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Science, Technology & Human Values
DOI: 10.1177/016224399902400303
1999; 24; 373 Science Technology Human Values
Michel Callon
1998 J. D. Bernal Prize Citation
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Science, Technology, & Human Values Callon / Citation
1998 J. D. BERNAL PRIZE
1998 J. D. Bernal Prize Citation
Michel CallonPresident
Society for the Social Studies of Science
A society like ours must have the constant preoccupation of asserting its
existence and its unity in relation to the outside (so that our work may be visi-
ble and, I hope, useful) and in relation to itself. Our field is a pluridisciplinary
one and must remain so because that is its richness. But pluridisciplinarity
can lead to fragmentation. To avert this ever-present danger, conferences
likes these are valuable. And so are the prizes because they afford an opportu-
nityfor us toassert our existence throughthe public recognitionof one of us.
Prizes also have the huge advantage of allowing people to meet when their
paths might otherwise never have crossed.
This is, indeed, the first time Ive had the pleasure of meeting Barry Barnes
himself. Many rumors led me to believe that he really did exist. For once the
rumors were true. Although Ive never met Barry before, I feel as though Ive
known him for a long time. One of the first articles I read in the field of sci-
ence studies was the one he published in 1971 and one that hes probably long
since forgotten: Making Out in Industrial Research. After that, I was a
faithful reader of his books and articles. Scientific Knowledge and Sociologi-
cal Theory (1974) had a great impact on me. And with hindsight I can safely
say that it is unquestionably one of the founding events and landmarks of the
new sociology of scientific knowledge, born in Edinburgh in the late 1960s
and early 1970s.
The other reason why I feel as though I already knowBarry is because we
have a mutual friend, John Law, and thanks to himI was able to outline Barrys
career path.
From Blackpool in the north of England, Barry went to Cambridge in
about 1960 to read chemistry. He then did an M.A. in chemistry at Leicester.
In about 1966, he went to Essex University to do an M.A. in sociology. (Why?
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Science, Technology, & Human Values, Vol. 24 No. 3, Summer 1999 373-375
1999 Sage Publications Inc.
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I honestly dont know, but if anyone asked me why I turned to sociology after
reading physics and mathematics, I would be incapable of answering.) Barry
then moved to Edinburgh in 1967 to take up a post in the newly formed Sci-
ence Studies Unit, where David Edge was director. That was where, together
with David Bloor and Steve Shapin, he formed that formidable teamof intel-
lects who worked alongside one another with extraordinarily productive
consequences.
The years after 1967 were years of sheer intellectual brilliance. It was then
possible to talk of the Edinburgh School. Barry and David had been reading
Kuhn, and both saw the potential for reading him sociologically, treating the
paradigm or the disciplinary matrix as a set of normsnot of a regulative
Mertonian kind, but as a set of cultural resources to allow rule following by
articulation. The two of them shared a large room in the Georgian flat that
housed the Science Studies Unit. They started to read Mary Douglas, and got
involved in the grid-group stuff. I can easily imagine their jubilation when they
picked up the complementarity between the two authorscomplementarity
that enabled them to establish a link between the sociology of science and
social theory.
The argument is that there are different approaches to anomaly. This can
be an abomination (high grid, high group), but not necessarily (lowgrid, low
group). This, then, was part of a broadening out from Kuhnian sociology of
science to an inquiry into how the wider society might shape knowledge.
The other prong of that expansion was the development of the interest theory
of knowledge; the idea that social interest groups might shape knowledge, all
of which was, therefore, both social and natural in inspiration.
A characteristic of Barrys was and is a general interest in social theory,
treating the sociology of science as a branch or a version of the sociology of
knowledge. A general interest in social relations, power, and social structure
is what has always driven him. (His recent work has been a systematic and
rigorous attempt to understand social ordering as the expression of the inter-
action of knowledge-carrying, competent, innovative, and interpretive
beings, linking up with issues like the free-rider problem. Note that his
work is theoretical, but is almost always inspired by empirical reading as
well.) In 1992, he went fromEdinburgh to the Sociology Department at Exe-
ter University.
When reading his recent book Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological
Analysis (1996) (coauthored with David Bloor and John Henry), I was struck
by the force, coherence, and continuity of his project born thirty years ago.
We knowthe key part that Barry gives to the notion of goal-oriented action in
his theoretical analyses. This notion applies perfectly to his work: it is goal ori-
ented. Against trends and criticism, he has remained loyal to his initial project,
374 Science, Technology, & Human Values
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which was to make scientific knowledge empirically analyzable through sociol-
ogy. And he avoided all easy concessions, rejecting both relativismwhether
Sokal liked it or notand simplistic realism. He got there by recognizing the
importance of both the experimental and the theoretical components of
research activity, by highlighting their entanglement, and by emphasizing
their relative autonomy.
In my view, the relevance and force of Barrys approach in our field is best
characterized by the fact that he put the question of induction at the center of
his problematique. It is a question that is both empirical and theoretical, both
sociological and scientific, and he has dealt with it in an extremely original
way by introducing the notion of finitism of knowledge. This third path,
between relativism and realism, is clearly expressed by Barry in Scientific
Knowledge (1996): For us states of affairs in the physical environment have
got to be taken into account in order to understand induction as a social
process (p. 76). I am, of course, profoundly in agreement with this state-
ment, even if I still think that the definition of the social would need to be
amended slightly to make this project realizable.
Tohis qualities as a researcher andlecturer, Barryhas addedothers that are
no less remarkable. My, our, friend John Lawassures me that Barry (like David
Bloor) has anold-fashioned andprinciplednotionof the nature of the univer-
sity as a place which should be partially disconnected from the social control
concerns of politicians. He is allergic, both intellectually and viscerally, I
think, to the culture of audit that has spread through the body politic of the
British academy. To fight for a degree of autonomy so as to open up to new
relations and new problemsthat is a challenge for coming years, which
assumes that the facile and tempting concessions of Gibbonss famous Model
2 are avoided. To conclude, the most appropriate words are Johns: Barry is a
man of great intellectual rigor, who is also quiet and undemonstrative and
relatively reserved and private, though with an excellent sense of humor.
That is why it is a great pleasure for me to announce that the Society for
Social Studies of Science has awarded the J. D. Bernal Prize to Professor
Barry Barnes for his outstanding achievements in the study of science.
References
Barnes, B. 1971. Making out in industrial research. Science Studies 1:157-75.
. 1974. Scientific knowledge and sociological theory. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Barnes, B., D. Bloor, and J. Henry. 1996. Scientific knowledge: A sociological analysis. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press.
Callon / Citation 375
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