-> Sociology of science began to interact intensely with philosophy of science, and sometimes set itself up as a ‘successor discipline’ to it.
-> If science is a social enterprise, then we should turn to sociology to understand it.
Sociology: The general study of human social structures
Sociology of science founded and developed in the mid-1900’s thanks to Robert Merton.
-> It’s mainstream sociology applied to the structure of science and to its historical development.
-> A set of basic values that govern scientific communities: Universalism, Communism, Disinterestedness, Organized Skepticism
1. Universalism
* Personal attributes and social background of a person are irrelevant to the scientific value of the person’s ideas.
2. Communism
* The common ownership of scientific ideas and results.
* Once an idea is published, it becomes common scientific property
3. Disinterestedness
* Scientists are supposed to act for the benefit of the common scientific enterprise, rather than personal gain.
4. Organized skepticism
* A community-wide pattern of challenging and testing ideas instead of taking them on trust.
5. /Humility (less emphasized and less important)/
The only property right recognized in science is /recognition/
The basic currency for reward in science is recognition, especially for being the first person to come up with an idea.
Best case scenario: scientist is rewarded by having the idea named after him.
(Attention vs recognition? Is recognition Angel?)
-> The reward system of science functions to encourage original thinking, but this can backfire into:
* fraud
* Merton argued this rarely happens due to rigorous internal policing by scientists, derived from their own ambitions and organized skepticism.
* plagiarism
* libel
* slander
* in the form of accusation of plagiarism
Mania to publish: Publication becomes a substitute for real recognition.
But recognition even within a small community of people who work on relevant problems can be significant motivation, as is recognized in Kuhn’s views.
Merton’s four norms = a motor
they describe a structure of social behavior
Merton’s reward system = the electricity making the motor run.
it describes what motivates people to participate in these activities
But the norm of disinterestedness falls apart with a reward system…
Morton’s analysis presents a good pattern for a theory of the structure of science, with a description of the rewards and incentives that motivate individual scientists + an account of how these individuals behaviors generate the higher-level social features of science.
Morton’s sociology = ‘old’ style of sociology of science.
-> New sociology of science uses sociological methods to explain why scientists believe what they do, why they behave as they do, and how scientific thinking and practice change over time.
-> Old sociology wanted to describe the social structure and social placement of science as a whole, but didn’t try to explain particular scientific beliefs in sociological terms.
Merton’s view on scientific theories was close to logical empiricism:
Theories are basically networks of predictive generalizations
Newer sociology embraced an ‘anti-positivist’ package:
* Kuhn
* Holism about testing
* Incommensurability
* New ideas about observation
* Various speculative views about scientific language
Logical positivists became paradigms of Dead White Males
Symmetry principle: Posits that all forms of belief and behavior should be approached using the same kinds of explanations.
Our own assessment of an idea shouldn’t affect how we explain its history and social role.
So scientific beliefs are products of the same general kinds of forces as other kinds of belief.
Beliefs are established and maintained in the community by the deployment of local norms of argument and justification – so the factors that lead to scientific belief should be symmetric with those that affect tribal superstitious beliefs.
Some scientific beliefs can be explained in terms of the political interests of scientists and their place within society (e.g. the influence of modern statistics + eugenics in reformist Middle English middle classes of the 1800’s.
* but this doesn’t = determinism in science, instead the sociologists said that scientific ideas “will reflect the interests” of a social group
Relativism: There’s no single set of standards entitled to govern the justification of beliefs. The applicability of such standards depends on one’s situation or point of view.
-> The strong program wanted to get rid of explanations of scientific beliefs in which nature just stamps itself on the minds of the scientific community. Instead they wanted to replace this with social and political ‘interests’ stamping themselves on the scientific community.
-> Exploring two of the most famous works in recent sociology of science.
-> This was a piece of sociologically informed history, rather than pure sociology
This book was a sophisticated development of the ideas in the strong program of sociology of science. It discusses the rise of experimental science in 1600’s England.
The book focuses on a dispute between Boyle and Hobbes over the proper form for scientific work and argumentation, (among other things) one which Boyle won.
What came out of this period was a new way of bringing experience to bear on theoretical investigation.
The Royal Society of London was founded in 1660 by Boyle’s group, and became the institutional embodiment of his new approach:
* a new picture of what should be the subject of organized investigation and dispute,
* and how these disputes should be settled.
Boyle sought to sharply distinguish the public, cooperative investigation of experimental “matters of fact” from other kinds of work.
* Proposing casual hypotheses about experimental results is always speculative and should only be done cautiously.
* Theological and metaphysical issues should be kept entirely separate from experimental work.
Boyle saw his group of experimentally minded colleagues as a model for over and conflict resolution in society at large (given the context of the recent English civil war).
Boyle set out new ways of organizing work, and new ways of talking:
* new ways of asking and answering questions,
* new ways of handling objections, and
* new ways of reaching agreement
In the case of vacuums, Boyle wasn’t trying to answer the standard questions about vacuums, he was reconstructing questions about vacuums in a way that brought them into contact with his experimental apparatus.
* His strategy was to replace these questions with other questions that could be the topic of experimental work.
* This was because the old questions (e.g. whether an absolutely pure vacuum could exist) were set up in a way that generated endless and uncontrollable dispute.
Shapin & Shaffer presented their views in terms borrowed from Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein’s early ideas about logic and language influenced logical positivism. His later ideas (especially ‘Philosophical Investigations’) were different – an anti-theory that attempted to show that philosophical problems arise from pathologies in language.
- Wittgenstein believed that philosophy arises from a subtle transition between ordinary use of language and linguistic misfiring.
- Questions that are really incoherent can seem to make sense.
Two of Wittgenstein’s most popular ideas are:
Form of Life: Like a set of basic practices, behaviors, and values.
Actions & decisions can make sense within a form of life, but a form of life itself can’t be externally justified.
Language game: Like a pattern of linguistic habits that contribute to a form of life and make sense within it.
Wittgenstein opposed a picture of language in which words and sentences are attached to their own particular meanings that determine how language is used.
Instead he claimed we should think of the socially maintained patterns of language we use as all there is to the meaning of language.
So in Boyle’s case, his treatment of a key term like ‘vacuum’ established a new language game that was a key component in the new form of life known as experimental science.
The LP’s thought that the right theory of meaning would show that all meaningful language ever does is describe patterns in experience.
The idea of a Language Game sets ups a new way of using language, which is closer to Bridgman’s operationalism which urges that scientists reform their use of language to ensure that each term has a direct connection to empirical testing.
Shapin and Schaffer claim that Boyle et. a were involved in the manufacture of facts: Doesn’t indicate deception. Instead means that facts are made rather than found.
- Alludes to Kuhn’s claim that ‘the world changes’ during a scientific revolution.
- Rejects picture of scientists as a passive receiver of information from the world.
“It is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know.
Shapin & Schaffer
The above is an example of a false dichotomy because neither we alone nor reality alone is ‘responsible’ for human knowledge – both are because knowledge is an interaction between both, and even that interpretation is slightly wrong because human knowledge is part of reality.
In order to understand human knowledge, we need a theory of human thought, language, and social interaction, and a theory of how these human capacities are connected to the world outside of us.
-> This piece was Latour’s description of the work that the molecular biology lab at the Salk Institute ultimately won a Noble Prize for by discovering the chemical structure of a hormone involved in the regulation of human growth.
The authors ignored most of what a ‘normal’ description of a piece of science would focus on, for example:
- the state of our knowledge of hormones
- the ways in which experimental methods in the field are able to discriminate alternative chemical structures
- how the new discovery fit into the rest of biology
The lab was regarded in a superficial, self-contained way – like a machine where raw materials came in one end, went through processing, and finished products (journal articles and technical reports) came out the other side.
- The processing in this equation involves taking scientific claims and building structures of support around them so they can eventually be taken as facts.
- Human work must be hidden so it looks like the results were directly given by nature.
Latour inspired a style of sociology of science described as elusive, self-conscious, and literary.
Latour’s approach borrowed from France philosophy, sociology, and semiotics:
Actor-Network Theory: what the sociologist does is study the fine structure of the internal dynamics of scientific work, especially dispute and negotiation about what’s been established. In this case the sociologist doesn’t begin by taking pressures or interests in society at large for granted, nor is the real world.
Society and nature are seen as products, not causes, of the settlement of scientific controversies.
Traditional empiricist philosophy sees science as data-driven
Strong program saw science as interest-driven
Latour sees science itself as the driver.
Facts (scientific work) are created/constructed when ‘one side wins’ because they become immune to challenge.
Latour got us to look at the dynamics of controversy –
- What social role is played by appeals to ‘truth’, ‘nature’, and ‘the facts’?
- How do people use these terms before, during, and after the settlement of disputes?
- One understanding we might have of concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘nature’ is an understanding of how they’re used as resources in arguments and discussion.
- An investigation of this kind could tell us a lot about how people decide what they take to be real.
-> David Bloor urges a return to the strong program in a way that avoids talk about metaphysics.
In this time period, sociology of science viewed science as being controlled entirely by human collective choices and social interests, which make science run.
- negotiation
- conflict resolution
- hierarchies
- power inequalities
Ultimately, the sociologists of science believed that wha t makes things happen in science is the interaction of social forces because self-made observations can’t guide belief or theory change due to the game of ‘telephone’.