institutions (and, of course, the other way around). Thus, to turn what is often referred to as ‘science studies’ into an intellectual and institutional enclave,236 decoupled from philosophical discussions237 and social and cultural studies generally, would be problematic.
3.3.2 The internal and external organization of science
What then is Haack’s picture of a good, sober sociology of science, apart from her prescription that it should focus explicitly on factors that facilitate or hamper genuine inquiry?
How are the internal organization and the external environment of science to be studied?
Concerning the external environment, Haack is implicit and general. She says that genuine inquiry can only take place in a free and just society. Haack contrasts the free and just society where genuine inquiry is facilitated, with totalitarian regimes, “Nazi” or “Soviet”-style regimes, where genuine inquiry is hampered, because inquirers are not guaranteed “freedom of thought and speech” (op.cit.: 131). Hence, a good, sober sociology of science should, in her view, focus on tracing Nazi- and Soviet-style tendencies in society. However, societies that are not easily associated with such tendencies, for example societies regulated by liberal-democratic constitutions that guarantee freedom of thought and speech, are not necessarily
234 This is neither to deny that science has empirically distinguishable traits as practice, institution and knowledge, to deny that the study of science confronts inquirers with particular normative problems, nor to deny that the warrant-acceptance distinction should be upheld.
235 Consider for example the tradition often referred to as ‘intellectual history’ (for an outline see Thue,
forthcoming), that does not seem to fit neatly into any of the two streams. Consider also, for example, studies of science inspired by Pierre Bourdieu. They may indeed be classified as focusing on the relationship between scientific knowledge and large-scale social formations, but would differ substantially from studies inspired by the Edinburgh-school.
236 For a definition of ”science studies”, see Enebakk (2004: 1-7).
237 As noted by Gunnar Skirbekk in a paper on the relationship between science studies and moral philosophy, this does not mean that philosophical discussions should be a main issue in science studies: “[…] even if we think that science studies should address […] normative questions critically and scholarly, this does not mean that questions of normative justification should be the main issue in science studies. There are various interesting and legitimate research themes and research interests, also in science studies” (2004: 10).
free and just, according to more ambitious criteria. A good sober sociology of science should, for example, focus on “the relationship between scientific knowledge and relatively large-scale professional and ideological social formations” of such societies, because such
“formations” of various kinds may influence the process of reason-giving and reason-taking in ways that inspire pseudo-inquiry (Fuller 1995, Longino 2002a. 7). Consider for example how feminists have traced interconnections between (what is accepted as) scientific knowledge – even if not warranted as such – and patriarchal evaluations, interests and structures in societies that are not Nazi or Soviet-style regimes (see Fox Keller 1985, Alcoff and Potter 1993, Longino and Fox Keller 1996, Wylie 1996).
Concerning the internal organization of science, Haack prescribes the good, sober sociologist to investigate whether the scientific community has organized competition and cooperation among individual inquirers optimally, i.e. in a way that inspires genuine inquiry.238 Haack focuses in this connection on the organizational aspects of scientific communities that are formal, official and relatively easily visible, i.e. on how scientific communities are formally organized – in specialized competing and cooperating subcommunities, to which recruitment is officially meritocratic, and on wishes (or fears) that are easily seen and easily measured, such as “fame and fortune” (1998: 9). What should concern a good, sober sociologist are, however, also less formal, less visible evaluations, interests and structures that may facilitate or hamper genuine inquiry. Evaluations, interests and structures in the scientific community cannot, moreover, be studied as though they were not potentially influenced by evaluations, interests and structures in society at large. This has been a main concern in feminist cultural and social studies of society; to highlight the interconnections between the patriarchal
‘external environment’ of science and the ‘internal organization’. Hence, it is not necessarily a fruitful strategy for genuine investigations of the sociology of science, to operate with too strict divisions between internal and external, science and society, the micro-level and the macro-level.
3.3.3 Debating science as social: From camps to arguments
My notion of a good, sober sociology of science is then, in several senses, more permissive than Haack’s notion: I think there are more significant questions to be asked by such a sociology than she does, and more places to look for relevant answers. Consequently, my
238 In Chapter 2 I comment on the questionable instrumental approach to the communal character of inquiry and the inadequate rational-choice theory of action in which Haack’s prescription is embedded.
approach to recent contributions in empirical studies of science, and the development of
‘science studies’, is not dismissive, even though critical. I belong, like Haack, to the moderate camp, in the sense that I defend the warrant-acceptance distinction, realism (as elaborated), and significant truth as the aim of genuine investigations. I think, however, that there are more allies among the scholars Haack refers to as radicals than she herself recognizes. In the end, moreover, vague general labels such as ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ are not very illuminating.
What matters are the particular elaboration of and the arguments given for particular positions.