Collection of short essays

22 September 2024 shrese Articles 0

Is the sociology of science ‘anti-science’?

Critics often complain that sociology of science is ‘anti-science’. An illustration of this is the Science wars (SW), an episode of the 1990s where natural scientists (referred to as science warriors or defenders – SDs) warned that the rise to hegemony of a certain type of social analyses of science was misguided, amounted to some form of undermining of science and/or was dangerous. To explore this, we can focus on one approach of the sociology of science (SOS) that was not only a target of the SDs but also an active participant in the SW: the Strong Program of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) (Bloor 1991).

The origin of SOS is sometimes attributed to the 1940s work of Merton, an American sociologist (Cetina 1991). Merton’s most famous contribution was to identify a set of norms that not only regulated scientists practices but also demarcated science from other social activities (Merton 1973). While this early version of SOS focused mainly on the institutions of science, a new SOS that explored the content of science itself emerged in the 1970s (Labinger and Collins 2001).

Originally formulated by a group of British scientists, referred to as the Edinburgh school, the SSK’s approach to scientific knowledge as an always/already material for sociological investigation can be situated in a 1970s general social mood that challenged science as an institution perceived as elitist, authoritarian and serving dominant interests (Pestre 2004). Specifically, SSK included four tenets, it should: look for causes, look for impartial explanation, be symmetrical and be reflexive (Bloor 1991).

The third tenet, that of symmetry, was particularly controversial during the SW (Labinger and Collins 2001) so we will focus mainly on this one. For Bloor, all beliefs, whether considered true or false, had to be symmetrically explained, i.e., calling upon similar contingent and local causation mechanisms (Bloor 1999). The tenet of symmetry lead to sociological accounts where various beliefs about nature were relativised, i.e., shown to belong to various social groups. The explanation of the variation of credibility of these beliefs (i.e., the superiority or inferiority of scientific theories) could not be achieved by looking for absolute evidence, but only after all beliefs had been socially and locally contextualised (Bloor 1999). This is why SSK’s symmetry is associated to forms of relativism.

SDs associated this relativism with, for example, social constructivism and postmodernism (Gross and Levitt 1998). On this basis, some of the most radical SDs accused SSK of being clearly anti-science (“I attack them [the Edinburgh school] at every opportunity, I hate them. They are the true enemies of science.” Lewis Wolpert in 1997 quoted by Shapin in (Labinger and Collins 2001, p.234). Others felt that undermining the authority of science, through relativism and the promotion of other non-scientific “ways of knowing”, was politically dangerous: “the doctrine [of postmodernism], at its most virulent, is hardly distinguishable from the moral blankness, the Viva la muerte!, upon which fascism was erected in the first half of this century” (Gross and Levitt 1998, pp.11, 73 original emphasis).

An example of a potentially more constructive SW’ debate between natural and social scientists was The One Culture (Labinger and Collins 2001). One core issue explored was whether SSK’s relativism was methodological or philosophical. Collins, a sociologist of science, argued for the former, saying that SSK’s relativism had to do with a methodology where the researcher “should act as though the beliefs about reality of any competing groups being investigated are not caused by the reality itself” (Labinger and Collins 2001, p.184). Collins added that methodological relativism was not necessarily related to a relativist philosophy which accepted that 1) reality itself would differ for different groups (ontological relativism) and 2) the qualities of the justifications of knowledge in different groups would all be of equal value and could not be externally judged (epistemological relativism).

One knot of the debate seemed to lie in the last part of Collin’s definition: “not caused by the reality itself”. It was around this bracketing of reality in the explanation of scientific knowledge that some of the SW raged, and whether this bracketing was total or partial.

Essentially, these SDs opened to a discussion with SSK’s members disagreed with a (radical) version of SSK that would not let at all the world enter in the causal explanation of beliefs (Sokal 1998). For Bricmont and Sokal, the total bracketing of reality promoted by this radical form of methodological relativism is irremediably associated to a kind of philosophical relativism that should not be accepted. Indeed, as they asked, what could “justify a philosophy that basically says that empirical studies never allow us to discover objective truths?” (Labinger and Collins 2001, p.249), assuming in a somehow circular way the actual existence of objective scientific knowledge. However, for these SDs, SSK was not actually anti-science. Their worries were that it was philosophically and methodologically misguided, preventing it from doing the work it should do, and that it undermined the factual basis of (left) political critique (Sokal 1998).

In turn, as told by Mermin, these same SDs would agree with a version of SSK that does not push social scientists “into thinking that putting together convincingly all the pieces of a scientific puzzle is a more flexible process than it actually is” (Labinger and Collins 2001, p.276) – meaning that not everything goes when it comes to build scientific knowledge, it is also at least partially constrained by real natural empirical facts (see also Sokal 1998).

In the meantime, SSK proponents defended themselves by saying that they have always included the real physical world in their practices (Bloor 1999). Collins and Pinch would go even further saying that SSK, because it debunked the ‘heroic’ version of science that they think actually provoked anti-science sentiment, was pro-science at its core (see note 4 Labinger and Collins 2001, p.185). Sociologists, by demonstrating “how infinitely complex the practice of science was” (Pestre 2004) and providing a more accurate picture of its functioning to the public, actually served science.

Therefore, is sociology of science anti-science? Taking the example of SSK, it seems to depend on who you ask. As often, in this kind of conflict, much is due to misunderstanding, miscommunication, assumptions and bad faith (see the contributions of Mermin in Labinger and Collins 2001). When it comes to exploring a statement such as ‘critics often complain that sociology of science is anti-science’, it is always worth pondering on the actual terms of the debate: what do people mean by ‘sociology of science’, by ‘anti-science’, and by ‘science’ itself?

References

  • Bloor, D. 1991. Knowledge and social imagery. 2. ed. Chicago, Ill.: Univ. of Chicago Press.
  • Bloor, D. 1999. Anti Latour. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 30(1), pp. 81–112.
  • Cetina, K.K. 1991. Merton’s Sociology of Science: The First and the Last Sociology of Science? Clark, J. et al. eds. Contemporary Sociology 20(4), pp. 522–526. doi: 10.2307/2071782.
  • Gross, P.R. and Levitt, N. 1998. Higher superstition: the academic left and its quarrels with science. Paperback ed. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.
  • Labinger, J.A. and Collins, H.M. eds. 2001. The one culture? a conversation about science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Merton, R.K. 1973. “Science and technology in a democratic order” 1942, reprinted as “The normative structure of science” in The sociology of science: theoretical and empirical investigations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Pestre, D. 2004. Thirty years of science studies: knowledge, society and the political. History and Technology 20(4), pp. 351–369. doi: 10.1080/0734151042000304330.
  • Sokal, A. 1998. What the Social Text affair does and does not prove. Critical Quarterly 40(2), pp. 3–18. doi: 10.1111/1467-8705.00151.