A Sociologist Challenges The 'Validity Of Science'

SCIENCE: The Very Idea Steve Woolgar Tavistock Publications; London and New York; 119 pages; $9.95 There exists a common desire among some nonscientific academics—sociologists, historians, philosophers, literary theoreticians, for example—to discredit the validity of science as a means of obtaining reliable knowledge about our world. Their attacks on science, their attempts to uproot traditional attitudes that view it as a special and powerful source of knowledge, form a part of an antiscience attitude spreading throughout the world of aca demia today— and the attacks should be taken seriously. At the heart of the challenge to science’s reliability is the demarcation issue—the problem of deciding precisely what is, and what is not, science. This is a genuinely difficult problem, and the nonscientific observers of science are correct in recognizing it as an important issue. Scientists, on the other hand, have shown little interest in the matter—indeed many of them are blissfully unaware of it. However, the failure to clearly demarcate the boundaries of science may lead to relativism. In the relativist’s view, consensus about the validity of a scientific idea arises out of a sociological-historical context rather than out of scientific observation of the real world. To relativists, the laws of quantum mechanics, for example, and the genetic code are merely expressions of a complex culture. A leading proponent of this particular approach to science is Steve Woolgar, a lecturer in sociology at Brunel University in England. He has now written a book—Science: The Very Idea--in which he gives a brief account of the body of the ory known as the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, or SSK. In the world according to Woolgar, it is very hard for us to recognize the familiar terrain of science that natural scientists love and, on occasion, hate. In SSK’s quite different world, hawks, doves, and sodium are indistinguishable. Lest I be accused of exaggeration, I quote:” . . . the supposedly inherent differences between people and electrons are no more than a reflection of the attributes differentially granted these entities in the discourses of social science and science.” Woolgar actually refuses to be- lieve the world exists independently of the knowledge produced about it. He draws a distinction between representation of an object and the object itself—for example, between a voltmeter reading and the voltage itself. This distinction leads him to argue that representa tion may precede the object, so " . . discovered objects are constituted through, rather than revealed by, their discovery.” Thus, “truth or falsity is perceived (and achieved) rather than inherent.” Understanding natural phenomena, then, plays no part in Woolgar’s universe. He does not see science as providing an explanation of the world we live in, and he ignores the brilliant achievements of the physical and the biological sciences. Why? A partial explanation for taking such a hostile position may be provided by the author himself If there is nothing special about the natural sciences—and they are seen as being, in fact, unscientific—social scientists are freed from worrying about how scientific their own discipline is. And once free of that concern, they no longer need to emulate the natural scientist. While one can appreciate their envy at the weight given to traditional science, these sociologists must be urged to curb their impatience. They must accept Peter Medawar’s concept of science as the art of the soluble. Their subject matter, which includes the very idea of science, is complex and difficult and may remain outside “the soluble” for the social sciences for a while to come. Though heavy with sociological jargon, the book is intelligently written. It seems a pity that such intelligence has been used to attack science rather than provide badly needed insights into science and its relation to society.

A Sociologist Challenges The 'Validity Of Science'

There exists a common desire among some nonscientific academics—sociologists, historians, philosophers, literary theoreticians, for example—to discredit the validity of science as a means of obtaining reliable knowledge about our world.

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