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Val Dusek. Review of Dissent on Descent by Steve Fuller

Jim Collier —  February 29, 2012 — 5 Comments

Dusek, Val [2012]. ‘Review of Dissent on Descent by Steve Fuller’ (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
social-epistemology.com/

Review of Dissent on Descent by Steve Fuller

Val Dusek, University of New Hampshire

Fuller, Steve. Dissent on Descent: Intelligent Design’s Challenge to Darwinism. Cambridge UK: Icon Books, 2008. 272 pp.

The appearance of the philosopher, social epistemologist, and sociologist of science Steve Fuller at the Dover, Pennsylvania trial as a witness defending the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID) led to consternation among some members of the history and philosophy of science community. It also delighted opponents of science studies in the “Science Wars” debate such as the late Norman Levitt. Here appeared to be the smoking gun of the alliance of “relativist” humanist and social science studies of science and the anti-science and know-nothing creationist movement.

In fact Fuller presented a sweeping historical and philosophical account of the role of notions of divine design in western science. This review will not deal with the politics and the issue of strategic wisdom of Fuller’s willingness to testify, issues that have been reviewed (and mostly denounced) extensively elsewhere, but consider the metaphysical, epistemological, and intellectual history claims that Fuller makes in justifying his position.

In the book being reviewed Fuller argues like a courtroom lawyer in associating ID with all that is admirable in past and contemporary science and linking Darwin to a denial of the traits that have made western science great and successful. A major thesis of the book is that Darwin is not a true scientist, or, at least, has doubtfully scientific credentials, while the advocates of Intelligent Design are inheritors of the mainstream of western science, leading through Mendel’s genetics, and part of the cutting edge, including biotechnology, artificial life, and nanotechnology. Fuller claims that Darwin’s work denies the intelligibility of nature (allying Darwin with Hume). Yet it was the acceptance of the divine design of the cosmos that made western science possible. Though far more deep and wide ranging, Fuller’s case is a very sophisticated and historically informed version of the creationist and ID claims that Darwin’s world is meaninglessness (a view that ironically, some neo-Darwinists such as historian of evolutionary genetics William Provine and some science warriors, such as physicist Steve Weinberg, embrace).

Fuller presents an extremely broad, rich, and informative history of the role of divine design in traditional western science. Part of the historical thesis on early modern science is highly plausible and well documented. Figures such as Boyle, Newton, Linnaeus (and Fuller wishes, with less evidence, to include Mendel via and ingenious but tenuous connection with Joseph Priestly) based their belief in the rational intelligibility it nature and their motivation to find the rational structure of the universe on a faith in the divine design of the cosmos.

Fuller is perfectly correct that “modern science” in the 17th century strict sense is design-based. His testimony on this at the Dover PA trial was a perfect corrective to the usual naturalist and cracker barrel atheist claims about science as anti-religion that one finds in Dawkins, Dennett, and many anti-creationists. Unfortunately the judge completely misinterpreted the point of it. The judge accepted that ID was theology based, but despite Fuller’s account of the design basis of the physics of Kepler and Newton, concluded that ID could not be science if religiously motivated.

Fuller fills out his very well informed and richly informed historical account with delineation of varieties of theodicy, discussing Leibniz as well as the conflict between the approaches to the perfection of nature of Nicholas Malebranche and Pierre Gassendi. Fuller claims that Leibniz’s concern in theodicy was with the moral education of humankind, using St. Augustine’s “light needs shadows” argument to justify the existence of evil. Gassendi the Christian atomist claimed that God’s creations are perfect, but that our intellect is incapable of fully discerning the nature of the perfections, while Father Nicholas Malebranche in contrast claimed that the imperfections of created things were part of a trade off to produce the greatest total overall perfection. (Fuller aptly notes that Catholic ID advocate Michael Behe and Catholic theistic evolutionist Miller replay the Malebranche vs. Gassendi debate.)

The less justified flip side of Fuller’s account of the history of the design hypothesis is his denigration of Darwin. Chapter 2 if entitled “Was Darwin really a scientist?” This is a bit sophistical. Of course Darwin was not a scientist in our contemporary, professional sense. Indeed, the word ‘scientist’ was first used in an important context by William Whewell in a reply to a question by Samuel Taylor Coleridge at the British Association of Science in 1832. Darwin’s “bulldog,” T. H. Huxley was an early campaigner for professional science and forged the professional role thereof in Britain. Darwin, in contrast was wealthy and unemployed, but respected in the professional societies of London. On institutional grounds one could question many other notable pre-1859 students of nature were really “scientists” in the modern sense.

Fuller contrasts Darwin’s natural history approach with the developing laboratory-based biology of the time. However, Darwin did do a number of experiments – simple ones indeed, but ones that did modify or create conditions. In the Origin chapter 11 on biogeography he did a number of experiments to test the resistance of seeds and hibernating snails to survive floating in the ocean for long periods of time, showing they could indeed survive floating at sea for two weeks leading to dispersal. He also did minor experiments with slave-making ants reported in his chapter 7 on instinct in Origin. In The Power of Movement in Plants and his other botanical books he did a great number of experimental manipulations.

Fuller claims that Darwin, by basing his theory on “chance,” “random” variations, inscrutable underlying causes and (more controversially) variation presented a random, chaotic, and meaningless universe. However, explicators of Darwin have noted that his variations are “random” only in the sense of not directed toward improving function or improved fitness. Later, with the rise of quantum mechanics, it has been suggested that some variations may be genuinely random. Stamos has studied the possibility of mutations involving single hydrogen bonds in DNA bases are well within the Heisenberg limits. Many have argued that Darwin thought that variations were ultimately physically explainable and under the sway of natural law, just not analyzable by us. (Provine, mentioned above, takes the extreme deterministic view of Darwinism that many working biologists not concerned with philosophical subtleties embrace.)

Statistical thinking was at the heart of Darwin’s theoretical innovation. One of Darwin’s readings (including a summary of Adam Smith by Dugald Stewart, Wordsworth’s poetry, Shakespeare plays, Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees and the famous essay on population by Malthus) was a summary of Quetelet’s statistical social science. Darwin’s innovative introduction of statistical thinking in biology was stimulated by sociology. This in turn probably stimulated the subsequent introduction of probability into the core of physics by Ludwig Boltzmann in statistical mechanics (Boltzmann). Isaac Asimov suggested, but was too modest to publish, the speculation that Boltzmann’s introduction of probability into statistical mechanics was inspired by his appreciation of Darwin. (R. S. Cohen) Via Exner and others, Boltzmann’s approach may have contributed to the development of indeterminacy. (Charles S. Peirce, an anti-Darwinian evolutionist was one of a number of later nineteenth century figures that advocated real indeterminism and recognized the significance of the introduction of statistical thinking by Darwin.) Quantum field theorist Sylvain Schweber became an historian of Darwinism by tracing James Clerk Maxwell’s own version of the introduction of probability into statistical mechanics to the same Scottish political economy and anthropology that impacted Darwin.

Fuller himself plots his own trajectory for Maxwell and Boltzmann emphasizing Boltzmann’s determinism and both Boltzmann and Maxwell’s ‘anthropic” claim that the region of the universe in which humans live is a thermodynamically special one. (Although one might wonder whether being in a region of increasing entropy is anthropically beneficial compared to one of locally decreasing entropy.) Fuller, in contrast to this thread, by tracing through Boltzmann’s disciple Schrödinger, ties Boltzmann to Fuller’s deterministic design tradition.) Ironically, Schrödinger’s teacher Franz Exner was himself an indeterminist.

Fuller also links ID’s design-based approach with contemporary information science. He refers to Charles Babbage’s Bridgewater Treatise where divine creation is described as analogous to the writing of a computer program that activated the creation of species at successive times. He links the Unitarian religious training of figures in cybernetics and artificial intelligence such as Norbert Wiener and Herbert Simon to the Intelligent Design approach. For Fuller, the rise of disciplines such as artificial intelligence and artificial life, as well as the general computer orientation of bioinformatics and contemporary molecular biology are cutting edge science, and themselves is a kind of “Intelligent Design” theory.

By linking ID theory, generally castigated as pseudo-science by the biology community (or at best as “dead science” by Philip Kitcher) with the grand tradition of design in nature of the Greats of early early modern science, as well as with cutting edge biotechnology and molecular biology Fuller attempts to boost the credentials of Intelligent Design. The only problem is that, despite Fuller’s allusions to ID as an ongoing “research programme,” there really seems to be no positive research going on among ID advocates. The ID “researchers” give criticisms of natural selection often borrowed from somewhat heretical evolutionists such as Steve Gould, Richard Lewontin, and Conrad Waddington, critical of the all-powerful nature of selection. Michael Behe recycles a molecular version of the troublesome objection by the tragic, Catholic evolutionist St. George Jackson Mivart’s that partially evolved organs would not be of selective value, and that therefore the intermediate steps could not survive. Dembski argues for the irreducible information content of living things, impossible to achieve by natural selection. Other, lesser figures deny that the Cambrian explosion could have arisen by Darwinian selection (borrowing in part from Gould). However, none of the design advocates use their appeal to the mysterious Intelligent Designer to articulate explanations in detail or to make predictions or retrodictions. Perhaps a very radical “left Popperian” approach in which only refutations are given would fit with the purely negative claims of contemporary ID.

One implication of the claim that Darwin does not fulfill the ideal of the scientist because of his Hume-like denial of the ultimate comprehensibility of nature and, according to Fuller, of design, is that quantum mechanics, and, perhaps, much of statistical mechanics and chaos theory, is not science. Chaos theory has some resemblance to Darwin’s own views in that, although ultimate determinism is assumed, predictability is impossible, because knowledge of the literally infinitesimal microstructure that makes significant differences in trajectories is beneath our ability, even in principle to measure. Is Fuller on his design-based pedigree of genuine science willing to bite the bullet and reject quantum mechanics and quantum statistical mechanics as real science? Fuller takes Einstein’s “God does not play dice” completely literally.

Emmanuel Mesthene, in an early STS defense of a kind of moderate technocracy nicely summarizes the claim that modern science completely denies the existence of the surd in nature. However, other cultural forms of knowledge of nature did yield contributions to description of nature that are not modern western science, but which denied the ultimate comprehensibility of nature at the micro-level. Aristotelian matter, Platonic matrix or chora (that Heisenberg later appealed to retrospectively justify his indeterminacy, and which sometimes are claimed to have come from his reading of the Timaeus) as well as Chinese science, with its notion of ultimate indeterminacy or vagueness of measurement according to Nathan Sivin, would be the prime examples of this. Earlier, at the end of his book Science, Fuller claimed rightly that contemporary science is moving in the direction of the governmentally directed and purely practically oriented science of ancient Asiatic despotisms, losing the commitment to absolute truth of early modern science. Fuller might say the turn to quantum mechanics, indeterminacy, and chaos is simply another sign of this degeneration in postmodern science and society.

Fuller elsewhere makes comments concerning divine creation which are inconsistent with the rejection of the incomprehensible surd aspect of matter. Fuller discusses God’s design as being limited or channeled by the recalcitrance of matter. (172-173) This seems to reject the creatio ex nihilo view in traditional Judaism and Christianity since the first or second century. What distinguishes Christianity from pagan religion (at least after the Alexandrian Platonist Philo Judaeus’ interpretations of Genesis were accepted by the Church Fathers) is that God created everything, including matter, from scratch. In other creation myths (and probably were the original understanding of “without form and void” and “darkness over the face of the deep” in the earliest version of Genesis) God or gods simply mold pre-existing stuff (matter) that pre-exists and is not itself rationally formed. The omnipotent, omniscient, rational God could make the matter to fit His design. This view fits well with the view of Western science as rejecting any surd, or inexplicable aspect of nature, present in the cosmologies of all ancient and pagan cultures.

Fuller agrees that Newton’s use of divine plan in understanding the universe is valuable, but Newton’s use of a sort holy cattle prod or pool stick to realign the planets in their orbits is not. However, the standard ID account of individual organisms seems to accept both sides of Newton. ID seems to more resemble the individual acts of intervention by Divine power, rather than the laying down of an overall plan or laws or the universe. If Charles Babbage shifted his so-called Ninth Bridgewater Treatise computer programming God to develop programs that evolved species one from another rather than successively creating them, this version of creationism (to which Fuller is sympathetic) would be turned into theistic evolution.

Fuller castigates theistic evolution for not having God make a difference and being a metaphysical idle wheel, criticizing the single act, all at once, model of creation of organisms, in such a way as to make them instantly intelligible. Fuller seems to be inadvertently moving back to something closer to theistic evolution. It would seem that there is a whole continuum of degrees of intervention between fiat creation and theistic evolution. At one extreme, Darwin’s first American advocate, Asa Gray, left natural selection alone, but claimed God was guiding the apparently random variations. Some theistic evolutionists, such as Fuller’s beloved Teilhard de Chardin, do modify natural selection by claiming that there is an overall purpose to evolution. A tinkering designer rather a creator of whole species by fiat Intelligent Designer might move closer to theistic evolution if the acts of tinkering were small enough.

There is a strong theme of human control and planning of nature in western history. Humans as completers of God’s work or stewards of nature would certainly fit with this. Nevertheless, one may ask, does this legitimate ID in the specific sense in accounting for the past? Lurking less obviously in the back of Fuller’s model of creationism with humans made in the image of God is Fuller’s belief that the duty and destiny of humans is to control nature. This is made more explicit and much further elaborated in Humanity 2.0. While Fuller supports Karl Popper’s critical rationalism against the defense of dogmatism by Kuhn and Michael Polanyi, Fuller apparently rejects Popper’s structures against global planning, either of society or the universe.

In the appeal to design in biotechnology and computers there is an apparent or hinted justification of belief in ID as an explanation of biological species. Fuller is probably right that (at least on an ideological level) notions of humans engineering and designing organisms will dominate the new biology. (There is, however, the issue of how much of the bioengineering will really be from scratch, as opposed to minor modifications of already existing organisms – even the restriction enzymes basic to gene splicing were natural enzymes discovered in bacteria, not constructions by synthesis—though this is an empirically open question.) However, will the prospective promise or claim of bioengineering design lead to belief in former ID of organisms in the distant past?

To caricature a bit the argument goes something like: 1) Von Neumann is intelligent. 2) Von Neumann designs things. 3) Von Neumann knows this. Therefore von Neumann believes in Intelligent Design. This argument suffers from some shift of meaning to say the least. (I chose von Neumann because, until his death bed conversion to Roman Catholicism during a painful death from cancer, he was not an advocate of ID, even if one of intelligent design. Fuller actually does claim, in an exchange elsewhere with Norman Levitt that Norbert Wiener and Herbert Simon were advocates of “Intelligent Design”.)

Fuller attempts to downgrade the scientific importance of Darwinism by noting that no Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine has been rewarded for Darwinian work. (Nobel also gave no Nobel Prize for mathematics, because he thought it not directly practical. Einstein’s relativity was not awarded a Prize, but only his photoelectric effect, which was more obviously practical.) Of course Darwinian population biology is not physiology or medicine (despite recent unfulfilled claims for “Darwinian medicine”). Fuller also claims that Darwin’s causal analysis is “feeble” and that Darwin is “no Newton.” This ignores the innovative and original nature of natural selection as a mechanism. (At least Fuller does not try, as some have done, to downgrade Darwin on the basis of Wallace’s independent discovery of natural selection.) However, perhaps it is Wallace’s spiritualism, inconsistent with the meaningless Darwinian universe thesis that leads to his omission.

In his Humanity 2.0 Fuller is certainly correct to denigrate the Uriah Heap role of pseudo-“humble” underlaborer publically played by contemporary philosophers of science. He takes particular umbrage at the Darwinism epigones in the philosophy of biology (although I should rate Sober considerably higher in rigor and independent thought than Ruse, Dawkins, and Dennett). However, Fuller over-rates the unity and historical continuity of Darwinism as opposed to Newtonianism. We speak of “neo-Darwinism” but not “neo-Newtonianism.” Fuller thinks that while Darwinism had to add Mendelian genetics to flourish in the twentieth century, Newtonianism developed continually and successfully based solely on its axioms. Even Fuller’s nemesis, Thomas Kuhn, was forced to add a footnote to the second edition of Structure in 1970 noting that he had overestimated the unity of Newtonianism in the eighteenth century, referring to Clifford Truesdell’s work on Euler and the Bernoullis. Even the early Kuhn had recognized that the “Newtonianism” in chemistry was quite different from the austere Newtonism of rational and celestial mechanics. Even within rational mechanics it was Jacob Bernoulli who began the formulation the general differential equation version of Newton’s laws used since. Leonard Euler developed this further for solid, flexible bodies. I go further than Kuhn and Truesdell and claim that Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics are in some ways as different from the Newton’s original mechanics as are relativity and quantum mechanics. Least action principles from Leibniz through William Rowan Hamilton, Max Planck and David Hilbert have a teleological aspect absent from the past-to-future efficient causality of the differential formulation of Newton and John Bernoulli. Hamiltonian mechanics, but not Newton’s Laws, is necessary to formulate quantum mechanics, as is Hamilton’s light-ray particle analogy. (His quaternion forulation is used for spin in quantum mechanics. There are some quaternion fanatics who do all quantum mechanics this way. Suggestively, there is a deep, topological connection between Hamilton’s quaternions and the Hamiltonian energy function.) So-called potential theory formulation of classical mechanics yields yet another conceptually different science, yielding, in the end, all of Aristotle’s four causes in 19th century mechanics. (Dusek 2000) Fuller blames Darwinism for producing the recent philosophy of science rejection of the hypothetico-deductive unified approach for treating theories as families of models. But later classical mechanics taken seriously yields the same result in the theory of theories. Bas Van Fraassen, for instance, had no interest in Darwin when he formulated his model theory of science. He was surprised and intrigued at a dinner when I mentioned to him that Lewontin applied state space mathematics to population genetics. He immediately saw that this would allow application of the semantics he had applied to physics. Only later did he turn Elizabeth Lloyd to application of his approach to natural selection).

Fuller is right in his claim that much biology can go on as usual without evolution or Darwinism, but this may be because Darwinism plays a unification role in biology analogous to particle physics in the rest of physics and chemistry. The French physicist Levy-Leblond suggests post-war particle physics doesn’t do much of anything practical (such as building nuclear bombs or power plants as does the earlier nuclear physics), but serves an ideological role of giving a reductionist grounding to physical science as a whole. Darwinism plays this role for the unification for biology but in a less directly reductionist and more historical manner.

There are several parallels of Fuller’s case for ID to Jeremy Rifkin’s Algeny. Rifkin, although less scholarly than Fuller, sets Darwinism and biotechnology in a broad social setting. Rifkin claims that Darwinism reflects industrial society and biotechnology reflects post-industrial society. (Rifkin mentions competition, division of labor, immigration, and other terms in Darwin’s work.) Rifkin gives a fairly accurate, readable popularization of the work of Robert Young, Sylvain Schweber, and others, on the industrial and capitalist terminology in Darwin’s work (though emphasizing French positivist “industrialism” rather than the Marx’s “capitalism”). Rifkin claimed that the informational and computer orientation of biotechnology more thoroughgoing today with bioinformatics than then) makes biotech the expression of post-industrial or information society. One of the peculiarities of Rifkin’s thesis is that model of nature and biotech with post-industrial society he thinks the rise of biotech will be tied to the young earth creationism of Duane Gish and Henry Morris. Rifkin is on to something in the first part his book, but spoils it with very naïve young earth creationism of later chapters. Fuller, on his part, links molecular biology, biotechnology, and artificial life to ID, not to young earth creationism.

Fuller ties modern design oriented computer-enhanced bioscience to the role of humans “playing God.” This phase is unfortunately and unreflectively overused in the popular debates over genetic engineering, a theme which Fuller takes much more seriously than the usual cliché and develops favorably philosophically in his more recent Humanity 2.0.

He certainly is correct in this claim. Indeed he could make an even stronger, more well-documented case for this than he does. He cites (200) one passage from Norbert Wiener’s God and Golem, Inc. on the power of the devil, but there are numerous discussions throughout that work dealing with the theme that the engineer is to his or her device as God is to creatures. Derek de Solla Price (1965), one of the earliest citation index sociologists of science and popularizer of the term “big science” wrote:

The making of tangible artifacts showing the nature of the material universe and the nature of a creature was … the two movements of a “do-it-yourself creation kit.” By playing God, man could know God … For almost five thousand years this urge dwelt in the minds of ingenious men, fostering their ingenuities and calling forth a wealth of mechanical skills and scientific understanding (as quoted in Heims, 1980).

Finally, in an issues relating to classical sociological theory disputes, Fuller criticizes contemporary Darwinian evolutionary theory for mixing or shifting between the lawful (nomological) and the individual-descriptive (idiographic). He notes that methodologists of the social sciences are well placed to analyze these (purported) confusions in evolutionary theory. He is correct that the Modern Synthesis of neo-Darwinism, as well as explicitly mores o the competing version of Darwinian evolution of Gould, shift between or mix the two approaches. However, this is hardly a criticism of Darwinian evolution. Rickert, the neo-Kantian analyst of science and history granted that there were fields, such as geology, where the two approaches were mixed. Max Weber’s methodology of the social science involves combining the two as it combines explanation (erklaerung) with understanding (verstehen). Evolutionary theory similarly combines idiographic narration with nomological model building.

It is true that often neo-Darwinists portray their methodology and explanatory strategy as wholly nomological, aping the physicists, as do many social scientists that suffer from “physics envy.” However, this methodological self-misunderstanding does not vitiate the effectiveness of the actual mixed method applied. Steve Gould and some other evolutionists have explicitly emphasized, indeed reveled in, the historical aspect of geology and paleontology, and hence in the historical aspect of macro-evolutionary description of the paths of evolution. Mathematical population geneticists do indeed usually follow a wholly nomological approach, producing statistically predictive mathematical models. Similarly laboratory fruit fly and bacterial geneticists follow an experimental, nomological method. However, the Modern Synthesis involves tying mathematical population genetics and laboratory genetics to field work. The locus classicus of this was Dobzhansky’s founding volume of the Modern Synthesis, Genetics and the Origin of Species combining Sewell Wright’s mathematical genetics with laboratory fruit fly genetics, and fieldwork on wild fruit flies. Pure mathematical population genetics, which usual lacks access to independent measures of fitness of organisms, often uses numbers of offspring (or gene frequencies) in future generations to act as a surrogate for fitness. If this approach is taken literally, it is indeed vulnerable to the crude and usually though discredited accusation that “survival of the fittest” really means “survival of the survivors” and is a “tautology.” Replies to this by evolutionists and philosophers of biology include noting that “survival of the fittest” is Spencer’s not Darwin’s invention (though Darwin did take it over), and that the slogan is a gross oversimplification of the structure of population genetics. However, in fact the equation of population genetics with fitness represented by reproduction rates do fall prey to the accusation. The more effective reply is that fitness is not defined as survival, and that an engineering measure of fitness in terms of some sort of efficiency (as in nutrient absorption in Egbert Leigh’s examples, used by Lewontin in his influential article on adaptation) detaches the definition of fitness from the definition of survival and makes the population genetics results empirically testable. However, the fitness estimates must be made in each particular case for each species and environment, introducing the idiographic element.

Contact details: valdusek@aol.com

References

Boltzmann, Ludwig. 1974. Theoretical physics and philosophical problems: selected writings. Translated from the German by Paul Foulkes and edited by Brian McGuiness. Dordrecht; Boston: Reidel Pub. Co.

Darwin, Charles. 1881. The power of movement in plants. New York: Appleton and Company. Reprinted 1966. New York: De Capo Press.

Dobzhansky, Theodosius. 1937. Genetics and the Origin of Species. New York: Columbia University Press.

Dusek, Val. 2000. Aristotles’s four causes and contemporary ‘Newtonian’ dynamics. In Aristotle and Contemporary Science, edited by Demetra Sfendoni-Mentzou, Jagdish Hattagiani, and David Johnston, pp. 81-93. New York: Peter Lang Publishers.

Dusek, Val. Non-Equivalence of Hamiltonian and Newtonian Mechanics. In The Hamiltonian Revolution. www.scribd.com/doc/78869965/Hamilton-Ian-Re-Vol-2

Fuller, Steve. 2011. Hunanity 2.0: What it means to be human past, present and future. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Fuller, Steve. 2008. Steve Fuller responds to Norman Levitt’s review of Science versus Religion. eSkeptic, January 2008. www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-01-16/

Fuller, Steve. 1997. Science. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Heims, Steve J. 1980. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: from mathematics to the technologies of life and death. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Jonas, Hans. 1967. Christianity, Judaism, and the Western Tradition. Commentary. (Expanded version given at Harvard Divinity School November 1967).

Kitcher, Philip. 2007. Living with Darwin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kitzmiller: THE MIDDLE DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA: TAMMY KITZMILLER, et al.: Case No. 04cv2688 Plaintiffs: Judge Jones v. DOVER AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT, Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. (400 F. Supp. 2d 707, Docket no. 4cv2688).

Kuhn. Thomas. 1970. The structure of scientific revolutions. 2nd edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Leigh, Egbert Giles 1971. Adaptation and diversity. San Francisco: Freeman Cooper.

Lévy‑Leblond, Jean‑Marc. 1980. Ideology of/in contemporary ohysics. In Ideology of/in the natural sciences, edited by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose, with an introductory essay by Ruth Hubbard. pp. 277-316. Cambridge, MA: Shenkman Publishing Co.

Levins, Richard. and Richard Lewontin. 1987. The dialectical biologist. Harvard University Press.

Lewontin, Richard. 1978. Adaptation. Scientific American 239: 212-228.

Lewontin, Richard. 1977. Adattamento. Enciclopedia Einaudi1: 198-214

Mayr, Ernst. 1974. Teleological and teleonomic: A New Analysis. In Boston studies in the philosophy of science, volume 14. Dordrecht: Kluwer. pp. 91-107.

Mesthene, Emmanuel. 1967. Technology and wisdom. In Technology and social change, edited by Emmanuel Mesthene, pp. 109-115. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill.

Price, Derek de Solla. 1965. Gods in black boxes. In Computers in humanistic research, edited by Edmund A. Bowles, pp. 3-8. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Schweber, Silvan. 1982. Demons, angels, and probability: Some aspects of British science in the nineteenth century. In Physics as natural philosophy: Essays in honor of Laszlo Tisza, edited by Abner Shimony and Herman Feshbach, pp. 319-363. Cambridge. MIT Press.

Seeger Raymond J., and Robert S. Cohen. 1974. Philosophical foundations of science. In Boston studies in the Philosophy of Science volume 11 (Proceedings of Section L. 1969. AAAS). Dordrecht, Boston: Reidel, p. v. and Robert S. Cohen. Personal communication.

Sivin, Nathan. 1986. On the limits of empirical knowledge in the traditional Chinese sciences. In Time, science and society in China and the West. (The study of time V). ed. J. T. Fraser et al., pp. 151-169. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press.

Snyder, Laura. J. 2011. The philosophical breakfast club. New York: Broadway Books.

Stamos, David N. 2001. Quantum indeterminism and evolutionary biology. Philosophy of Science, 68 (2):164-184.

Truesdell. C. 1960. The rational mechanics of flexible or elastic bodies 1688-1788: Introduction to Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia II (II2), Turici: Orel Füssli, pp. 34-44.

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Gregory Sandstrom. Science, Ideology and Knowledge: A Reply to “Social Epistemology Revisted”

Jim Collier —  February 23, 2012 — 3 Comments

Sandstrom, Gregory [2012].‘Science, Ideology and Knowledge:
A Reply to “Social Epistemology Revisted”’ (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
social-epistemology.com/

  

Science, Ideology and Knowledge: A Reply to “Social Epistemology Revisted”

Gregory Sandstrom, Lithuania University of Educational Sciences, SERRC

This reply offers a general analysis, along with several probes and tangents for further possible exploration, of the video interview with Professor Steve Fuller, revisiting 25 years of the journal Social Epistemology, conducted by Dr. Elisabeth Simbürger. In particular, I will focus on the topic of ‘science’ as a multi-disciplinary knowledge category in the contemporary Academy as discussed therein.

When Elisabeth asked “What else would you add or do differently?” to the project of ‘social epistemology’ 25 years later, Steve replied by starting with the notion of academic disciplines. The so-called ‘artificiality’ of disciplinary boundaries and borders had by the late 1980s led to studies of ‘interdisciplinarity.’ According to Professor Fuller, this was then “politically high-jacked” by some people as a way of “not simply showing gaps” between disciplines, “but of deconstructing academic knowledge, for purposes of opening up the university to become a tool for larger social interests.” Fuller refers to this as a “disturbing feature of neo-liberalism,” thus identifying an economic-political context in which the notion of ‘interdisciplinarity,’ and also ‘social epistemology’ is sometimes framed.

Though the political context will be raised again below, I’d like to first suggest the importance of identifying a vision or ‘map’ of knowledge, without which it becomes difficult to see just where ‘social epistemology’ can be suitably identified and elaborated. Whether one accepts the tripartite division of the Academy into ‘natural sciences,’ ‘social sciences’ and ‘humanities’ (Anglo-American model) or a bipartite division into ‘human-social sciences’ and ‘natural-physical sciences’ (German-Russian-Chinese – GRC model, cf. naturwissenschaften & kulturwissenschaften or geisteswissenschaften, естественные науки & общественные науки), with philosophy and/or theology serving as mediator or overseer, makes a significant difference to how a person will view the meanings of ‘science,’ ‘knowledge’ and ‘society.’

In the interview, Fuller sticks mainly with the Anglo-American view that ‘science’ refers to ‘natural-physical’ fields or disciplines. Thus, ‘science’ does not include those who study history, literature or the arts, like it does when viewed in the alternative GRC ‘map of knowledge.’ Instead, professionals in the latter model are ‘scholars’ or ‘public intellectuals,’ figures operating in the humanitarian and liberal arts traditions. In either model, however, the social epistemologist is viewed as an ‘interdisciplinary mediator’ (Fuller 1988) who can bridge some of the gaps between natural-physical scientists, human-social scientists, ideological humanists, philosophers and theologians.

The preceding paragraphs set the stage for Fuller’s unique approach to ‘social epistemology’ — which he calls recognizing “the social conditions of knowledge production” — and the insightful project he has prepared in the late 20th and early 21st century. “My version of social epistemology has always been very much concerned with regard to science as a universal form of knowledge,” says Fuller in the interview. He then asks the following crucial question: “What does it take to make it [i.e. science] universal?” This is a question worthy of thinking long and hard about and I am pleased to take time here at SERRC for a reply.

Drawing on my previous work in sociology of science (SoS) and science studies (науковедение) in Russia, let me suggest this: It takes ‘ideology’ to make knowledge (aspire to be) universal. Without ideology, there can be no recognition of science as ‘universalistic,’ even in aspiration. The notion that natural-physical sciences aspire to universal knowledge, but that human-social sciences are ‘softer’ or less rigorous and therefore do not similarly aspire, is itself an ideological position. Thus, to say that natural science is a form of globalising knowledge is as much a hermeneutical as it is an epistemological statement.

Ideology in this sense means the ordering of ideas, making sense of and giving meaning to ideas, organising one’s ‘map of knowledge’ and enabling common social values. It does not refer to assessing the material or empirical ‘facts of nature’ that one deals with, in perhaps a crude, basic or pre-theoretical sense while doing science. Without ideology there can be no coherent scientific theorising, methodologies or experimentation. This makes ideology in many ways the driver and deliverer of science, under whose guise scientific and non-scientific knowledge of the modern variety is produced and consumed.

Every scientist and scholar in every field or discipline is in some way ideologically-oriented; even mathematicians carry ideological presuppositions into their work. To suggest otherwise is to commit some form of unrealistic objectivism or positivism, which are of course them-selves also ideologies. Trying to avoid ideology altogether in the patently reflexive field of social epistemology, rather than facing it and insisting on exposing it for the benefit of readers, listeners or observers, would be a recipe for failure.

In other words, as I understand it, Fuller’s project of social epistemology attempts to show both the power and the limitations of (natural) science as a type of common (social) knowledge, particularly in relation to ideology, worldview and religion. This explains why he constantly refers to theology and philosophy as appropriate and necessary counter-weights to the ideology of scientism (read: that exalts science out of proportion to reality), the latter which has gained prominence particularly in scientifically (over-) developed countries (especially of the global north). Without recognizing the impact of ideology on the discourse of science (and technology) studies and its heir social epistemology, the result will likely be a one-way slide into ‘science everywhere and always knows best,’ even if it lacks predictive power, necessary human understanding and ethics in manifold ways.

As Fuller says, “When I say that science is universal knowledge, I’m not saying that science is already universal knowledge, but rather that’s the project of science.” If the question were instead: “how to make science universal?” then personally, I view this task as next to impossible. Science is not and will never be ‘universal.’ Yet, we can nevertheless strive to produce valuable scientific knowledge for humanity on a local or global scale, within the changing landscapes and environments in which various fields of research and teaching are moving.

This leads to an excellent short phrase made during the interview, one that carries the punch of a provocative public intellectual, and which for me encapsulates Fuller’s ‘social epistemology’ project: “To understand the social character of knowledge is to understand the context in which knowledge is produced and consumed…precisely what public intellectuals are good at.”

Here Fuller puts forward knowledge gained by SoS in recent decades, revealing that the old view of ‘objective science’ (cf. Monod 1970), where science happens in a vacuum, done by human-robots, seeking complete neutrality, can no longer be maintained. Instead, the more appropriate new way to view science, knowledge production and consumption is within the social, cultural, ethnic, gendered, linguistic, religious, political and ideological contexts in which it is practiced. In such surroundings, we are able more clearly to asses the ‘value’ of science in the ‘post-modern’ world-era and thus to “think things out before we put them out,” in Marshall McLuhan’s prescient phrase about new media and technologies.

“The [first] question for social epistemologists,” suggests Fuller on his homepage, “is whether science’s actual conduct is worthy of its exalted social status.”

This ‘exalted social status’ of science is indeed a controversial topic; science is widely practiced in some parts of the world, while almost absent in others. Indeed, in societies of the global south where science or scientific thought is much less developed and diffused, the lack of contact by ‘regular people’ with scientists makes them susceptible to veneration or suspicion, if not wild attraction or condemnation. The knowledge of the world that natural-physical sciences attain has nevertheless in some cases provided an elevation of worth to scientists beyond that of any other (competing or cooperating) knowledge producers. Thus, following the work of Robert Boyle, one might argue that if nature is a temple, then natural-physical scientists today act as priests; while if society is the temple then sociologists would be its leaders, prophets and guides.

As it is, I’m not so sure that natural-physical scientists do indeed possess such a high social status, if one makes a comparison with, for example, actors and actresses, singers, artists and athletes of the highest level. In the scientifically developed nation of the U.S., it is surely plausible to conclude that no living scientist has the level of status of film stars or professional sports players. Indeed, natural science could be said to actually have a low status if only for the lack of familiarity most people have with those who ‘do natural science’ as their profession. In part, because we who are reading, writing and replying at this site are mainly academics, it is in our realm of awareness to know and perhaps even to elevate top-level natural scientists to a certain status. But that does not mean society values academic scientists to the same degree.

Fuller continues, in answer to his own question about (natural) science’s status: “Those who say ‘yes’ assume that science is on the right track and offer guidance on whom people should believe from among competing experts, whereas those who say ‘no’ address the more fundamental issue of determining the sort of knowledge that people need and the conditions under which it ought to be produced and distributed.”

In investigating what sort of knowledge people need, Fuller falls into the ‘no’ category; natural science’s status is over-exalted compared with its conduct. The rewards of scientists have over-reached their actual worth to humanity in light of the very real dangers that some natural sciences pose. Our willingness to look more closely at the costs, or at least to take a sober (cost-benefit) look at other types of (non-scientific or extra-scientific) knowledge that currently have perhaps a lower status than natural sciences, but which contain greater human meaning and importance, is long overdue. At least this may be true in the hyper-scientific ‘western world,’ if not globally.

According to Fuller, sociology of science (SoS) and science and technology studies (STS) “provide(s) an empirical understanding of how that process [of science becoming a global currency] takes place.” One could add that there are additionally comparative, historical, and also theoretical understandings, which are made into ‘currency’ by philosophers of science. The reason for making this point is to guard against the idea that ‘empiricism’ can or should be the sole ideological indicator of ‘scientific understanding,’ a point with which Fuller would likely agree (i.e. as he has stated elsewhere). As scholars and scientists we seek empirical understanding along with other types of social knowledge.

“Once science becomes a kind of global knowledge that everyone can appropriate,” claims Fuller, “it also then becomes a standard against which you judge the sort of knowledge that is indigenous to where you happen to live.”

Here I interpret Fuller as welcoming a revaluation of ‘indigenous knowledges’ in light of core-periphery dynamics. Knowledge that is indigenous and that cannot necessarily be deemed as propaganda, even if it disagrees with conventional modern, western (natural) scientific (MWS) approaches, becomes openly accessible and noticeable to many people living in our inter-connected electronic-information age. One need only think about the trees on Avatar’s Pandora, to tune in to the power of indigenous social epistemological self-understanding.

Contact details: gregorisandstrom@yahoo.com

References

Fuller, Steve. “Social Epistemology Revisited: An Interview with Steve Fuller.” By Elisabeth Simbürger. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective (November 2011): http://social-epistemology.com/2011/11/11/social-epistemology-revisited-25-years-after-an-interview-with-steve-fuller/.

Fuller, Steve. 1988. Social Epistemology. Bloomington. Indiana University Press.

Monod, Jacques. 1970. Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology. New York. Alfred A. Knopf.

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Zoltan Majdik. Reply to Derek Ross’ “Ambiguous Weighting and Nonsensical Sense”

Jim Collier —  February 18, 2012 — Leave a comment

Majdik, Zoltan [2012]. ‘Reply to Derek Ross’ “Ambiguous Weighting and
Nonsensical Sense”‘ (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
social-epistemology.com/

Reply to Derek Ross’ “Ambiguous Weighting and Nonsensical Sense”

Zoltan Majdik, North Dakota State University

(Editor’s Note: Derek Ross’ article, “Ambiguous Weighting and Nonsensical Sense: The Problems of ‘Balance’ and ‘Common Sense’ as Commonplace Concepts and Decision-making Heuristics in Environmental Rhetoric” to which Zoltan Majdik replies, appears in Social Epistemology 26.1 (2012) available through Taylor & Francis Online.)

Derek G. Ross’ essay in the 26(1) issue of Social Epistemology is a timely and important contribution to the study of environmental rhetoric, with interesting conceptual/theoretical, methodological, and practical implications. My purpose in this reply for Social Epistemology’s Review and Reply Collective is to emphasize the insights and import of Ross’ study by highlighting what to me are its most salient aspects and pointing out how these could serve as points of further discussion and inquiry. I specifically focus on Ross’ interpretation and analysis of the ‘Common Sense’ commonplace, and on an alternative way of interpreting the prevalent use of this commonplace in environmental discourse.

Central to Ross’ project is an interesting move that brings together a traditional concept of rhetoric — topoi, or commonplaces — with a methodology different from those generally practiced in rhetorical studies, yet fitting to the essay’s conceptual ideas. Unlike more traditional rhetorical criticism that tends to take unique and exceptional (in terms of artistry, inventiveness, and other characteristics of rhetorical practice) artifacts as its text, Ross uses interview data to investigate the characteristics of the most common responses to issues of the environment. This approach is as well-justified as it is used rarely. In line with Leff’s (2006) concerns about our treatment of topical invention, Ross approaches commonplaces primarily as generative sites of invention and only secondarily as theoretical principles; thus, he sets out to determine how people on the average use certain symbolic and argumentative grounds to know about, judge, and act on complex environmental issues. Here, topoi become not only sites of argumentative invention but also more broadly sites of epistemological invention. Ross researches specific topoi within specific domains and situations of epistemic action and as generative of those actions, rather than simply classifying and categorizing the commonplaces used in a set of texts. His approach demonstrates compelling possibilities for gaining new insights into environmental rhetoric. Some of these insights are evident in Ross’ study and need no repeating here; instead, I focus on what I believe is a missed opportunity in Ross’ analysis, and develop an alternative perspective on his findings.

Ross’ discussion of the ‘Balance’ commonplace exemplifies the strengths of his conceptual and methodological approach. I would, however, be interested to see him discuss the second commonplace, ‘Common Sense,’ either more extensively or from a different perspective. Ross is correct, in my view, to identify ‘Common Sense’ as a central and important commonplace of environmental discourse; his data certainly shows the prevalence of arguments grounded in the topos, and we can look beyond the environmental arena to politics, culture, and other institutions to find similar uses of this commonplace. But I believe that his conceptual equivocation of ‘Balance’ and ‘Common Sense’ shortchanges the contribution his study could make. To Ross, both topoi “suggest that members of the decision-making public have either all information on all aspects of complex situations and can objectively work through the many permutations inherent in pursuing a chosen path” (p. 116). The concept of ‘common sense’ provides (in name and in its conceptual history) an epistemic starting point for decision-making that is distinctly different from that of science (where objectively working through causal processes indeed requires understanding of all available information on all aspects of a situation) and instead is located in a communal, public, democratic framework. Importantly, however, ‘common sense’ need not be limited to the individual. If we turn to Vico (as Ross does, too), we find that ‘common sense’ (Vico’s sensus communis) represents a shared type of knowledge from which both sense-making and decision-making occur. ‘Common sense’ gains purchase in knowledge that is shared in the present as well as developed over time, and thereby able to provide the epistemic ‘material’ against which particular, local, current choices, situations, or acts are judged (see e.g., Morrison 1978, 591; Schaeffer 1996, 10; Verene 1981, 147; Vico 1968, 67, 104-106).

The crux of the ‘Common Sense’ commonplace thus revolves around how we conceptualize knowledge, both where it originates from and how it is used. Because of the kind of knowledge common sense partakes of, I argue that contrary to Ross’ claim, the two topoi are not “unavoidably conflated as they share a kind of reasoning not necessarily mediated by empirical evidence or objectivity” (p. 117). Common sense requires a kind of objectivity: not one grounded in technical fact but instead in intersubjective agreement, and shared social and historical understanding. From an epistemological perspective, common sense requires an awareness of social knowledge; this is not the objective knowledge of science or Cartesian reasoning, but neither is it the radical subjectivity Ross suggests. Rather, it is closer to Vico’s sense of truth we find in the verum-factum principle (see e.g., Miner 1998, 53–73) or Aristotle’s reasoning through practical wisdom (phronesis, as opposed to the demonstrable knowledge we get through apodeixis in episteme).[1] It is a type of knowledge contained in the communicative relations between people and within historical knowledge, not in the causal relations between empirical objects. Thus, looking at the data on p. 132, I don’t interpret the use of ‘Common Sense’ to suggest “personal experience, personal need, and a single entity’s actions on the world,”[2] but how one’s subjective experience of the world exists relative to the common experiences of the world shared by relevant groups and publics.

These tensions around claims to different types of knowledge raise the question of what type of knowledge — and thus, what epistemic approach to environmental issues — is most relevant to the domain of Ross’ study. A good argument can be made that in large part, it’s technical, empirical knowledge of the kind that Ross favors. But I contend that approaching the ‘Common Sense’ topos from this alternative perspective on the locus of its knowledge-claims would give Ross the opportunity to move beyond the strictly critical conclusion he develops. Such an alternative perspective would suggest that the use of this commonplace by the public may demonstrate not only and exclusively “reductionist arguments that may limit a public’s ability to fully understand the complexities of any given situation” (p. 137).

Specifically, I disagree with Ross’ claim that “common sense sees use as a decision-making heuristic by a public attempting to work with common social representations of science,” which in their constitution and reasoning are inferior to science proper (p. 122). To me, the use of this topos by the public suggests that there is an alternative epistemological framework through which publics (that are not scientifically accredited) make decisions about environmental matters; it may suggest, for example, that there are alternative ways to traditional notions of expertise in which publics think about the concept, value, and locus of expertise (i.e., of what ought to constitute the most relevant criteria and most fitting shared place of knowledge and understanding for decision-making about matters like the environment). Put differently, the use of the ‘Common Sense’ commonplace need not suggest primarily that publics find “a place of shared understanding” (p. 116) relative to [faulty or inadequate] “common social representations of science” (p. 122, my emphasis), but that publics try to find a place of shared understanding to address complex technical questions relative to issues of public goods. Thus, the use of the ‘Common Sense’ topos to me suggests not a binary opposition between ‘common sense’ and ‘science’. It instead suggests a primary orientation toward questions of emergent knowledge and decision-making about public goods (“how do we productively deliberate about complex matters that affect us all?”); questions that then depend on the alignment of scientific knowledge with phronetic practice (“how do we integrate and deploy scientific knowledge in our understanding and acting-on complex public matters?”). This is a difference more in analytic perspective than in substance between my approach and Ross’; yet, it’s a difference that leads to different conclusions.

Thus, I don’t want to suggest that Ross’ interpretation of the ‘Common Sense’ topos or the conclusions he draws from it are wrong; indeed, I believe that a cavalier use of ‘common sense’ and ‘balance’ as grounds for arguments can and probably often does create artificial limits and boundaries to doing the difficult civic work of truly informing ourselves about the matters that affect us all.[3] What I want to suggest is that we can also find alternative, and maybe more hopeful reasons for the prevalent use of the ‘Common Sense’ topos. These reasons go beyond the cost-benefit rationales Ross proposes, and the “overly-simplified places from which a public seeking a voice of authority can begin their knowledge-making and decision-making process” (p. 137). They point to a latent public desire (or more realistically, a desire by some publics) to be able to move past the use of purely scientific, technical concepts and processes as epistemological gate-keepers for decision-making about complex matters. The use of the ‘Common Sense’ topos points to a recognition that in a democratic polity, even complex scientific matters — even those as complex as the environment — affect us all and therefore ought to be made available to deliberative testing, contesting, and decision-making by a larger population. Only then can legitimate and believable (i.e., reason-able and justifiable) civic actions and choices be directed toward the resolution of those scientific problems and issues. The environment is a particularly fitting example, as unlike many other scientific domains, it directly relates to the public good and public affairs as well as to more strictly delineated scientific domains of practice. This, of course, takes us back to Ross’ own conceptual starting-point in rhetorical theory, which revolves around precisely these kinds of democratic and deliberative commitments.

The alternative perspective I sketched out here should not be understood as implying that empirical evidence and other characteristics or outputs of scientific reasoning have no place in civic deliberations. Rather, I want to argue that the prevalent use of the ‘common sense’ topos suggests a desire to recognize other types of epistemic action as also valid in deliberations about the environment. Starting from commonplaces like ‘Common Sense’ (with all the heuristic benefits they carry) may yield more productive and sustainable discussions about these issues. I see benefits in this approach particularly in relation to environmental discourses, as I don’t believe we should separate “environmentalism” from “environmental science” in quite the same way Ross does. Certainly, “environmentalism needs to make sense based on our held-in-common beliefs” (p. 123). But it also needs to provide an entry point for intervention and action that Ross’ view of the prevalent ‘common sense’ approach does not provide. Contra Ross, I would thus not separate ’Common Sense’ as “rhetorical component” from ‘Common Sense’ as a “decision-making heuristic” as cleanly (p. 123). Instead, we can understand the use of the commonplace as a rhetorical component that facilitates finding a shared understanding of the common stakes we have in environmental issues. This need not exclude “environmental science,” nor should it. But it can integrate environmental science into a communicative framework, placing necessary scientific facts into phronetic practice to allow people to make sense of such facts relative to the historical and current developments, tensions, and exigencies that are mediated by the realities of scientific discovery as well as by the realities of social, cultural, or political interests. This again should not be understood as a way of softening scientific fact, but instead of integrating scientific facts and discoveries into the broader ecology of decision-making criteria within which they need to be understood and used.

It’s in this sense that I suggested earlier Ross may have missed an opportunity, and it’s also in this sense that I revise that earlier statement and instead suggest that Ross opened an opportunity that is not yet fully explored. His thorough and creative methodological approach to his study is precisely what makes it possible for me to consider this topic from the vantage point I discussed in the preceding paragraphs. Thus, I don’t mean to offer a binary choice between two mutually exclusive insights; rather, I attempt to offer an alternative perspective with the hope and intention of generating points of discussion about this particular topic as well as more broadly about the relationship between civic publics and complex scientific bodies of knowledge and norms of practice.

Contact details: Zoltan.Majdik@ndsu.edu

References

Leff, M. 2006. Up from theory: Or I fought the topoi and the topoi won. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 36: 203–211.

Miner, R. C. 1998. Verum-factum and practical wisdom in the early writings of Giambattista Vico. Journal of the History of Ideas 59: 53–73.

Ross, D. G. 2012. Ambiguous weighting and nonsensical sense: The problems of “balance” and “common sense” as commonplace concepts and decision-making heuristics in environmental rhetoric. Social Epistemology 26: 115–144.

Schaeffer, J. D. 1981. Vico’s rhetorical model of the mind: Sensus communis in de De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Ratione. Philosophy and Rhetoric 14: 152–167.

Schaeffer, J. D. 1996. Vico and Kenneth Burke. Rhetoric Society Quarterly 26: 7–17

Verene, D. P. 1981. Vico’s Science of Imagination. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Vico, G. 1968. The New Science of Giambattista Vico. Rev. Trans. of 3rd (1774) Ed. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

[1] I turn to Vico and Aristotle because they are most closely connected to the two key ideas at discussion here: common sense and commonplaces, respectively.

[2] To address Ross’ quote about Vico’s concept of ‘common sense’ on p. 122, I would conjecture that “judgment without reflection” is more in reference to Vico’s opposition to Descartes’ ideas than a commentary on the capricious nature of reasoning through common sense.

[3] As Ross states, the use of the commonplace can be “particularly problematic […] because internalized sense-making criteria may be based on dated world-views” (p. 131).

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William Gorton. Popper’s Realism, the Rationality Principle and Rational Choice Theory: Discussion of “The Rationality Principle Idealized” by Boaz Miller

Jim Collier —  February 16, 2012 — 4 Comments

Gorton, William [2012]. ‘Popper’s Realism, the Rationality Principle and Rational Choice
Theory: Discussion of “The Rationality Principle Idealized”
by Boaz Miller’ (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
social-epistemology.com/

Popper’s Realism, the Rationality Principle and Rational Choice Theory: Discussion of “The Rationality Principle Idealized”
by Boaz Miller

William Gorton, Alma College

(Editor’s Note: Boaz Miller’s article “The Rationality Principle Idealized”, to which William Gorton replies, appears in Social Epistemology 26.1 (2012) available through Taylor & Francis Online.)

Miller’s paper (2012) sheds a lot of light on one of the most confusing and underdeveloped ideas in Popper’s philosophy. Popper called for social science grounded in what he called “situational analysis.” This requires building models of social situations, which include individual actors and physical and social barriers (especially social institutions, e.g. markets, legal codes, bureaucracies, etc.) The models attribute certain aims and information to the actors. Such information and aims are not to be understood as psychological facts but rather as “elements of the objective situation” (Popper 1994: 167). Finally, the situational model is “animated” by means of the “rationality principle” (RP). RP stipulates that actors respond “adequately” or “appropriately” to their situation or, put differently, that they “work out” what is already implicit in the situation (1994: 169). By this he appeared to mean that RP requires that individuals act instrumentally in trying to attain the goal posited by the model, such as maximizing profit or power, or, in Popper’s example of Richard the pedestrian, simply getting to the other side of the road. (It isn’t clear to me whether Popper would permit noninstrumental action, such as acting in accordance with tradition or social norms, to animate situational models, but I don’t see why not.) Popper envisioned progress in social science as a growing body of such situational models, presumably gaining depth and explanatory power as they were refined in response to criticism and empirical testing. The aim of such models would be to lay bear how the interaction between individuals and institutions produces unintended consequences. Indeed, this is the key task of social science, Popper said (1996b: 95).

A key problem with Popper’s situational analysis, as Miller and others have noted, is that it seems to violate Popper’s own falsifiability criterion, for it appears that RP is indeed false: manifestly, individuals do not always respond rationally to their situation, even in the minimal sense of responding “adequately” to it. Popper admits as much with his example of the flustered driver who, angry because the parking lot is full, keeps driving round and round the lot, contrary to his objective situational goal of, say, getting in and out of the store as swiftly as possible. But does not the inclusion of a known-to-be-false assumption into the model falsify the whole model? Popper apparently cannot reply that RP is a useful falsehood because it helps us predict what happens in social situations. That would require abandoning not only his signature falsificationism but also realism, which Popper also wanted to retain, and embracing instrumentalism or pragmatism, both of which he opposed.

But Popper says the falsity of RP does not force these conclusions. He starts by noting that all models are in fact false: “Can any model be true? I do not think so. Any model, whether in physics or in the social sciences, must be an over-simplification. It must omit much, and it must over-emphasize much” (1994: 172). But he also says that the aim of science is to produce theories and models that get closer and closer to the truth, rather than merely better and better at making predictions. So, although all models are false in the sense that they do not fully and accurately describe everything about the phenomenon that they are meant to explain, he insists that some models get closer to the truth than others. Intuitively, it makes sense to claim that, say, Copernicus’s model of the solar system is closer to the truth than Ptolemy’s, even though the Copernican model is clearly false insofar as, for instance, it assumes that the planet’s orbits are circular rather than elliptical. The process of getting closer and closer to the truth requires creation of testable models, Popper says, the more testable the better. And – here’s the clincher for Popper – incorporation of RP into social models, he says, makes them more testable and hence facilitates the goal of getting closer to truth. This is mainly because excluding RP from situational models would “lead to complete arbitrariness in our model-building” (1994: 178). It’s a better methodological policy, Popper seems to say, to assume that something about our description of the objective social situation – something about the pattern of interaction between individuals, about the social rules, etc. – has been misdescribed if our model fails to predict behavior accurately.

Here is where Miller steps in to buttress Popper’s defense of RP by providing a much more precise meaning to Popper’s claim that all models “over-simplify.” His key move is to suggest that RP itself be viewed as a model of human action. Like all models, RP simplifies the reality it is meant to depict, and it also omits certain aspects of that reality. Drawing upon recent work in the philosophy of science, he suggests that RP be understood as an idealization with two abstractions. This is a more plausible and satisfying account of RP than the view that RP should be understood as a statistical regularity, and it seems to align better with what Popper has to say about models. Miller has indeed demonstrated, at least to my satisfaction, that the falseness of RP is completely compatible with Popper’s realism. Or, at a minimum, Miller has shown that the falseness of RP is no more problematic for realism than the known false elements of models from the natural sciences, such as the assumption in the ideal gas model that molecules are perfectly elastic spheres or the point-masses in an astronomer’s model of the solar system.

But Miller does more than demonstrate that compatibility of RP with Popper’s realism. He also shows how Popper’s situational analysis can be improved by systematic de-idealization of RP. Popper said that removing RP from situational models would lead to complete arbitrariness in their construction. He doesn’t seem to have considered the possibility of hybrid situational models that incorporate well-tested psychological mechanisms describing how people predictably deviate from “pure rationality.” Such mechanisms exist and have been identified. Irrational action does not necessarily mean arbitrary action. Kahneman and Tversky, for instance, have cataloged the diverse and consistent ways in which people act irrationally or come to hold irrational beliefs about their situation. A whole field of social science, in fact, is made up of hybrid situational models that incorporate these psychological mechanisms. It’s called behavioral economics. I tried to make the case for incorporating psychological mechanisms into situational models in my 2006 book on Popper. Miller makes a stronger argument for doing so than I did, with more analytical precision than I could muster.

Is Situational Analysis Merely Rational Choice Theory?

So I’m convinced that Miller has saved Popperian situational models and RP from instrumentalism, and I also think that he has shown that psychology can be incorporated into models without depriving situational models of their testability or reducing them to what Popper called “psychologism.” Still, what I’m wondering is whether Miller has saved a theory of any real novelty, interest or special importance. More specifically, the questions I want to pose are these: Is Popper’s situational analysis really just a less technical or somewhat underdeveloped version of rational-choice theory? If so, does Popper’s situational analysis offer anything of value to working social scientists – some special insights or methodological direction that would help them create social models that are more testable, have more predicative or explanatory power, or are of greater verisimilitude? I think the answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second is no. I wonder if Miller agrees with me and if not, why not. Rational-choice explanations are generally understood to be grounded in the assumptions that (a) individuals act instrumentally to achieve their goals and (b) that their actions are the best means for attaining their goals. That is, it assumes that their actions are in some sense optimal. (I’ll forgo a discussion of exactly what optimality might require.) Popper, however, merely requires that agents act “appropriately” or “adequately” rather than optimally. It isn’t at all clear to me what this means. Perhaps “adequately” is something like so-called satisficing – the loose requirement that agents simply choose an option that is deemed “good enough.” In any event the reason, of course, that social scientists build in the assumption of optimality into their models is that it is allows for precise deductive predictions about how individuals will behave in certain contexts. These predictions can be quantified with mathematical models, which are naturally especially useful when trying to explain highly complex interactions between multiple actors. Many admirers of Popper, however, seem to think that situational analysis and RP would produce explanations that would necessarily differ in important ways from the typical kinds of rational choice explanations found in economics and political science. It’s not clear to me why they think this. Consider what Popper says in “Models, Instruments and Truth.” He starts by noting that situational analysis was his attempt to “generalize the method of theoretical economics” (1994: 154). Later in the essay he says that his situational model of Richard the pedestrian

contains almost all the relevant elements of situational analysis as used in economics,… To take a familiar example, the most important part of classical economic theory is the theory of perfect competition. It may be developed as the situational logic of an idealized or over-simplified social situation – the situation of people acting within the institutional framework of a perfectly free market in which buyers and sellers are equally informed of the physical qualities of the goods that are bought and sold (1994: 170).

That certainly sounds like an endorsement of modern rational choice theory to me, especially given the stipulation that individuals are “equally informed” about the goods that they buy and sell. It’s hard to see on what ground Popper would be opposed to the other idealizations typically built into economic models, such as the stipulation that individuals be able to rank-order their preferences, that these preferences are transitive, that individuals have perfect information, etc. This is not to say that Popper necessarily would have approved of everything in contemporary social science that flies under the banner of rational choice theory. I have in mind the obnoxious trend in economics, and political science as well, of producing esoteric formal models that are completely untethered to any real-world problems and which don’t even seem to have the goal of explaining or predicting actual individuals’ behavior, something that no doubt would have horrified Popper. (Jon Elster has recently commented that the motivation behind the creation of such models seems to be “aesthetic” [461].)

I also don’t mean to say that the more technical, idealized rational choice models found in economics and, to a lesser degree, political science represent the only kind of situational models that Popper had in mind. Popper also saw situational analysis as underpinning the more impressionistic, informal models of human interaction that social inquiry has occasionally produced since the ancient Greeks. These models do not stipulate that actors act optimally or with perfect information. They merely require that individuals pursue some typified aim and, as result of the interaction of individuals and institutional constraints, produce some interesting unintended consequences. Popper’s first discussion of situational analysis comes in The Open Society and concerns what Popper calls Plato’s “logic of power,” found in chapters XIII and IV of the Republic. Tyrants seeking to secure their own power are forced by the logic of their situation to kill off all their potential rivals, including all persons of wealth, intelligence and reputation. Paradoxically and unintentionally, this undermines their power and ultimately paves the way toward democracy. Other examples of such models would include Smith’s invisible hand, Marx’s theory of trade cycles (which Popper discusses in The Open Society [1996b: 179-181]), Hobbes on the logic of the state of nature (individuals pursuing their own safety paradoxically and unintentionally leads to a state of war), and the so-called tragedy of the commons. No math or technical language is required to explain the operation of these situational models. All that is required is a thought experiment in which one imaginatively traces the interaction of individuals in certain institutional settings. Popper called for social scientists to seek to uncover more of these interesting social mechanisms and hoped that overtime they might become more refined.

Popper thought that situational analysis would revolutionize social science and put it, for the first time, on a proper scientific footing (Hacohen: 492). In fact, he claimed that situational analysis should be “the” method of the social sciences – or the “golden foundation,” as Miller says (1994: 173). It would be the method not only for economics, but also sociology, anthropology, “power politics,” and social and political history (1994: 170). Further, he seemed to have imagined that situational analysis would be the approach to social inquiry that “piecemeal social engineers” would employ to tackle vexing social problems (unemployment, poverty, violence, etc.) (1966a: 163). Social science would become for the first time not only genuinely scientific but also a genuinely useful tool for social improvement. In some ways I think that Popper’s wish has been partly fulfilled. As everyone knows, the methods of economics have indeed spread to other disciplines in the social sciences. Unfortunately, this hasn’t produced the salutary effects that he hoped it would. It cannot be said that the adoption of situational analysis has led to any notable progress in social science or to some kind of quantum improvement in public policy.

In the end, I think, Popper’s important contribution to social science was not positive; it was negative. Most of his energy in The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society was focused on criticizing what he called “historicism,” the view that the aim of social science is to engage in historical prophesy, which requires discovering laws of historical development. Popper convincingly argued that such transhistorical laws cannot exist and that historical forecasting is a fool’s errand. He dealt a deathblow to this type of scholarship. But when it came to presenting his own prescription for social science, Popper offered mostly unsystematic and scattered observations on the topic. His positive contributions to the methodology of social science were mostly an addendum.

Contact details: gorton@alma.edu

References
Elster, J. 2007. Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press.

Hacohen, M. 2000. Karl Popper: The Formative Years, 1902-1945. Cambridge; New York, Cambridge University Press.

Kahneman, D. and A. Tversky. 1982. Judgment under Uncertainty. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Gorton, W. 2006. Karl Popper and the Social Sciences. Albany, State University of New York Press.

Miller, B. 2012. The Rationality Principle Idealized. Social Epistemology 26 (1): 3-30.

Popper, K. 1966a. The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. I, Fifth Edition. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Popper, K. 1996b. The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. II, Fifth Edition. Princeton, Princeton University Press.

Popper, K. 1957. The Poverty of Historicism. London, Routledge.

Popper, Karl. 1994. “Models, Instruments, and Truth,” in The Myth of Framework, edited by M. A. Notturno. London, Routledge.

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Collective forum

Collective Judgment Forum

elisabethsimbuerger —  February 15, 2012 — Leave a comment

Collective Judgment Forum

As the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective is constantly seeking new formats of academic writing that do not find space in common academic journal writing, The New York Times’ Room for Debate provided an excellent piece of inspiration for promoting short, engaged discussions. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate Three or four debaters write a short opinion-piece (max. 400 words) on an important, contemporary topic which is then commented on by readers.

In a similar vein, we are now launching our own Collective Judgment Forum. It serves as a space where three or four debaters (350 to 450 words max. each) kick off a debate around a central question regarding social epistemology and related matters. These short argumentative snippets provide plenty of material to initiate a debate that can be joined by everyone on the web.

The Collective Judgment Forum will be open with a new topic every six to eight weeks. Potential debaters can suggest a topic of their choice to the online editors who will assist in finding other participants.

The first Collective Judgment Forum is kicked off by three debaters from the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective. Verusca Simões dos Reis, Adam Riggio and Elisabeth Simbürger discuss the question ‘Does the Public University Still Exist?’

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Universidad de Chile, 2011

Reis, Riggio and Simbürger: ‘Does The Public University Still Exist?’: A Collective Judgment Debate

elisabethsimbuerger —  February 15, 2012 — 2 Comments

 Simões dos Reis, Verusca, Riggio, Adam and Simbürger, Elisabeth [2012].
Does the Public University Still Exist? (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
social-epistemology.com/

Does the Public University Still Exist?

Over the last eighteen months, sparked by intense student protests in countries such as the UK, Austria, Italy, Chile, Colombia and the US, interest has been renewed in the debate over the future of the public university. In the UK, triggered by the austerity period and the complete restructuring of universities, the ranks are formed to defend the public university (Bailey and Freedman, 2011; Holmwood, 2011). However, as New Public Management has transformed previously public universities and private universities find themselves on the fore march globally, the question remains whether the public university is nothing else than a remote, nostalgic memory.

In the following, three debaters from the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective – Verusca Simões dos Reis, Adam Riggio and Elisabeth Simbürger provide their answers to the question whether the public university still exists.

Bailey, M. and Freedman, D. (eds.) 2011. The Assault on Universities. A Manifesto for Resistance. London: Pluto Press. Holmwood, J. (ed.) 2011. A Manifiesto for the Public University. London: Bloomsbury.

The Public University: Producing Knowledge As A Public Good?

Verusca Simões dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil

My straightforward answer to the question whether the public university still exists would be: it depends. It depends on whether one thinks about the nature of funding or knowledge. Either way they are connected.

Looking at public and private funds globally, public funding has experienced severe cuts over the last decades. However, taking on board some of the criticism against the generalizing, universalizing tendencies in the social sciences, we should rather look at local practices (sees Adam Riggio’s text for the U.S.A. case). In the following, I will focus on the academic mode adopted in Brazil.</p?

Despite local differences, there is some basic common ground about the original idea of the university, i.e, the task of forming people and scholars and of producing knowledge. This model of university as teaching and research goes back to Wilhelm von Humboldt in the 19th century. According to Weber, much of the academic tradition of producing knowledge socially and in a public way (expressed in Humboldt’s ideals) had collapsed due to the capitalist tradition in American universities.

Although there has been much influence of the American model on Brazilian life and culture, until some years ago the university had been a place of résistance. Due to the strong dependency of grants from the government, universities in Brazil are usually public funded. Private universities do exist but the best research – public knowledge –. is considered to be produced in public universities with public funding. At least this was the case until a couple of years ago, until the partnership between university and industry got more serious. The interaction between public university, industry and the government has developed based on the rhetoric that innovation will be a solution to all sorts of needs of public universities. But the “marriage” between public and private funds is only the tip of the iceberg to a larger problem that has been discussed worldwide at least since 1983, i.e., a change in the academic culture and in the way knowledge is produced and scholars evaluated.

Some scholars, such as the physicist and epistemologist John Michael Ziman F.R.S (1925-2005), have pointed out that the incorporation of managerial principles in the norms of academia changes its whole culture. Today, knowledge seems to be synonymous with market driven and instrumental research. Nevertheless scholars have been evaluated differently than in the past, with increasing pressure to publish results (sometimes even before getting them) and more administrative duties to the detriment of what their vocation ought to be: managing their own research and helping people to understand (and possibly change) the world.

So, public universities might cease to exist not only because they may not be publicly funded anymore, but mainly and more seriously because the incorporation of managerial ethos in academic practices might, in the long term, kill the public nature of knowledge.

The University Is No Longer Public

Adam Riggio, McMaster University, Canada

Despite the large number of universities in North America that can be called public, thanks to their government funding, I doubt if it is appropriate to discuss universities this way anymore.

I understand public as an answer to the question of who a university is for. Most readers of social epistemology scholarship work in universities as professors, or aim to do so. Our work concentrates on research, the advancement of an academic discipline. But the majority of people on a university campus are not faculty and researchers. They are students, who come to a university to develop the skills and habits of thinking to help them build careers. If a university has a public, this is it. The research and the institution should have one aim: an educated, free thinking populace.

The financial burden of education in public universities in North America constitutes the greatest social burden to potential students. There are many resources for financial aid to attend universities whose tuition is upwards of $12,000 per semester. Some of these resources are loans, forcing young people into severe debt. If we have learned one thing from the past four years, it is that extreme debt is no way to live.

There are also options of government grants, which do not have to be repaid, and are available to many students in the United States (far fewer non-loan programs exist in my own country, Canada). If government offers grants, and government funds universities, there is no reason why the budgets of universities themselves could not absorb this money by reducing student fees to reasonable levels. It would make no budgetary difference to the taxpayer, and would reduce the barrier preventing the modern university from being genuinely public.

High tuition fees show young people that there are penalties and barriers to earning a university degree. Such high entrance fees and the prospect of heavy debt may not reduce accessibility in a literal sense: anyone can jump the bureaucratic hoops of loans and grants, or accept the debt burden for an education. But these burdens are incidental to the genuinely difficult work of earning an advanced education: classes, lab work, writing, developing one’s thought. When the burdens of a project are incidental to the project itself, for many people the project is not worth the extra burden. Such a burdensome institution can no longer call itself public.

What Really Kills The Public University: Social Scientists’ Hybrid Terminologies

Elisabeth Simbürger, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile

The public university still exists, albeit it has changed substantially over the last few decades. I would argue that not only neo-liberalism – ‘the market’ – is to blame for the increasingly precarious state of the public university. What is more is that the social sciences and humanities that engage in research about the university also have a role to play in how a lot of the discourse about universities is run: by having created and employed empirically misleading terminologies such as the hybrid or postmodern university.

As a consequence of the implementation of New Public Management, these days even public universities incorporate business models and function like Ltds. Common terms in Higher Education studies such as ‘the marketization of Higher Education’ refer to the public sphere having been colonised by the market. Some take this as an argument for why the current reality of universities can no longer be captured using the dichotomy of the public and the private. Rather, hybridity would be a more apt description of the status quo in Higher Education (Lowrie and Willmott, 2006). Social epistemologist Steve Fuller argues that the promotion of knowledge as a public good irrespective of the public or private status of a university would be more important than sticking to the old discussion of public and private universities (Fuller, 2003).

Both arguments are tricky for similar reasons. They tend to disguise the underlying mechanism for the so-called blurring boundaries between the public and the private: capitalism. Just to be clear: This is not to idealize the notion of the public university in a romantic fashion or to be in nostalgic denial of the many changes that have taken place over the last decades. Yet, by replacing the dichotomy of public and private universities with new terms such as hybridity, the commodification of education merely gets a new, seemingly fashionable name. However, ambiguity in terminology is unhelpful or even dangerous when employed to make empirical phenomena invisible. To what extent the public university still exists is another matter but first of all the social sciences need to rethink their terminology.

References

Fuller, S. 2003. ‘Can universities solve the problem of knowledge in society without succumbing to the knowledge society? Policy Futures in Education 1 (1): 106-124.

Lowrie, A. and H. Willmott. 2006. ‘Marketing Higher Education: the promotion of relevance and the relevance of promotion’. Social Epistemology 20 (3-4): 221-240.

Nederveen Pieterse, J. 2001. ‘Hybridity, So What? : The Anti-Hybridity Backlash and the Riddles of Recognition’. Theory, Culture and Society 18: 219-245.

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Paul de Laat and Nicholas Munn. Online Encyclopaedias: An Exchange

Jim Collier —  February 14, 2012 — 3 Comments

de Laat, Paul and Munn, Nicholas [2012]. Online Encyclopaedias: An Exchange (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
social-epistemology.com/

Online Encyclopaedias: An Exchange

Paul de Laat, University of Groningen
Nicholas Munn, Monash University

Editor’s Note: Conducted over email during January and February 2012, this exchange between Paul de Laat, University of Groningen, and Nicholas Munn, Monash University, addresses issues in, and related to, their articles published in Social Epistemology 26.1 (2012). Both de Laat, in “Open Source Production of Encyclopedias”, and Munn, in “The New Political Blogosphere”, examine questions related to social epistemology and social media. This exchange focuses on online encyclopedias. Please go to “Social Epistemology and Social Media: An Exchange” to read Paul’s questions and observations and Nick’s replies to issues involving social epistemology and social media.

In this exchange, Nicholas Munn (NM) offers questions and observations to which Paul de Laat (PDL) responds.

NM: What is the relative importance of each of the online encyclopaedias examined? Has any one of them clearly been a leader/innovator, such that the others can be seen to adapt to them (i.e. Wikipedia)?

PDL: Wikipedia is the early innovator that adopted the wiki format (allowing everybody unrestricted and immediate access to textual entries). As mentioned in the article, (de Laat, 2012) many others adopted the same format later on. At the same time, they introduced ever more moderation and restrictions on access (in an effort to obtain the guarantees of expertise). Note that Wikipedia, in turn, has been inspired by the open source software movement that also allows access to the source code tree (at least if a contributor has been accepted as “developer”, not just “observer”). Note also, that h2g2 is the odd man out. It also started early on, but in their own ways (without a wiki).

NM: Might be interesting to expand the discussion out to cover other online encyclopaedias that have explicitly rejected the open source model, such as the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (SEP). Is there an important difference in the epistemic status of a resource like this? Recalling the now famous argument that Wikipedia is just as good as Britannica (EB), does the same apply here?

PDL: Wikipedia might be of the same quality level as EB; at least if similar (scientific) topics are drawn into the comparison. (Why this might be so is a matter of speculation. I myself am working on the hypothesis that at least some amateurs have an opportunity in Wikipedia to learn and acquire so-called “interactional” expertise.) A whole new discipline is unfolding that compares the quality of outputs from the various encyclopedic models. As for the SEP, Wikipedian articles about philosophy may possibly match their quality. And then again I would speculate that this is so since 1) trained philosophers also provide a helping hand to Wikipedia, and 2) untrained philosophers obtain some training by participating in discussions on talk pages and working in the wiki; so gradually they are also able to contribute quality. But all this is pure speculation.

NM: We see from table 1 (de Laat, 2012, 77) that the other wiki based encyclopaedias all began much later than Wikipedia. To what extent do you believe that the differences in editorial style embraced by these other projects reflect an attempt to avoid ‘mistakes’ made by Wikipedia, or, if not mistakes, at least certain outcomes considered undesirable?

PDL: It is interesting to note that many encyclopedias in my sample distance themselves from Wikipedia explicitly (“we are not Wikipedia”). Citizendium advertises itself as Wikipedia “corrected” on 2 counts: 1) an account with one’s real name is required; and 2) experts are appointed as “topic editors” to oversee wiki developments in the entries that belong to their particular topic (and to prevent escalating “edit wars”). Scholarpedia and the Encyclopedia of Earth also employ a wiki — but in more restricted ways. Often only accepted experts may participate; moreover, participation can be on invitation only. So the whole idea of crowd participation is obviously undermined; the wiki turns into a content management tool.

NM: The wikipedian assumption of trust seems to work for many issues. That is, Wikipedia is often an excellent source for particular, non-controversial details. However, the assumption of trust also seems to breakdown in marginal cases, those where, for whatever reason, sharply opposed positions occur amongst the (potential) contributors. In such circumstances (evolution, abortion, various nationalisms), the wikipedian approach has obvious flaws …

PDL: Which flaws are you referring to? I only know that Wikipedia takes pains with such entries to keep them under control. All kinds of people are continuously watching the entries as they develop; both new edits and new entries are carefully patrolled. Banners often announce that this is a heated subject, that contributors should take care, that vandalist edits are likely to be deleted very quickly, that they risk to be banned, and so on and so forth. As a rule biographies of living persons in particular are closely watched. Take the entry on Obama. It is on ‘article probation’, meaning that disturbances and obnoxious behaviour are taken even more seriously than elsewhere, the standards of behaviour to be adhered to are much stricter than normal. If the lines are crossed just a little bit this will quickly result in banning users for the topic involved for a period of time. Or take cold fusion: it is placed under a regime of ‘disciplinary sanctions’, meaning (in a similar fashion) that the rules of proper Wikipedian behaviour are closely watched and transgressions strictly sanctioned. And take global warming: editing the entry is forbidden until tempers have calmed down (the page is ‘protected’; in this case ‘semi-protection’, meaning that experienced registered users may still edit).

NM: Given both the array of proposals for change in wikipedian practices and the apparent unwillingness of Wikipedia itself to embrace these changes, do you see a place for a new online encyclopaedia to pick up the basic strands of wikipedian ideas, and implement them in a way that avoids the issues Wikipedia has? Citizendium explicitly started with this idea, but seems to represent a rejection of the wikipedian approach rather than a modification thereof.

PDL: Citizendium cannot be interpreted as rejecting a Wikipedian approach: they endorse the wiki format, though with some extras (real names and topic editors). With this slightly modified approach they did not meet with a lot of success: the number of entries (about one percent of the Wikipedia total) and more in particular their growth rate are not spectacular, the enterprise seems to be stalling by now. Obviously, it is not easy to find a place under the sun when Wikipedia is around—an obstacle that any new encyclopedic venture will have to overcome. So in the end, I do not see any viable way of starting a new open-content encyclopedia in general. Wikipedia has simply grown too large. For niche topics some room may exist.

NM: Do reputation scores (de Laat 2012, 88-89) lead to unacceptably high barriers to entry for new participants in encyclopaedia projects? Is a new commentator to be treated initially as neutral, or do they have significant disadvantages to overcome simply in virtue of not having previously participated in the project? A possible solution is connecting edits to some ur-identity for each user, that runs over a range of areas. However, suggestions like this (for example, the increasing use of Facebook profiles for commenting on blog articles) have their own downsides, such as the apparent harms to women participants that result from abuse when the identity of the participant is known.

PDL: This has to be a misunderstanding. If the dynamic reputation model (de Laat 2012, 97-99) is introduced, newcomers by default obtain a low reputation score. This score then grows or diminishes in relation to the longevity of all edits contributed. Those who contribute many edits that stand the test of time see their reputation rise; those who contribute edits that soon perish (being deleted by co-contributors) will see their reputation sink. Nevertheless, there is no barrier to entry: anybody can start without any obstacles. But let us say the right to vote on proposals, to review new edits coming in, and so on, will only accrue to those with a high enough reputation. And vice versa, sinking reputation will imply closer scrutiny of one’s new edits than for average Wikipedians. The solution to seek guarantees in real-life identities (of a kind) has always been rejected by Wikipedia, since they feel that it may deter those contributors that prefer to remain anonymous but have much to contribute in spite of this. Not all ‘anons’ are vandals (an estimate is: only 20% of them)!

NM: Wikipedia suffers significantly from a lack of assurance, as set out on pages 92-94 (de Laat 2012). However, it seems as though a combination of ubiquity/size and multiple redundancy (in that for any topic included in the wiki, there are multiple willing contributors, who tend in time to balance their opinions/perspectives out), this flaw is in part addressed. As such, could one model the importance of the assurance standard as a function of the size and/or number of contributors to the wiki itself?

PDL: Possibly a model runs like this. Lack of assurances as associated with anons is mainly a problem in the short run: malevolent anons tend to enter the scene and leave. So whenever an entry is populated with at least some veterans that guard the gates, the vandal problem can be held in check. And that is pattern one sees often: a core of a handful of veteran Wikipedians (some 10% of all) are involved in an entry over a longer time and take the lead as to where the entry is heading. All along, they police unconstructive edits.

NM: The expertise condition seems vulnerable to the flaws mentioned regarding reputation scores above. Especially in light of the notoriously hostile environment of the internet to minority/disadvantaged contributors, the exclusion of legitimate sources of information through such entry requirements seems a real concern. If, as you suspect, an expertise-based approach is beginning to take hold in Wikipedia, I would be concerned that there will be a real loss of perspective entailed by this change.

PDL: Wikipedia is taking pains to combine the 2 perspectives. On the one hand, expertise (edit longevity, de Laat 2012, 96) may become important to calibrate the quality of entries (and stimulate further development). On the other hand, this is not to mean that anyone is to be excluded as source of information. Barriers to entry are and probably will remain very low (provided you have an Internet connection and speak an appropriate language). So what is the loss of perspective you are afraid of?

NM: The following passage “Finally, it has to be observed that in case the real contributory experts stay away from some Wikipedian areas, contributors with high edit longevity may only seemingly qualify as interactional experts in them.” (de Laat 2012, 97) brings to mind a comment I believe (but am not sure) David Chalmers made regarding Wikipedia, namely that he had given up on attempting to address certain flaws in its coverage of his areas of philosophical interest, because his alterations were being reversed on the grounds that Wikipedia did not consider him an authoritative source. (I could send him an email and check if I am recalling the particulars of this story correctly, if you would like?)

PDL: Authority obviously is a big problem in Wikipedia. Sanger (who founded Citizendium) is fond of saying that in the worst case, edit wars erupt causing entries to fluctuate around an equilibrium – but never reaching it entirely. I have no real answer to that — except for arguing that also in the sciences, editing conflicts often have no natural resolution and linger on. About climate change we still have wars going on, in spite of all the ‘real’ experts involved. So maybe Wikipedia is just reproducing a more general phenomenon.

Contact details:
p.b.de.laat@rug.nl
nicholas.munn@monash.edu

References
De Laat, P. 2012. Open Source Production of Encyclopedias: Editorial Policies at the Intersection of Organizational and Epistemological Trust. Social Epistemology 26: 71-103.

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Nicholas Munn and Paul de Laat. Social Epistemology and Social Media: An Exchange

Jim Collier —  February 13, 2012 — 4 Comments

Munn, Nicholas and de Laat, Paul [2012]. Social Epistemology and Social Media:
An Exchange (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
social-epistemology.com/

Social Epistemology and Social Media: An Exchange

Nicholas Munn, Monash University
Paul de Laat, University of Groningen

Editor’s Note: Conducted over email during January and February 2012, this exchange between Nicholas Munn, Monash University, and Paul de Laat, University of Groningen, addresses issues in, and related to, their articles published in Social Epistemology 26.1 (2012). Both Munn, in “The New Political Blogosphere”, and de Laat, in “Open Source Production of Encyclopedias”, examine questions related to social epistemology and social media. This exchange focuses on political blogs. Please go to “Online Encyclopaedias: An Exchange” to read Nick’s questions and observations and Paul’s replies to issues involving online encyclopedias.

In this exchange, Paul de Laat (PDL) offers questions and observations to which Nick Munn (NM) responds.

Points Closely Related to the Articles

PDL: Your criticism of [Alvin] Goldman is sometimes overblown (if I read him correctly). You interpret him (Munn, 2012, 59) as arguing that blogs completely depend on mainstream media for the facts (and then you go on providing some famous counterexamples of bloggers that dig up new content). That interpretation, however, seems ill-founded. Looking at Goldman (2008, 114), he argues that blogs do free ride on traditional media for the facts and subsequently engage in superior acts of fact-checking. Indeed. But the creation of content is also on their menu: after all, he approvingly quotes Posner (2005) as saying, that millions of amateur posters sustain and nourish political blogging.

NM: I take it that you are referring to the passage in my text which reads: ‘He argues that the political blogosphere is reliant on mainstream media for content’? (Munn 2012, 59) If so, I did not intend for that passage to be read as indicating that Goldman requires the complete dependence of the blogosphere on mainstream media. As long as there is a significant dependence on mainstream media for content, I believe that the criticism applies. While it would be stronger if the dependence was complete, this isn’t necessary. I take it that Goldman’s position is captured in any situation where the following two conditions obtain: Political blogs rely on the work of the mainstream media as a starting point; and the mainstream media is cut out of the readership/response loop by individuals going straight to political blogs.

With regard to Goldman’s acceptance of the passage from Posner (2005) on sustaining and nourishing, I took that comment to be referring to the process of editorialising and analysis that the political blogosphere undertakes, having been provided with the core data sets by the mainstream media. The content they produce is new, yes, but it remains parasitic on the mainstream media insofar as the basic information required for the activities of the bloggers is found and reported by the mainstream media outlets. The problem in a case like this is not that political blogs are redistributing mainstream media data, but that the new content they produce could not have been produced without the mainstream media (and, that the ability of the mainstream media to continue producing content is undermined by the success of the blogs).

PDL: Many assertions play a crucial role in your text – but I would like to see some supporting data. Most influential political blogs are made by non-amateurs (Munn 2012, 62): data? [And are these top blogs the same as the ones you mention by name in the article later on?] Amateurs discovering important facts is a marginal phenomenon (Munn 2012, 62): data? What’s more, the only source you mention (Hindman cs 2003) is no longer accessible. (But rest assured: the reader can obtain it from a Princeton link, as I just did.)

NM: The blogs mentioned later in the text are a good sample of the top blogs, and they are largely comprised of professional journalists. The Hindman paper gives a good overview of the disparity between the top blogs and the average blogger in terms of influence, as measured by views & links. As you mention, the link which appears in my paper has become non-functional at some stage recently. The Princeton link you refer to is, I take it, www.cs.princeton.edu/~kt/mpsa03.pdf? Readers should be referred to this in future.

In terms of hard data, a more recent, and well detailed analysis of the power of various blogs can be found in Farrell and Drezner (2008; available online www.henryfarrell.net/publicchoice2.pdf.) The two articles by Bowers (2010a, 2010b) that are mentioned in the text also provide data on these issues. These have the added benefit of being freely available online. The names I mention, Mickey Kaus (KausFiles), Michelle Malkin (michellemalkin.com), Andrew Sullivan (The Dish) and Joshua Marshall (Talking Points Memo) are all highly ranked bloggers on the Technorati lists of influential political blogs. For current influence rankings of political blogs, particularly in the US, one can visit technorati.com/politics/. There are various subdivisions available within the Technorati page that can be used to customise the data further.

One note on this point is that the blogosphere remains in a state of rapid change. In the relatively short time between writing the first draft of this paper for a conference in 2010, and acceptance in 2011, the balance of blogs has moved noticeably towards group blogs, many of which are run as businesses in their own right. This move away from blogs as the preserve of individuals, towards blogs as businesses, is worth looking at. I believe that we will find that this is further evidence of the professionalization of the blogosphere, and that young journalists will look to work for websites as a first step into the business. Places like Daily Kos and the Huffington Post already hire interns and offer work experience for students (details of which can be found on the respective websites).

PDL: You argue that some bloggers are getting absorbed so to speak in conventional media. Why do you remain silent about the very real prospect of them becoming much more ‘traditional-media’ than before? Becoming forced to speak with the voice of their master, thereby diluting their partisan stance? In the end you devote a few words to this — maybe some more words are warranted.

NM: In part I speak little of it because I do not want to engage in speculation when the results may shortly be available. As I have detailed, there is a lot of this absorption happening (Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, and Matt Yglesias have all moved to such companies), and following the content of those who have begun working for larger companies may well enable us to draw actual data, rather than mere speculation. But the available data sets were limited then, and the topic is possibly important enough for analysis in a paper of its own.

I do, however, agree that this is an important concern, and it may be one that works on the blogosphere as a whole, rather than solely on the individuals within it. As blogs in general become accepted, will their approach become more mainstream, less risky? I fear the answer is yes. A closely related concern is that, even if their voices are not toned down, their availability may be. An example of this can be found with the experience of Nate Silver (FiveThirtyEight), who is now writing for the New York Times. His blog is subject to the Times paywall, which restricts access to the online version of the paper after 20 article hits a month. I have personally stopped reading it as frequently because of this.

Points for General Discussion

PDL: The ‘data’ about something are often not unambiguous: a variety of answers can be entertained. Experts often disagree on vital matters, whether global warming or the speed of neutrino’s. One may try to formulate epistemologically correct ways of handling such disagreements in media and blogs. How do traditional media vs new blogs fare in this respect?

NM: Traditional media often seem to have a ‘party line’ to which they adhere. So, for example, one does not expect to hear Fox News in the US praise any Democratic Party action. The epistemic disagreement in such a case is segregated between competing organisations. To hear the other side of the debate, one watches another channel. Similarly, one reads multiple newspapers to get multiple perspectives on the issues. One feature of the blogosphere which appears to give it an advantage here is that in standing outside the traditional structure, there is more willingness to engage in critical self-reflection. It is fairly common to see President Obama attacked from the liberal blogosphere for his decisions, while the left-leaning mainstream media support him.

Having said this, it is worth noting that the traditional media and the blogosphere share a harmful tendency towards becoming echo chambers, in which disagreements are ignored are forcibly removed from the debate. That is, both parties can tend towards a position wherein decisions as to which side of a disagreement to present are made on the basis of previously held beliefs, or political positions, rather than on the merits of the data as presented. It is not clear that the blogosphere offers any clear advantages over mainstream media on this point. It is, however, clear that there is no special disadvantage held by the blogosphere here. (I note this is beginning to answer the following question, so will end here)

PDL: More generally, a central epistemological problem with media to me seems to be not only the reporting of false information/data or only a part of available data, but also the interpretation of the data, the stories erected from them. Obviously, one can go several ways with the same data. So how would you say does the political blogosphere fare in this respect in comparison to traditional media? To what extent is one epistemologically superior to the other? And how to define such interpretational superiority in the first place? Bear in mind that we are talking politics here, not science! Is this whole question not arguably more important than the subordinate aspect of getting-the-political-facts-straight?! So I argue for comparing traditional and blog media on two main criteria: information and interpretation, unearthing political facts and developing political views. [This question is linked to your echo chamber discussion] In Goldman and others, I would argue, there seems to be too easy a transition from information and truths to becoming informed and taking correct political decisions.

NM: The different ways in which any data set can be taken are not all epistemologically equal. Any given data can be presented favourably, neutrally or badly. Obviously there are instances where this determination is difficult, but such hard cases are marginal ones. Most of the time, for example, the creation of new jobs in a depressed economy is an unequivocal good, and if it is not presented as such, the parties doing the presenting are engaged in partisan interpretation. Part of the reason the blogosphere has epistemological advantages is that many blogs are devoted to a sort of meta-analysis of data. They look at how other news sources treat data sets, and analyse this treatment, rather than analysing the data set itself.

The question of how to define interpretational superiority is an important one. In large part, it can be answered by appeal to relevance. If there are other interpretations, or further relevant information, which would alter the expectations of a reasonable person when confronted with that information, and these other interpretations are not mentioned, then that failure suggests an inferior interpretation. If the answer to ‘why would you interpret the data in that way?’ is that it best suits one’s own agenda, rather than that it is the best available interpretation, one is acting in an epistemologically dangerous manner. Obviously, this doesn’t give us a clear metric for deciding these things, but it provides the kind of beginning which can root out the most egregious cases of mis-presentation.

The initial discovery of relevant political information may seem at first to tie quite closely into funding, that is, big organisations with more staff and more money may be expected to be better at discovering relevant information. But if there is such a correlation, it is clearly imperfect, as a wide variety of other factors work to undermine the impact of funding. So, for example, a media source which contributes to the Republican Party, or has a primary readership/viewership from that party, has disincentives to expose failings of that party. An independent or smaller organisation is less vulnerable to disincentives of this kind, so may be able to discover or disseminate information that is left untouched by bigger parties.

Interpretation also provides its own difficulties. The position of the media agency within the political structure can provide its own constraints on the available interpretations of the data, for example. One important function of the blogosphere is to make information on the existence of competing interpretations available to the politically interested public. To draw again from an example I use in my article, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight devotes a lot of time to showing the various ways in which polling figures can be interpreted, and to explaining why particular interested parties choose particular interpretations of the available figures. This sort of undertaking does not, I think, fit cleanly into the information/interpretation framework you suggest.

On the worry about the transition from the availability of information to the state of being informed, I take it that your concern is something like the following: Even given the relevant information, many people will not know what to do with it. It is important to know not just that, for example, the unemployment rate has fallen, but also the factors that play into the unemployment rate, and whether the change can meaningfully be ascribed to any particular political actions undertaken on either side. Information alone cannot provide people with this, and interpretation is not considered by Goldman.

I think that the blogosphere is at its strongest when it comes to interpretation of information, whether that information is publicly available, such as employment figures, or provided through the mainstream media. It provides a broader coverage of the possible interpretations, and analysis of why any of them are good interpretations, than is usually available through the mainstream media.

PDL: To what extent is it important/necessary that Goldman (and you yourself presumably) stick to a veritistic social epistemology? Sticking to the term veritistic, you argued that political blogs are gaining veritistic momentum so to speak. But if we strike that term, and consider the issue in more general terms, do blogs not also score well? Do they do not also provide entertainment and amusement as seems to be so important politically? And might this by any chance strengthen their more epistemological impact?! We live, after all, in an era of emotionalized media.

NM: I think that on the whole, blogs do score well even absent a veritistic social epistemology. Readers are drawn to particular blogs not only by the strict informational content of the site, but also by the means with which that information is distributed. Good writing, humour, an ability to make connections and offer thoughts, or further material to pursue… all of these add value to blogs. So there is no need to restrict discussion of the benefits of blogs to their veritistic benefits. If we can satisfactorily answer your question above, then yes, I think all the other points you mention could help enhance the epistemological impact of the blogosphere.

Contact details:
nicholas.munn@monash.edu
p.b.de.laat@rug.nl

References

Bowers, C. 2010a. Amateur blogosphere, RIP [cited 3 June 2010; accessed 13 December 2010]. Available from http://openleft.com/diary/18957/amateur-blogosphere-rip; INTERNET

Bowers, C. 2010b. Amateur blogosphere, RIP: Follow-up [cited 4 June 2010; accessed 13 December 2010]. Available from http://www.openleft.com/diary/18979/amateur-blogosphere-ripfollowup; INTERNET

Farrell, Henry and D. Drezner. 2008. The power and politics of blogs. Public Choice 134: 15–30. Available from http://www.henryfarrell.net/publicchoice2.pdf; INTERNET

Goldman, A. 2008. The social epistemology of blogging. In Information technology and moral philosophy, edited by J. van den Hoven and J. Weckert, pp. 111–22. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hindman, M., K. Tsioutsiouliklis, and J. A. Johnson. 2003. “Googlearchy”: How a few heavily linked sites dominate politics on the Web [cited 23 July 2003; accessed 5 May 2011]. Available from http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~kt/mpsa03.pdf; INTERNET

Munn, N. 2012. The New Political Blogosphere. Social Epistemology 26 (1): 55-70.

Posner, R. 2005. Bad news [book review]. The New York Times, 31 July, 1–7.

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William Davis. Interdisciplinarity and Pedagogy: Disciplining Collaboration in Academia. An Interview with Carl Mitcham

elisabethsimbuerger —  February 10, 2012 — 4 Comments

Davis, William. [2011]. ‘Interdisciplinarity and Pedagogy: Disciplining Collaboration in Academia. An Interview with Carl Mitcham.’ (PDF)
The Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
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Interdisciplinarity and Pedagogy: Disciplining Collaboration in Academia

An Interview With Carl Mitcham

This interview between Carl Mitcham and William Davis (SERRC) took place by phone on Wednesday, September 14th, 2011. Carl Mithcam, Ph.D. in Philosophy from Fordham University, directs the Hennebach Programme in the Humanities at the Colorado School of Mines, and has held posts at a number of US and European universities.  He has published regularly since the 1970s, including Philosophy and Technology (1972), Thinking through Technology (1994), and the Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics (2005).  More recently, he co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (2010), and this book serves as the stimulus for much of the interview.

The interviewer, William Davis, is a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech studying Science and Technology Studies (STS).  His interests include pedagogy of STS, philosophy of science and philosophy of technology.  Though this interview primarily concerns the general topic of interdisciplinarity, some of the questions deal directly with STS, as an example of an interdiscipline, and how instruction in such programmes can, does, or should occur.

Keywords: Epistemology, Interdisciplinarity, Pedagogy, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Technology, STS, Transdisciplinarity

William Davis (WD): Can you tell me why you wanted to work on the Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity (OHI)?  Why you think the book is important, or what you would like to see as a result of it?

Carl Mitcham (CM): I have been working with Bob Frodeman and Julie Thompson Klein for a number of years on various interdisciplinary projects.  They were always specific interdisciplinary projects, and it seemed appropriate to thematise interdisciplinarity in general.  Julie and Bob and I have had a number of conversations.  Julie is the leader in the scholarly field, as a historian, participant, and creator of self-conscious reflection on interdisciplinarity from the inside.  Bob and I have been coming at it more from a philosophical perspective and a little bit from the outside, and so we thought we could have value added as a couple of new kids on the block by collaborating with somebody who has been a long-time promoter of interdisciplinarity.  Fortunately, Julie was amenable. We wanted to raise the concept of interdisciplinarity for greater thematisation, for further conscious reflection ― in modest advance over what had been done before.

At Penn State, before coming to Colorado School of Mines, I had been involved with Joe Kockelmans. Bob had studied with Kockelmans before I ever thought about interdisciplinarity.* I learned about Julie from Joe.  Joe had created a programme at Penn State, the individualized interdisciplinary doctoral program.  And when Joe retired from directing that program, I was asked to take it on.  So I had involvement there at the graduate level trying to promote interdisciplinary graduate education. Then I realized by reading Julie’s work, before I ever met her, that what I had really been practicing interdisciplinarity (although  I had not called it that) since I was an undergraduate.  The idea of the OHI was the natural outgrowth of a long trajectory of work.

WD: Do you see Philosophy of Technology, which is a field you work in specifically, as almost inherently interdisciplinary?  Have you always thought of it that way?

CM: Yes, that’s true.  From my earliest work in philosophy and technology, I was doing interdisciplinarity without realizing it.  Hemingway made a comment one time that it was strange that he had to go to Paris to realize he was an American.  I had to read Julie to realize I was an interdisciplinarian.

For me philosophy is about trying to figure out what it means to live in the world that we are living in. I became convinced even in high school, or certainly as an undergraduate, that technology was a primary influence on the world I was growing up in.  In the philosophy field, there was no respect for the Philosophy of Technology.  It was dismissed in favor of real problems in the Philosophy of Science.  But what I discovered was that engineers were willing to talk about questions related to technology even if philosophers weren’t. So even though I have a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, I took a double Bachelor’s in General Studies, because I wound up going outside the philosophical discipline in order to find people who would talk about the kinds of questions that to me seemed important.  Thus even from my undergraduate studies I found the discipline of professionalized philosophy was not adequate to reflect on the issues that seemed most important.

Then in the 1980s I discovered Science, Technology, and Society (STS) Studies, and began to think of Philosophy of Technology as one of the three major fields that contributes to STS, sociology and history being the other two.  In fact, for one of my first publications, the Bibliography of the Philosophy of Technology (1973), there was no philosophy publisher that wanted it.  It was the Society for the History of Technology that published it.  So there again, I realized I was crossing boundaries.  And then when I discovered Joe Kockelmans and Julie Thompson Klein’s work, where they thematised interdisciplinarity, I realized STS was also a kind of interdisciplinarity.  So it was just sort of climbing up the ladder and getting a better perspective on what I was already doing, in order, I hope, to do it better.

WD: Is interdisciplinarity a broad approach to education?  Should it affect entire disciplines or curriculums?  Or is this just what specific programs like STS are about, and interdisciplinarity is not going to affect the entire university curriculum?

CM: I think it should affect university curricula.  This relates to a conflict in the STS community.  For ten years I was at Penn State and for six of those years directed the STS programme there.  We took the position that STS should not become a discipline; should not become a department; should not be professionalised in a disciplinary way.  There is a tendency, when a new interdisciplinary field is created, for it to devolve into a discipline. Bio-physics, for example, was originally going to be a kind of synthesis that included biology and physics.  But it became very quickly just a new specialised discipline.  Bio-chemistry, the same thing.  Geo-physics, to some extent the same thing.  But from my initial involvement in STS, I wanted to try to keep STS from becoming just another specialisation.

At Penn State we consciously rejected the idea of having our own faculty.  There were no faculty tenured within the STS program.  We did not want the program to become a department. We didn’t want to create a major.  We wanted STS to become a part of all majors, rather than its own major.  We lost that battle.  The work that people did at Cornell and other institutions, and to some extent there at Virginia Tech [institution of the interviewer], to promote STS as a discipline, as a major, as a department, won out, over attempts to preserve it as an interdiscipline. I think that is unfortunate.  It was a loss to what education could have been, what STS education could have been.  At Penn State we tried, but did not succeed, to make STS a requirement for all undergraduate majors.  The best we were able to do was, among a suite of general education courses, to make STS an option.

For me, the transformation of STS from an interdisciplinary field to a scholarly specialization has been a real loss.  STS is no longer Science, Technology, and Society.  It has become professionalized as Science and Technology Studies.

WD: You are echoing what Frodeman mentioned in the intro to the Handbook.  He thinks of STS as fundamentally anti-disciplinary as opposed to interdisciplinary.  He thinks that is a very good thing.  It sounds like you agree with him.

CM: Yes, Frodeman and I sometimes agree on so much that it’s not clear there need to be two of us on the planet.

WD:  Is it too late for STS to be anti-disciplinary?  Is there a potential for a shift, or this is what it is now, and we just have to figure out what to do from here?

CM: We probably just have to figure out where to go from here.  There are other scholars like me, and I try to encourage my students to be interdisciplinary as well. I occasionally teach a graduate Intro to  Science, Technology, and Society Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, trying to bridge the gap between Science, Technology, and Society and Science and Technology Studies.  Steve Cutcliffe and I edited a book, Visions of STS, subtitled, Counterpoints in Science, Technology, and Society Studies.  So to the graduate students I teach, I make this pitch.  There is no STS program at CU-Boulder; the course is part of an environmental studies curriculum and a Master’s in Science and Technology Policy.  Policy research is a useful context in which to promote STS interdisciplinarity in ways that revive some of the old interdisciplinary tradition.

The STS-related programme at Arizona State University (ASU) does this as well.  It’s called Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology.  Originally, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before the STS moniker got created, there was a diversity among programme titles.  At Lehigh University it was Humanities Perspectives on Science and Technology.  At Stanford it was something like Science and Human Values.  At SUNY Stoneybrook the term of art was Technology Literacy.  This diversity gave way in the late 1970s the STS standardization.  Then in the 1980s STS as “Science, Technology, and Society” was replaced with STS as “Science and Technology Studies.” More recently there some modest diversity has re-surfaced, as in the ASU program.  I think this is a good thing.

There is some discussion of this within 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) as well.  4S tends to promote science and technology studies as a social science based discipline rather than an as interdiscipline, but there is always a bit of fluidity in the academic world.  I think we can move forward with some kind of effort to preserve the rich interdisciplinary character of early STS, particularly within groups that are promoting interdisciplinarity itself.  For example, Frodeman right now is at a meeting in Switzerland, TDNET, Trans-discipline Network.  People in Europe and the TD community, I think, are more sympathetic to interdisciplinary STS.

WD:  Would you help me with terminology: transdisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, are we talking about something similar?  Are these not the same thing?

CM: Interdisciplinarity has a broad meaning and a narrow meaning.  It can be an umbrella term that includes multi-, anti-, cross-, trans-, inter-, and other ways of stepping outside disciplinarity.  I tend to use the term this way, primarily. This is its meaning in the title of the Handbook.  There are different kinds of interdisciplinarity.  There is, on the one hand, interdisciplinarity in different fields: chemists working with chemical engineers, working with sociologists, working with philosophers, etc.  This tends to be what we call narrow interdisciplinarity, where you have disciplines in engineering collaborating, or disciplines in the sciences collaborating, or disciplines in science and engineering collaborating.  This is all pretty narrow.

You have the same thing happening within the humanities.  This tends to be what we can call multi- or cross-disciplinary work, as when I am involved in a programme here at the Colorado School of Mines, called Smart-Geo.  This programme brings together computer and geo-scientists and geo-engineers to design and implement instrumentation in dams and bridges and buildings so that they become self-monitoring with regard to things like structural integrity, leakage, etc.  We can instrument dams to talk to us about how well they are functioning.  It is really important to have some computer scientists and computer engineers who are really good specialists in their fields working alongside geological engineers and geologists and geo-physicists to collaborate.  This is multi-disciplinarity.

I think of cross-disciplinarity as when someone actually moves from one field to another.  We have some students in the Smart-Geo program who were originally trained as civil engineers but now work as computer scientists.  This crossing disciplinary boundaries is another kind of interdisciplinarity.

In still a third important case, trans-disciplinarity involves to some degree transcending disciplines, going outside the disciplines to appreciate the social contexts in which disciplines work.  This can be done from a single discipline.  Or it can be done from the base of multi-disciplinary collaborations.  But trans-disciplinarity usually means going vertical.  Going outside the academy to communicate with and collaborate with economists, business people, corporations, government agencies, the public.

WD: What do you think are the benefits of an interdisciplinary culture in the university?  Does it have limits?  Or should, for example, science education — you mention chemistry, or even biology — should they become more interdisciplinary?  And if so, what would that look like? Is it just putting STS into every discipline?

CM:  Your question points toward the increasing emphasis in the world on accountability and responsibility in research, which necessarily suggests the need for transdiplinarity in many areas of teaching and research.  It is used to be the case that both the scientific community and the larger non-scientific public were content to have funds given to the scientists and allowing scientists to decide how to use them. Scientists did their work without paying much attention to where the money came from or what the needs were of the larger society in which they lived. But, increasingly, society is saying, governments and states are saying, look, if we are going to supply lots of money, which we do, then we want you not just to remain isolated in your laboratory, but to think about how in your lab you can be most useful to society.  (This is simplified history, I know, but there is some broad truth in it.) Well, this is what STS as trans-disciplinarity can help scientists and engineers do.

The issue here is probably more one for science than engineering.  Engineering has always been more collaborative with society.  We say that engineers are “on tap, not on top.”  Scientists have often had a culture of thinking they need to be autonomous, independent, left alone to do their own thing.  And there is a place for this in some sciences.  I am not denying that there is some place for scientific autonomy, but there is also a place for scientists trying to be proactive and not just reactive to the social contexts in which they live and work, in which they are citizens.

I think of STS and interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary, as helping scientists be better scientists in the sense of being more sensitive to the social contexts in which they work. And also to be better citizens, not isolating themselves from society.  If scientists bring their work as scientists to the larger non-scientific community, they can help us all become more intelligent.  This was the vision of John Dewey.  What we should really be doing is trying to increase public intelligence.  Science has a big role to play here.  Science offers important perspectives on reality.  Yes there is some social construction involved, but it is a social construction that has given us insights into reality that are to some extent superior to some other insights.  And the scientists don’t need to be apologetic about this; they just need to be sensitive to the perspectives of non-scientists.  It is part of their responsibility as scientists to be more aware of the world around them.

Interdisciplinarity and STS can help scientists be more engaged with the non-scientific world. Interdisciplinarity can perform some modest chiropractic on the way science is done.   To take our Smart-Geo programme again: Initially there was considerable resistance to the required STS and science policy courses. Now, students are becoming comfortable with them.  All Smart-Geo dissertations will have chapters on social and policy implications of the project that is the core of the dissertation.  And the students the benefit, how this can help them understand why this problem should even cropped up, and how their research may benefit their fellow citizens.

WD:  If interdisciplinarity is vital and important in academia, how do we promote it?  By “we” I mean as a student, as a professor, perhaps as an administrator.  How should each promote this?  Is there anyone else that should be involved?

CM: One of the best examples of the really effective promotion of interdisciplinarity is at Arizona State University. When Michael Crow became president in 2002, he brought with him from Columbia University a strong commitment to interdisciplinarity.  And at ASU he said something like although he was not going to punish anybody who didn’t do interdisciplinarity, future rewards were going to those who practiced interdisciplinarity.  If any academic units or individuals on campus could come up with proposals for bridging disciplines and trans-disciplinary engagement with the community, particularly in Arizona, then he indicated he would work to find ways to get those proposals supported.

One great example concerned the departments of anthropology and sociology, which collaborated to propose a new School of Human Evolution and Social Change.  In response to proposals like this, leadership from the top can really make a difference.  But you have to have imaginative leaders like Mike Crow.  He is a really exceptional guy.

I was on sabbatical at ASU in 2006, and ASU is one of the largest single campuses in the U.S.   Crow, even while serving as president one of the most dynamic universities in the country, teaches a class.  And he really teaches.  He doesn’t just come and tell war stories.  I saw the syllabus for the year before I sat in on the class with him, and the year I audited the seminar.  It was a different syllabus. So he was continuously revising. We would meet on Wednesday mornings.  He said, look: My days get away from me, so we are going to start class at 7am.  We went until 10am. At the beginning of the seminar he gave out his personal email but said, please, don’t share this with anyone else.  At the end of the semester, forget it, otherwise I just have to get a new one.  But I will be available for you.  I can’t make any appointments during the day, but if you would like to talk with me individually, I will be here at 6am.  Any number of times, when I showed up a little before 7am, he was already there, having individual discussions with students.  He is just an amazing guy.  This was a class on Science, Technology, and Human Affairs.  We read work in philosophy, history, sociology and management ―  a fantastic class.  I think he only missed one class during the semester.  Leadership like that is just worth gold.

But the promotion of interdisciplinarity cannot just rest with administrators. There are roles for faculty and for students, too.  It took me nine years to get my bachelor’s degree, and in the course of that nine years I attended four different universities, tried out at least three different majors, and stopped out to paint houses and do other kinds of manual labor that were something other than internships.  That was nine years very well spent.  I think it is a crime that we force students graduate in four year, that we judge ourselves on ‘through-put’.  This should not be what education is about.  It is about learning who we are, the complexities of the world.  Students need to have more courage and push back and say, look, I am not here to just quickly get a degree in four years, in some minimum amount of time.  String it out.  Don’t string it out to play, but string it out to learn.  Take a gap year.  I feel like I am a success when I can convince a student to drop out for a while.  I am convinced that perhaps 25% of my first-year students would be better off outside the university doing something else for a while.  At Penn State I once got my wrist slapped by the president for encouraging students to drop out for a while.

WD: What are the values that interdisciplinary programs promote? Are they promoting autonomy? Or is it something else? Why are those values important to us, in either academia, or the world itself?

CM: I’d say the basic good of interdisciplinarity is leading a richer and more rewarding life. Human flourishing. It is really a kind of return to what philosophy was for Socrates, the examined life.  For Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living.  Interdisciplinarity is leading an examined life. Flourishing, human wellbeing raised to a level beyond just material wellbeing. Thinking about what we are doing.  Trying to live responsibly. Recognising the challenges of social justice. Recognising that we are not alone, we are not just isolated individuals. We are part of a human community.  We are part of a biosphere. We live on a pretty unique planet and galaxy, from all we can tell.  It is becoming more self-aware and therefore being a different kind of person, a better kind of person. That is what life is really about, not making money.

WD: In terms of scholarship, what does an interdisciplinary approach mean?  Does it mean greater collaboration in terms of research, in terms of writing?  I am guessing you don’t think interdisciplinary scholarship should look like one thing and one thing only, but what might it look like to you?  What would you want it to be?

CM: The only way I can answer that is at the level of cliché, alas. But, in scholarship, take more than one thing into account.  One of the things I have argued in the ethics of technology is that the fundamental principle is to take more into account.  Our larger moral responsibility as human beings is not just avoiding conflicts of interests or honesty in research, but to take more into account. To try to consider different perspectives, longer-term implications, to be reflexive, as the STS community likes to say.  (I think that is a good way to put it, too.)  Be aware of how we fit into a particular context, social, economic, political.  This should find some kind of echo in scholarship. Maybe in part in the kinds of things we do as much as the way we do them.

I like to distinguish between two kinds of problem.  One is doing things right and the other is doing the right kinds of things.  I teach a graduate level course, Introduction to Research Ethics, in which we emphasize at the beginning how responsible conduct of research tends to be on just making sure we do things right, but how we also need to go further and ask questions about what’s the right thing to do.  And the final assignment is always to write an ethics code for yourself.  Sure, the professional society in which you work is going to have some kind of ethics guidelines, and you should take these into account.  But, write an ethics code for yourself that you could put on your wall and help remind you that, after due consideration, these are the ways you want to lead your life, and these are the kinds of things you want to do.  Then, look at it now and then and revise it every year or five years, because none of this stuff should be set in stone.  It provides a helpful framework, because we all get bogged down and trapped in the details, in the quicksand of academic life.  But we all need to work to rise above the trees to be able to see and appreciate the forest.

I would say this is what interdisciplinarity should help us do. To return again and again to thinking about what we are really doing and why, and maybe the path, the trajectory that we have taken. Disciplinarity is a good thing, too.  It is not a bad thing. But it needs to be placed in a broader context, and interdisciplinarity can help us do that. It needs to be redone over and over again, because we are always in danger of being drowned in the sea of disciplinary minutia.

WD: How do you get comfortable working in multiple arenas?  Is it just by doing it?  As you say, you teach classes outside your area.  Is this learning by doing?  Could you tell me about your own experiences?

CM: Partly it is just a matter of time.  Partly it is also accepting not being comfortable.  I’m still nervous at the beginning of every semester when I meet classes for the first time. I used to look at other people and say, oh, they are so comfortable and so confident in what they are doing, and I am not. But now, I see it as a virtue, of not being comfortable, and not being overconfident. I see some of those people as being a perhaps too self-confident and comfortable. I don’t want to be self-righteous about it, but maybe there is a virtue in not being comfortable.  Always recognizing, again like Socrates, there are lots of things I don’t know. Some of us think we know it all when we really don’t.

In another of the courses I teach on globalization, which is way outside my area of expertise, students often ask questions, and I have to say, I don’t know the answer to that.  Give me until next class and I will see what I can find out.  I’ve become more comfortable not being comfortable, not being an expert.  But this is a bit scary in the academic world, where the coin of the realm is to be able to claim you are an expert in something.  To reference Frodeman, again, he has a phrase that I have picked up and used. He claims to be a ‘specialist in the general’.  I like his way of putting it and sometimes apply it to myself.  I am a specialist in the general.  I take as my model scholars such as Lewis Mumford, who never even got a bachelor’s degree, and did history and architectural criticism and literary criticism and philosophy and anthropology.  It is a weird combination of boldness and humility.

I am still nervous.  I keep thinking I will get over it, but I just try to accept the fact that I will never be a real expert, and this is OK.  I really, in some ways, wish that I had been better educated.  At Penn State I actually considered going back and getting a BS in Civil Engineering.  I thought that it would help me have a little more bona fides when doing engineering ethics, if I had a degree in engineering.  So I went to the engineering department and we looked at my old transcripts and figured out what I would have to do.  And I started to realize it was going to take me away from too many other things and I just couldn’t do it.  But in some ways I look back and wish I had had the discipline to do it.

WD: Do you think that STS students and practitioners should have a background in science and/or engineering?

CM: It would be very helpful.  I don’t think this is necessary, but my council to my own kids and grandkids is, get a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering first.  It is much easier, if you are a scientist at age 40, to become a humanities scholar, than it is the other way around.  And I think we need people who are both.  I was fortunate in that I did do a lot of science at university.  I have a Bachelor’s degree in General Studies as well as in Philosophy and the general studies degree required me to do chemistry and biology.  I did a good deal of math.  In fact, I started out as a chemistry major and sometimes wish I had completed a chemistry degree.

But another thing that all students need to learn is languages, some language other than English. Being bilingual is a crucially important asset that most U.S. students lack. And this is probably more the case in science and engineering than in other disciplines.  So getting a degree in science or engineering should not come at the expense of learning Spanish or Mandarin. Additionally, language learning can be a crucial stimulus to and support of interdisciplinarity, insofar as interdisciplinarity is also a kind of bilingualism.

WD: What does a pedagogy of STS look like?  What is a philosophy of STS?  What do you think STS pedagogy should be?  How does interdisciplinarity play into STS education?  For example, let’s say I take a history of science course.  Should I just look at the texts and themes from an historian’s perspective?  If I were a professor, how do I put philosophy and sociology into that course?  Or are these separate classes and should they remain so?

CM: It will depend on context.  I am not opposed to disciplinarity.  There is a role for a course that is just the history of science.  And maybe just internalist history of science.  If I were teaching a history of science class, I would start by situating the history of science, and say look, this is how the history of science got started, this is the way it has worked in relation to other disciplines.  That would be kind of a framing mechanism.  Then we would do as high quality as I could muster history of science, and at the end come back out again and say: Here is what we did for the semester, but here are some of the criticisms of the history of science and its narrowness.  What are we to make of this?

Scientists criticise because they say historians don’t really understand what scientists do.  Sociologists criticise because they say scientists don’t really appreciate the social context.  But we should also place both criticisms in context.  You can’t appreciate the criticisms until you have immersed yourself in both disciplines, looking at each from the other.  I’m in favor of immersing ourselves in disciplines but then, at the same time, after we’ve done so, stepping out and looking at what we have been doing.  Then individuals, given their life trajectories, will be able to make different kinds of use of their disciplines.  Disciplines are really useful for helping us throw diverse lights on aspects of reality, aspects of human experience, that we would not otherwise get.  But the way we use them is going to be dependent on our personal life work and social historical contexts.

I try to do this in my ethics course.  I begin the semester calling attention to ethics as a unique cultural achievement.  It’s a little like art.  It’s a little like music, like learning a new language.  But then we set this point aside and turn to reading Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Kant. But at the end of the semester we return to the idea that ethics is complementary to a cultural world, a human life. We ask how ethics relates to other things as well.  This is what I think of as an interdisciplinary pedagogy.  Since the world we live in is primarily influenced by science and technology, interdisciplinarity is naturally going to emphasize the relationship between science, technology, and society.  This will take place especially in the ethics course, where we read great books but every now and then ask: Does this have any relation to the life of an engineer or scientist?

Contact details: williamdavis@vt.edu

* Correction, April 23, 2012: In the revised version of this interview, posted 10 February 2012, Carl Mitcham stated: “At Penn State, before coming to Colorado School of Mines, I had been involved with Joe Kockelmans, whom Julie [Klein] considers one of the founders of the interdisciplinarity. Julie had studied with Kockelmans back in the 1980s before I ever thought about interdisciplinarity.” Julie Klein responded in an April 23 email: “I was never a student of Kockelmans. Frodeman was. I also don’t think Kocklemans was a founder of interdisciplinarity. He was a leading figure of its advance in the USA.” Mitcham’s answer was edited to reflect Julie Klein’s correction.

Note: A version of this interview published in November 2011 was withdrawn pending revisions. This update has few substantive content changes, but there are numerous stylistic alterations that have, hopefully, improved the readability of the document.

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Review of Humanity 2.0 by Steve Fuller, Sabrina Weiss

Jim Collier —  February 9, 2012 — 1 Comment

Author Information: Sabrina Weiss, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, sabrinamweiss@gmail.com

Weiss, Sabrina. 2012. “Review of Humanity 2.0 by Steve Fuller.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective.

The PDF of the article gives specific page numbers. Shortlink: http://wp.me/p1Bfg0-9M

Please refer to: Winyard, David C. 2013. “Review of Steve Fuller, Humanity 2.0: What it Means to be Human Past, Present and Future.” Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 2 (2): 16-18.

Humanity 2.0, by Steve Fuller, is a bold interjection into the landscape of oppositional discussions about progress, science, religion, and policy. Rather than quarantining modern secular intellectual thought from theology, Fuller embraces their shared lineage that forms the basis of discussions today on everything from human enhancement to novel instantiations of life. Through in-depth discussions of converging technologies (CT), the complex ideological and theological roots of Intelligent Design, and a proposal for empowering science education using theological tools, this work refuses to shy away from difficult questions about humanity’s future, instead seizing them vigorously and boldly. Whether for its concisely effective history of social epistemologies through theological roots or for its advocacy of shedding fear in favor of understanding, this book will be of use to students and scholars alike.

The narrative of humanity’s future is presented in five parts, each punctuated by section headings, resulting in a reasonably ordered book that can be referenced easily (making this an approachable book for graduate students or advanced undergraduates interested in this topic). Each chapter focuses on some theme of clash or conflict between ideologies or visions, giving extra meaning to the “2.0” in the title.

Chapter 1, “Humanity Poised Between Biology and Ideology”, opens the book with an overview of the tensions between social sciences and biological sciences, as demonstrated by the struggle between our material and ideological natures: “To be human is to identify both an animal and an ideal” (7). From there, Fuller draws a circle of focus around the two key boundary issues in the social sciences that are unique to and universal for human beings, race and religion. The boundary issue of gender and/or sex is not included in this circle of focus; while not particularly surprising, this omission suggests a less revolutionary reframing than what could have been. While there is some brief discussion about the usual considerations of women’s historical dis/empowerment regarding reproduction, the home, and public life, including in religious affairs (46-48), it does not go anywhere (such as past this chapter, minus a lone mention of Donna Haraway that was not indexed). Through an enriching yet convoluted tour of topics like the Cold War and the “memes vs. genes” controversy, the chapter concludes with a foreshadowing suggestion that through biotechnology and horizontal gene transfer we may in fact validate Lamarck over Darwin.

Chapter 2, “Defining the Human: The Always Already – or Never to be – Object of the Social Sciences?”, discusses the “bipolar disorder” of humanity and frames its conceptualizations as disagreements recapitulated throughout history from the early division between Dominicans and Franciscans on the nature of God, humanity, and the rest of nature. This very engaging chapter highlighted contributions originating with Plato and Aristotle, continuing through John Duns Scotus’ response to Thomist thought (Thomas Aquinas), and tying in to the contrasts between the Paris and Oxford universities. Table 2.1 (81) provides a neatly ordered binary sorting of philosophical and theological positions on issues like “epistemic certainty” and the nature of the “God-human relationship”. To Thomists, the mechanical explanations of life start one onto a “slippery semantic slope to saying that science finishes the work of theology because God turns out to be a super-mechanic whose modus operandi we come to fathom by studying the mechanics of nature – and extending and improving it through our technology” (107). This urgent taboo against mixing – whether of ideas, people, or technologies – is maintained, Fuller asserts, by controlling the way these issues are discussed. But it is also through communication that we can more effectively address the real substance of controversial issues like human enhancement. Rather than weakly appealing to some essentialist human nature, Fuller advises that principled objections to enhancement ought to focus on the magnification of inequalities in our society resulting from unchecked development (109).

The third chapter looks at the interactions between policy and converging technologies (CT): “A Policy Blueprint for Humanity 2.0: The Converging Technologies Agenda”. The idea of convergence emphasizes the trend of multiple technologies increasing in shared focus as well as in shared interactions while not necessarily being destined to meet at a specific point (124). Technologies like nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology are discussed in both positive and negative feedback interactions within, throughout, and traversing policy in both the United States and the European Union. Additionally, their transgression of traditional disciplinary boundaries strain attempts to keep expertise separated (127) and promote the development of neologisms like Nikolas Rose’s “biological citizenship” and “neurochemical self” (131). Of particular interest is the insight surrounding artificial life, that technologies have moved from simulating to instantiating life (127) and that functional definitions of life have granted digital organisms authority as demonstrative examples of organic life (such as the Avida simulation in Kitzmiller v. Dover) (128). The end of the chapter revisits the limitations of objections to transhumanist-style technological enhancement that are based in violation of an essential “human being” and muses on the potential inequities of access and protection that would arise in today’s policy climate (161).

Chapter 4, “A Theology 2.0 for Humanity 2.0: Thinking Outside the Neo-Darwinian Box”, is the most controversial and bold chapter of the work, as the leap made there relies on several dicey assumptions. This chapter’s narrative flowed through discussions of philosophers of science serving as neo-Darwinian apologists to uses of Intelligent Design as a heuristic for discovery, and from applications of theology to promote science education to Teilhard de Chardin’s science-friendly “Theology 2.0”. Within this chapter lies the ambitious proposal by the author:

Here we move into what may be the most controversial aspect of my position, namely, that the active promotion of a certain broadly Abrahamic theological perspective is necessary to motivate students to undertake lives in science and to support those who decide to do so (180).

There are two difficulties with this proposal: first, there are distinct historical and cultural differences between the UK and the US, and second, the presumption of Abrahamic theology as the best tradition to use is ignorant of benefits offered by other religions. To support his proposal, the author cites higher performance by Christian students in the UK, some of whom were in religious schools, on science exams (180). However, as is noted by the author, there are numerous public-funded Christian schools in the UK because there is not such a distinct separation made between church and state as in the United States. This difference in culture and history promises more complex challenges to applying any unitary solution or even problem definition to both countries, much less to the rest of Europe. The other shortcoming of a proposal to leverage Christian theology in science education is its narrow focus on Abrahamic tradition rather than an expansion to other theological realms. Openly identifying as a “Occidentalist” (a more politically correct word for “Eurocentrist”?), the author defends his Western, Abrahamic focus: “It is very unlikely that science would have taken the course it has – and valued[sic] as much as it has been – were it not for the Abrahamic belief that humans were created in the image of God” (183). While the historical foundations of modern science are certainly grounded in Abrahamic thought, in today’s cosmopolitan world it seems appropriate to build humanity’s (and science’s) future on a recognition of the value of Eastern collaborative philosophies in promoting integration and hybridization of thought. It is a little difficult to justify rejection of an essential humanity when a particular essential concept of a type of theology is championed. Despite these two concerns, the proposal is certainly provocative and insightful for its forays into territory often deemed strictly “off-limits.”

The final chapter, “Conclusion: In Search of Humanity 2.0’s Moral Horizon”, discusses the past, present, and future of suffering in light of early theological and modern civic justifications. Additionally, the author justifies his Occidentalism by pointing to a 19th century distinction of Western and Eastern religions as based on prophecy and wisdom, respectively (236). Therefore, it is because of the forward-looking character of Western Abrahamic religious tradition that we must look to it for tomorrow’s answers. Yet, when considering a secondary framing of this binary, that “the prophetic religions live ever in anticipation, the wisdom religions ever in adaptation” (237), one might wonder if more adaptation and a little less eagerness to progress might have avoided some of the troubles that plague us today. By suggesting that Western religious tradition can be revitalized for a new age, but that Eastern religious thought is immutably stuck, the author could be seen as relying on a familiar tool for a difficult task despite the ill fit. After all, the work concludes with the suggestion that “’suffering smart’ may be less about extending your current mode of existence that exchanging it for one with a greater chance of achieving your aims more effectively. In that respect, the moral horizons of Humanity 2.0 are about defining what is in need of continual resurrection” (247).

Grounded in a palpable awareness of the integral relationship of theology to human culture and thought while gazing ahead to a future iterated yet (hopefully) matured, Humanity 2.0 presents an interesting narrative of conflict, analysis, and (anticipated) synthesis. Buried within are also insights regarding Fuller’s participation in Kitzmiller v. Dover, which would be of interest to anyone wishing for more depth in the often over-simplified “Intelligent Design vs. Evolution” debate. Throughout, Steve Fuller certainly answers his favorite question: “Where are the politics?” Although perhaps overreaching in what it attempts to do, this work certainly will provoke discussion and re-evaluation of assumptions of science, theology, morality, the social world, and of humanity – past, present, and future.

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