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Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems
Science is continually confronted by new and difficult social and ethical problems. Some of these problems have arisen from the transformation of the academic science of the prewar period into the industrialized science of the present. Traditional theories of science are now widely recognized as obsolete. In Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems (originally published in 1971), Jerome R. Ravetz analyzes the work of science as the creation and investigation of problems. He demonstrates the role of choice and value judgment, and the inevitability of error, in scientific research. Ravetz's new introductory essay is a masterful statement of how our understanding of science has evolved over the last two decades.
478 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 1971
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January 12, 2014
Somehow, I missed this one.
Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems is a seminal work in the sociology (and philosophy) of science, related to, but different from the Strong Programme and Actor-Network theories that would become dominant, but I only came across it because I saw it mentioned in a review (by Steve Fuller, who said that it offered the foundation for a different, more anarchistic sociology of studies--I’m not so sure of that.)
Reading the book now is interesting because I can see where Ravetz’s ideas were later fleshed out by others, and even places where he offered answers to questions that were a time seen as urgent, though his book had come out a good fifteen years earlier.
Which is not to say the book is perfect, by any means. Ravetz himself notes this in a preface tot he 1996 edition that admits the third and fourth sections are naive. It is also true (as, again, he confesses) the book is overly informal for a scholarly work and prolix: even keeping the two poorer sections, the book could have easily been trimmed in half.
The basic argument here is the then-controversial, now-common claim that science is a social activity, a human activity, and not some ahistorical wresting of secrets from nature. Science, Ravetz says, is craft work done on intellectual constructs--scientists use tacit skills to answer questions about our ideas of objects, like electrons. The objects themselves change over time (no one uses Daltonian electrons anymore to do scientific work) and more robust as the techniques are refined to avoid pitfalls.
The role of the scientist, Ravetz says, is to use his craft skills to answer solve particular problems. As those solutions themselves prove significant, stable, and useful to others, they become facts (188). Mature sciences--the mathematical sciences, physics, chemistry, biology to a lesser extent--are mature because the objects they have created, their facts, do not change much in their measurements, and the techniques do not reveal fundamental problems with the model (they avoid pitfalls, in his parlance.) (109) Scientists, alone, have both craft skills--though used on intellectual constructs and not real objects, as with craftsmen--and technical skills--those that characterize the actions of a technician--and also the ability to define problems (143).
This view of science is an ideal-type, though Ravetz won’t quite admit that point. He wants to claim that all science is historical and contingent (237)--and he’s right to do so. But the historical conditions necessary for the science he describes here never really existed--it’s a cherry-picking of certain sciences’ development throughout history. Ravetz, though, posits this as a way all science was done in the golden age of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth, when scientific work was done by individuals serving a higher purpose: the search for truth. He admits that it is impossible to find truth--we only find useful facts that help us for a time--but truth was an important guiding principle that disciplined scientific practitioners and kept them honest (236).
Overly idealized or not, this discussion of science (in section two, the best section of the book) was prescient. One can see in it the outlines of Bruno Latour’s later ethnology of laboratories (implicit in Ravetz’s work is the credit cycle, with scientists solving problems and creating facts so that they can solve more problems and create more facts) as well as Latour’s solution to the problem that bothered so many sociologists of science in the 1980s: if scientific facts are contingent, and baed in local craft skills, how do they ever become widespread? Ravetz argues that as facts are useful and significant, they are taken up by others, who further refine and standardize the techniques (199, 237)--which is related to Latour’s networks and and black boxes and immutable mobiles.
But Ravetz is more subtle than Latour: the mobiles--the scientific objects--are not immutable, but change themselves as they are worked on by others. Scientific objects, then, even as they seem straightforward, are ambiguous and carry with them a concealed history (175). This argument was later expanded (or may re-invented) by Lorraine Daston and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger (Biographies of Scientific Objects). (At other places, though, he is more naive, placing way, way, way too much weight on the role of journal referees in vetting good science.)
The third section argues that the conditions in which science is done has changed since the end of World War II and especially in the years leading up to the publication of the book in 1971. It has become industrialized. Even academic research is connected to corporate America and the military. And industrialization changes the teleology of science (he invokes Aristotle at one point to explain the qualities of science, and is most interested in Aristotle’s final cause). No longer is the pursuit of truth the guiding value of science. Indeed, he wonders if there is a guiding value at all: the ends of science are now the creation of new objects for sale and new bombs to kill people. Science, in its current social organization, is corruptible.
Again, this argument is a mixture of the naive and the prescient. Patrons have always directed the development of science--just ask Galileo. So it is unclear that there is a transition from a social organization that rewarded truth to one the rewards mendacity. But, there certainly have been changes. They can be seen in the credit cycle, for example: in the past, fights over priority of publication were vociferous, less so now because the creation of facts is not as important as obtaining the resources to do more research. There is also a great deal of shoddy research now, a problem that he attributes to scientists just trying to pad their resumes--but could just as easily be attributed to the growth of science: more people means more research, and not all of it can be good. And it may be that science’s alliance with corporations and the government does hurt its credibility. Brian Balogh (Chain Reaction) has shown how having science dragged down by partisan and bureaucratic fighting has made people skeptical of all science. And Merchants of Doubt certainly shows how science can be corrupted by corporations.
In the fourth and final section (technically, the conclusion is its own section), Ravetz looks at “Science and the Modern World.” Here he bemoans that too much science has become the solution of technical and practical problems--how to create more accurate missile guidance systems, for example--rather than the search for stable and useful facts. Science has become an extension of the military and corporate worlds. These claims are not wrong, but underdeveloped, in part because he is judging modern science against an ideal that never existed. At the same time, Ravetz says, the idea of science has become, among the educated elite, its own kind of folk-science (387): the term science is appended to all kinds of endeavors (library science, political science) and there is a belief among some that mimicking the methods of mature sciences will make their own discipline a science. (This is the problem with cryptozoology, for example: the methods don’t matter. The difficulty is the science is so immature as to not have created any viable facts; 158) The problem of proliferating science is so bad because most of these mis-named fields are, in his word, immature: they have yet to create a portfolio of robust facts. As a result, political discussions are being partly ‘solved’ by sciences that are not really sciences and cannot bring important and usable facts to the table. The situation inevitably leads to more conflict and the continued degradation of science’s credibility.
What is needed, then? Ravetz rejects the radical folk-science challenges of the hippies, beats, and counter-culture more generally. (I could add that the Forteans fit this mold, too.) It is too romantic, he says, and Romantic Science is a contradiction in terms: Science influenced by Romanticism cannot produce strong programs and robust facts and, further, the radicals don’t see just how much of modern society is dependent upon science. Any unravelling of science will lead to a more general unravelling of society, which Ravetz sees as bad. (And here is why I disagree with Fuller that Ravetz’s work is anarchic. He wants strong, socially-mediated programs; the Forteans, by contrast, were often genuinely anarchic.) These Romantic criticisms, though, he says, will continue to draw attention as science becomes more allied with science and the military (394).
What is needed, then, is instead a critical science. A critical science would be a real science, using craft skills to work with intellectual constructs to solve problems. What will be different is the teleology, the final cause: there will need to be a new ethic, a new value driving science. There is no longer a possibility of returning to the old virtue of science as the pursuit of truth; and the current system is either moribund or dangerous. So we must decide that science needs to do other things: maybe save humanity or the environment. Ravetz never really develops what this other program might be, but it is, in light of the rest of his argument, suggestive.
Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems is a seminal work in the sociology (and philosophy) of science, related to, but different from the Strong Programme and Actor-Network theories that would become dominant, but I only came across it because I saw it mentioned in a review (by Steve Fuller, who said that it offered the foundation for a different, more anarchistic sociology of studies--I’m not so sure of that.)
Reading the book now is interesting because I can see where Ravetz’s ideas were later fleshed out by others, and even places where he offered answers to questions that were a time seen as urgent, though his book had come out a good fifteen years earlier.
Which is not to say the book is perfect, by any means. Ravetz himself notes this in a preface tot he 1996 edition that admits the third and fourth sections are naive. It is also true (as, again, he confesses) the book is overly informal for a scholarly work and prolix: even keeping the two poorer sections, the book could have easily been trimmed in half.
The basic argument here is the then-controversial, now-common claim that science is a social activity, a human activity, and not some ahistorical wresting of secrets from nature. Science, Ravetz says, is craft work done on intellectual constructs--scientists use tacit skills to answer questions about our ideas of objects, like electrons. The objects themselves change over time (no one uses Daltonian electrons anymore to do scientific work) and more robust as the techniques are refined to avoid pitfalls.
The role of the scientist, Ravetz says, is to use his craft skills to answer solve particular problems. As those solutions themselves prove significant, stable, and useful to others, they become facts (188). Mature sciences--the mathematical sciences, physics, chemistry, biology to a lesser extent--are mature because the objects they have created, their facts, do not change much in their measurements, and the techniques do not reveal fundamental problems with the model (they avoid pitfalls, in his parlance.) (109) Scientists, alone, have both craft skills--though used on intellectual constructs and not real objects, as with craftsmen--and technical skills--those that characterize the actions of a technician--and also the ability to define problems (143).
This view of science is an ideal-type, though Ravetz won’t quite admit that point. He wants to claim that all science is historical and contingent (237)--and he’s right to do so. But the historical conditions necessary for the science he describes here never really existed--it’s a cherry-picking of certain sciences’ development throughout history. Ravetz, though, posits this as a way all science was done in the golden age of the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth, when scientific work was done by individuals serving a higher purpose: the search for truth. He admits that it is impossible to find truth--we only find useful facts that help us for a time--but truth was an important guiding principle that disciplined scientific practitioners and kept them honest (236).
Overly idealized or not, this discussion of science (in section two, the best section of the book) was prescient. One can see in it the outlines of Bruno Latour’s later ethnology of laboratories (implicit in Ravetz’s work is the credit cycle, with scientists solving problems and creating facts so that they can solve more problems and create more facts) as well as Latour’s solution to the problem that bothered so many sociologists of science in the 1980s: if scientific facts are contingent, and baed in local craft skills, how do they ever become widespread? Ravetz argues that as facts are useful and significant, they are taken up by others, who further refine and standardize the techniques (199, 237)--which is related to Latour’s networks and and black boxes and immutable mobiles.
But Ravetz is more subtle than Latour: the mobiles--the scientific objects--are not immutable, but change themselves as they are worked on by others. Scientific objects, then, even as they seem straightforward, are ambiguous and carry with them a concealed history (175). This argument was later expanded (or may re-invented) by Lorraine Daston and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger (Biographies of Scientific Objects). (At other places, though, he is more naive, placing way, way, way too much weight on the role of journal referees in vetting good science.)
The third section argues that the conditions in which science is done has changed since the end of World War II and especially in the years leading up to the publication of the book in 1971. It has become industrialized. Even academic research is connected to corporate America and the military. And industrialization changes the teleology of science (he invokes Aristotle at one point to explain the qualities of science, and is most interested in Aristotle’s final cause). No longer is the pursuit of truth the guiding value of science. Indeed, he wonders if there is a guiding value at all: the ends of science are now the creation of new objects for sale and new bombs to kill people. Science, in its current social organization, is corruptible.
Again, this argument is a mixture of the naive and the prescient. Patrons have always directed the development of science--just ask Galileo. So it is unclear that there is a transition from a social organization that rewarded truth to one the rewards mendacity. But, there certainly have been changes. They can be seen in the credit cycle, for example: in the past, fights over priority of publication were vociferous, less so now because the creation of facts is not as important as obtaining the resources to do more research. There is also a great deal of shoddy research now, a problem that he attributes to scientists just trying to pad their resumes--but could just as easily be attributed to the growth of science: more people means more research, and not all of it can be good. And it may be that science’s alliance with corporations and the government does hurt its credibility. Brian Balogh (Chain Reaction) has shown how having science dragged down by partisan and bureaucratic fighting has made people skeptical of all science. And Merchants of Doubt certainly shows how science can be corrupted by corporations.
In the fourth and final section (technically, the conclusion is its own section), Ravetz looks at “Science and the Modern World.” Here he bemoans that too much science has become the solution of technical and practical problems--how to create more accurate missile guidance systems, for example--rather than the search for stable and useful facts. Science has become an extension of the military and corporate worlds. These claims are not wrong, but underdeveloped, in part because he is judging modern science against an ideal that never existed. At the same time, Ravetz says, the idea of science has become, among the educated elite, its own kind of folk-science (387): the term science is appended to all kinds of endeavors (library science, political science) and there is a belief among some that mimicking the methods of mature sciences will make their own discipline a science. (This is the problem with cryptozoology, for example: the methods don’t matter. The difficulty is the science is so immature as to not have created any viable facts; 158) The problem of proliferating science is so bad because most of these mis-named fields are, in his word, immature: they have yet to create a portfolio of robust facts. As a result, political discussions are being partly ‘solved’ by sciences that are not really sciences and cannot bring important and usable facts to the table. The situation inevitably leads to more conflict and the continued degradation of science’s credibility.
What is needed, then? Ravetz rejects the radical folk-science challenges of the hippies, beats, and counter-culture more generally. (I could add that the Forteans fit this mold, too.) It is too romantic, he says, and Romantic Science is a contradiction in terms: Science influenced by Romanticism cannot produce strong programs and robust facts and, further, the radicals don’t see just how much of modern society is dependent upon science. Any unravelling of science will lead to a more general unravelling of society, which Ravetz sees as bad. (And here is why I disagree with Fuller that Ravetz’s work is anarchic. He wants strong, socially-mediated programs; the Forteans, by contrast, were often genuinely anarchic.) These Romantic criticisms, though, he says, will continue to draw attention as science becomes more allied with science and the military (394).
What is needed, then, is instead a critical science. A critical science would be a real science, using craft skills to work with intellectual constructs to solve problems. What will be different is the teleology, the final cause: there will need to be a new ethic, a new value driving science. There is no longer a possibility of returning to the old virtue of science as the pursuit of truth; and the current system is either moribund or dangerous. So we must decide that science needs to do other things: maybe save humanity or the environment. Ravetz never really develops what this other program might be, but it is, in light of the rest of his argument, suggestive.
August 31, 2014
A. Synopsis: The main intent for the book is to serve a practical function--to assist the solving of the deep problems confronting science now and in the future. The first section is on scientific knowledge and the second is an emotional polemic which argues that the main problem of science is that it is linked to an entrepreneurial industrial society and that the rise of the immature social sciences threatens ‘pure’ science.
B. Historiography: This is a sort of Popper-Kuhn mix by which the scientific community defines what is scientific knowledge.
C. Paradigms of scientific activity.
1. Science began in a “academic science” paradigm, a sort of a golden age, when the main problems of science were epistemological. This was the 19th century small-scale scientific activity performed by the gentlemen of science and their pursuit of truth.
2. The next stage is the “industrialized science” of the present, and the resulting transformation from epistemological to social problems. The central problem with this type of science the possibility that pure knowledge will be reduced only to its application to military and industrial applications. Ravetz argues that this current stage develops “shoddy” science. The independent scientist is now an employee in the capitalist system.
3. Ravetz predicts in the future a “critical science” emerging in which science, technology, politics, and the philosophy of nature are involved. It is critical in the sense that it examines the dangers inflicted upon man by run-away technology. This he argues may be the most significant development in the science of our age. These stages are essentially paradigms in the Kuhnian sense.
4. My criticism: Ravetz is arguing that there was a transformation between epistemological and sociological science. I would argue instead that scientific problems are both epistemological and social and that they always have been. Even in the epistemological period science was social)
D. How is scientific knowledge achieved?
1. Science is a delicate and vulnerable social activity. It is vulnerable because the quest for scientific knowledge begins from a subjective and fallible position. At this stage science is a craftmans work, creating intellectual constructs. It is only through complex social processes of the testing and transformation of scientific research that genuine objective scientific knowledge can be created.
2. This is the section of the book that perhaps I am most in agreement with.
E. What are the social problems of science?
1. Science today is reduced to solving three types of problems: scientific problems serving a remote goal; technical problems concerned with making things work; and practical problems serving human welfare. The contaminating agent in our industrialized society is technology and other suspect modes of inquiry (the social sciences). Ravetz argues that for example the practical problems of human welfare are actually in the realm of the social sciences. These are immature, ‘pseudo-sciences,’ folk-sciences, and vacuous of any real data. The immaturity and rise of the social sciences is important to understand because it presents a danger to all of ‘pure’ science.
B. Historiography: This is a sort of Popper-Kuhn mix by which the scientific community defines what is scientific knowledge.
C. Paradigms of scientific activity.
1. Science began in a “academic science” paradigm, a sort of a golden age, when the main problems of science were epistemological. This was the 19th century small-scale scientific activity performed by the gentlemen of science and their pursuit of truth.
2. The next stage is the “industrialized science” of the present, and the resulting transformation from epistemological to social problems. The central problem with this type of science the possibility that pure knowledge will be reduced only to its application to military and industrial applications. Ravetz argues that this current stage develops “shoddy” science. The independent scientist is now an employee in the capitalist system.
3. Ravetz predicts in the future a “critical science” emerging in which science, technology, politics, and the philosophy of nature are involved. It is critical in the sense that it examines the dangers inflicted upon man by run-away technology. This he argues may be the most significant development in the science of our age. These stages are essentially paradigms in the Kuhnian sense.
4. My criticism: Ravetz is arguing that there was a transformation between epistemological and sociological science. I would argue instead that scientific problems are both epistemological and social and that they always have been. Even in the epistemological period science was social)
D. How is scientific knowledge achieved?
1. Science is a delicate and vulnerable social activity. It is vulnerable because the quest for scientific knowledge begins from a subjective and fallible position. At this stage science is a craftmans work, creating intellectual constructs. It is only through complex social processes of the testing and transformation of scientific research that genuine objective scientific knowledge can be created.
2. This is the section of the book that perhaps I am most in agreement with.
E. What are the social problems of science?
1. Science today is reduced to solving three types of problems: scientific problems serving a remote goal; technical problems concerned with making things work; and practical problems serving human welfare. The contaminating agent in our industrialized society is technology and other suspect modes of inquiry (the social sciences). Ravetz argues that for example the practical problems of human welfare are actually in the realm of the social sciences. These are immature, ‘pseudo-sciences,’ folk-sciences, and vacuous of any real data. The immaturity and rise of the social sciences is important to understand because it presents a danger to all of ‘pure’ science.
May 19, 2021
in the first two sections of this book, ravetz provides a careful and insightful description of research endeavors in stem-like fields, including careful attention to the discrepancy between individual papers (inferences that are only ever tenuous and "adequate according to the standards of the field") and a larger body of knowledge. in particular, ravetz's argument is basically that correct things get cited, and shoddy or irrelevant work doesn't, and so anything cited in the literature is probably good so long as scientists are "ethical." i found this bibiometric operationalization of knowledge generative of research ideas for an ongoing bibliometrics project, but it feels woefully insufficient as the basis for an epistemology.
in the last two sections of the book, ravetz attempts to discuss the relationship of science (by this he means quantitative research) and technical problem solving to society at large. so far as i can tell ravetz is largely talking out his ass in these sections, and i recommend skipping them.
i give the first two sections 4 stars as a descriptive account of academia and research, especially the discussion of craft work and the difficulties and nuances involved in assessing the quality of any particular piece of research. the remainder of the work is an extended 1-star brigade. in the introduction to the 1995 edition ravetz basically acknowledges that the first part of the book is good and that the second part isn't
in the last two sections of the book, ravetz attempts to discuss the relationship of science (by this he means quantitative research) and technical problem solving to society at large. so far as i can tell ravetz is largely talking out his ass in these sections, and i recommend skipping them.
i give the first two sections 4 stars as a descriptive account of academia and research, especially the discussion of craft work and the difficulties and nuances involved in assessing the quality of any particular piece of research. the remainder of the work is an extended 1-star brigade. in the introduction to the 1995 edition ravetz basically acknowledges that the first part of the book is good and that the second part isn't
July 16, 2010
This classic of what has become the field of science studies, published in 1971, dismantles the myths of impartiality, Truth seeking (with a capital T), and moral infallibility that surrounded science in the popular Western conception for roughly 200 years. He is especially good at demonstrating how value judgments play a role in the establishment of supposedly quantitative fact--in everything from knowing whether an instrument is properly calibrated to formulating meaningful lines of inquiry. The book pre-dates his formulation of post-normal science but sounds prescient themes regarding the nature of complex (aka, "wicked") problems.
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