Red, Black, and Objective: Science, Sociology, and Anarchism

273 Pages·2011·1.27 MB·English

by  Professor Sal Restivo

RED, BLACK, AND OBJECTIVE
Red, Black, and Objective
Science, Sociology, and Anarchism
SAL RESTIVO
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
ASHGATE
© Sal Restivo 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission
of the publisher.
Sal Restivo has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Restivo, Sal P.
Red, black, and objective : science, sociology, and anarchism.
1. Science--Social aspects. 2. Objectivity. 3. Anarchism.
I. Title
306.4’5-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Restivo, Sal P.
Red, black, and objective : science, sociology, and anarchism / by Sal Restivo.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-1039-3 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-1040-9 (ebook) 1.
Social sciences--Philosophy. 2. Science--Social aspects. I. Title.
H61.R4667 2011
330.1--dc22
2011011357
ISBN 978 1 4094 1039 3 (hbk)
ISBN 978 1 4094 1040 9 (ebk)
ISBN 9781409494560 (ebk-ePUB)
Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Prologue
1 Objectivity Revisited and Revised
2 The Social Theory of Objectivity and Its Problems
3 Sociology: A Copernican Revolution Changes How We Think About Science
and Mathematics
4 Science Studies: Sociological Theory and Social Criticism
5 Math Studies and the Anarchist Agenda
6 Anarchism and Modern Science
7 What’s Mind Got To Do With It?
8 Science, Religion, and Anarchism: The End of God and The Beginning of
Inquiry
9 A Manifesto in Anarcho-Sociology
Appendix 1: A Dialogue on the Syllogism With Philosopher Jean Paul Van
Bendegem (JP), Free University of Brussels
Appendix 2: Bibliographic Epilogue: Anarchism All the Way Down
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge and appreciate that the “I” is – as Nietzsche was among the first
to teach us – a grammatical illusion. The “social,” by contrast, is not an illusion.
I have drawn on my collaborative writings with Drs. Wenda Bauchspies, Jennifer
Croissant, Deborah Sloan, Daryl Chubin, Randall Collins, and Julia Loughlin.
They have been among my most enduring educators and collaborators but have
no responsibility for the ways in which I have re-woven and integrated into this
book our collaborative interrogative narratives on science, mathematics, and
sociology. I have been fortunate to have counted among my friends and virtual
teachers such saints of science as Joseph Needham, Mary Douglas, Dirk Struik,
and David Bohm (all of whom have passed on), along with my colleagues in the
sociology of science and other disciplines – notably, on a more personal level,
Karin Knorr-Cetina, Randall Collins, Daryl Chubin, Peter Denton, Hilary and
Steven Rose, the late Bernard Barber, Jerry Ravetz, Les Levidow, Leslie
Brothers, Brian Martin, the late David Edge, the late Derek Price, the late Joseph
Ben David, Steve Woolgar, Susan Cozzens, the late Leigh Star, Sharon Traweek,
Aant Elzinga, Jean Paul Van Bendegem, Clifford Hooker, the late Donald T.
Campbell, Ole Skovsmose, Ubi D’Ambrosio, and Jens Hoyrup. I have gained
much intellectually and emotionally from knowing and working with the
Michigan State University sociologists Herbert Karp and Christopher
Vanderpool, long departed. I have also learned from and been provoked by
knowing and reading Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Don Mackenzie, Sandra
Harding, Elizabeth Fee, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Donna Haraway, the late Bob
Merton, and Bruno Latour. Among my colleagues at RPI I have been closest to
and most influenced by Michael Zenzen, Ellen Esrock, Audrey Bennett, Shirley
Gorenstein, and Linnda Caporael. And I have been fortunate in working with
graduate students whose values and intellect have helped them stand above the
waves of commodification and commercialization that have been transforming
what I once knew (without Platonic delusions) as “the university”; I mentioned
Wenda and Jennifer (RPI STS Phds) above; the others are Gil Peach (Phd, NYU,
sociology), Monica Mesquita (PhD, Lisbon, ethnomathematics), Colin Beech
and Rachel Dowty (PhDs, RPI, STS), and Peter Bellomo (MS, RPI, STS). And
just as I am completing this book, a brilliant young PhD student has come along
to draw me into the roles of advisor, mentor, friend, and colleague: Sabrina
Weiss. I had the pleasure of having an office at RPI next to one occupied at
different times by the late David Weick and the late John Schumacher, friends,
colleagues, and inspired anarchists. And the anarchist George Bennello, also
long departed, was an occasional visitor to my home in southern Vermont and
with me among the founding members of the humanist sociology movement.
I want to thank my undergraduate teaching fellows for assisting me in
various ways in the classroom and with my research and writing over the last
couple of years: Terry Cheng, Christine Eromenok, Ashley Lowe, Laura Henry,
Leah Jakaitis, Eleanor Dunn, and Lorena Nicotra. I am especially grateful to
Lorena for helping me with formatting problems during the final preparation of
the manuscript.
As a young professor, I drifted away from organized Marxist, socialist, and
anarchist organizations which I found generally uninviting for a variety of
reasons. On the other hand, I was warmly but not uncritically embraced by and
became one of the founding members of the science studies movement. I am
grateful for the many ways in which the science studies community took me in
when I was looking for a home as a young researcher. In the end, the truth is I
have always felt homeless and marginalized, encouraged by many of life’s
contingencies to “do it my way”. Paint me red, black, and objective.
I have drawn on several previously published articles and list them below.
Readers interested in filling in the citation gaps in my narrative are referred to
these sources. I have limited citations within the text and have not used footnotes
or endnotes in the interest of narrative continuity. I have also included birth and
death dates only in cases where I thought the person might not be widely known
to readers or where it seemed important to locate the person in his or her
historical context.
References
“Science, Social Problems, and Progressive Thought: Essays on the Tyranny of
Science” (including “Technoscience or Tyrannoscience Rex”, a review of
Jurassic Park), pp. 39–87 in S.L. Star (ed.), Ecologies of Science (SUNY
Press, Albany, 1995). With Jennifer Croissant.
“How to Criticize Science and Maintain Your Sanity”, Science as Culture, 6,
Part 3, 28 (Spring 1996), pp. 396–413. With Wenda K. Bauchspies.
“Science, Social Theory, and Science Criticism”, Communication and Cognition
(special issue on Popularization of Science: The Democratization of
Knowledge in Perspective), 29, 2 (1996), pp. 249–272. With Wenda K.
Bauchspies.
“The Invention of Science”, Cultural Dynamics, 12, 2 (July, 2000), pp. 57–73.
With Julia Loughlin.
“Building Labs and Building Lives”, in Degrees of Compromise: Industrial
Interests and Academic Values (SUNY Press, Albany, 2001). With Jennifer
Croissant.
“The Will to Mathematics: Minds, Morals, and Numbers”, Foundations of
Science, 11, 1 and 2, special issue on Mathematics: What Does It All Mean?
Edited by Jean Paul Van Bendegem, Bart Kerkhove, and Sal Restivo, March
2006, 197–215. With Wenda Bauchspies. Portuguese translation, Bauchspies,
W. and Restivo, S. (2001) – “O arbítrio da matemática: mentes, moral e
numerous”, in BOLEMA, 16, pp. 102–124.
“Mechanical Mathematicians: The End of Proof as We Know It”, review essay,
The Information Society, 20, 1 (January, 2004), pp. 67–8.
“Theories of Mind, Social Science, And Mathematical Practice”, pp. 61–79 in
J.P. Van Bendegem and Bart Van Kerkhove (eds), Perspectives on
Mathematical Practices (Kluwer, Dordrecht, 2005).
“Politics of Latour”, review essay, Organization and Environment, 8, 1 (March,
2005), pp. 111–115.
“Social Constructionism in Science and Technology Studies”, pp. 213–229 in
Jim Holstein and Jaber Gubrium (eds), Handbook of Constructionist
Research, edited by (Guilford, New York, 2007). With Jennifer Croissant.
“Sturm und Drang in Mathematics: Casualties, Consequences, and
Contingencies in the Math Wars”, Philosophy of Mathematics Education
Journal, 20 (June 2007). With Deborah Sloan.
“Society, Social Construction, and the Sociological Imagination”, invited
commentary, Constructivist Foundations 3, 2 (2008), pp. 94–96.
“Minds, Morals, and Mathematics in the Wake of the Deaths of Plato and God:
Reflections on What Social Constructionism Means, Really”, pp. 37–43 in
Anna Chronaki (ed.), Mathematics, Technologies, Education: The Gender
Perspective (University of Thessaly Press, Volos, 2008/2010).
“Science Studies”, Cultural Theory, M.K. Booker (editor), a volume in the
Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, M. Ryan (editor) (Blackwell,
Oxford, 2010). With Jennifer Croissant.
“Bruno Latour: The Once and Future Philosopher”, in George Ritzer and Jeffrey
Stepinsky (eds), The New Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists
(Blackwell, Boston, 2010).
A specter is haunting the sociology of science – the specter of anarchism. All the
powers of the old and the new sociology of science have entered into a holy
alliance to exorcise this specter: British relativists and American evolutionary
epistemologists, Mertonians and Kuhnians, functionalists and Marxists.
Where is the paradigm in opposition that has not been descried as anarchistic
by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the
branding reproach of anarchism, against the more advanced opposition
paradigms, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
1. Anarchism is already acknowledged by all sociologists of science to be
itself a power.
2. It is high time that anarchists should openly, in the face of the whole field,
publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale
of the specter of anarchism with a manifesto of the paradigm itself.
Sal Restivo, Dubrovnik, 1990