The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

by Michael Strevens

That is my project, too. I do not, as you know, endorse the understanding of science proposed by subjectivists such as Collins and Pinch. They have overlooked the iron rule; consequently, they have missed the scientific method. Restore the method to its proper place at the heart of the machine, however, and the image of the golem retains its force. The golem of legend was made of clay and brought to life by a magic word. The science golem’s raw material is people, organized and empowered by the iron rule. (It is bronze, not iron, but otherwise the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi’s transmogrification of Blake’s Newton, shown in the frontispiece to this book, is an apt portrayal of a man made knowledge machine.) The golem of legend had a mind of its own. Science is made up of many minds—those of a multitude of scientists, each interpreting the evidence in the light of their own culture and education, their own taste and inclination, and acting accordingly. Yet at the center of this multiplicity sits something further, the public arena in which scientific debates unfold. That we can understand as a theater of consciousness belonging to the golem itself. The golem’s memory is the archive of observation and experiment; its trains of thought are the arguments published by disputing scientists. Such reasoning as goes on in the golem’s head is therefore incomplete and conflicted. But at the same time, it operates at a remove from the human concerns of the people of which it is made. Hav...