Sociology Versus Rationality in Science

Abstract

One of the main points we wish to make in Parts III and IV of this book is that the involvement of the social in science has been exaggerated and, worse, wrongly conceived. We do not deny that there are social influences on science; we mention some of these in Chapter 14. But what we want to deny is the involvement of the social in the very content of science itself. Hence we have been at pains in Part I and II to set out a realist and rationalist account of science. Having presented our more positive view of science and knowledge, we are now in a position to critically evaluate a range of doctrines that are anti-realist and non-rationalist, or even anti- rationalist. These go under the labels of constructivism (social or individual), ethnoscience, multiculturalism in science, Foucault's "power/knowledge" doctrine, postmodernist accounts of science, and a host of others. We have already criticized a version of constructivism as it has become popular in science education circles. In the next two parts of the book we turn to the Strong Programme in the sociology of science, Foucault on power, Lyotard's postmodernist account of science and education, and the range of views that fall under multiculturalism. This has significance for those in science education who would downplay principles of critical inquiry in the role they play in scientists' obtaining scientific knowledge and the role they play in pupil's coming to acquire scientific knowledge (as opposed to mere belief). If science educationalists place emphasis on social processes for evaluating and accepting scientific theories that are criticised in this chapter, then science education will have gone down a wrong path in ignoring the kind of critical inquiry advocated in Parts I and II. We will argue that often a wrong focus has been placed on the way politics interacts with science that has obscured what seem to us to be more urgent questions. In rectifying this wrong focus we wish to hark back to the social and political investigations into science of, say, Merton or Greenberg, and simply pass over the recent, and costly, distraction through occupation with the social at the expense of the rational. The sociology of science is quite distinct from the sociology of scientific knowledge. Practitioners of the former, such as Robert Merton and Joseph Ben-David, have made a contribution to "old-time" sociology of science through the investigations they carried out into the organisation of science, its disputes, its ethos, and the like. We applaud this but do not wish to discuss it here. The sociology of scientific knowledge of the sort practiced by the Strong Programme (SP) is a different matter with which we will take issue in this chapter. It attempts to carry sociological investigations into the very heart of science itself in order to show that the beliefs we entertain about the laws and theories of science are themselves socially determined. Previously this was sacred territory left to theories of rationality to explain. Strong Programmers ("SPers") wish to storm the bastion which is the refuge of those who think that the very content of our scientific theories is to be believed on the basis of methodological principles that are at the heart of critical inquiry. To illustrate the position under attack, we set out in Section 11.1 a model for the rational explanation of scientific belief that appeals essentially to methodological principles of the sort described in Part II. Section 11.2 explores the opposite view, namely that beliefs in the very content of science are caused by social, historical or cultural factors, or interests in these, and do not arise from the application of principles of methodology. This is a tradition that finds its roots in Marx and Mannheim, and has been developed to its fullest extent in SP by Barry Barnes and David Bloor. A number of practitioners of the earlier sociology of science have expressed their doubts about the success of such a programme. Thus Joseph Ben-David in his essay 'Sociology of Scientific Knowledge', identifies the theories inaugurated by Marx and Mannheim as sustaining the sociology of scientific "knowledge" as a programme of investigation in the twentieth century. But to no avail, says Ben-David with reference to SP: 'No success can be claimed for the new Marxian-Mannheimian attempts to find a systematic (that is, permanent and regular, not just occasional) relationship among macrosocial location, ideology, and scientific theory. Indeed there is little reason to expect that there should be such relationships.' (Ben-David 1991, p. 462). In Sections 11.2 to 11.4 and in 11.6 we will make some critical points that go towards substantiating Ben-David's point. It is not commonly realised that Michel Foucault's doctrine of "power/knowledge" shares a common form with SP. Whereas SPers look for the causes of scientific belief in more broad socio-politico-cultural factors (or interests in these), Foucault looks for their cause in the narrower, and more obscure, idea of power. His views are discussed in Section 11.5. There two aspects to his central thesis are distinguished and they are compared to similar claims advanced by Francis Bacon about 400 years ago. In our view the sensible core of Foucault's claims are to be found in Bacon while the less plausible aspects are original to him. We end with a discussion of SP in relation to scientific realism, since many take SP to support a constructivist account of "reality".