Theories of Science and Research
3. Science and
Industrialization
Andrew Jamison
What was/is Industrialization?

An economic and technical revolution
 the growth of modern industry, or mechanization

A process of social change
 the coming of industrial society and its institutions

Cultural, or human transformations
 from rural communities to an industrial way of life
Cycles of Creative Reconstruction
”Long Waves” of Industrialization
mechanization
socialization modernization
textile machines telegraph
factories
railroads
1800
electrification
Industrial R&D
1850
enlightenment romanticism
cooperation
1900
socialism
populism
scientification
atomic energy
”big science”
globalization
IT, biotech
technoscience
2000
1950
modernism
anticolonialism
environmentalism
feminism
Cultural and Social Movements
The First Cycle

”the industrial revolution” (ca 1780-1830)

iron, textile machines, and steam engines

technologies of mechanization

the factory as an organizational innovation

social and cultural movements:
• ”machine-storming” and romanticism
• cooperation and polytechnics
The Iron Bridge
James
Watt
The Spinning Jenny
Industrialization as hubris
Manchester in the 1830s
The Luddites
”Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least
by my example, how dangerous is the
acquirement of knowledge, and how much
happier that man is who believed his native
town to be the world, than he who aspires to
become greater than his nature will allow...”
Mary Shelley:
Challenging the hubris
The Hybrid Imagination:
Hans Christian Ørsted (1777-1851)
• mixed Naturphilosophie with experimentation
• to look for the ”spirit in nature”...
• discovered electromagnetism (1820)
• and founded DTU in 1829
The Hybrid Imagination:
Samuel Morse (1791-1872)
• the
scientist-artist who invented the telegraph (1832)
• made a machine that could communicate
• devised a new technical language, Morse code (1838)
”Learning for life”
A Hybrid Imagination:
NFS Grundtvig (1783-1872)
and the folk high schools
”The theories of the natural scientists do not, of course
appeal to me when they try to make history unnecessary, but
there is no one more willing to sing the praises of their praxis
than me.”
Af udkast til tale om historiens forhold til livet, 1839
The Hybrid Imagination:
Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)
• a ”romantic” scientist, author of Walden
• one of the founders of environmentalism
• also wrote On the Duty of Civil Disobedience (1849)
From Walden
”I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately, to front only the essential facts of
life, and see if I could not learn what it had to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived...”
Thoreau’s theory of science
”The true man of science will know nature
better by his finer organization; he will smell,
taste, see, hear, feel better than other men. His
will be a deeper and finer experience. We do
not learn by inference and deduction, and the
application of mathematics to philosophy, but
by direct intercourse and sympathy...”
The Second Cycle

”the age of capital” (ca 1830-1880)

railroads, telegraph, and steel

technologies of socialization

the rise of the corporation (Carnegie, Krupp)

social and cultural movements:
• socialism and populism
• science fiction and arts and crafts
”The machine in the garden”
George Inness, 1851
George Inness, 1851
The industrial society
Claude Monet
A hybrid imagination:
Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Philosophy (Hegel) meets economics (Ricardo)

Positivism (Comte) meets socialism (Owen)

Idealism (Kant) meets materialism (Bentham)

Theory of science meets the industrial society
A theory of industrial science
”Modern industry never views or treats the existing form of
a production process as the definitive one. Its technical
basis is therefore revolutionary, whereas all earlier
modes of production were essentially conservative. By
means of machinery, chemical processes and other
methods, it is continually transforming not only the
technical basis of production but also the functions of
the worker and the social combinations of the labour
process.”
From Das Kapital, 1867
”Darwin has directed attention to the history of
natural technology, i.e. the formation of the organs
of plants and animals, which serve as the
instruments of production for sustaining their life.
Does not the history of the productive organs of
man in society, of organs that are the matrial basis
of every particular organization of sciety, deserve
equal attention?... ”
Science as technology
”...Technology reveals the active relation of
man to nature, the direct process of the
production of his life, and thereby it also
lays bare the process of the production of
the social relations of his life, and of the
mental conceptions that flow from those
relations.”
A Hybrid Imagination: William Morris (1834-1896)

A romantic poet turned designer

Combined artistry and business

Mixed tradition and innovation

A utopian who was also practical
From ”Useful Work
versus Useless Toil”:
”Our epoch has invented machines which would have
appeared wild dreams to the men of past ages, and of
those machines we have as yet made no use. They are
called ”labor-saving” machines – a commonly used
phrase which implies what we expect of them; but we do
not get what we expect. What they really do is to reduce
the skilled labourer to the ranks of the unskilled.”
A major influence on…

Arts and crafts movements, garden cities

Interior and industrial design

Architecture: Wright, Gehry, Utzon

Art Nouveau and functionalism

Socialist politics and fantasy literature

The ”education of desire”
A Hybrid Imagination:
Poul La Cour (1846-1908)
- a ”populist” scientist-engineer
- taught physics at Askov folk high school
- wrote Historisk Mathematik and Historisk Fysik
- built laboratory for wind energy experimentation
- founded Danish Wind Electricity Society in 1903
The Poul La Cour Museum, Askov
Industrialization and science

New technological, and science-based universities

New fields of social and human sciences

Professional science and engineering societies

Research laboratories in education and industry

”science as a vocation” (Max Weber)
Justus Liebig and his laboratory
at the University in Giessen, 1840s
The Carlsberg Laboratory in Valby, founded 1872,
one of the first industrial research laboratories in the world
Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)
and his ”electrical speech machine”
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
The laboratory at Menlo Park
Edison’s
”Kinetoscope”
I am experimenting upon
an instrument which does
for the eye what the
phonograph does for the
ear, which is the recording
and reproduction of things
in motion ...."
--Thomas A. Edison, 1888
Theories of Science and Research
4. Science and
Modernization
Andrew Jamison
The Third Cycle

”the age of empire” (ca 1880-1930)

Electricity, automobiles, and airplanes

Technologies of modernization

Research becomes incorporated (GM, GE, AT&T, etc)

Social and cultural movements:
• modernism and anticolonialism
• cultural and human sciences
An Age of Hubris
Henry Ford with his 10 millionth car
”Natural science gives us an answer to the
question of what we must do if we wish to
master life technically. It leaves quite aside,
or assumes for its purposes, whether we
should and do wish to master life
technically and whether it ultimately makes
sense to do so.”
Max Weber, Science as a Vocation, 1918
”The whole industrial world – and
instrumentalism is only its highest
conscious expression - has taken
values for granted...An instrumental
philosophy which was oriented
toward a whole life would begin...by a
criticism of this one-sided
idealization of practical contrivance.”
Lewis Mumford, 1926
National Styles of Science

empiricism and economics in UK


positivism and sociology in France


Condorcet and Comte to Durkheim and Bergson
historicism and humanities in Germany


Smith and Ricardo to Mill and Russell
Kant and Hegel to Weber and Dilthey
pragmatism and planning/management in US

Franklin and Emerson to Dewey and Taylor
Theoretical Tensions
In terms of the logic of explanation
induction versus deduction, facts versus concepts
In terms of the logic of discovery
experiments versus mathematics, data versus models
In terms of the logic of justification, or verification
empiricism versus rationalism, practice versus theory
Competing Traditions

empiricism –
largely a British, and then American ”style”
 closely connected to the economy
 observations and data are central


rationalism –
largely a French ”style”
 closely connected to the state and religion
 beliefs and concepts are central

A Synthetic, or Hybrid
Tradition

largely a German-dominated ”style”

Combining empiricism and rationalism

Emphasis on systems, wholes

Often connected to social, or political change

Characterized by hybrid identities
A Hybrid Imagination:
Albert Einstein (1878-1955)
”Imagination is more important than knowledge”
Principles of Empiricism

An emphasis on observation and data collection

Observations provide basis for generalizations

A preference for quantitative methods

Science a search for law-like regularities, for facts

and for theories that can be tested empirically
The Empirical Tradition

17th century: Francis Bacon, John Locke

18th century: Hume’s skepticism

19th century: Bentham, Mill & utilitarianism

20th century: Russell, Dewey & pragmatism
Principles of Rationalism

An emphasis on concepts and rational thought

Concepts the basis for exemplification

A preference for qualitative methods

Science a search for logical truths, for insights

and for theories that can be applied to reality
The Rational Tradition

17th century: Descartes & the analytical method

18th century: Diderot, Condorcet & enlightenment

19th century: Comte & positivism

20th century: Merleau-Ponty & phenomenology
Principles of Synthesis

Truth a matter of combining opposites

A ”dialectical” view of nature, or reality

A preference for systematizing methods

Science a search for a unified theory

and for a deeper, more ”holistic” understanding
The Synthetic Tradition

17th century: Leibniz’s logic, Spinoza’s ethics

18th century: Goethe’s holism, Kant’s idealism

19th century: Marx, Weber and human sciences

20th century: Carnap, Popper, and systems theory
A Hybrid Imagination:
Albert Einstein (1878-1955)
”Imagination is more important than knowledge”
Logical Empiricism

about verification, the justification of truth claims

focus on coherence of scientific statements

theories seen to provide causal explanations

stress the importance of ”thought experiments”

science is a matter of logical rules, or ”language
games” (Wittgenstein)
Popper’s Falsificationism

an individual model of science as a”logic of discovery”

negativism, rather than positivism

theories are conjectures, hypotheses

experiments seen as attempts to refute theories

truth is a goal rather than a result

science is a continuous, cumulative process
Thomas Kuhn’s Revolution

a collective, ”big science” model of science

research guided by paradigms, or disciplinary matrices

”normal” science as a form of puzzle-solving

disrupted by periodic revolutions: paradigm conflicts

science is a discontinuous process
Kuhn’s Model
an exemplary
explanation, or theory
anomalies that
lead to revolution
pre-paradigm
stage
paradigmatic,
or normal
science
different ideas
coexist
disciplinary
formation
new paradigm
disciplinary
restructuring
The Popper-Kuhn Debate

Methodologically: how science works


Ontologically: what science is


A debate between a normative, or philosophical,
and a descriptive, or historical approach
A debate about whether science is about reality
or about perceptions of reality
Epistemologically: how science grows

A debate about how scientific knowledge
Recent Developments

the concept of research programs (Lakatos)

finalization and post-normal science

methodological pluralism: ”anything goes” (Feyerabend)

constructivism and situated knowledge (Latour, Haraway)

transdisciplinarity and mode 2 (Gibbons et al)

social epistemology, social theories of science
The Idea of a Research
Program
A ”hard core”
The research
field
The research
front
The Finalization Thesis
anomalies that
lead to revolution
external interests
that need science
pre-paradigm
stage
paradigmatic,
or normal
science
different ideas
coexist
disciplinary
science
finalized, or
post-normal
science
transdisciplinary
science
Principles of
Constructivism

Science a kind of ”situated knowledge”

Importance of tacit knowledge and intuition

Scientists ”construct” facts and theories

Science a search for ”socially robust” knowledge

A relative, or relativist notion of truth