Author Information: Jim Collier, Virginia Tech, jim.collier@vt.edu
Collier, Jim. 2012. “Normativity and Nostalgia: A Reply to Pitt.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (2): 26-34.
The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-8A
Please refer to:
- Pitt, Joseph C. 2011. “Standards in Science and Technology Studies.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (1) 25-38.
- Riggio, Adam. 2012. ” Right Thinking for Right Science? On the Pitt-Collier Exchange Over the Purpose of STS.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 1 (2): 35-39.
On behalf of the Collective, we thank Professor Pitt for his contribution to our venture and willingness to develop and exchange meaningful ideas on the conduct of Science and Technology Studies (STS). We hope this reply encourages additional discussion about the important issues Pitt raises.
You Cannot Be Serious [1]
Sokal’s most critical charge here is that there is a lack of seriousness on the part of literary theory types and anyone else who endorses relativism and subjectivity. (original emphasis)
Professor Pitt’s polemic begins with a test. Pitt tests the seriousness of our commitments to scientific inquiry. As a manner of test preparation, Pitt primes our philosophical intuitions by inviting questions regarding what we would risk, and ignore, to expose intellectual and academic malpractice. Would we endorse the deliberate use of deception, through hoaxes, to uncover malpractice? If not deception, would a proper scientific experiment uncover quackery?[2] Given your intuitions on these questions what, then, does Leibniz demonstrate in punking a secret society of alchemists? And what does Alan Sokal demonstrate in punking a group of “social scientists/literary theorists?” How we, and Pitt, frame and answer these questions affords a sense of how we may regard the place and purpose of scientific inquiry.
For Pitt, scientific inquiry tends to be a rather cut and dried affair. Sokal’s self-proclaimed “experiment” would not pass scientific muster. Nevertheless, Sokal is right. Any ambiguity surrounding using a hoax to reveal fraud gets instantly clarified by understanding the righteous anger one should feel over the pretense and preening of pretenders to the throne of knowledge. Pitt shows the clever Leibniz and the cunning Sokal unveiling the respective arrogance of alchemists and “social scientists/literary theorists.” Both Leibniz and Sokal, knowing little more about alchemy or postmodern theory than how to ape the bombastic linguistic mannerisms of educated fools, gained acceptance, even money, from these intellectual imposters.[3] Leibniz and Sokal admitted to writing gibberish. By accepting, praising and, in Sokal’s case, publishing gibberish, these hapless alchemists and literary theorists confessed their fraud.
Given his instruction on how to identify, and feel about, revelations of apparent fraud, Pitt proceeds to test directly our notions of scientific inquiry.
To gauge how seriously you take scientific inquiry, Pitt weds two assertions and requires a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ reply to both of them: 1) Scientific inquiry, undeniably, “ … has produced and continues to produce the best and most successful methods we have for understanding the world and universe around us.” 2) Scientific inquiry corrects itself. On replying to the two assertions, your scientific disposition stands as follows:
Affirming both assertions means you take science seriously indeed. Your seriousness entails a commitment to the epistemic privilege and authority of science. Defending and enhancing science’s privilege and authority, even if you fail being scientific in the process (e.g., Sokal’s “experiment”, Gross and Levitt’s “data”), honors that commitment. For STS — or STS-1 on Pitt’s account — affirming both assertions means affirming, and fully describing, scientific exceptionalism through an apolitical, epistemic agenda.
Denying both assertions means you are decidedly unserious.[4] Your sympathies lie with the postmodernist “gang”. Your unseriousness leads you to treat science “just like” other social institutions. Questioning and undermining science’s privilege and authority, even if you get punked by a hoax (e.g., Sokal) and become the object of derision (e.g., Gross and Levitt), exhibits your distain. For STS — or STS-2 on Pitt’s account— denying both assertions means denying, and proliferating contextual accounts regarding, scientific hegemony through a political, exploitative agenda.
Self-Correction
One of the strongest features of scientific inquiry is its self-correcting nature. Faulty assumptions are exposed and rejected, new procedures are tested and new instruments are calibrated and retested, theories are proposed, explored, elaborated, and tested, only to be finally rejected or replaced by a new set of conjectures and methods.
Pitt depicts science’s self-correction as both a settled matter and a desirable feature of inquiry.[1] Does scientific inquiry self-correct? Pitt’s argument by assertion notwithstanding, the answer remains a firm “yes and no”. One can point to historical instances where science corrected along the lines Pitt describes.[6] Yet social studies of science, of contemporary scientific inquiry in particular, render more accurately our understanding of the process.[7] Scientific inquiry has become so complex, specialized and beholden to funding and publishing priorities that the opportunity for experimental replication, the basis for self-correction, stands virtually nonexistent. As Carl Zimmer points out, quoting John Helmann (a microbiologist at Cornell), scientists have their own science to perform.[8] Generally, scientists do not have the time, funding, and/or resources to reproduce the experiments of others. Science’s incentive structure actively discourages regular replication. Helmann’s sentiments are echoed by Rosie Redfield (a microbiologist at the University of British Columbia) who adds “ … trying to replicate the claimed results is a waste of time.”
Technology, as Pitt well knows,[9] further complicates replication. The technologies necessary for cutting edge experiments conducted in unusual environments (e.g., nominal gravity) do not reside in common laboratories.[10] Less exotically, technologies readily available and commonly used in well-funded research universities defeat the budgets of less well-endowed universities, colleges and some private labs. Practically speaking, experimental replication requires specific conditions belying objective, universal standards.
Despite the impracticalities of replication and self-correction, Pitt goes a step further:
And despite this dynamic constant reassessment and reconfiguration, science continues to produce results which give us greater and greater control over our lives, giving us the ability to improve our life styles and our understanding of how it all hangs together.
Let’s make plain Pitt’s teleology. On Pitt’s account science, unceasingly, reassesses, self-corrects, produces results, “gives” understanding and control, and makes life better. Pitt’s characterization of science at once strains credulity and reduces the study of science to an arid form of accountancy. For what, other than scoring instances of inevitable progress, and correctly entering them in the historical balance sheet, remains? Moreover, accepting Pitt’s idea, why do we need STS practitioners, of any type, to perform this task? If science corrects itself, science can account for itself. Pitt makes no case for the particular methods of STS, or history, other than extreme scrupulousness — and, for Pitt, science has that in abundance — and self-correction — a feature originating in science itself — in studying science.
Normativity, Didacticism and Nostalgia
We can give our students theories of right and wrong, pointing out their strengths and weaknesses, and we can explain the science and the technology with its possible ramifications. But we must leave it to them to draw out and defend their own conclusions about value.
At the root of Pitt’s self-contradiction, one finds his didacticism. Pitt’s overwhelming desire to impart an unmistakable moral lesson leads to heedless oversimplifications. Tracing these oversimplifications — among them the blithe characterization of postmodernism, the brushing aside of political concerns,[15] the facile bifurcation of STS — we find Pitt’s paternal leanings in wanting to rein in an STS that does not respect, and may threaten, its scientific betters. We also find a nostalgia that undermines a goal we both seek — a renewed place for philosophy in STS.
Conclusion
Normative arguments can emit an odor of despotism. We all want to tell others what they should do, particularly with regard to something about which we care deeply. We care deeply about knowledge — how we recognize it, who holds it, how we get it, how we can give it to others, and how we use it. We care deeply about science in relation to knowledge. Pitt wants to tell us how we should relate to science. We, those who study science and technology in particular, should be respectful if not reverential. We should use the means and methods of other disciplines, such as history and philosophy, to make science understood more fully and cogently. To not take science seriously by promulgating radical views derived from unconventional theories and demonstrably wrong claims promotes ignorance and ill-logic.
References
Ashmore, M. 1993. The Theatre of the Blind: Starring a Promethean Prankster, a Phoney Phenomenon, a Prism, a Pocket, and a Piece of Wood. Social Studies of Science 23: 67-106.
Fuller, S. 2001. Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.
Gross, P and N. Levitt, 1994. Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Latour, B. 2004. Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. Critical Inquiry 30. Accessed January 18, 2012. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnl-crit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html
McEnroe, J. 2003. You Cannot Be Serious. New York: Berkley Publishing.
Pitt, J. C. 2011. Standards in STS. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. Accessed January 18, 2012. http://social-epistemology.com/2011/11/23/413/
Pitt, J. C. 2001. The Dilemma of Case Studies: Toward a Heraclitian Philosophy of Science. Perspectives on Science 9: 373-382.
Pitt, J. C. 1999. Thinking About Technology: Foundations of the Philosophy of Technology. New York: Seven Bridges Press.
Reisch, G. A. 2005. How the Cold War Transformed Philosophy of Science: To the Icy Slopes of Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sokal, A. and J. Bricmont. 1998. Intellectual Impostures. London: Profile Books.
[1] An exclamation (and title of his book, 2002) shouted by tennis player John McEnroe in disputing a line call with a referee during a match at the 1981 Wimbledon championship.
[2] I am reminded of Malcolm Ashmore’s (1993) retelling of the N-ray saga åand the controversial “experiment” used to expose French physicist Prosper-René Blondlot’s malpractice.
[3] Here, I refer to Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont’s Intellectual Impostures.
[4] Further, you may be decidedly unserious about Sokal’s work. Pitt asks us to “hear” — take seriously — Sokal’s complaint over the inane observation that: “Theorizing about ‘the social construction of reality’ won’t help us find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming.” Of course, neither will theorizing about the social construction of reality hurt science. Either science is a self-correcting, epistemic engine, or it’s not. If so, social interests — postmodern silliness or fights over research dollars — ultimately do not matter. If not, social interests do matter. Defenders of science, like Sokal and Pitt, want it both ways. For them, science is not social in any way other than the way scientists say it is — when funding is at stake, for example.
[5] We certainly wish to correct error. Pitt posits self-correction as a unique, and perhaps defining, feature of science. However, Pitt fails to confront the complexities of self-correction and further confuses the issue in his concluding examples. In these examples, self-correction becomes an exercise in having a self-appointed referee (Pitt) declare a winner in a debate with an ideologically preordained outcome. Keeping Pitt’s examples in mind as a collective cautionary tale, we might well contemplate the question of why, normatively or otherwise, we should prefer self-correction to correction by others.
[6] Throughout the essay, Pitt relies on the old time religion of using physics and astronomy as
experimental exemplars of all the sciences.
[7] I note the astounding breath and complexity of contemporary scientific experimentation and the
general, if not absolute, lack of resources and rewards for replicating experiments. Replication is neither a routine, nor automatic, activity as Pitt suggests. In STS, Collins and Harrison’s “Building a TEA Laser: The Caprices of Communication” (1975) serves as the locus classicus in demonstrating the difficulties surrounding the transfer, and replication, of scientific knowledge and experimentation.
[8] Zimmer, Carl. 2011. “It’s Science, but Not Necessarily Right.” New York Times, June 26. Accessed January 19, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26ideas.html
[9] I refer to Pitt’s Thinking About Technology (1999).
[10] We get an indication of Pitt’s counter to my claim in Alan Shapiro’s debate with Simon
Schaffer: “Schaffer situates Newton’s experiment and use of prisms in such a local situation that, he argues, Newton and his conspirators held that the conspirators will succeed only with prisms made of British glass. This odd claim is what initially led me to distrust his account, especially when I found that the sources he cites to establish his argument said nothing of the kind.” Shapiro takes a swipe at Schaffer’s over determination of locality (or hyper-locality), and the apparent lack of evidence of the same, on Newton’s experimentation. Shapiro’s poke at Schaffer, and Pitt’s reference to the exchange, illustrates the unfortunate rhetorical opportunism in such debates. Shapiro chides Schaffer for an inaccurate interpretation of a source (Pitt suggests the exchange means something more about relative standards of historical evidence.). If true, such an inaccuracy does not reject the deeper claim that specific conditions, and new or uncommon technologies, may significantly affect the conduct and potential replication of scientific experiments.
[11] One wonders, on Pitt’s ontology, if practitioners can occupy both sides of his STS divide at a given time (or use the methods and perspectives of one camp while bearing allegiance to the other), move between the categories or, if once a modernist or postmodernist, then always so.
[12] From Pitt: “The Past is what happened, the whole thing, all of it, every minute, second and
detail in the non-stop flow of time.” Past accounts of STS self-correction do not seem to aspire to Pitt’s criteria for doing history.
[13] Or with evidence as flimsy as hearsay and impression?
[14] Pitt, Joseph. 2001 “The Dilemma of Case Studies: Toward a Heraclitian Philosophy of
Science.” Perspectives on Science 9: 373-382.
[15] Pitt claims: “… STS-1’s agenda is not political … If every agenda is a political agenda, then
the use of ‘political’ to characterize an agenda loses its force.” I support Pitt’s inclinations (and logic) in dealing with ready-made, taken for granted, claims that this (e.g., power) or that (e.g., politics) always, already prefigures any argument, or observation, and awaits timely excavation by an interlocutor. Yet, following the pattern of his reductive account, Pitt denies the possibility of a specific understanding of an epistemic agenda as a political agenda. That one might proclaim “every agenda is a political agenda” does not necessarily entail that every political agenda is politically equivalent.
[16] I note Kuhn’s presence in the Wikipedia entry for postmodernism
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism). So it must be.
[17] Steve Fuller (2001). Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times.
[18] See, for example: Chait, Jonathan. 2011. “Why Right-Wing Anti-Science Matters.” The New Republic August 25. Accessed January 19, 2012. http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathanchait/94198/why-right-wing-anti-science-matters
[19] I underscore the subtitle of Gross and Levitt’s Higher Superstition — The Academic Left and Its Quarrels With Science.
[20] Latour, Bruno. 2004. “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of
Concern.” Critical Inquiry 30. Accessed January 18, 2012. http://www.uchicago.edu/research/jnlcrit-inq/issues/v30/30n2.Latour.html.
[21] Pitt proposes a case for doing STS in such a way as “ … to seek to understand science in its historical context as a social process whose domain is the real world.” (emphasis added) The proposed definition seems odd as Pitt holds his nose throughout the essay in referring to “social process” (especially regarding STS-2): “Science is here presented as merely a social process …”; “The importance of the Strong Programme was the general position it opened up, which was that science should be considered a social process. For now the question became which social process?”; “The sociological study of science, concentrating as it does on the social processes within the scientific community …” (emphasis added)
[22] I refer to Gary Gutting’s conception in answering what the use of philosophy is: “Even though basic beliefs on ethics, politics and religion do not require prior philosophical justification, they do need what we might call ‘intellectual maintenance,’ which itself typically involves philosophical thinking.” Gutting, Gary. 2012. “Philosophy — What’s the Use?” New York Times January 25. Accessed January 25, 2012. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/philosophy-whats-the-use/.
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