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This article explores the impact of social context on scientific research and the extent to which values influence scientific findings. It analyzes different perspectives and critiques, highlighting the importance of considering values in research.
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PH201/400 – Week 18 Science and Society I
Introduction Trivial observation: science is practised in a social context. Scientists are employed by some institution, often have to work in a team, have to apply to funding bodies for grants, have to publish their results in journals, endorse certain social and political values, etc. First reaction: sociology of science – study science just as one studies any other aspect of society.
Question: Are the sciences neutral with respect to social issues and social values? That is, does the social context in which scientific research is carried out affect the outcome of this research? Does the knowledge we gain in a scientific investigation reflect the particular social values or the social background of those involved in the investigation?
‘Traditional’ answer: No! The social context in which an investigation is carried out does not affect scientific results and findings. Scientific knowledge is objective in that it is free from social, political, moral, and aesthetical values, and it should not be influenced by personal preferences, interests and biases.
This is the ‘value-free ideal’ • Science is desirable exactly because it is a mode of inquiry which is free of these all these values and biases. • Science instructs us about how the world is, and the world does not care about our values. • A claim is objective exactly if it successfully captures a feature of the world in way that is untinted by idiosyncratic factors.
Roots in enlightenment philosophy • It is held by scientific realists • It also finds supporters among those concerned with the social aspects of science: The founding father of sociology of science, Robert K. Merton, argues that although the rise of science and its success results from social forces there is no connection bet between the content of scientific knowledge and the social context in which it has been produced.
Imre Lakatos: Distinguish between • internal history of science (i.e. rational reconstruction) and • external history of science, which deals with features of the history of science which cannot be explained internally. • Internal history is primary; indeed ‘external history is irrelevant for the understanding of science.’ (1971, 102).
In Lakatos’ words: ‘The history of science is always richer than its rational reconstruction. But rational reconstruction or internal history is primary, external history is only secondary, since the most important problems of external history are defined by internal history. External history […] provides non-rational explanation of the speed, locality, selectiveness, etc. of historic events as interpreted in terms of internal history […] But the rational aspects of scientific growth is fully accounted for by one’s logic of scientific discovery.’ (1971, 118; orig. emph.)
Prominent early dissenters: Karl Marx emphasised the interdependence of one’s position in the labour process and one’s cognitive perspective. Karl Mannheim radicalised this idea and argued for the ‘Seinsgebundenheit’ of all human thought: ‘[…] the vain hope of discovering truth in a form which is independent of an historically and socially determined set of meaning will have to be given up.’ (1929, 71)
Instead he recommends a way of doing history in which: […] no judgements are pronounced as to the correctness of the ideas to be treated. This approach confines itself to discovering the relations between certain mental structures [Bewusstseinsstrukturen] and life situations [Seinslagen] in which they exist. […] According to this view human thought arises, and operates, not in a social vacuum but [it is rooted in a] definite social milieu.’ (ibid.)
More contemporary attacks: • Theory ladenness of observation and incommensurability of paradigms (Kuhn, Hanson, Feyerabend). • Doubts about the absence of values in scientific reasoning (Douglas, Longino) • Sociology of Science: acceptance of results eventually is determined by not by the ‘facts’ themselves but by social and political factors (Collins, Pickering, …).
Social constructivism (Latour, Barnes, Bloor, …) • Standpoint theory, most prominently in a feminist version (Haraway, Harding, Wylie, Longino) • …
Values in Science Weber identifies four places at which values can enter: The choice of a research problem. The collection and evaluation of evidence. The acceptance of a finding or theory as adequate. The application of scientific research results.
Mainstream view: agreed on (i) and (iv) but they are not problematic: • The choice of a question is determined by interest, preferences and agendas. Just think of medical research. • Likewise the use of results, for instance in technological applications, is driven by interest. • By contrast, it is problematic if values enter in (ii) and (iii).
Charge: but one cannot avoid values. Example: tiebreakers in cases of underdetermination of theory by evidence. Recall from Lecture 2: Evidence
Claim: the gap between evidence and theory must be filled in by scientific values. It is a preference for simplicity, accuracy, etc. which makes us prefer the red to the blue curve. Reply: Yes, these are values, but they are epistemic values, and these are benign. Epistemic like simplicity, accuracy, explanatory power, etc. are essential for science.
Cognitive values are no threat to objectivity. • What threatens objectivity are contextual values: moral, personal, social, political, cultural, … values. • Standard examples of the bad influence of such values on science: • Nazi Science (relativity condemned as ‘Jewish physics’). • Soviet Biology (Darwinism was outlawed because it didn’t square with the communist ideology).
More subtle cases: • Racist theories of psychology • Sexist theories of reproduction • Biased research due to sponsoring by the pharmaceutical industry • ‘Climate research’ done by oil companies • …
Hence, the value-free ideal should be upheld: Contextual values should be banned from science. Criticisms: This is impossible because scientists collect evidence and assess theories without making contextual value judgments. The value-free ideal is a pipe-dream.
Problem: Epistemic values cannot be clearly separated from epistemic values. Longino: the use of epistemic certain epistemic values is in fact based on political and social values, and the use of epistemic values is not politically neutral. Example: contrast the usual epistemic values like simplicity and scope with feminist values such as novelty, ontological heterogeneity, mutuality of interaction, applicability to human needs and diffusion of power.
Hence: There is no clear distinction between epistemic and contextual values and therefore the value free ideal is impossible to implement. More on value in the Douglas reading
Constructivism Constructivists (sometimes: ‘constructionists;) maintain that the truth or falsehood of scientific claims does not derive from their relation to the world but from the attitude scientists take towards them. If one sees this attitude as determined mainly by the social arrangements of scientist and social interests, then one is a social constructivist.
Therefore: social constructivists maintain that it is the social factors surrounding scientific practice that determine which beliefs are held to be true or false. Motivation: case studies often focussing on scientific controversies whose resolution does not appear to depend on hard evidence or data, but on the social set-up in which the controversies took place.
Constructivists are antirealists: • They claim that the truth and falsity of scientific beliefs can be established independently of empirical evidence. • They deny that science discovers facts about a mind-independent and determinate reality; they regard the facts that are described in scientific propositions as constructed by the scientists.
Constructivists are relativists: • Someone who holds that X is not simply true, but only true for someone and from a certain point of view, holds a relativist view. • Constructivist deny that there is one, and only one, way in which things are: different sets of beliefs can be equally true if their assessment is sensitive to facts about the person or group holding the beliefs and their standpoint.
Notice: Constructivism as defined here should not be confused with: • constructivism in mathematics and with • constructive empiricism. • Who? The Edinburgh School (Barnes, Bloor), Collins, Latour, Pickering, Wooglar, … • Study question 1: What is the difference between constructivism and constructive empiricism. • Study question 2: Realists claim that their position is the only one that does not make the progress of science a miracle. How could a constructivist reply to this contention?
Qualification 1: ‘Construction’ Constructivists deny that there is a mind-independent world and emphasise that facts, or even the world as a whole, is a social construction. But what exactly does ‘construction’ in this context mean?
Strong reading: ‘construction’ has to be understood literally. Constructivists are then taken to claim that scientists literally make the world in the same way in which a shoemaker makes shoes or a builder builds houses. This seems to be the position of those constructivists who emphasise that it is science produces facts (Wooglar, Latour).
Weak reading: it is scientific knowledge which is constructed. On this understanding, we do not construct the world; rather we construct representations of the world whose acceptance or rejection depends on the social setting in which their evaluation takes place.
But there seems to be a tension here: • On the one hand, if constructivism grants that there is a world and that it has a definite mind-independent structure and that it is only the representations of this world that are constructed, then the position collapses onto a version of scientific realism, namely one that is firmly realist in its metaphysical aspects but has only a weak notion of epistemic optimism and admits that the world itself does not always ‘decide for us’. • On the other hand, if one denies that there is such a world, one falls back onto the radical view that science literally constructs the world.
Mitigating position: scientific knowledge is produced primarily by scientists and only to a lesser extent determined by fixed structures in the world. Question: what does that mean? Possible reply (à la Pickering): One can view nature as a source of resistance to human action and understand scientific research as a kind of social action that characterizes the world’s resistance using various kinds of representations.
Question: Yes, but in what way does that conflict with scientific realism? Bottom line: Different versions of constructivism differ in what role they attribute to the social order and to nature in shaping scientific constructions. This attribution of roles makes for strong antirealism at one pole and a kind of sceptic/pragmatic realism at the other. More on this in the Latour reading.
Criticisms Critics of social constructivism argue that constructivism is necessarily relativist. But as relativism is unacceptable, so is constructivism. Larry Laudan writes: ‘The displacement of the idea that facts and evidence matter by the idea that everything boils down to subjective interests and perspectives is – second only to American political campaigns – the most prominent and pernicious manifestation of anti-intellectualism in our time.’ (Science and Relativism, p. x.)
Why is relativism supposed to be anti-intellectual? • Truth may differ from group to group, or even from individual to individual. But this view cannot be held consistently. To admit that something may be true for me and my society while it may be false for others and to just leave it there comes close to giving up one’s own position. Example: Witchcraft versus technology in the case of flying to the moon.
Is self-contradictory. • Relativism is nihilistic because it gives up the project of distinguishing good from bad reasoning, which eventually leads to epistemic anarchy. • Study question: Are these good arguments against relativism?
Counter (à la Latour): This charges are unfair as constructivists join everybody else in admitting that, for instance, modern technology is effective at getting us quickly from one place to another while broom travel simply does not work. But the reason for this is, contrary to realism, not that science correctly mirrors a mind-independent reality. Rather it is due to the fact that technology is deeply entrenched in our social life while witchcraft is not: there are textbooks on fluid dynamics and jet engines, and all scientific facts are connected to a set of instruments, practices, and prominent scientists. For this reason beliefs about planes are more credible than beliefs about flying brooms. So the constructivist can account for the fact that some beliefs are more credible than others without invoking realist ideas.
Study question: Is this reply sufficient to rebut relativism? It seems that is only shows hat constructivists are not (or at least need not be) subjectivists.
