Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science

126 Pages·1998·9.091 MB·English

by  Jan Golinski

MAKING NATURAL KNOWLEDGE
Constructivism and the History of Science
In Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science, Jan
Golinski reviews recent writing on the history of science and shows how
it has been dramatically reshaped by a new understanding of science
itself. In the last few years, scientific knowledge has come to be seen as
a product of human culture, an approach that has challenged the tradi­
tion of the history of science as a story of steady and autonomous prog­
ress. New topics have emerged in historical research, including: the
identity of the scientist, the importance of the laboratory, the roles of
language and instruments, and the connections with other realms of cul­
ture and society. Golinski has written a sympathetic but critical survey
of this exciting field of research, at a level that can be appreciated by
students or anyone else who wants an introduction to contemporary
thinking about the development of the sciences.
Jan Golinski is Associate Professor of History and Humanities at the
University of New Hampshire, where he teaches the history of European
science since the Renaissance. He has also held visiting appointments at
Churchill College, Cambridge University, and Princeton University. He
is the author of Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in
Britain, 1760-1820 (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and of many ar­
ticles on the history of science. His current work includes editing (with
William Clark and Simon Schaffer) a collection of essays on The Sciences
in Enlightened Europe and investigating the cultural history of weather in
the eighteenth century.
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
Editors
GEORGE BASALLA
University of Delaware
OWEN HANNA WAY
Johns Hopkins University
Man and Nature in the Renaissance
ALLEN G. DEBUS
The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics
RICHARD s. WESTFALL
Science and the Enlightenment
THOMAS L. HANKINS
Biology in the Nineteenth Century: Problems of Form, Function, and
Transformation
WILLIAM COLEMAN
Energy, Force, and Matter: The Conceptual Development of Nineteenth-
Century Physics
p. M. HARMAN
Life Science in the Twentieth Century
GARLAND E. ALLEN
The Evolution of Technology
GEORGE BASALLA
Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives
JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE
Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History
LOREN R. GRAHAM
Science and the Practice of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century
W. F. BYNUM
The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages
EDWARD GRANT
MAKING NATURAL
KNOWLEDGE
Constructivism and the History of
Science
JAN GOLINSKI
C a m brid g e
UNIVERSITY PRESS
PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 IRP, United Kingdom
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk
Contents
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA http://www.cup.org
10 Stamford Road, Oakleigh, Melbourne 3166, Australia
© Jan Colinski 1998
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
page viii
the written permission of Cambridge University Press. List of Illustrations
ix
Preface
First published 1998
Printed in the United States of America Introduction: Challenges to the Classical View of Science
Typeset in Palatino 10/12 [RF] 1. An Outline of Constructivism 13
From Kuhn to the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge 13
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data What's Social about Constructivism? 27
Golinski, Jan.
Making natural knowledge ; constructivism and the history of 47
2. Identity and Discipline
science / Jan Golinski.
The Making of a Social Identity 47
p. cm. - (Cambridge history of science)
66
The Disciplinary Mold
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-521-44471-3 (alk. paper). - ISBN 0-521-44913-8 (pbk. 3. The Place of Production 79
alk. paper)
The Workshop of Nature 79
1. Science - History. 2. Science - Historiography.
3. Constructivism (Philosophy) I. Title. II. Series. Beyond the Laboratory Walls 91
Q125.G63 1998
507'.22 - dc21 4. Speaking for Nature 103
97-24028 The Open Hand 103
CIP Stepping into the Circle 119
A catalog record of this book is available from 5. Interventions and Representations 133
the British Library.
Instruments and Objects 133
ISBN 0 521 44471 3 hardback The Work of Representation 145
ISBN 0 521 44913 8 paperback
6. Culture and Construction 162
The Meanings of Culture 162
172
Regimes of Construction
Coda: The Obligations of Narrative 186
207
Bibliography
229
Index
Illustrations
Preface
1. Frontispiece from Sprat, History of the Royal Society (1667) page 56
This is a book of uncertain genre, which seems to call for more than the
2. Liebig's laboratory in Giessen in the 1830s 74 usual amount of prefatory explanation. What follows is a kind of ex­
tended historiographical essay, a review of recent writing about the his­
3. Laboratory floor plans from the Liverpool University
tory of the sciences. It is not, however, a comprehensive survey; rather,
College (1880s) 89
it is selective and written from a clearly defined point of view. My aim
4. Imperato's cabinet of curiosities (sixteenth century) 96 is to explore the implications of what I have called a "constructivist"
view of science for the question of how its history is to be written. By a
5. The first page of Newton's paper "A New Theory about
"constructivist" outlook, I mean that which regards scientific knowledge
Light and Colors" (1672) 116
primarily as a human product, made with locally situated cultural and
6. Boyle's air pump (1660) 148 material resources, rather than as simply the revelation of a pre-given
order of nature. This view of science has attained widespread currency
7. Hooke's Micrographia (1665) 150
in recent years, although expressed in a variety of different idioms with
A representative plate from Bernhard Albinus's anatom­ varying degrees of explicitness. For historians, as for others, it brings in
ical atlas (1747) 155 its train a series of questions: What does such an outlook imply for the
history of the sciences? What issues does it open up for historical inves­
9. A representative plate from William Hunter's anatomical
tigation? What new sources does it suggest historians might be able to
atlas (1774) 156
use? What questions are posed to history by the constructivist perspec­
10. Two of Warren De la Rue's photographs of a total solar tive, and in what ways might historical research illuminate, extend, or
eclipse in 1860 159 challenge it?
In proposing answers to these questions, I shall give an avowedly
11. The most detailed of Martin Rudwick's mappings of the
partial survey of recent historical work, choosing to emphasize those
path of the Devonian controversy 200
studies that seem to draw strength from - or to develop implications of
- "constructivism." I shall argue that identification of this theme pro­
vides a way to draw together much (though not by any means all) of
what historians of science have been doing in the last few years. To make
the general tendency explicit helps us to make sense of what has been
done and point out directions in which we might go from here. My
orientation toward this program is sympathetic, but not entirely uncrit­
ical. I shall point out ways in which some of its foundational claims have
been questioned, and original approaches modified, as the work has un­
folded. It should nonetheless be clear that I think constructivism is wor­
thy of serious attention from those who are interested in the history of
X Preface Preface XI
the sciences, and that historical study has contributed, and can contribute follows is not a defense of constructivism, in philosophical or sociological
further, to its development. terms. I am more concerned to see how the constructivist approach can
Within the limits of my project, I have tried to be flexible in my choice be put to work than to engage in a debate about it on an abstract level.
of historical research that can be shown to be relevant to it. Some of the There are, however, a number of very able defenses available, some of
authors whose work I have mentioned may not share my view of their which can also serve as introductions to the constructivist outlook. (See,
location in the current historiographical landscape. Other mappings of for example, the works of Barnes 1985a; Bloor 1976/1991; Collins and
the field would certainly be possible. The value of the view I offer has Pinch 1993; Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay 1983; Latour 1987; Mulkay 1979;
to be judged by its utility. I have sketched a review of recent historical Pickering 1992, 1995a; Rouse 1987, 1996; and Woolgar, 1988a.) Rather
research that tries to bring into focus some of the most imaginative work than reiterating philosophical arguments here, I argue implicitly that the
of the last few years and to chart a path ahead. In thinking of those who best justification of an approach is to show that it can be used produc­
might profit from reading the pages that follow, I have aimed to make tively to generate new knowledge and to deepen understanding. It is
them accessible, say, to senior undergraduates who have already studied nonetheless the case that, in choosing to give serious attention to con­
a little history of science and want to undertake more advanced work. structivism, and in ascribing some importance to it in relation to histor­
For graduate students in the subject, I offer a guide to some important ical understanding of the sciences, I am distancing myself from the recent
recent research and a scheme for making sense of its overall direction. conservative denunciations of its "fashionable relativism" (Gross and
It is not, of course, a substitute for study of the monographs and journal Levitt 1994; cf. Fuller 1995; Lewontin 1995), and even from the more
articles themselves, but it will help students locate studies that pursue measured discussions that have perpetuated what I believe is a misread­
certain methodological themes, and make use of them. I believe the book ing of it as the parent of a postmodernist challenge to the legitimacy of
can serve the same purpose for academic readers in other disciplines, science (Appleby, Hunt, and Jacob 1994). I do not identify the construc­
such as general history, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, literary tivist outlook with a generalized relativism, if by that is meant a deter­
studies, and cultural studies. Readers with a limited amount of time to mination that all claims to knowledge are to be judged equally valid. As I
devote to the history of science will, I hope, be persuaded that they can explain in Chapter 1,1 take constructivism to be based, rather, on a de­
learn something valuable in relation to their own concerns. Finally, for gree of methodological relativism, which stipulates that all forms of
practitioners of the history of science itself, I offer an opportunity to knowledge should be understood in the same manner - which is not the
pause for reflection, to lift our eyes from our immediate research pre­ same thing.
occupations and think about where our subject is going. Not everyone Many of the sociological and philosophical books on constructivism
will agree with my view about this - perhaps nobody will agree about make use of examples drawn from the research of historians (most re­
everything - but we can benefit, I think, from some discussion of these cently, Barnes, Bloor, and Henry 1996). This is the first one to reverse
general issues. the traffic and to explore the implications of the constructivist perspec­
I have chosen to trace the roots of the constructivist outlook to the tive for historical studies (though Dominique Pestre's recent article in the
philosophical arguments of the 1960s and 1970s, surrounding Thomas journal Annales [1995] follows a path very close to mine). Looking at it
Kuhn's work and that of the succeeding "Strong Programme" and the in this connection helps us to see how the program has been articulated
"sociology of scientific knowledge." As I shall explain in the Introduction and modified by engagement with the specific problems historians face
and in Chapter 1,1 see the significance of this work as lying in its break in their work. Rather than portraying history as simply sociological the­
with the project of epistemological validation of scientific knowledge - ory put into practice, this account shows how historians have qualified
a break that brought in its train a series of novel techniques for the study theoretical schemes to accommodate empirical findings that are always
of science as an aspect of human culture. I propose, in other words, that more complex than theorists would wish. In the course of this dialectic,
the uncoupling of historical and sociological inquiry from issues of truth, the abstract formulations with which constructivism began have been
or realism, or objectivity opened the way to a remarkably productive replaced by a more subtle awareness of the complexities of the sciences
period in the understanding of science as a human enterprise. Historians, as creations of human culture. The reader will observe repeatedly, in the
and the others now involved in the interdisciplinary field of "science chapters that follow, a trajectory that leads from abstract formulations
studies," continue to have reason to be grateful to those who took that by sociologists and philosophers to the empirically richer and more nu-
step. anced accounts of historians. I offer this narrative thread as a reflection
Notwithstanding my view of this, I should make it clear that what of my own experience of the last two decades' work in empirical study
Xll Preface Preface xiii
of the sciences. My argument is not an antitheoretical one, however. On ture, and the implications this has for our understanding of what "cul­
the contrary, I insist that the course of recent research cannot be under­ ture" is. In this connection, constructivist studies have emphasized the
stood without acknowledging the critical and continuing importance of material means by which verbal and visual representations are trans­
theoretical articulations of constructivism. If I had not been convinced of ported across time and space. The final Coda tackles the question of the
this, I would not have written the book in the way I have. responsibilities of constructivism as a form of historical narrative. I con­
In tracing the progress of a dialogue between empirical research and sider what forms of writing constructivist history of science might pro­
theoretical interpretation, I have ended up writing an unusually long duce, and what the prospects might be for relations with its potential
essay in historiography. I have however tried to avoid the tendency, audiences.
sometimes found in that kind of writing, to lay down the law about what Having organized the book thematically, I have drawn for historical
is good and what is bad history. I have also tried to avoid the tone of a examples upon studies that are concentrated in my own areas of com­
manifesto or a call to arms. Neither negative criticism nor a program­ petence. The biases and limitations revealed by my choices will be read­
matic clarion call seems to be necessary, given the wealth of good his­ ily apparent to knowledgeable readers. My own scholarly research has
torical work of the last couple of decades which I have been able to draw been on the sciences of the "long eighteenth century," particularly in
upon for examples of concrete achievements. We can take pride, I be­ Britain. My knowledge of more modern physical and biological sciences
lieve, in what has been accomplished and look with optimism to the is much less comprehensive. And I am quite unable to address the ques­
future. tion of how constructivist perspectives could affect our understanding
of natural knowledge in the premodern or non-Western worlds. In other
Quite early in my thinking about this book, I decided that I could not respects, my choices of historical research to discuss have been even
write a survey, organized along chronological or geographical lines, of more arbitrary. I am well aware that there is much relevant work that I
the historical picture that has emerged from constructivist studies. In­ have not been able to incorporate, either because of my ignorance or
stead, each chapter is organized around a theme that connects historical because I did not see how to do justice to it within the small compass
research with other varieties of science studies. The Introduction and and limited number of themes I had chosen. I apologize to authors who
Chapter 1 trace the origins and development of constructivism and out­ may feel slighted in this respect, and (even more) to those who think
line some of the debates that have characterized its history. Chapter 2 their work has been misrepresented by my treatment of it.
develops the theme of the social dimension of scientific life, which has
been brought under renewed scrutiny by constructivism. I describe work My most substantial debt of gratitude is to the many colleagues, in the
on the formation of the identity of the scientific practitioner in early- various fields of science studies, from whose work I have learned. For
modern Europe, and on the creation of new disciplinary structures in most, a reference in the Bibliography is a scarcely adequate acknowledg­
the so-called second scientific revolution of the late eighteenth and early ment of my indebtedness. I would just add that I feel privileged to have
nineteenth centuries. In Chapter 3, I consider the issue of the locations been a witness of the intellectual excitement that has characterized this
in which scientific knowledge is produced. I describe work on labora­ field in the last two decades.
tories, in which materials, instruments, and human skills are concen­ This book originated in a happy coincidence of my own ideas and
trated and put to use, and on the fieldwork sciences, which deploy their those of John Kim, when he was working at Cambridge University Press.
resources across much more extensive spaces. Chapter 4 looks at science After John's departure, Frank Smith and Alex Holzman at the Press con­
as a linguistic activity, embodied in a variety of different kinds of dis­ tinued the encouragement. Owen Hannaway and George Basalla have
course, from lectures and grant proposals to research papers and text­ been most supportive series editors.
books. I discuss how we can understand scientists' use of language as The work was begun during my period as a visiting assistant professor
an activity that involves both persuasion and the making of meaning. In at Princeton University, in the spring of 1992. I owe a particular debt to
Chapter 5, we shall see that the study of science as a practical activity Norton Wise and the other faculty and students in the History of Science
also involves taking seriously the way material resources are used to Program for their friendly advice.
create knowledge. Two aspects of laboratory work emerge as crucial in Just when I was wondering if I would ever have time to write the
this respect: the manipulation of apparatus and practices of visual rep­ book, the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at
resentation. Chapter 6 moves beyond the laboratory to consider the MIT came forward with a very welcome offer of a resident fellowship
means by which scientific knowledge acquires authority in general cul­ in the spring of 1994.1 am most grateful to Jed Buchwald, Evelyn Simha,
XIV Preface
the institute staff, and the other resident fellows, for making my time at
the Dibner so profitable.
At my home institution, the University of New Hampshire, colleagues
in many departments have fostered and sustained my interdisciplinary
interests. Those in the History Department have helped me anchor them
Introduction: Challenges to the
firmly in a commitment to historical scholarship, while also giving me
the sense of intellectual freedom to undertake a project like this.
Classical View of Science
Peter Dear, Simon Schaffer, Jim Secord, Steven Shapin, and Roger
Smith deserve special thanks for their careful readings of the manuscript
and their very helpful comments.
Many colleagues have aided me by sharing their work, by commenting
on mine, or just by illuminating conversation. In addition to those men­ [W]hen we tell our Whiggish stories about how our ancestors gradually
crawled up the mountain on whose (possibly false) summit we stand, we
tioned above, I can recall particularly helpful discussions with Mario
need to keep some things constant throughout the story. The forces of
Biagioli, Jed Buchwald, Harry Collins, Steve Fuller, Dominique Pestre,
nature and the small bits of matter, as conceived by current physical the­
Larry Prelli, Anne Secord, Miriam Solomon, Maria Trumpler, and An­
ory, are good choices for this role.
drew Warwick. No doubt there were others. Anne Harrington, Everett
Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979: 344-345)
Mendelsohn, and Sam Schweber invited me to participate in seminars at
Harvard that were good-humored and very productive. Earlier versions But, irresistibly, I cannot help thinking that this idea is the equivalent of
of parts of the book were also presented to audiences at the Boston Col­ those ancient diagrams we laugh at today, which place the Earth at the
center of everything, or our galaxy at the middle of the universe, to satisfy
loquium for Philosophy of Science, and at the Dibner Institute. I thank
our narcissism. Just as in space we situate ourselves at the center, at the
those who commented or asked questions on either occasion, especially
navel of things in the universe, so for time, through progress, we never
Evelyn Fox Keller. I am also grateful to the following for sharing their
cease to be at the summit, on the cutting edge, at the state-of-the-art of
work with me in advance of publication; Pnina Abir-Am, Jon Agar,
development. It follows that we are always right, for the simple, banal, and
Mario Biagioli, Harry Collins, Michael Dennis, Sophie Forgan, Steve Ful­
naive reason that we are living in the present moment. The curve traced
ler, Graeme Gooday, Dominique Pestre, John Pickstone, Hans-Jorg by the idea of progress thus seems to me to sketch or project into time the
Rheinberger, Simon Schaffer, Steven Shapin, and Mary Terrall. None of vanity and fatuousness expressed spatially by that central position. Instead
these people should be held responsible for what I have made of their of inhabiting the heart or the middle of the world, we are sojourning at
work or their advice. the summit, the height, the best of truth.
Michel Serres with Bruno Latour, Conversations on Science, Culture, and
Time (1995; 48^9)
People who have not come across it before frequently express surprise
that there is a subject called "history of science." "Is that a kind of history
or a kind of science?" they sometimes ask. "Do historians of science work
in a library or a laboratory?" And, "Why would anyone want to study
out-of-date science, anyway?"
To those with some knowledge of the subject, these questions no doubt
sound naive. But, as I have encountered them repeatedly, I have come
to feel that they reflect serious conceptual difficulties surrounding the
yoking together of the words "history" and "science." It is not just that
the two subjects are usually well separated in educational institutions,
but that they seem to be rooted in fundamentally opposed points of
view. History is oriented to the past, while science seems oriented to the
future; history is connected with humanity, science (largely) with the
2 Making Natural Knowledge Introduction 3
nonhuman world; history is associated with culture, science with nature; encompassing vision of progress. Human knowledge could be seen to
history is thought of as subjective, science as objective; history uses com­ have advanced in a single positive direction, even though its forward
mon language, while science uses technical vocabulary; and so on. motion might sometimes have been delayed (McEvoy 1979). Knowl­
Because of these common assumptions, the conjunction of "history" and edge of the natural world increased in step with the enhancement of
"science" can seem bizarre and confusing. human life in all of its material and cultural aspects - the process that
Even those of us who are now familiar with the history of science Enlightenment intellectuals called "refinement" or "improvement."
should perhaps remind ourselves, from time to time, what a strange Priestley wrote, of his History of Electricity, that the "idea of a continual
hybrid the discipline is. It is worth asking periodically what history of rise and improvement is conspicuous in the whole study"; so that the
science is, what it can be as a discipline. This book is about how ideas of history of science, thus narrated, "cannot but animate us in our at­
the subject have been changing in the last few decades. It argues that tempts to advance still further" (1767; ii-v). A "philosophical" history
the hybridization of history and science has been a remarkably fertile of this kind would be more instructive than human or "civil" history,
union, giving birth to exciting new ideas about what science is, its role with its disorder and immoral behavior. The history of scientific pro­
in our culture and society, and the kind of history that is appropriate for gress offered readers a "sublime" experience, one provoked by ideas
understanding it. that, "relate to great objects, suppose extensive views of things, require
In part, these new ideas and approaches have come about through a a great effort of mind to conceive them, and produce great effects"
fundamental reconsideration of the ways of dealing with the past that (Priestley 1777: 154).
are embedded in the practices of science itself. Although we sometimes This uplifting vision of the progress of science was integrated with a
think of science as aimed only toward the future, scientists do have to particular model of epistemology. Priestley, like many of his contem­
engage in interpretation and assimilation of the past as part of their poraries, was an empiricist; he believed that knowledge comprised an
work. Practising scientists are continually appropriating the work of their association of ideas that derived from the impact of external reality upon
predecessors and orienting themselves in relation to it. They periodically the senses. Knowledge was stored up in the mind like marks on the
celebrate the work of founders and pioneers of the various scientific dis­ proverbial blank slate. Because ideas, which represented impressions of
ciplines (Abir-Am 1992). It is because their interests in the past do not the external world, could be translated in turn into speech and writing,
coincide with those of historians, however, that problems arise. The his­ the stock of human knowledge was constantly augmented.
tory of science has had a long struggle to free itself from science's own Even when strict empiricism was brought into question, at the end of
view of its past. the eighteenth century, the epistemological model of the mind as a "mir­
This is particularly so because of the context in which the subject of ror of nature" was largely retained, and the history of science continued
history of science originated. When it began, during the eighteenth- to be narrated as a story of progress. In the 1830s the man who invented
century Enlightenment, it was practised by scientists (or "natural phi­ the word "scientist," William Whewell, again argued that the historical
losophers") with an interest in validating and defending their enterprise. development of the sciences followed the path by which the human mind
They wrote histories in which the discoveries of their own day were gradually gained representational mastery of external reality. Although
presented as the culmination of a long process of advancing knowledge Whewell complicated Priestley's version of empiricism, by ascribing an
and civilization. This kind of account tied the epistemological credentials essential role to mental activity in anticipating and structuring experi­
of science to a particular vision of history: one that saw it as steady ence, the basic notion of knowledge as a representation of the object in
upward progress. The science of the day was exhibited as the outcome the mind of the subject was retained (Brooke 1987, Cantor 1991a). This
of the progressive accumulation of human knowledge, which was an informed Whewell's view of the historian's task and the kind of narrative
integral part of moral and cultural development. The origins of the his­ he should produce. He wrote:
tory of science lie in this Enlightenment project to advance the standing
IT]he existence of clear Ideas applied to distinct Facts will be discernible
of natural knowledge by claiming for it a particular kind of history. It is
in the History of Science, whenever any marked advance takes place. And,
worth considering this legacy briefly, before we discuss the current pros­
in tracing the progress of the various provinces of knowledge which come
pects for the discipline.
under our survey, it will be important for us to see that, at all such epochs,
For its pioneers, like the eighteenth-century English preacher and such a combination has occurred....
chemist Joseph Priestley, the history of science was part of an all- In our history, it is the progress of knowledge only which we have to
4 Making Natural Knowledge Introduction 5
attend to. This is the main action of our drama; and all the events which rule that can be consistently applied to the great scientific innovators of
do not bear upon this, though they may relate to the cultivation and the
the past is that "anything goes" (Feyerabend 1975).
cultivators of philosophy, are not a necessary part of our theme. (Whewell
The effect of these challenges has been to undermine the historical and
1837/1984: 7-9)
philosophical assumptions upon which the history of science was origi­
In the second half of the twentieth century, both Whev^ell's story of nally established. Stories of the long-term incremental progress of accu­
progress and its undergirding philosophical assumptions have been sub­ mulating knowledge, under the aegis of the scientific method, no longer
jected to damaging criticism. Historical narratives in v^hich science ap­ command general acceptance. Uprooted from its original philosophical
pears to advance steadily in the direction of greater accumulations of foundations, the subject has nonetheless flourished, aided by a multitude
factual knowledge are now widely scorned as “whig history." Priestley's of new intellectual resources and alliances. As the link between whiggish
and Whewell's chronicles of the steady progress of discoveries have been history and classical empiricist epistemology has been broken, new links
revealed as nostalgic retrospectives, like the stories the Whig political with other versions of philosophy and history, and with the humanities
historians used to tell about the steady growth of English liberty. Today's and social sciences, have been forged. In the process, the history of sci­
historians are more likely to set themselves the goal of understanding ence has ceased to seem fundamentally different from other fields of
the past "in its own terms" (whatever that might mean) rather than in human history, although it continues to benefit from a wealth of inter­
the light of subsequent developments. This has yielded histories in which disciplinary connections that other kinds of history sometimes lack. Prac­
knowledge, rather than continuously increasing, has undergone radical titioners of the subject have been able to draw upon the contributions of
discontinuities and transformations, and in which what subsequently sociology, anthropology, social history, philosophy, literary criticism,
come to be seen as forward movements are deeply rooted in contexts
cultural studies, and other disciplines.
that are quite foreign from a modern perspective.
It would be impossible to survey all of these contributions here. In­
Recent criticism has also removed a central philosophical support from stead, in Chapter 1,1 shall trace a particular lineage that connects recent
Whewell's vision of history - the idea of a universal scientific method. historical work back to crucial arguments in the philosophy and sociol­
Whewell wrote explicitly to demonstrate the pervasive importance of the ogy of science that surfaced in the 1960s and 1970s, though their roots
method of induction, whereby scientific knowledge was supposedly built go back somewhat earlier. I begin with Thomas S. Kuhn, whose Structure
up, by generalization from collections of particular observations and ex­ of Scientific Revolutions (1962/1970) launched a fundamental reexamina­
periments, to universal laws. The narrative of progress was designed to tion of the nature of science. Kuhn's book, as we shall see, was given a
display the working through of the inductive method and to recommend forceful if contentious interpretation by David Bloor and Barry Barnes,
its continuing use in science. "It will be universally expected," Whewell at the University of Edinburgh, who articulated what they called the
wrote, "that a History of Inductive Science should... afford us some "Strong Programme" in the sociology of science in the 1970s. This pro-
indication of the most promising mode of directing our future efforts to I grarnT^vTfKlts founding proposition that science should be studied like
add to its extent and completeness" (1837/1984: 4). Since Whewell's day, I other aspects of human culture, without regard to its supposed truth or
however, many alternative accounts of scientific method have come to i falsity, was controversial among philosophers and many historians. It
be entertained in place of his inductivism. More fundamentally, persua­ nonetheless provided an important inspiration for the field that became
sive arguments have been proposed against the belief that scientists con­ known as the sociology of scientific knowledge (or "SSK"), which ac­
sistently adhere to any single, specifiable method in their research. All crued some impressive empirical case studies and began to influence the
the methods proposed have been subjected to stringent critiques, while work of several leading historians by the mid-1980s. As we shall also see
some philosophers have undermined the whole project of methodology in Chapter 1, SSK faced a significant challenge in the late 1980s from an
by arguing that human action cannot be understood as a process of fol­ alternative sociological approach, advocated by the "actor-network"
lowing general rules. Meanwhile, sociologists of contemporary science school of Bruno Latour and Michel Callon. The arguments over these
have shown that practising scientists do not appear to be bound by any different approaches fragmented the community of sociologists of sci­
of the rules of method that have been suggested. No single method that ence but, paradoxically, confirmed their influence among historians, and
has been articulated seems able to capture more than a part of what they increasingly also among philosophers. By the late 1980s, the constellation
actually do (Mulkay 1979: 49-59). To expect such a method to provide a of "science studies" disciplines was heterogeneous and riven with ar­
key to historical development has therefore come to seem quite naive. guments, but it was no longer possible to evade the conclusion that the
One account has gone so far as to conclude that the only methodological traditional understanding of science had been radically undermined.