Science studies – what’s wrong?

Physicists form a rather closed group of people. You may occasionally talk to a chemist or a mathematician, but how often do you cross the campus to speak to people working in the relatively new academic disciplines of “science studies”, “sociology of scientific knowledge” (SSK) or “science, technology and society” (STS). Do you even talk to people in more traditional fields such as the history and philosophy of science?

Depending on where you are and who works in your institution, you may be surprised by some of the statements that are fairly widely (but by no means universally) accepted in these “science studies” circles. For example, two leading sociologists of science – Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch – have said in their collection of essays The Golem (1993 Cambridge University Press pp144-145) that “scientists at the research front cannot settle their disagreements through better experimentation, more knowledge, more advanced theories, or clearer thinking”.

You might well think that this description of science could not be further from reality, and well known physicists, such as Steven Weinberg, David Mermin, Kurt Gottfried and Kenneth Wilson, have offered detailed criticism of these sociological views. Another type of response came from Alan Sokal, a physicist from New York University, who published a now famous hoax article in the journal Social Text in which he parodied the sloppy thinking of some sociologists and philosophers. At the beginning of his article, Sokal mockingly declares “that scientific ‘knowledge’, far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it”. The worrying thing is that this statement is not so different from what you may hear some sociologists actually saying!

Roughly speaking, Sokal was parodying two kinds of discourses: silly pronouncements about science made by famous (mostly French) intellectuals, and extreme “philosophical relativism” – themes that Sokal and I have developed in our recent book Impostures Intellectuelles (1997 Editions Odile Jacob). Some people working in SSK, STS and related areas feel that they have been unfairly attacked by the parody and by our book. I shall therefore try to summarize exactly our criticism of certain widespread (but not universal) tendencies in science studies.

To begin, let me distinguish between the part of science studies that belongs to “cultural studies” and SSK itself. Most of Sokal’s hoax was a parody of people working in cultural studies and not in SSK. Recent years have seen the growth of a variety of anti-scientific attitudes, even in academic circles (often under the label of Post-modernism). These attitudes should not be confused with science studies, which is, in principle, a rational enterprise.

Strong views

The 1970s saw the development of a new trend in the sociology of science, spearheaded by Barry Barnes, David Bloor and collaborators at Edinburgh University, who put forward what they called the “strong programme”. This programme, which was related to Thomas Kuhn’s earlier work on the history of science, differed from its predecessors by being sociologically more ambitious and by adopting a new conceptual attitude. While previous sociologists of science might have been satisfied just to describe scientific activity or scientific institutions, the goal of this new “Edinburgh school” was to give a causal account of the content of scientific theories.

The new conceptual attitude was a form of “methodological relativism”. In other words, as Bloor wrote in Knowledge and Social Imagery (1991 University of Chicago Press p7), sociological accounts in the strong programme had to be impartial “with respect to the truth or falsity, rationality or irrationality, success or failure” of the theories whose content was to be explained. This impartiality is referred to as the “symmetry principle”.

This combination of sociological ambition and methodological relativism is, I believe, the source of the trouble with science studies. It is perfectly acceptable to analyse, say, what social factors lead to the casual-dressing habits among (contemporary) physicists without worrying about the truth value of physicists’ theories. But here we are talking about sociologists who are actually trying to explain how scientific theories develop.

To see what the problem is, let us first distinguish between philosophical and methodological relativism. Broadly speaking, “philosophical relativism” argues that the truth of a proposition depends on who states it or on the social group(s) to which that person belongs. So, statements are true “for us” or “in our culture” or – to sound more sophisticated, as some sociologists try to – “in our language game”. But statements in philosophical relitavism are not true in any broader sense.

Of course, this attitude might be valid with respect to some kinds of assertions, such as aesthetic judgements or maybe even ethical ones. But in the view of most scientists, scientific statements are – while rarely absolutely true – supposed to be (partially) true or false in an unconditioned way. For example, if the fine-structure constant of particle physics means anything, it is a number that was the same at the time of the Roman Empire as it was in 12th-century China.

Of course, there are various sceptical arguments that are sometimes brought up in discussions on sociology of science in order to support philosophical relativism. For example, sociologists might argue how we can know that there really exists something outside of our minds? And even if something did exist outside our minds, how could we ever be certain about our knowledge of this external world?

Discussing these arguments would be long and complicated, but also irrelevant. After all, sociologists of science explicitly say that their goal is to produce a scientific understanding of scientific activities. Whenever one tries to produce a scientific theory of anything – be it atoms, genes or societies – one must put aside these sceptical doubts, and act on the belief that one can indeed learn about the external world through reasoning and experience.

Strong criticism

But sociologists who espouse the “strong programme” rely on a form of methodological rather than philosophical relativism, namely the symmetry principle. In other words, they try to be impartial when assessing how scientific theories develop, and not take a stance on whether the science itself is correct. But can that principle really be defended? Several philosophers of science have also criticized methodological relativism, and here is a short summary of some of their arguments.

Suppose that you want to give a causal account of why some people became convinced of the theories of Newton or of Darwin. Many historical, political, socio-economic and even theological factors will enter into such an explanation. But also – and it is this also that matters – one part of the explanation must include the fact that these theories are supported by good evidence. Of course, this last factor is not on its own enough – in the case of Darwin’s theories, for example, you also have to explain why so many people reject the fact of evolution – and one should credit the new trends in the sociology of science for emphasizing this point. (In contrast, “hagiographic” views of the history of science argue that science is purely the progress of reason, unaffected by social factors.)

Now, suppose that you want to give a causal account of a superstitious belief, say of astrology. It is conceivable that one can obtain a purely sociological account of the existence of such beliefs, without ever invoking the evidence supporting them – simply because there is no such evidence. Of course, one may have a separate worry: at present does anybody have a well tested sociological theory that yields a causal and explanatory account of any system of beliefs, even superstitious ones? But leaving that aside, the comparison between Newton’s theories and astrology clearly shows a necessary and crucial asymmetry in such an explanatory scheme: in one case, evidence must enter into the explanation, in the other case not. Note, of course, that if you happen to believe (wrongly) that astrology is well supported by evidence, then this factor should, presumably, enter into what you regard as a causal account of belief in astrology.

This leads to a further problem: when sociologists study “science in action” – i.e. science at the research front – how do they distinguish between beliefs that are held for purely sociological reasons (after all, scientists are not immune to fads) and those that are held for valid empirical reasons? Well, it seems obvious that you have to know the physics in detail, and not just the sociology. But it is by no means impossible for sociologists to acquire such knowledge. They could collaborate with physicists or other scientists, and indeed some sociologists have a background in physics. But it would require some work, and at least some sociologists of science want to avoid doing this kind of work. As sociologist Steve Fuller says, the aim of SSK is to “employ methods that enable them to fathom both the ‘inner workings’ and the ‘outer character’ of science without having to be expert in the fields they study” (see Philosophy, Rhetoric, and the End of Knowledge: The Coming of Science and Technology Studies 1993 University of Wisconsin Press p xii).

Even sociologists who would not go that far will tend to say that, not being physicists, they do not have to take sides in the scientific controversies. But in my opinion, one cannot interpret adequately the sociology of the content of scientific theories – such as the relative role played by rational, cognitive factors versus fashion, prestige, economic self-interest and so on – without making at least some judgement of the underlying scientific issues.

To be fair to sociologists of science, the most controversial claims of the strong programme have recently been toned down. For example, the symmetry principle is not even mentioned in the index of a recent textbook on SSK by Barnes, Bloor and John Henry (Scientific Knowledge: Sociological Analysis 1996 University of Chicago Press). And one can redefine the neutrality involved in the “symmetry principle” to make it harmless, but then also rather meaningless. So some sociologists may claim that I have misrepresented their (previous) views. However, since, nowadays at least, sociologists often accuse each other of exaggerated “sociologism”, I am not alone in such apparent misreading.

Action plan

So what is to be done? Well, many things. First of all, we should worry about the image of science that we show to the public. A lot of popularization of science seems to me pretty bad. It is either written by scientists who hold marginal or “dissident” views, or it puts the most speculative aspects of science on a par with the most well established ones. (This problem is also well parodied in Sokal’s hoax.) On the other hand, we should keep an open eye on the courses of philosophy, history or pedagogy that are offered to our students and, while remaining open-minded and tolerant, talk to the people teaching these courses to avoid anti-scientific nonsense being poured onto students through such channels. (One high-school physics teacher recently told me that the main purpose of the “philosophy of science” course offered in his school was to destroy what he, as a physics teacher, was doing.)

I would like to end with some words of caution. Physicists can easily overreact to the science studies crowd. On the one hand, the negative reaction is understandable: there is a fair amount of sloppy work in so-called cultural studies – take a look at the references in Sokal’s article in Social Text if you are not convinced – that is often justified by philosophically confused arguments. But a sociologist could say: so what? After all, there is also a lot of sloppy work in physics, and it is only the technicality of our jargon that protects us from the kind of public exposure achieved by Sokal.

Scientists themselves sometimes get philosophically confused (although sociologists will not say it, I believe that a lot of confusion can be found in the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics) and they can grossly exaggerate the relevance, scope or level of confirmation of their theories. Scientists can also be selfish, arrogant and prejudiced. In case these descriptions do not apply to you, just think about your colleagues! Scientific research is a human activity, too human maybe. All this justifies subjecting it to careful and reasoned analysis from a historical, sociological and philosophical viewpoint. But it does not warrant sloppy thinking or radical relativism.

By no means do Sokal and I wish to fight what some commentators have called a “science war”, which pits scientists against anti-scientific humanists of all sorts. But we wish to defend canons of rationality that are – or should be – common to all. And we do not want to let it be forgotten that the discovery of objective, culture-independent truths about the world has had powerful consequences as one of the sources of the enlightenment, and is one of the best remedies against the permanent short-sightedness of our cultural prejudices.