The Cognitive Turn: Sociological and Psychological Perspectives on Science PDF
Preview The Cognitive Turn: Sociological and Psychological Perspectives on Science
THE COGNITIVE TURN SOCIOLOGY OF THE SCIENCES A YEARBOOK Managing Editor: R. D. Whitley Manchester Business School. University of Manchester Editorial Board: G. B(jhme. Technische Hochschule. Darmstadt N. Elias, Amsterdam Y. Ezrahi, The Hebrew University ofl ersusalem L. Graham, Massachusetts Institute of Technology T. Lenoir, University of Pennsylvania E. Mendelsohn, Harvard University H. Nowotny,Institutfur Wissenschaftstheorie und Wissenschaftsforschung. Vienna Claire Salomon-Bayet, Paris R. Schwartz-Cowan, State University ofN ew York at Stony Brook T. Shinn, Groupe d' Etude des Methodes de ['Analyse Sociologique. Paris P. Weingart, University ofB ielefeld VOLUME XIII - 1989 THE COGNITIVE TURN Sociological and Psychological Perspectives on Science Edited by STEVE FULLER Virginia Polytechnic Institute, U.S,A. MARC DE MEY Rijksuniversiteit Gent, Belgium TERRY SHINN Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France and STEVE WOOLGAR Brunei University, u.K. Springer Science+Business Media, B.Y. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The Cognitive turn: Sociological and psychological perspect1ves on SClence / edited by Steve Fuller ... [et al.]. p. CII. -- (SOCiology of the sciences ; v. 13) Selected papers of the Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook conference, held at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Nov. 23-25, 1987. Bibliography: p. Includes 1ndex. ISBN 0-7923-0306-7 <U.S.J 1. Science--Soc1al aspects--Congresses. 2. Science--Psychologlcal aspects--Congresses. 3. Cognitlon--Congresses. 1. Fuller, Steve. II. Serles. Q175.4.C64 1989 303.48·3--dc20 89-34245 ISBN 978-90-481-4049-7 ISBN 978-94-015-7825-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-7825-7 printed an acid free paper AII Rights Reserved © 1989 by Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1989 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Introduction ix PART ONE Mapping the Study of Scientific Cognition RONALD N. GIERE - The Units of Analysis in Science Studies 3 WILLIAM R. SHADISH Jr. and ROBERT A. NEIMEYER - Contributions of Psychol- ogy to an Integrative Science Studies: The Shape of Things to Come 13 PART TWO Models for Studying Scientific Cognition MICHAEL E. GORMAN - Error and Scientific Reasoning: An Experimental Inquiry 41 PAUL THAGARD - Scientific Cognition: Hot or Cold? 71 STEPHEN TURNER - Tacit Knowledge and the Project of Computer Modelling Cognitive Processes in Science 83 PART THREE The Modularity of Scientific Cognition BEATRICE DE GELDER - Granny, the Naked Emperor and the Second Cognitive Revolution 97 TERRY SHINN - Cognitive Process and Social Practice: The Case of Experimental Macroscopic Physics 119 PART FOUR Language as an Indicator of Scientific Cognition DONALD T. CAMPBELL - Models of Language Learning and their Implications for Social Constructionist Analyses of Scientific Belief 153 DAVID BLOOR - Professor Campbell on Models of Language-Learning and the Sociology of Science: A Reply 159 EDWARD MANIER - Reductionist Rhetoric: Expository Strategies and the Develop- ment of the Molecular Neurobiology of Behavior 167 vi Contents PART FIVE The Prospects for an Integration of Approaches STEVE WOOLGAR - Representation, Cognition and Self: What Hope for an Integration of Psychology and Sociology? 201 THOMAS NICKLES - Integrating the Science Studies Disciplines 225 Participants at the Yearbook Conference 257 Index 259 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The participants of the 1989 Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook conference would like to thank the University of Colorado at Boulder for serving as host, 23-25 Novem ber 1987. In particular, Steve Fuller, who was Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Colorado from 1985 to 1988, wishes to acknowledge the many divisions of the Uni versity that generously provided funds, making possible the room and board, and in some cases travel, of twenty-two individuals, representing several nations and dis ciplinary orientations: the Office of the Chancellor, the Graduate School, the Com mittee on Science Policy, and the Department of Philosophy. In addition, Virginia Tech has provided generous assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication. Special thanks to Jackie Hamblin and Debra Harmon. Last but not least, the Yearbook editorial board is to be thanked for undertaking what at first seemed to be a rather risky conceptual venture into the new frontiers of Science Studies. Papers by participants not represented in this volume are published in vol. 3, no. 2, of the journal, Social Epistemology (1989). vii INTRODUCTION If nothing else, the twelve papers assembled in this volume should lay to rest the idea that the interesting debates about the nature of science are still being conducted by "internalists" vs. "externalists,"" rationalists" vs. "arationalists, n or even "normative epistemologists" vs. "empirical sociologists of knowledge." Although these distinctions continue to haunt much of the theoretical discussion in philosophy and sociology of science, our authors have managed to elude their strictures by finally getting beyond the post-positivist preoccupation of defending a certain division of labor among the science studies disciplines. But this is hardly to claim that our historians, philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists have brought about an "end of ideology," or even an "era of good feelings," to their debates. Rather, they have drawn new lines of battle which center more squarely than ever on practical matters of evaluating and selecting methods for studying science. To get a vivid sense of the new terrain that was staked out at the Yearbook conference, let us start by meditating on a picture. The front cover of a recent collection of sociological studies edited by one of us (Woolgar 1988) bears a stylized picture of a series of lined up open books presented in a typical perspective fashion. The global shape comes close to a trapezium, and is composed of smaller trapeziums gradually decreasing in size and piled upon each other so as to suggest a line receding in depth. The perspective is stylized too. It is not the fully developed central perspective with all receding lines converging upon one vanishing point, but rather one in which the lines come together at the median line of the picture. Nevertheless, the trick works, and some illusion of depth Is ob tained and enhanced by a combination of straight lines depicting a series of embed ded frames and suggesting a (white) rectangular hole in which the line of books might seem to enter. Both the receding lines and the frames are highly schematic applications of standard (rhetorical) devices used by painters even before the ge ometric theory of perspective was proposed by Alberti in 1435. The end result, however, looks fashionable and contemporary and is, as such cover illustrations re quire, sufficiently ambiguous to allow the viewer his own interpretation. Is this col lection transgressing a barrier in order to offer a new vista upon a previously entangled group of questions? The suggestion of an infinity of books might seem mistaken at first, since the addition of still another volume to an already uncountable number of books on the same subject might discourage rather than encourage a po tential reader. But in combination with the title (Know/edge and Reflexivity), it changes into a provocative questioning of the fundamental meaning of "represen tation": books about books about books in an endless loop. In an intriguing way, this cover illustrates the theme that another one of the editors took as the prototypical question for the Yearbook conference. In line with earlier indications in that direction (De Mey 1982, Fuller 1987), it was argued in the final session that the analysis of linear perspective as a major innovation in fifteenth cen tury pictorial representation could be seen as an illustration of the range of problems that one encounters in the psychology of science. Art historians have approached the discovery of linear perspective as a cognitive achievement involving the coordination of various representational devices, including optical theories, cartographic techniques, and painters' practices (Edgerton 1975). As such, it is a cognitive achievement in the orthodox sense: a specific mental re- ix x Introduction organization qualifying as a discovery in Its own right. It Is also compatible with the traditional view of science as the successful combination of mathematics and expe rience, with linear perspective as its first genuine product, Indicative of the start of the Scientific Revolution. While it might seem hopelessly naive to the sociologist of science, some cognitive psychologists and cognitive scientists in artificial Intelli gence (AI) research might still work along these lines, Interested in seeing how sci entific achievements arise as new and productive combinations or recombinations of this kind. But the same art historians come closer to a viewpoint that a sociologist of science might take more seriously when they stress the rhetorical effect of perspective over its cognitive structure. The importance of linear perspective is then said to reside in its specific power to impress viewers rather than in its structural qualities. The con text of use Is more important than cognitive structure, though the rhetoric of cognitive structure might contribute to the overall dramatic effect. The cognitive thus plays but an incidental role in the social strategem. Control over others Is obtained by im pressing them in such a way that they are "moved" in certain directions. A low viewpoint perspective on a religious scene "moves" the viewer in the direction of more respect and devotion. Latour's (1985) reconstruction of Pasteur's scientific achievements follows this line of analysis. Pasteur's experiments are ·spectacular views" which make him move his viewers in a certain direction. The difference between the two orientations should be apparent from a compar ison with two rhetorical techniques that would not normally be considered compara ble: the scientific experiment and the television commercial. The first orientation would tend to take these as radically different. The scientific experiment has a sound cognitive methodology which guarantees the solidity of its outcome, whatever the result, while the television commercial has a tricky nature, representing products in such an attention-captivating way as to move the viewer in certain directions. The second orientation would consider the scientific experiment as just a specific kind of commercial: the technique of a specific group to move specific audiences. For the first, ·cognitive" is a quality label indicating the soundness of the knowledge claims. For the second, "cognitive" is part of a jargon of seduction, a fashionable label added to knowledge claims in the way commercials add classical music to the advertise ment of shaving soap. The first orientation comes close to the position of the psy chologist; the second is more in line with the inclinations of the sociologist. Viewed in this way, psychology of science and sociology of science are far apart from each other, if not diametrically opposed. But the example of perspective suggests the possibility of further exploration. We can pursue the idea that it is not entirely accidental that perspective played some pivotal role in the development of both and science. Ultimately, it is a technique for representing the location of the viewer, a subtle way to include some of the maker's individuality into the picture. The selection of a position, as revealed in a specific point of view, also reveals, in prinCiple, some aspect of the self of the viewer. This changeable relation between representation and its maker constitutes the heart of the matter in discussions of cognition: who is representing what to whom. How a ·self' elaborates itself by constructing a specific representation of the world? On this basic level and for this central issue of representation as self-elaboration, psychology and sociology of science can meet. Another way to characterize the scope confronted by cognitive studies is to indi cate how they range from the simplest issues of ambiguous pictures to the deepest question representation which Wittgenstein brings together in his Philosophical In vestigations. Ambiguous pictures are well known in science studies as prototypes Introduction xi of alternative Interpretations for a single set of data. Cognitive psychology has much to offer nowadays to trace the detailed path of eye movements and fixations in such Gestalt shifts, as from duck to rabbit, or from old woman to young woman (Gale & Findlay 1983). The insights obtained from these very simple Gestalt switches in the analysis of scientific discovery. But sociologists would indeed be entitled to skepti cism, if cognitive psychology's representation itself, i.e., what it means to construct an experience as seeing a duck, not so much in relation to its alternative, the rabbit, but in relation to the agent co-constructing himself in the experience: the active self. The papers in this volume represent only a small selection of studies aiming at understanding science through some inspiration by cognitive psychology or cognitive science. The pivotal term in the new debates is cognitivism, and the question asso ciated with it which joins our authors in debate is this: Is there something special about the cognitive processes of scientists that is, in large part, responsible for the special sort of knowledge that science produces? Half of the answer to this question lies in its unpacking, wherein also lies the se lection of a methodology for studying science. The two papers which open the vol ume, by Ronald Giere and by William Shadish & Robert Neimeyer, survey the available options. Giere sketches the interconnected histories of the science studies disciplines, arguing that, for all their differences, both philosophers and sociologists have equally failed to capture the distinctiveness of the scientific enterprise by pro posing ·structural" accounts that abstract too much away from the level at which science actually occurs, namely, among individual cognizers. Giere sees a more realistic approach to science in an evolutionary epistemology, grounded in historical case studies, experimental psychology and cognitive science. Shad ish & Neimeyer fill in the details of psychology's past, present and future contributions to the study of science, and in so doing bring out some methodological tensions hidden in Giere's ecumenical approach. In particular, Shadish & Neimeyer note that whereas exper imenters strive to understand the statistically average scientist, historians have tended to focus on the mental lives of superior scientists. This difference in empha sis makes the integration of findings difficult, especially as it reflects a difference of opinion over the relative causal significance of average vis-a-vis superior individuals in the history of science. Finally, Shad ish & Neimeyer remind us that psychology can playa major role in making sense of science, even if scientists turn out not to have any distinctive cognitive processes; for it may be that scientists are distinctive in their emotional lives or forms of social organization, topics equally amenable to psycho logical investigation. The papers by Michael Gorman, Paul Thagard, and Stephen Turner highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the leading paradigms in the study of scientific cogni tion. Gorman is interested in how subjects analyze possible and actual error in data from which they have been instructed to infer a testable hypothesis. His paper is the purest case of experimental cognitive psychology to be found in this volume. As with other researchers in this paradigm who take science and engineering students as their experimental subjects, Gorman presumes that whatever may be special about the cognitive processes of mature scientists is certainly not unique to them. In ad dition, since experiments of this sort tend to demonstrate that subjects are rather inept individually but improve when working in groups, Gorman's research may be seen as suggesting that the special sort of knowledge that science produces may be the result of the ways in which scientists are allowed to monitor and correct each other's errors. Thagard, by contrast, provides a computer simulated approach to scientific cognition. Whereas Gorman manipulates the problem presented to sub jects in order to gain insight about the cognitive processes that ensure their attempts
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