The Subjective Side of Science: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Psychology of the Apollo Moon Scientists

by Ian I. Mitroff

328 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

ِِAn American organizational theorist, consultant and Professor Emeritus at the USC Marshall School of Business and the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern

Reviews

[Alvaro de Menard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has 1072 citations on google scholar and 2 ratings on goodreads, which tells you quite a lot. Mitroff did a series of structured interviews with scientists involved with the Apollo program (mostly geologists). Most of the book presents the results of those interviews, and toward the end it goes off into some discussions of the psychology and the philosophy of science (partly) based on the answers the geologists gave. The interviews are pretty raw and emotional, and Mitroff doesn't hold back.

So many of the remarks and judgments contained profanity and bordered on slander (if they did not cross over into it) that it would be difficult just to count them. Although so many of the comments were extreme, perhaps the most extreme was uttered by one of the more prestigious scientists who, after the discussion had gone on for some time blurted out, “Look they ’re all fucking ass-holes!”

Mitroff broadly argues for approaches that embrace the "subjective side", biases, etc. as a normal part of scientific progress. Contra both the idealized version of science found in Merton and the one found in most philosophical approaches.

There are some silly parts, like an attempt to tie Jungian psychology with the psychological clusters in science, and a very strange typology of scientific approaches toward the end. Mitroff is a bit uncritical in his reading of Kuhn and Feyerabend, but never goes full relativist. Overall it could've been a bit deeper and a bit better, but it's above-average for the genre.

With the foregoing in mind, we can consider the proposition that strong emotions — the often hostile feelings between various types of individuals, the intense commitment to particular pre- ferred positions — are not by themselves necessarily detrimental to the idea of scientific objectivity. It may well be, as the results of this book would strongly seem to indicate, that every scientist must be committed to his ideas if he is to be able to engage in particular types of observations, and that if emotional commit- ment blinds the scientist from seeing some things, then without it he would not be able to see other things. Some scientists are keen observers precisely because of their commitments, not in spite of them. The notion that bias and commitment are detrimental to the idea of science is not wrong — rather, it misses the mark. The mere fact that commitment and bias are present does not make an activity that contains them necessarily subjective. An activity is subjective if, and only if, there is no way of assessing the influence of some crucial factors on which that activity depends. Converse- ly, an activity is objective if we have a systematic way of assessing the key variables on which that activity depends. If, as the results of this book strongly indicate, it is humanly impossible to elimi- nate all bias and commitment from science, then it is hopeless to pin our hopes for the existence of an objective science on the existence of passionless unbiased individuals. The task, then, is to Show how objectivity is possible in terms of a conception of sci- ence that recognizes the active presence of commitment and bias, not in terms of a conception that dismisses them. This is the intent of the schema. It should not then be our goal to eliminate all emotion and bias from science, but rather to understand them, to assess them. [...] Science advances through the process of scientists of widely differing persuasions (types and degrees of commitment) thrusting their opposing conceptions and commitments at one another. Through this process science not only subjects its results to severe (but not crucial) tests but also exposes the underlying commitments of its practitioners.

Science, as opposed to other systems of knowledge, is distinguished by the fact that, if not in theory then in actual practice, it has learned how to make use of strong determinants of rationality (testing, evidence, etc.) plus strong emotional commitments. [...]

If we are honest, at this point in time we must confess we still do not comprehend the conversion process.

[Stephen Antczak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, and little known book about the subjectivity of geologists studying Moon rock samples brought back to Earth during the Apollo program.