collins programa empírico do relativismo

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Social Studies of Science

DOI: 10.1177/0306312781011001011981; 11; 3Social Studies of Science

H.M. CollinsStages in the Empirical Programme of Relativism

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3-1

INTRODUCTION

Stages in the Empirical Programmeof Relativism

H. M. Collins

Modern philosophy of science has allowed an extra dimension -

time - into descriptions of the nature of scientific knowledge.Theories are now seen as linked to each other, and tQ observations,not by fixed bonds of logic and correspondence, but by a network,each link of which takes time to be established as consensus

emerges and each link of which is potentially revisable - giventime.’ Many contributors to this new model intend only to make

philosophy of science compatible with history while maintaining an

epistemological demarcation between science and other intellectual

enterprises. One school, however, inspired in particular by Wit-

tgenstein and more lately by the phenomenologists and ethno-

methodologists, embraces an explicit relativism in which the

natural world has a small or non-existent role in the construction of

scientific knowledge.2Relativist or not, the new philosophy leaves

room for historical and sociological analysis of the processes which

lead to the acceptance, or otherwise, of new scientific knowledge.One set of such analyses is gathered in this issue of Social Studies ofScience.

The studies reported here emerge out of the relativist approach,the approach which has given rise to some of the most vigoroussocial analyses. Studies of modern science in this genre have been

reported since at least 1975 but the reports have been either un-









4

published, or, when published, scattered or diluted with program-

matic material. This has led one commentator to miss the empiricalface of the relativist programme altogether!’ More important, it

has tended to make authors feel that every new report must defendthe relativist position anew. This collection, it is hoped, in addition

to its substantive contribution, will reveal clearly the flourishingempirical programme associated with relativism and thereby ob-

viate the necessity for further defences and re-affirmations.4

The substantive contribution of the papers can be thought of as

threefold. First, they develop the empirical programme in its

sociological details. Second, they contribute to the understandingof the relationship between scientific knowledge and broader social

processes. And finally - a point which needs no expansion - each

of the five papers is a study of an area of modern science: memory

transfer; the detection of gravitational radiation; the detection of

magnetic monopoles; the experimental study of quantum non-

locality ; and the detection of solar neutrinos. Four of the papers

discuss overt controversies, while one discusses a case (non-locality)in which the latent controversy did not develop. The areas of

science looked at are nearer to the mainstream of ’respectable’research than to the ’margins of science’. In each study the in-

vestigator has built on a good understanding of the technical details

of the science in question, and has used extended informal inter-

views with relevant scientists as part of the method. In most cases

the salience of alternative interpretations of evidence, which

typifies controversies, has acted as a lever to elicit the essentiallycultural nature of the local boundaries of scientific legitimacy -

normally elusive or concealed.5 All the papers confirm the potentiallocal interpretative flexibility of science which prevents experimen-tation, by itself, from being decisive. In particular, the socially-

negotiated character of experimental replication is further

documented. This interpretative flexibility was the main message of

the ’first stage’ of the relativist empirical programme.6 At the same

time the papers go on to begin what might be called ’the second

stage of the programme’ by describing mechanisms which limit in-

terpretative flexibility and thus allow controversies to come to an

end.

Travis’s paper is, in the main, a replication of earlier work on

replication! It refers, however, to a new area of science. In the case

of ’worm running’ experiments, up to seventy factors could be in-

voked to justify the failure of an intended test of a ’memory









5

transfer’ effect. These factors included the phase of the Moon at

the time of the experiment and the orientation of the experimentalworm with respect to the Earth’s magnetic field. However, few of

the ’unlikely’ possibilities were taken seriously. Only a sub-set ofthe possible experimental configurations was exhausted. What is

more, the constraints on interpretative flexibility in the case of

worm experiments in general seem to have been more severe than in

(much better understood) experiments on laboratory rats. For ex-

ample, in the latter case, care in pre-experimental handling, which

was often ignored when worms were the experimental subjects, is

considered an important experimental safeguard. Thus, deficien-

cies in pre-experimental handling can be used to discount the resultsof rat experiments, but not the results of most worm experiments.Most of Travis’s paper is concerned with one aspect of the memory

transfer controversy - the ability of worms to learn. That they can

learn was initially a heterodox suggestion, and one attempt to

discredit the idea appears to have been made through the selective

reporting of negative results in a prestigious professional outlet. In

the long term, however, this move failed, and the once-heterodox

view is now virtually the orthodoxy.

Collins’s paper is a development of earlier work on replication in

gravity wave experiments. It deals with a more recent ’chronologicalcut’ of material. Again the potential openness of the debate is

shown, and one mechanism of closure is discussed - namely, the

use of rhetorical and presentational devices by one group of ex-

perimenters to make their own interpretation of the experimental

series the one credible possibility.

Pickering’s study of the magnetic monopole again confirms the

indecisiveness of experimental data taken by themselves. However,

Pickering concentrates his discussion on the way that debate was

curtailed, making the monopole interpretation untenable. He sug-

gests that the debate was brought to an end by decisions, on the

part of experimenters and critics, to preserve the maximum number

of

prior agreementson what could count as correct

experimenta-tion and what could be seen as credible experimental results. Since

it is theories which enable scientists to marshall previous sets of

agreements behind their views, by linking one area of science with

another, theoretical consensus becomes all-important. Pickering’sstress on theory as the major effective constraint on interpretative

flexibility leads him to recommend a shift in research emphasis









6

toward studies of the establishment of theoretical consensus -

often established, he claims, without controversy.

Harvey looks at experiments on ’non-locality’ - experimental

tests of quantum theory. In this case conflicting experimentalresults did not lead to overt controversy since the minority result,which was not in favour of quantum theory, was not supported bythe scientist who found it. Nevertheless, Harvey is able to show the

important ’non-scientific’ assumptions that had to be made for this

experiment to be dismissed. Harvey introduces the term ’plausibili-

ty’ to summarize the pre-existing cultural constraints which allow

scientists to make such assumptions with confidence. When press-

ed, Harvey’s scientist respondents themselves referred to the im-

plausibility, or ’screwiness’, of the assumptions and arguments that

would be needed to allow the minority result to stand. It was shared

agreements about what constitutes screwiness which allowed

closure of this debate.

In the last part of his paper Harvey shows the particular value of

the ’blanket’ term plausibility when he looks at the changes in

plausibility that have attended one assumption associated with the

non-locality experiments - the timing hypothesis. He suggests thatthe plausibility of this hypothesis has increased because one ex-

perimenter has planned an experiment to test it. According to

Harvey, then, experimental activity need not produce data to

change the pre-existing plausibility of an idea; the activity itself is

sufficient. This suggestion seems to contrast in an interesting way

with Pickering’s conclusions about the power of pre-existingtheory.

Pinch’s paper, on the solar neutrino debate, looks at scientists’claims about the certainty of the findings of the various sub-fields

within the overall controversy. By showing the differences in opi-nion he reveals that each of the sub-fields can be seen as either open

or closed. In the main, Pinch’s scientist respondents claimed

closure for their own fields and interpretative licence for those of

others. On the other hand, it appeared that when they felt that theywere not making a public statement they were prepared to admit to

the possibility of interpretative licence in their own fields too.

Perhaps Pinch’s paper reveals the way in which ideas about certain-

ty, or plausibility, or closure, are maintained outside the inner cir-

cle of scientists who are in direct contact with the data.

I have said that the papers collected here contribute to two stages

of the empirical programme of relativism - showing the inter-









7

pretative flexibility of experimental data, and showing some of the

mechanisms through which the potentially endless debate about in-

terpretation is limited. As more studies are completed, similarities

and differences across scientific disciplines will emerge. So far thedegree of similarity in the central body of findings is as encouragingas it is unusual in sociology. Another part of the programme is to relate the sort of work

presented here to the wider social and political structure. Historians

have already produced studies which suggest homologies between

political and scientific views.’ The papers here show that the con-

sensual interpretation of day-to-day laboratory work is only possi-

ble within constraints coming from outside that work. Thus the

homologies found in the historical studies are not incompatiblewith the apparent methodological autonomy of science.8 The miss-

ing link is the detailed relationship of the constraining mechanismsto the wider structure. It would be very satisfying if the establish-

ment of a piece of knowledge belonging to a modern mainstream

science, with substantial institutional autonomy, could be describ-

ed in terms of all three stages. The impact of society on knowledge

’produced’ at the laboratory bench would then have been followed

through in the hardest possible case.

. NOTES

Steve Shapin originally suggested the idea of an edited volume of papers to be taken

from the proceedings of a Conference on ’New Perspectives in the History and

Sociology of Scientific Knowledge’, jointly sponsored by the British Society for the

History of Science and the British Sociological Association Sociology of Science

Study Group, at the University of Bath, UK, 27-29 March 1980 - a conference of

which we were the joint organizers. Four of the papers in this issue are, in fact, bas-

ed on work presented at that conference, but Shapin nobly withdrew from joint

editorship as it became clear that the final collection would consist of studies of

modern science only. Shapin has been an inspiration throughout. David Edge and

Roy MacLeod provided the opportunity of bringing these five studies together by in-

viting me to edit this issue of Social Studies of Science. David Edge also did most of

the routine editorial work and made extensive comments on the papers which have

proved to be of great value. Ron Westrum refereed the papers and provided notes









8

which are so helpful that it would be unfair for him to remain anonymous. Without

the help of Edge and Westrum this would be a much inferior issue. Nevertheless,final responsibility for all editorial mistakes, omissions and infelicities rests with

myself. Finally,I would like to thank the authors for

putting upwith me and

my,sometimes substantial, suggestions for re-drafting.

1. Among the philosophers who have contributed, not always intentionally, to

this new view are Stephen Toulmin (see, for example, Human Understanding [Ox-ford : Clarendon Press, 1972]); W. V. O. Quine and Mary Hesse, for the revisabilityof network links (see, for example, their respective works, From a Logical Point ofView [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953], and The Structure ofScientific Inference [London: Macmillan, 1974]); Karl Popper, in his stress on the

temporary nature of contemporary knowledge (see, for example, The Logic ofScientific Discovery [New York: Harper & Row, 1959]); and, in particular, Imre

Lakatos, for his negative thesis concerning the revisability of judgements about

falsification (see, for example, Proofs and Refutations [Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1976]). It is impossible to separate philosophical contributions

from the contributions of historians. T. S. Kuhn in particular has been influential in

breaking down the timeless quality of philosophy of science (see, for example, The

Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2nd

edn, 1970]). Paul Feyerabend has given the new view its most florid treatment in his

Against Method (London: New Left Books, 1975). We also now know that Ludwik

Fleck anticipated many of the new ideas about the analysis of scientific knowledge in

The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press, 1979). A historian/sociologist who has stressed that findings can on-

ly become facts in certain circumstances is J. R. Ravetz, in his Scientific Knowledgeand its Social Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). Finally, John Ziman has

written about the consensual aspects of science in his Public Knowledge: The Social

Dimension of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).2. In this regard the best known books of Ludwig Wittgenstein are

Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), and Remarks on the Foun-

dations of Mathematics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956). Peter Winch’s book, The Idea ofa Social Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958) has shown the impor-tance of Wittgenstein to many non-philosophers and has given rise to the ’rationalitydebate’ (see, for example, B. Wilson [ed.], Rationality [Oxford: Blackwell, 1970]),around which the early arguments about relativism were centred. David Bloor, in his

’Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics’, Studies in the

History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4 (1973), 173-91, and Knowledge and

Social Imagery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), and Barry Barnes, in

his Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul, 1974), have carried the relativistic argument to science in particular. In this

regard, see also H. M. Collins and G. Cox, ’Recovering Relativity: Did ProphecyFail?’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 423-44. A useful entrée to the inter-

pretative sociology input to the debate is P. McHugh, ’On the Failure of

Positivism’, in J. D. Douglas (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life (London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), 320-35. The phenomenological aspect in par-

ticular may be approached through P. Berger and T. Luckman, The Social Con-

struction ofReality (London: Allen Lane, 1967). The source of the ethnomethod-









9

ological input is H. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs,NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), but for the case of science this should be examined in con-

junction with B. Barnes and J. Law, ’Whatever Should be Done with Indexical Ex-

pressions?’, Theory and Society, Vol. 3 (1976), 223-37. M. J. Mulkay’s recent book,Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Allen and Unwin, 1980) draws

together large areas of the debate in a very useful way. David Edge’s paper, ’Quan-titative Measures of Communication in Science: A Critical Review’, History ofScience, Vol. 17 (1979), 102-34, draws together criticisms of the major contem-

porary non-relativist approach to sociology of science.

3. J. Ben-David, ’Emergence of National Traditions in the Sociology of

Science’, in J. Gaston (ed.), The Sociology of Science: Problems, Approaches and

Research (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 1978), 197-218.

4. Empirical studies within the relativist programme include the following:

H. M. Collins, ’The Seven Sexes: A

Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or theReplication of Experiments in Physics’, Sociology, Vol. 9 (1975), 205-24; Collins,

’Upon the Replication of Scientific Findings: A Discussion Illuminated by the Ex-

periences of Researchers Into Parapsychology’, Proceedings of the 4S/ISA Con-

ference on Social Studies of Science, Cornell University, November 1976 (un-

published mimeo); Collins and T. J. Pinch, ’The Construction of the Paranormal:

Nothing Unscientific is Happening’, in R. Wallis (ed.), On the Margins of Science:

The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge (Keele, Staffs.: Sociological Review

Monograph No. 27, 1979), 237-70; Collins and Pinch, Science and the Spoon-benders : Frames of Meaning and Extraordinary Science, final report (1978) on (UK)

SSRC-sponsored project on ’Cognitive Dislocation in Science’ (Bath: Bath Science

Studies Centre Manuscript, 1979), to be published by Routledge and Kegan Paul;J. Dean, ’Controversy Over Classification: A Case Study from the History of

Botany’, in B. Barnes and S. Shapin (eds), Natural Order: Historical Studies ofScientific Culture (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), 211-30; B. Harvey, ’The Ef-

fects of Social Context on the Process of Scientific Investigation: ExperimentalTests of Quantum Mechanics’, in K. D. Knorr, R. Krohn and R. D. Whitley (eds),The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook,Vol. 4 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), 139-63; D. MacKenzie, ’Statistical Theory and

SocialInterests: A Case

Study’, SocialStudies

of Science, Vol. 8 (1978), 35-83; A. R. Pickering, ’The Hunting of the Quark’, Isis, Vol. 72, No. 262 (June 1981), in

press; T. J. Pinch, ’Normal Explanations of the Paranormal: The Demarcation

Problem in Parapsychology’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 9 (1979), 329-48;S. Shapin, ’The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy and Social Interests in

the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes’, in Wallis (ed.), op. cit., 139-78; G. D. L.

Travis, ’On the Construction of Creativity: The Memory Transfer Phenomenon and

the Importance of Being Earnest’, in Knorr et al. (eds), op. cit., 165-93; B. Wynne,’C. G. Barkla and the J Phenomenon: A Case Study in the Treatment of Deviance

in Physics’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 307-47. A number of other

studies by the same authors are still in draft form. An anthropological/ethnomethodological approach may be found in B. Latour and S. Woolgar,

Laboratory Life (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), and S. Woolgar, ’Writing an In-

tellectual History of Scientific Development: The Use of Discovery Accounts’,Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 395-422. Ethnomethodological studies byother authors will be forthcoming. M. J. Mulkay and G. N. Gilbert are currently

completing a large study of an area of biochemistry - oxydative phosphorylation.









10

Their work, which uses the same methods as most of the other studies, promisesmuch valuable new and comparative material. R. Westrum has produced studies of

the process by which information about ’anomolous events’ - sea-serpents,

meteorites, and the like - is received and processed by the scientific establishment. His

work is exactly compatible with the relativist programme — see R. Westrum, ’Social

Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of UFOs’, Social Studies of Scrence, Vol. 7

(1977), 271-302; ’Science and Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of

Meteorites’, ibid., Vol. 8 (1978), 461-93; and ’Knowledge about Sea-Serpents’, in

Wallis (ed.), op. cit., 293-314.

5. M. J. Mulkay’s article, ’Norms and Ideology in Science’, Social Science In-

formation, Vol. 15 (1976), 637-56, discusses the ideology of science. Mulkay’s argu-

ment would explain why parochial cultural boundaries might be concealed behind a

universalistic face.

6. One might say that this part of the programme showed the Quine-Duhem-Lakatos position to be more than an abstract, or long-term account of science. It un-

covered the equivalent of this philosophical and historical argument in the day-to-

day activity of contemporary laboratory science.

7. Paul Forman’s long paper, ’Weimar Culture, Causality and Quantum

Theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a

Hostile Intellectual Environment’, in R. McCormmach (ed.), Historical Studies in

the Physical Sciences, No. 3 (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press,

1971), 1-115, is the best known article in this genre. Shapin’s paper, ’The Politics of

Observation...’, op. cit. note 4, is the most complete attempt to link fairly high-

level political structures to the technical details of a scientific debate. He shows how

Edinburgh politics affected observation of the intricate formations of the human

brain. There are, of course, many compatible studies, at a more abstract level, in the

Marxist tradition.

8. For an argument reconciling social contingency with scientific method see

H. M. Collins, ’The Role of the Core-Set in Modern Science: Social ContingencyWith Methodological Propriety in Discovery’, History of Science, Vol. 19 (March1981), in press.







collins programa empírico do relativismo

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