THEORETICAL

DEBATES I
HUSS 3103
Week 02
 SISMONDO, S. (2010) CHAPTER 1, IN AN
INTRUDUCTION TO SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY STUDIES, CHICHESTER, WEST
SUSSEX, U.K.; MALDEN, MA, WILEY-
BLACKWELL (PP. 1-11).
The Prehistory of Science and
Technology Studies
■ a mythic framework for scientists themselves
■ Technology as simply the application of science
■ Science is a formal activity that creates and accumulates knowledge by directly
confronting the natural world
■ A certain consistency: scientists can agree on truths about the natural world
■ the Vienna Circle - logical positivism
■ Karl Popper - falsificationism
the Vienna Circle - logical positivism

■ A scientific theory: a condensed summary of possible observations

■ scientific progress increases the correctness, number, and range of potential
observations
■ Inductivity: individual data points → general statements
■ Critiques/problems
– many apparently meaningful claims are not systematically related to
observations, because theories are often too abstract to be immediately cashed
out in terms of data.
– Popper: There is no way of assuredly going from a finit number of cases to a true
general statement about all the relevant cases.
Karl Popper - falsificationism

■ Genuine scientific theories are falsifiable, which make risky predictions

■ Progress: the successive refinement and enlargement of theories to cover increasing data
– Any theory that fails to make risky predictions is ruled unscientific,
– any theory that makes failed predictions is ruled false.
– A theory that makes good predictions is provisionally accepted – until new evidence comes
along
■ Critiques/problems - formal relations between theories and data
– when theories are used to make incorrect predictions, scientists often look for reasons to
explain away the observations or predictions, rather than rejecting the theories. Nonetheless,
there is something attractive about the idea that (potential) falsification
– the rational construction of theoretical edifices on top of empirical data or the rational
dismissal of theories on the basis of empirical data.
“Intuition” realism

■ Progress: the increases in precision of scientific predictions, the increases in scope of

scientific knowledge, and the increases in technical ability that stem from scientific progress.
■ Truths: For the realist, science does not merely construct convenient theoretical descriptions of
data, or merely discard falsified theories: When it constructs theories or other claims, those
generally and eventually approach the truth.
■ Critiques: Functionalist view of Merton (the 1960s)
– Science served a social function, providing certified knowledge.
– Nothing particularly “scientific” about the people who do science. Rather, science’s social
structure rewards behavior that, in general, promotes the growth of knowledge; in
principle it also penalizes behavior that retards the growth of knowledge
Ideal science

■ Positivists: theories can be no more or less than the logical representation of data.
■ Falsificationists: scientists are held to a standard on which they have to discard
theories in the face of opposing data.
■ Realists: good methods form the basis of scientific progress.
■ Functionalists: the norms are the rules governing scientific behavior and attitudes
Secondary role of technology

■ Straightforward application of science

■ A linear model of innovation
■ Technology as a finished product: interest in its effects
■ Lewis Mumford:
– Polytechnics: “life-oriented,” integrated with broad human needs and potentials.
Polytechnics produce small-scale and versatile tools, useful for pursuing many
human goals.
– Monotechnics: produce “mega machines” that can increase power dramatically,
but by regimenting and dehumanizing.
Heidegger - “The Question Concerning
Technology” (1954)
■ Modern technology is the application of science in the service of power;
■ this is an objectifying process / disenchantment of the world.
■ X the craft tradition that produced individualized things
Science, Technology and Society

■ Concerns about technology have been the source of many of the movements critical
of science after the US use of nuclear weapons
■ Starting in the 1970s, a diverse group united by progressive goals and an interest in
science and technology as problematic social institutions.
■ the project of promoting a socially responsible science
Science and Technology Studies (STS)

■ Assumption that science and technology are thoroughly social activities

■ Scientists and engineers are always members of communities
– No abstract and logical scientific method apart from evolving community norms
– Not mere logical operators, but instead have investments in skills, prestige, knowledge,
and specific theories and practices
■ A variety of anti-essentialist positions with respect to science and technology.
■ The interpretations of knowledge and artifacts are complex and various: claims, theories, facts,
and objects may have very different meanings to different audiences.
■ Main question: How scientific knowledge and technological artifacts are constructed.
– scientists and engineers use the material world in their work; it is not merely translated
into knowledge and objects by a mechanical process.
 SISMONDO, S. (2010) CHAPTER 2, IN AN INTRODUCTION
TO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES, CHICHESTER,
WEST SUSSEX, U.K.; MALDEN, MA, WILEY-BLACKWELL (PP.
12-22) & KUHN, T. S. (1962) INTRODUCTION: A ROLE FOR
HISTORY, IN THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS,
CHICAGO, THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS (PP.1-9).
KUHN, T. S. (1962) INTRODUCTION: A ROLE FOR
HISTORY, IN THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC
REVOLUTIONS, CHICAGO, THE UNIVERSITY OF
CHICAGO PRESS (PP.1-9).
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
in 1962
■ Science is merely what scientists do / focus on the activities of and around scientific research
■ X the formalist view with its normative stance
■ Periods of normal science punctuated by revolutions
■ Target: history that attempts to construct the past as a series of steps toward present views.
■ Normal science: the science done when members of a field share a recognition of key past
achievements in their field, beliefs about which theories are right, an understanding of the
important problems of the field, and methods for solving those problems. / Scientists doing
normal science share a paradigm.
■ Ex: Newton’s mechanics, Lavoisier’s chemistry, and Mendel’s genetics
«Normal science» - Paradigms

■ Theoretical and methodological tools for further research.

■ The practical side of a paradigm serves as a form of life, providing patterns of
behavior or frameworks for action.
■ Puzzle-solving: problems are to be solved within the terms of the paradigm
– failure to solve a problem usually reflects badly on the researcher, rather than
on the theories or methods of the paradigm.
■ With respect to a paradigm, an unsolved problem is simply an anomaly, fodder for
future researchers.
– In periods of normal science the paradigm is not open to serious question. This
is because the natural sciences are particularly successful at socializing
practitioners.
Anomalies

■ Anomalies accumulate, and may eventually start to take on the character of real problems,
rather than mere puzzles.
■ to consider changes and alternatives to the framework; Kuhn terms this a period of crisis.
■ Scientists who have not yet been fully indoctrinated into the beliefs and practices or way of life
of the older paradigm, will adopt the alternative.
– Robust alternative may become a paradigm itself, structuring a new period of normal
science.
■ In periods of normal science, we can most easily talk about progress, because scientists have
little difficulty recognizing each other’s achievements.
– Revolutions, however, are not progressive, because they both build and destroy
Incommensurability of paradigms

■ Pre-revolutionary paradigm will fail to make sense under the new regime
■ Theories belonging to different paradigms are incommensurable – lacking a common
measure – because people working in different paradigms see the world differently,
and because the meanings of theoretical terms change with revolutions
■ Science does not straightforwardly accumulate knowledge, but instead moves from
one more or less adequate paradigm to another.
■ Science does not track the truth,
– but creates different partial views that can be considered to contain truth only
by people who hold those views!
Theory-dependence of observation

■ Observation is guided by concepts and ideas

■ Indoctrination: Paradigms even shape observations. People working within different paradigms
see things differently
■ Critique of incommensurability: Problems, concepts, and methods change is uncontroversial.
But the difficulties that these create for interpreting past episodes in science can be overcome
– the very fact that historical research can challenge present-centered interpretations shows
the limits of incommensurability
– Claims of radical incommensurability appear to fail
– No image of complete breaks: when theories change, there is no immediate change in
either experiments or instruments. Discontinuity in one realm, then, is at least generally
bounded by continuity in others. Science gains strength, an ad hoc unity, from the fact
that its key components rarely change together. Science maintains stability through
change by being disunified
Epistemic cultures (Knorr Cetina 1999)

■ Disciplines are “epistemic cultures” that may have completely different orientations to their
objects, social units of knowledge production, and patterns of interaction.
■ Trading zones
– an area in which scientific and/or technical practices can fruitfully interact via these
simplified languages or pidgins, without requiring full assimilation
– They can develop at the contact points of specialties, around the transfer of valuable
goods from one to another
■ Boundary objects:
– They allow for a certain amount of coordination of actions without large measures of
translation
– ex: Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology / different social worlds of amateur
collectors, Professional scientists, philanthropists, and administrators
Conclusion

■ Scientific communities are importantly organized around ideas and practices, not around
ideals of behavior scientific communities are importantly organized around ideas and
practices, not around ideals of behavior
■ Changes in theories are not driven by data but by changes of vision
■ Anomalies are typically set aside,
– only during revolutions are they used as a justification to reject a theory
– X falsificationism
■ The history of science should not be told as a story of uninterrupted progress, but only change
– Thinking about the practices of science in local terms,
– X thinking in terms of their contribution to progress, or their exemplification of ideals