Tieteenhistorian ja –
historiografian filosofia
LUENTOKURSSI
OULUN YLIOPISTO
27.10.2014-11.12.2014
JOUNI-MATTI KUUKKANEN
Structure
1.
Anthropological studies of science
•
•
2.
Network theory
•
•
3.
Radical empiricism
Construction of facts
Extension of symmetry principle
Rules and methods
Observations on Latour
1.Anthropological studies of
science
RADICAL EMPIRICISM
Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar: Laboratory Life. (1979)
• Study of science and laboratories like an anthropologist
• Pretend ignorance
•Describe the ‘social practice’ of science as it is; ‘just describe’
how it happened
•Follow, document, report empirical details of historical practice
•In the ideal researcher historical and sociological perspectives coincide:
◦ Historian as a temporally conditioned sociologist or anthropologist
◦ Sociologists as on-the-spot observer of the ‘science in the making’
•Critique of SSK: asymmetry bw. ‘society’ and ‘nature’: “There is no
Nature ‘out there’ to account for the success of Boyle’s programme is
obvious to them; but they seem to believe that there is a society ‘out
there’ to account for the failure of Hobbes’s programme” (Callon and
Latour, “Unscrewing the Big Leviathan”).
•“Social scientists should strop trying to determine the nature of the
social structure that they believe generates … conflicts, and instead
treat the latter as data. In other words, society should not be seen as
the referent of an ostensive definition, but rather seen as being
performed through the various efforts to define it” (Law in
“Power/Knowledge and the Dissolution of the Sociology of Knowledge”)
•”From the moment one accepts that both social and natural science are
equally uncertain, ambiguous and disputable, it is no longer possible to
have them playing different role in the analysis. Since society is no more
obvious or less controversial than nature, sociological explanation can
find no solid foundation” (Callon in ”Some elements of a Sociology of
Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St.
Brieuc Bay”)
The central feature of anthropological studies of science
Radical empiricism: let’s just follow scientists around and see what
emerges
CONSTRUCTION OF FACTS
Facts are born and can loose they factivity
The central element in the process is decrease of modality and
qualifications of statements
Note: the change of title Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific
Facts
◦ i.e. ’sociality’ not central, construction is
A research of TRF in 1976 created a new object, which was “not the TRF
of 1963, 1966, 1969, or 1975” (Latour and Woolgar 1979, 125–126)
2. Actor-network theory
EXTENSION OF SYMMETRY PRINCIPLE
•No pre-empirical category of ‘nature,’ nor ‘society’
•Latour critical of Bloor not extending the principle further:
“Bloor designated Durkheimian social structures to occupy the Sun’s
focus and gave the name ‘symmetry’ to the principle that required us to
explain successes and failures in the development of science with the
same sociological terms. This was, to be sure, a major advance, since
until then only good science was explained by appealing to Nature and
only bad science by appealing to Society. However the very success of
this principle of symmetry disguised the complete asymmetry of Bloor’s
argument. Society was supposed to explain Nature! We start from one of
the poles to account for the other…
… Bloor has not realized that his principle cannot be implemented if
another much more radical symmetry is not introduced, a symmetry
that treats this time the subject/society pole in the same way as the
object pole (Callon, 1985). This 90° shift is what I call “one more turn
after the social turn” (Figure 2). (Latour: “One more Turn after the
Social Turn).
•What is more general after all? Philosophy or sociology?
•Cf. theory of everything again
•In Science in action: How to Follow scientists and Engineers through
Society, Latour develops a network theory:
• science is scientists and their ‘allies in nature’ extending their networks as
widely as possible
• Human vs. non-human actants
•Introduces many new concepts, such as ‘actant’ (any actor in networks),
‘immutable mobile’ (that which stays invariant in networks,’ etc.).
When things
are true they
hold
n things hold they
start becoming
true
RULES OF METHOD – Science in Action, 258):
Rule 1 We study science in action and not ready made science or
technology; to do so, we either arrive before the facts and machines are
blackboxed or we follow the controversies that reopen them.
(Introduction)
Rule 2 To determine the objectivity or subjectivity of a claim, the
efficiency or perfection of a mechanism, we do not look for their
intrinsic qualities but at all the transformations they undergo later in
the hands of others. (Chapter 1)
Rule 3 Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Nature's
representation, not its consequence, we can never use this
consequence, Nature, to explain how and why a controversy has been
settled. (Chapter 2)
Rule 4 Since the settlement of a controversy is the cause of Society's stability, we
cannot use Society to explain how and why a controversy has been settled. We
should consider symmetrically the efforts to enrol human and non-human resources.
(Chapter 3)
Rule 5 We have to be as undecided as the various actors we follow as to what
technoscience is made of; every time an inside/outside divide is built, we should
study the two sides simultaneously and make the list, no matter how long and
heterogeneous, of those who do the work. (Chapter 4)
Rule 6 Confronted with the accusation of irrationality, we look neither at what rule of
logic has been broken, nor at what structure of society could explain the distortion,
but to the angle and direction of the observer's displacement, and to the length of
the network thus being built. (Chapter 5)
Rule 7 Before attributing any special quality to the mind or to the method of people,
let us examine first the many ways through which inscriptions are gathered,
combined, tied together and sent back. Only if there is something unexplained once
the networks have been studied shall we start to speak of cognitive factors. (Chapter
6)
PRINCIPLES – Science in Action, 259):
First principle The fate of facts and machines is in later users' hands;
their qualities are thus a consequence, not a cause, of a collective
action. (Chapter 1)
Second principle Scientists and engineers speak in the name of new
allies that they have shaped and enrolled; representatives among other
representatives, they add these unexpected resources to tip the
balance of force in their favour. (Chapter 2)
Third principle We are never confronted with science, technology and
society, but with a gamut of weaker and stronger associations; thus
understanding what facts and machines are is the same task as
understanding who the people are. (Chapter 3)
Fourth principle The more science and technology have an esoteric
content the further they extend outside; thus, `science and technology'
is only a subset of technoscience. (Chapter 4)
Fifth principle Irrationality is always an accusation made by someone
building a network over someone else who stands in the way; thus,
there is no Great Divide between minds, but only shorter and longer
networks; harder facts are not the rule but the exception, since they are
needed only in a very few cases to displace others on a large scale out
of their usual ways. (Chapter 5)
Sixth principle History of technoscience is in a large part the history of
the resources scattered along networks to accelerate the mobility,
faithfulness, combination and cohesion of traces that make action at a
distance possible. (Chapter 6)
3. Observations on Latour
•“Naïve” empiricism
•Ontologically radical
•Science and politics continuous: networks, allies and strength is
everything
• Louis Pasteur as a cunning negotiator
Standardisation central:
Standardisation of method, practices, materials, science relies on
metrological standardisation, which have a long social history
◦ in this view ‘H2O’ comes to Amazonas when the science comes and ‘H2O’ is
dependent on its network – and there is not science outside the network
◦ The topic for next time
Scientist
Community
Ethics: Politics!