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The Social Dimensions of Science by Ernan McMullinReview by: Steven ShapinIsis, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 623-624Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/235725 .
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BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 84: 3 (1993) BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 84: 3 (1993)
sented by papers 4 and 5 in the current vol- ume, was a neo-Kuhnian sociology of science. It dealt with innovation, substituted cognitive and technical norms for Mertonian norms, and sometimes adopted a geographical meta- phor-scientists being explorers of unknown cognitive territories. The more important po- sitions are sociology of scientific knowledge (represented by papers 1, 6, 7, and 8) and discourse analysis (papers 2 and 9-11), while the fourth position was reflexivity, along with new literary forms (papers 3 and 12-14).
Position four has given rise to some witty writing, such as Malcolm Ashmore's book. I was present when Mulkay delivered his bril- liant and amusing Bernal acceptance speech; I am sorry it is not reproduced here. I fear, however, that there is nothing left to do with reflexivity and discourse analysis. Even the wit consists of in-jokes, and it has to be thus because position four is a turning of every- thing in on itself. Position four reveals what is wrong with the whole pilgrimage: the grace sought was inner peace through absolute cer- tainty-the restless heart is that of a disap- pointed logical empiricist. Each intervening position has been found unsatisfactory be- cause it was imperfect; someone could pick holes in what you said. The motto ought to be "I want to be alone with the truth."
This is a strange ambition for a sociologist; it fits better with romantic models of science or even philosophy. What is sought is what can no longer be doubted, even if the con- sequence is triviality. Consider position three: Discourse analysis arose because, noting that respondents supplied differing accounts of their activities, Mulkay and G. Nigel Gilbert came to distrust analysts' interpretations of inter- view data. Thinking that all our knowledge of society consisted of tape recordings and unable to see why bits of talk that could be read as inconsistent should be taken to illus- trate aspects of culture, the discourse analysts decided to concentrate on the talk alone, us- ing it as their new topic. This way, so it was claimed, they could avoid imposing their meanings on the world and would remain true to the data. The unnoticed implication was that the discourse analysts were taking verbal behavior as their topic. But it is as unusual to find regularity in verbal behavior as in any other kind of behavior. We might find reg- ularity in nursery rhymes or the chanting of the multiplication tables, but nowhere else is there one-to-one mapping between the verbal behavior and the meaning. If this were not so
sented by papers 4 and 5 in the current vol- ume, was a neo-Kuhnian sociology of science. It dealt with innovation, substituted cognitive and technical norms for Mertonian norms, and sometimes adopted a geographical meta- phor-scientists being explorers of unknown cognitive territories. The more important po- sitions are sociology of scientific knowledge (represented by papers 1, 6, 7, and 8) and discourse analysis (papers 2 and 9-11), while the fourth position was reflexivity, along with new literary forms (papers 3 and 12-14).
Position four has given rise to some witty writing, such as Malcolm Ashmore's book. I was present when Mulkay delivered his bril- liant and amusing Bernal acceptance speech; I am sorry it is not reproduced here. I fear, however, that there is nothing left to do with reflexivity and discourse analysis. Even the wit consists of in-jokes, and it has to be thus because position four is a turning of every- thing in on itself. Position four reveals what is wrong with the whole pilgrimage: the grace sought was inner peace through absolute cer- tainty-the restless heart is that of a disap- pointed logical empiricist. Each intervening position has been found unsatisfactory be- cause it was imperfect; someone could pick holes in what you said. The motto ought to be "I want to be alone with the truth."
This is a strange ambition for a sociologist; it fits better with romantic models of science or even philosophy. What is sought is what can no longer be doubted, even if the con- sequence is triviality. Consider position three: Discourse analysis arose because, noting that respondents supplied differing accounts of their activities, Mulkay and G. Nigel Gilbert came to distrust analysts' interpretations of inter- view data. Thinking that all our knowledge of society consisted of tape recordings and unable to see why bits of talk that could be read as inconsistent should be taken to illus- trate aspects of culture, the discourse analysts decided to concentrate on the talk alone, us- ing it as their new topic. This way, so it was claimed, they could avoid imposing their meanings on the world and would remain true to the data. The unnoticed implication was that the discourse analysts were taking verbal behavior as their topic. But it is as unusual to find regularity in verbal behavior as in any other kind of behavior. We might find reg- ularity in nursery rhymes or the chanting of the multiplication tables, but nowhere else is there one-to-one mapping between the verbal behavior and the meaning. If this were not so
there would be no need for participant ob- servation; sociologists and anthropologists could feel equally confident about studying peoples whose language and culture they could not understand as in studying familiar envi- ronments-all that there was to know would be found in the correlation of uncompre- hended sounds.
That, of course, is absurd-Mulkay and company were doing understanding work in interpreting the words they recorded because they told us not about the sounds the speakers uttered but about their "repertoires." While they were castigating others for fitting sen- tences into meaningful patterns of action, they were themselves fitting sounds into meaning- ful patterns of speech; the only difference was a small shift in the level of imputation. Thus they made no progress in remaining true to the data even while believing they were at bedrock, no progress as far as understanding talk is concerned (this was being done by the conversational analysts), and no progress in the analysis of science or social life because that requires understanding culture, not sen- tences. The enterprise would look sensible only if words had fixed meanings; uncoinciden- tally, this is the case where word-using en- tities are social isolates-computers are an example.
Position four carries the quest for social isolation one illusory step further. Each in- dividual author not only peers reflexively into himself or herself but, using multiple voices, represents everyone else too. Here we have a computer-like representation of the whole of scientific society. Sociologists have finally made real society redundant. Is this the grail? I doubt it.
Could it be that part of the attractiveness of new literary forms is that they evade-ac- tually disallow-- the terrifying craft work of scientific writing? According to the philoso- phy that drives the enterprise, it must be wrong to try to wrest a coherent story from the tan- gled stream of consciousness because all craft is artifice. Paralleling the British "Campaign for Real Ale," what we need is a "Campaign for Real Grail."
H. M. COLLINS
Ernan McMullin (Editor). The Social Di- mensions of Science. (Studies in Science and the Humanities from the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, 3.) xvii +
there would be no need for participant ob- servation; sociologists and anthropologists could feel equally confident about studying peoples whose language and culture they could not understand as in studying familiar envi- ronments-all that there was to know would be found in the correlation of uncompre- hended sounds.
That, of course, is absurd-Mulkay and company were doing understanding work in interpreting the words they recorded because they told us not about the sounds the speakers uttered but about their "repertoires." While they were castigating others for fitting sen- tences into meaningful patterns of action, they were themselves fitting sounds into meaning- ful patterns of speech; the only difference was a small shift in the level of imputation. Thus they made no progress in remaining true to the data even while believing they were at bedrock, no progress as far as understanding talk is concerned (this was being done by the conversational analysts), and no progress in the analysis of science or social life because that requires understanding culture, not sen- tences. The enterprise would look sensible only if words had fixed meanings; uncoinciden- tally, this is the case where word-using en- tities are social isolates-computers are an example.
Position four carries the quest for social isolation one illusory step further. Each in- dividual author not only peers reflexively into himself or herself but, using multiple voices, represents everyone else too. Here we have a computer-like representation of the whole of scientific society. Sociologists have finally made real society redundant. Is this the grail? I doubt it.
Could it be that part of the attractiveness of new literary forms is that they evade-ac- tually disallow-- the terrifying craft work of scientific writing? According to the philoso- phy that drives the enterprise, it must be wrong to try to wrest a coherent story from the tan- gled stream of consciousness because all craft is artifice. Paralleling the British "Campaign for Real Ale," what we need is a "Campaign for Real Grail."
H. M. COLLINS
Ernan McMullin (Editor). The Social Di- mensions of Science. (Studies in Science and the Humanities from the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values, 3.) xvii +
623 623
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BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 84: 3 (1993) BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 84: 3 (1993)
299 pp., figs., bibls., index. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. $37.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
The title promises an old-fashioned blandness that the text fails to deliver. Ten or fifteen years ago, historical essays on "The Social Dimensions of Science" would have ner- vously debated whether "social factors could influence scientific knowledge" while philos- ophers vigilantly patrolled the boundary be- tween "the rational and the social" and the few sociologists of scientific knowledge would be lucky to find their work knocked about in the footnotes.
All change now. Eran McMullin prom- isingly starts out by making himself one of the first philosophers of science fully to ap- preciate the final divorce between "the so- cial" and "the external" wrought by neo- Kuhnian sociology of science, offering a his- torical sketch of how the distinction between society and the life of the mind came about. Ian Hacking appropriates Alistair Crombie's "styles of reasoning" in his attempt to fuse metaphysics and Braudelian historical con- cerns with microsociological studies. Thomas Nickles gives a marvelously constructive and important neo-pragmatist critique of sociol- ogy of scientific knowledge: his "multi-pass" conception of science (whereby the practice of "good science" continually precipitates "bad history") ought to transform relations be- tween the sociology of scientific knowledge and historicist practice. Helen Longino takes on board large chunks of social constructiv- ism in her version of postmodernist feminist philosophy of science, and Philip Kitcher urges that even normatively concerned philoso- phers must confront the collective nature of scientific activity and the central role of au- thority in scientific judgment.
McMullin's book is a fine indicator of the current state of science studies achievements and debates. More than any other recent col- lection, it shows the extent to which philos- ophy of science has been brought back into play and the importance for philosophers of rejecting conceptions of "the solitary knower." Philosophy of science is changing fast. The cold war with the sociologists is very far from over, but visions of postwar collaboration are already being tentatively formulated. The re- vival of pragmatist philosophy of knowledge is well under way, and relativist sociology is increasingly recognized as a form of prag- matism. The most interesting philosophers of
299 pp., figs., bibls., index. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. $37.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).
The title promises an old-fashioned blandness that the text fails to deliver. Ten or fifteen years ago, historical essays on "The Social Dimensions of Science" would have ner- vously debated whether "social factors could influence scientific knowledge" while philos- ophers vigilantly patrolled the boundary be- tween "the rational and the social" and the few sociologists of scientific knowledge would be lucky to find their work knocked about in the footnotes.
All change now. Eran McMullin prom- isingly starts out by making himself one of the first philosophers of science fully to ap- preciate the final divorce between "the so- cial" and "the external" wrought by neo- Kuhnian sociology of science, offering a his- torical sketch of how the distinction between society and the life of the mind came about. Ian Hacking appropriates Alistair Crombie's "styles of reasoning" in his attempt to fuse metaphysics and Braudelian historical con- cerns with microsociological studies. Thomas Nickles gives a marvelously constructive and important neo-pragmatist critique of sociol- ogy of scientific knowledge: his "multi-pass" conception of science (whereby the practice of "good science" continually precipitates "bad history") ought to transform relations be- tween the sociology of scientific knowledge and historicist practice. Helen Longino takes on board large chunks of social constructiv- ism in her version of postmodernist feminist philosophy of science, and Philip Kitcher urges that even normatively concerned philoso- phers must confront the collective nature of scientific activity and the central role of au- thority in scientific judgment.
McMullin's book is a fine indicator of the current state of science studies achievements and debates. More than any other recent col- lection, it shows the extent to which philos- ophy of science has been brought back into play and the importance for philosophers of rejecting conceptions of "the solitary knower." Philosophy of science is changing fast. The cold war with the sociologists is very far from over, but visions of postwar collaboration are already being tentatively formulated. The re- vival of pragmatist philosophy of knowledge is well under way, and relativist sociology is increasingly recognized as a form of prag- matism. The most interesting philosophers of
science are preparing-on their own terms, to be sure-to embrace the collective char- acter of knowledge.
At one end of this book McMullin skep- tically notes Steve Woolgar's recommenda- tion that the very category of "the social" ought to be made redundant, while at the other Bruno Latour promises to "bury" social studies of science. Having explained nature in terms of society, the truly radical next thing is said to consist of putting "the social" permanently in quotation marks and making up a special new language to explain nature and society in the same terms (pp. 272, 274, 279).
Apostasy is loose in the land. "Radical" philosophers endorse the social and see a bright future in social epistemologies. "Radical" so- ciologists rush to purge their work of explan- atory references to the social and conclude that social studies of science have reached a "dead end" (p. 273). One train approaches the station as another pulls out. Is it possible that the successor subject to what used to be called the social studies of science may one day be the philosophy of science?
STEVEN SHAPIN
* Reference Tools
Gordon L. Miller. The History of Science: An Annotated Bibliography. (Magill Bibli- ographies.) xiv + 193 pp., index. Pasadena, Calif./Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1992. $40.
This annotated bibliography, which contains approximately 550 references to literature through 1991, is actually two works: a guide to reference sources (e.g., bibliographies, dictionaries), and a bibliography of the sec- ondary literature in the history of science and medicine (excluding technology).
Reference works require much effort to compile, and the effort has not been wasted here. The annotations are clear, succinct, and helpful; the book's organization is straight- forward, sensible, and supplemented by cross- references; the section on audiovisual mate- rials is a pleasant surprise; the social sciences are well represented; and the section on spe- cial topics is a nice addition. As befits a ref- erence work, the book is well bound and printed on acid-free paper. The name index provides additional access.
science are preparing-on their own terms, to be sure-to embrace the collective char- acter of knowledge.
At one end of this book McMullin skep- tically notes Steve Woolgar's recommenda- tion that the very category of "the social" ought to be made redundant, while at the other Bruno Latour promises to "bury" social studies of science. Having explained nature in terms of society, the truly radical next thing is said to consist of putting "the social" permanently in quotation marks and making up a special new language to explain nature and society in the same terms (pp. 272, 274, 279).
Apostasy is loose in the land. "Radical" philosophers endorse the social and see a bright future in social epistemologies. "Radical" so- ciologists rush to purge their work of explan- atory references to the social and conclude that social studies of science have reached a "dead end" (p. 273). One train approaches the station as another pulls out. Is it possible that the successor subject to what used to be called the social studies of science may one day be the philosophy of science?
STEVEN SHAPIN
* Reference Tools
Gordon L. Miller. The History of Science: An Annotated Bibliography. (Magill Bibli- ographies.) xiv + 193 pp., index. Pasadena, Calif./Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Salem Press, 1992. $40.
This annotated bibliography, which contains approximately 550 references to literature through 1991, is actually two works: a guide to reference sources (e.g., bibliographies, dictionaries), and a bibliography of the sec- ondary literature in the history of science and medicine (excluding technology).
Reference works require much effort to compile, and the effort has not been wasted here. The annotations are clear, succinct, and helpful; the book's organization is straight- forward, sensible, and supplemented by cross- references; the section on audiovisual mate- rials is a pleasant surprise; the social sciences are well represented; and the section on spe- cial topics is a nice addition. As befits a ref- erence work, the book is well bound and printed on acid-free paper. The name index provides additional access.
624 624
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