Philosophy of Science 134E
Instructor: Christian Lacroix
Nov.4, 2004
The Science Wars
Inspired by Kuhn, a movement emerged in the late 70s and 80s that attacked science’s claim to rationality and objectivity.
This was dubbed “the Science Wars”.
It claims that there is no real distinction between the context of discovery and the context of confirmation.

Why do you believe X?
What caused you to believe X?
E.g., I believe in God because when I was younger my parents told me that he exists.
What justifies you in believing X?
E.g., from the fact that my parents told me that God exists, it does not follow that God exists.  My parents also told me about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, yet, I do not believe in those.

There is no rational justification
Some sociologists of science (e.g., Latour & Woolgar) argues that to answer the first question is to answer the second question.
There is no more to justifying a belief than identifying its cause.
Rational considerations plays little or no role in determining what scientists believe.
It is all a matter of politics and peer pressure.

Latour & Woolgar
Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar
Respectively French and British sociologists of science
Social constructivists
Important part of the Science Wars
Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts (1979)

Social constructivism
If science is not rational, then it is no better than any other way to generate beliefs.
Yet, we often take what scientists tell us as ‘facts’.
Scientific facts are constructed, not discovered.
It is “as if a laboratory was a factory where facts were produced on an assembly line.”

Looking at scientists talking
Scientists are negotiating.  E.g., Wilson and Flower.
Some claims are strengthened, others are weakened;  some resources are gained or spent; reputations are made and lost.
These exchanges are not objective; all statements are subject to negotiation.
No indication of a form of reasoning any different than from non-scientific settings.

Some important concepts
1- Construction
2- Agonistic field
3- Reification
4- Credibility
5- Circumstances

1- Construction
Construction is the slow, practical creation of stories (arguments, accounts, etc.), subject to negotiation, that eventually lead to the establishment of a statement as a ‘fact’.
Undermines the distinction between facts and artefacts.
“reality is the consequence of the settlement of a dispute rather than its cause.” (Coursepack, p.80)

2- Agonistic field
Since facts are constructed, the scientists’ activity is directed toward this construction rather than toward an objective reality.
The agonistic field is the total sum of the scientists’ such activities.
Scientific arguments do not aim at truth, but at convincing other scientists.
This is not to imply that scientist are especially wicked or dishonest.

3- Reification
Reification, or materialization: once a statement stabilizes in the agonistic field, it is reified and becomes part of the tacit skills or material equipment of another laboratory.
Some statements which used to be debated, as well as some instruments or techniques whose utilisation used to be debated, are now taken for granted, even by other disciplines.

4- Credibility
Credibility: the various investments made by scientists and the conversions between different aspects of the laboratory.
Information is costly in various ways, so the negotiations of scientists involve a cost-benefit analysis of factors such as money, time, energy, influence on career, the kind of scientific paper written, the nature of the journals in which a paper is published, etc.

5- Circumstances
Scientific facts are entirely fabricated out of circumstances, not merely “influenced by”, “partly based on”, or “also caused by” circumstances.

From construction to reification
Once a statement is accepted (reified), it seems to the scientists involved as if no construction was involved, that they were not persuaded (agonistic field), and that material considerations and circumstances played little role, if any.

The authority of science
If scientific knowledge is constructed, then why is scientific knowledge more respected than other kinds?
“It’s a scientific fact! = true”; scientific advisors, technocracy, ads using scientists, etc.
It is only a matter of power.  Scientists have convinced us that they are the dispensers of the truths.

The authority of science
In the Western world, religion used to be the dispensers of truth, but it got overthrown by science.
Now, the West is using its influence to impose science in the rest of the world.
Social constructivists aim to undermine this undue power of the natural science.

Cole’s reply
Stephen Cole
American sociologist of science
The Flight from Science and Reason (1996)
Argues that the social constructivists did not proved that scientific knowledge is socially constructed.

If a sociologist wants to show that social variables influence the cognitive content of science, she must be careful in specifying exactly what about the cognitive content is being influenced.

There are three parts of science that can potentially be influenced by social variables:
1- The foci of attention
i.e., what problems scientists choose to study
2- Rate of advance
3- The content of science

1- The foci of attention
It is clear that problem choice is influenced at least to some significant extent by social factors.
E.g., search for SARS cure.

2- Rate of advance
It is also clear that the rate at which scientific advances are made is influenced at least to some significant extent by social factors.
Different nations put more or less emphasis on science.
The centers of scientific advance have changed over time.

3- The content of science
The third way to look at cognitive content is to look at the actual substance of solutions to specific scientific problems.
I.e., that social factors determine what the content of science is going to be.
E.g., which laws of nature and theoretical entities are accepted by the scientific community.
This is what is at issue here. The social constructivists argues that the content of science is dependent on social factors.
An example
Latour & Woolgar try to show how the discovery of TRF (thyrotropin releasing factor) was socially constructed.
That is, the scientific community came to believe that the chemical structure of TRF was made up of the sequence Pyro-Glu-His-Pro-NH2 rather than some other sequence.
If, as the social constructivists argue, science is not constrained by nature, then the chemical structure of TRF could have been different and neuro-endocrinology would have progressed to the same degree.
In other words, the progress of science depends only on the proper agreement of scientists, not on any fact about nature.

Cole’s reply 
There is not one single example in the entire constructivist literature that supports this view of science.
The constructivists illustrate well how social processes influence the doing of science; but they fail to show how they have had a significant effect on the resulting scientific content.
Example:
Latour & Woolgar present the social negotiation between Wilson and Flower, two biologists.
They show that scientists engage in social negotiations about their work in the same way as any other people negotiate about other aspects of their interaction.
But they fail to show how this social negotiation influenced any aspect of the scientific content.

The social constructivists cannot explain how sometimes a minor lab or scientist can make a ‘construction’ (discovery) that gain fast approval by the scientific community, even when the opposing camp include some major labs and scientists.

It makes more sense to think that scientific fact are not constructed, but discovered.
This explains that the results of science are not overly influenced by social factors.
It also explains how the reputation and political power of the scientists is less important that the nature of the discovery made.
This does not negate the influence of social factors on the foci of attention and the rate of advance.