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Collins Programa Empírico Do Relativismo
Collins Programa Empírico Do Relativismo
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INTRODUCTION
Stages
in the
Empirical Programme
of Relativism
H. M. Collins
Modern philosophy of science has allowed an extra dimension into descriptions of the nature of scientific knowledge.
Theories are now seen as linked to each other, and tQ observations,
not by fixed bonds of logic and correspondence, but by a network,
each link of which takes time to be established as consensus
emerges and each link of which is potentially revisable
given
time. Many contributors to this new model intend only to make
philosophy of science compatible with history while maintaining an
epistemological demarcation between science and other intellectual
enterprises. One school, however, inspired in particular by Wittgenstein and more lately by the phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists, embraces an explicit relativism in which the
natural world has a small or non-existent role in the construction of
scientific knowledge.2Relativist or not, the new philosophy leaves
room for historical and sociological analysis of the processes which
lead to the acceptance, or otherwise, of new scientific knowledge.
One set of such analyses is gathered in this issue of Social Studies of
Science.
The studies reported here emerge out of the relativist approach,
the approach which has given rise to some of the most vigorous
social analyses. Studies of modern science in this genre have been
reported since at least 1975 but the reports have been either un-
time
3-1
4
or, when published, scattered or diluted with programmatic material. This has led one commentator to miss the empirical
face of the relativist programme altogether! More important, it
has tended to make authors feel that every new report must defend
the relativist position anew. This collection, it is hoped, in addition
to its substantive contribution, will reveal clearly the flourishing
empirical programme associated with relativism and thereby obviate the necessity for further defences and re-affirmations.4
The substantive contribution of the papers can be thought of as
threefold. First, they develop the empirical programme in its
sociological details. Second, they contribute to the understanding
of the relationship between scientific knowledge and broader social
a point which needs no expansion - each
processes. And finally
of the five papers is a study of an area of modern science: memory
transfer; the detection of gravitational radiation; the detection of
magnetic monopoles; the experimental study of quantum nonlocality ; and the detection of solar neutrinos. Four of the papers
discuss overt controversies, while one discusses a case (non-locality)
in which the latent controversy did not develop. The areas of
science looked at are nearer to the mainstream of respectable
research than to the margins of science. In each study the investigator has built on a good understanding of the technical details
of the science in question, and has used extended informal interviews with relevant scientists as part of the method. In most cases
the salience of alternative interpretations of evidence, which
typifies controversies, has acted as a lever to elicit the essentially
cultural nature of the local boundaries of scientific legitimacy
normally elusive or concealed.5 All the papers confirm the potential
local interpretative flexibility of science which prevents experimentation, by itself, from being decisive. In particular, the sociallynegotiated character of experimental replication is further
documented. This interpretative flexibility was the main message of
the first stage of the relativist empirical programme.6At the same
time the papers go on to begin what might be called the second
stage of the programme by describing mechanisms which limit interpretative flexibility and thus allow controversies to come to an
end.
Traviss paper is, in the main, a replication of earlier work on
replication! It refers, however, to a new area of science. In the case
of worm running experiments, up to seventy factors could be invoked to justify the failure of an intended test of a memory
published,
Collinss paper is
wave
6
toward studies of the establishment of theoretical consensus
often established, he claims, without controversy.
Harvey looks at experiments on non-locality
experimental
tests of quantum theory. In this case conflicting experimental
results did not lead to overt controversy since the minority result,
which was not in favour of quantum theory, was not supported by
the scientist who found it. Nevertheless, Harvey is able to show the
important non-scientific assumptions that had to be made for this
experiment to be dismissed. Harvey introduces the term plausibility to summarize the pre-existing cultural constraints which allow
scientists to make such assumptions with confidence. When pressed, Harveys scientist respondents themselves referred to the implausibility, or screwiness, of the assumptions and arguments that
would be needed to allow the minority result to stand. It was shared
agreements about what constitutes screwiness which allowed
closure of this debate.
In the last part of his paper Harvey shows the particular value of
the blanket term plausibility when he looks at the changes in
plausibility that have attended one assumption associated with the
non-locality experiments - the timing hypothesis. He suggests that
the plausibility of this hypothesis has increased because one experimenter has planned an experiment to test it. According to
Harvey, then, experimental activity need not produce data to
change the pre-existing plausibility of an idea; the activity itself is
sufficient. This suggestion seems to contrast in an interesting way
with Pickerings conclusions about the power of pre-existing
-
theory.
Pinchs paper, on the solar neutrino debate, looks at scientists
claims about the certainty of the findings of the various sub-fields
within the overall controversy. By showing the differences in opinion he reveals that each of the sub-fields can be seen as either open
or closed. In the main, Pinchs scientist respondents claimed
closure for their own fields and interpretative licence for those of
others. On the other hand, it appeared that when they felt that they
were not making a public statement they were prepared to admit to
the possibility of interpretative licence in their own fields too.
Perhaps Pinchs paper reveals the way in which ideas about certainty, or plausibility, or closure, are maintained outside the inner circle of scientists who are in direct contact with the data.
I have said that the papers collected here contribute to two stages
of the empirical programme of relativism
showing the inter-
NOTES
Steve Shapin originally suggested the idea of an edited volume of papers to be taken
from the proceedings of a Conference on New Perspectives in the History and
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, jointly sponsored by the British Society for the
History of Science and the British Sociological Association Sociology of Science
Study Group, at the University of Bath, UK, 27-29 March 1980 a conference of
which we were the joint organizers. Four of the papers in this issue are, in fact, based on work presented at that conference, but Shapin nobly withdrew from joint
editorship as it became clear that the final collection would consist of studies of
modern science only. Shapin has been an inspiration throughout. David Edge and
Roy MacLeod provided the opportunity of bringing these five studies together by inviting me to edit this issue of Social Studies of Science. David Edge also did most of
the routine editorial work and made extensive comments on the papers which have
proved to be of great value. Ron Westrum refereed the papers and provided notes
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8
which
are so helpful that it would be unfair for him to remain anonymous. Without
the help of Edge and Westrum this would be a much inferior issue. Nevertheless,
final responsibility for all editorial mistakes, omissions and infelicities rests with
myself. Finally, I would like to thank the authors for putting up with me and my,
sometimes substantial, suggestions for re-drafting.
9
ological input is H. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), but for the case of science this should be examined in conjunction with B. Barnes and J. Law, Whatever Should be Done with Indexical Expressions?, Theory and Society, Vol. 3 (1976), 223-37. M. J. Mulkays recent book,
Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Allen and Unwin, 1980) draws
together large areas of the debate in a very useful way. David Edges paper, Quantitative Measures of Communication in Science: A Critical Review, History of
Science, Vol. 17 (1979), 102-34, draws together criticisms of the major contemporary non-relativist approach to sociology of science.
3. J. Ben-David, Emergence of National Traditions in the Sociology of
Science, in J. Gaston (ed.), The Sociology of Science: Problems, Approaches and
Research (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 1978), 197-218.
4. Empirical studies within the relativist programme include the following:
H. M. Collins, The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or the
Replication of Experiments in Physics, Sociology, Vol. 9 (1975), 205-24; Collins,
Upon the Replication of Scientific Findings: A Discussion Illuminated by the Experiences of Researchers Into Parapsychology, Proceedings of the 4S/ISA Conference on Social Studies of Science, Cornell University, November 1976 (unpublished mimeo); Collins and T. J. Pinch, The Construction of the Paranormal:
Nothing Unscientific is Happening, in R. Wallis (ed.), On the Margins of Science:
The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge (Keele, Staffs.: Sociological Review
Monograph No. 27, 1979), 237-70; Collins and Pinch, Science and the Spoonbenders : Frames of Meaning and Extraordinary Science, final report (1978) on (UK)
SSRC-sponsored project on Cognitive Dislocation in Science (Bath: Bath Science
Studies Centre Manuscript, 1979), to be published by Routledge and Kegan Paul;
J. Dean, Controversy Over Classification: A Case Study from the History of
Botany, in B. Barnes and S. Shapin (eds), Natural Order: Historical Studies of
Scientific Culture (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), 211-30; B. Harvey, The Effects of Social Context on the Process of Scientific Investigation: Experimental
Tests of Quantum Mechanics, in K. D. Knorr, R. Krohn and R. D. Whitley (eds),
The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook,
Vol. 4 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), 139-63; D. MacKenzie, Statistical Theory and
Social Interests: A Case Study, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 8 (1978), 35-83;
A. R. Pickering, The Hunting of the Quark, Isis
, Vol. 72, No. 262 (June 1981), in
press; T. J. Pinch, Normal Explanations of the Paranormal: The Demarcation
Problem in Parapsychology, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 9 (1979), 329-48;
S. Shapin, The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy and Social Interests in
the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes, in Wallis (ed.), op. cit., 139-78; G. D. L.
Travis, On the Construction of Creativity: The Memory Transfer Phenomenon and
the Importance of Being Earnest, in Knorr et al. (eds), op. cit., 165-93; B. Wynne,
C. G. Barkla and the J Phenomenon: A Case Study in the Treatment of Deviance
in Physics, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 307-47. A number of other
studies by the same authors are still in draft form. An anthropological/
ethnomethodological approach may be found in B. Latour and S. Woolgar,
Laboratory Life (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), and S. Woolgar, Writing an Intellectual History of Scientific Development: The Use of Discovery Accounts,
Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 395-422. Ethnomethodological studies by
other authors will be forthcoming. M. J. Mulkay and G. N. Gilbert are currently
completing a large study of an area of biochemistry oxydative phosphorylation.
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10
Their work, which uses the same methods as most of the other studies, promises
much valuable new and comparative material. R. Westrum has produced studies of
the process by which information about anomolous events
sea-serpents,
is received and processed by the scientific establishment. His
meteorites, and the like
work is exactly compatible with the relativist programme — see R. Westrum, Social
Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of UFOs, Social Studies of Scrence, Vol. 7
(1977), 271-302; Science and Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of
Meteorites, ibid., Vol. 8 (1978), 461-93; and Knowledge about Sea-Serpents, in
Wallis (ed.), op. cit., 293-314.
5. M. J. Mulkays article, Norms and Ideology in Science, Social Science In, Vol. 15 (1976), 637-56, discusses the ideology of science. Mulkays arguformation
ment would explain why parochial cultural boundaries might be concealed behind a
universalistic face.
6. One might say that this part of the programme showed the Quine-DuhemLakatos position to be more than an abstract, or long-term account of science. It uncovered the equivalent of this philosophical and historical argument in the day-today activity of contemporary laboratory science.
7. Paul Formans long paper, Weimar Culture, Causality and Quantum
Theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a
Hostile Intellectual Environment, in R. McCormmach (ed.), Historical Studies in
the Physical Sciences, No. 3 (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1971), 1-115, is the best known article in this genre. Shapins paper, The Politics of
Observation..., op. cit. note 4, is the most complete attempt to link fairly highlevel political structures to the technical details of a scientific debate. He shows how
Edinburgh politics affected observation of the intricate formations of the human
brain. There are, of course, many compatible studies, at a more abstract level, in the
Marxist tradition.
8. For an argument reconciling social contingency with scientific method see
H. M. Collins, The Role of the Core-Set in Modern Science: Social Contingency
With Methodological Propriety in Discovery, History of Science
, Vol. 19 (March
1981), in press.
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