Abstract
Professor Laudan’s strictures on the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge do not, I think, call for a defence of that programme so much as a thorough counter-attack. Nevertheless I am grateful to him for raising a range of objections and queries of a kind which are typical of philosophers. I shall therefore combine defence and attack. To ease the burden on the reader I shall discuss Laudan’s points in the order in which he raises them. The only departure from this procedure concerns some general points from the end of his paper that I shall take up immediately. These deal with what Laudan sees as the excessive emphasis on sociological approaches and the neglect of the pragmatic success of science.
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References
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For a valuable analysis of the various responses to this dispute see S. Shapin, ‘Licking Leibniz’ (essay review of A.R. Hall, Philosophers at War), History of Science, Dec. 1981
See for example M.C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720, Ithaca 1976. S. Shapin, ‘Of Gods and Kings: Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes’, Isis, 72, 1981.
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Mary Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science, Brighton 1980, p. 190. Mary Hesse, The Structure of Scientific Inference, London 1974.
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I have taken the term ‘natural rationality’ from S.B. Barnes, ‘Natural Rationality: A Neglected Concept in the Social Sciences’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 6, 1976,115–26.
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As evidence that this confusion is endemic and does not merely represent a momentary lapse, see the following review of Laudan’s book: S.B. Barnes, ‘Vicissitudes of Belief’, Social Studies of Science, 9, 1979, 247–63.
As well as the previous references to their work, see B. Barnes, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge, London 1977.
D. Mackenzie, Statistics in Britain, 1865–1930. The Social Construction of Scientific Knowledge, Edinburgh 1981.
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M. Hesse, The Structure of Scientific Inference, op. cit., note 4, Chapters 1 and 2.
D. Bloor, ‘Polyhedra and the Abominations of Leviticus’, British Journal for the History of Science, 11, 1978, 245–71.
This is a sociological reading of I. Lakatos’brilliant book Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery, Cambridge 1976.
Hesse’s network model was designed, in part, to attack the empiricist idea of an independent observation language. It explains why all predicates are ‘theory-laden’ by showing that they all depend on a negotiable ‘network’. But at the same time this explains why it is correct to equate the theoretical aspect of knowledge with its social aspect. This is because examination of the model shows that the network is a set of conventions.
D. Bloor, ‘Klassifikation und Wissenssoziologie: Durkheim and Mauss neu betrachtet’, in N. Stehr und V. Meja (Hrsg.), Wissenssoziologie-Studien und Materialen, Sonderheft 22 der Kolner Zeitschrift fur Sozioloqie und Sozialpsychologie, Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1980.
An English version will, I hope, be published before too long. In this paper I develop the ideas first formulated in my review of Hesse’s Structure of Scientific Inference, D. Bloor, ‘Epistemology or Psychology?’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 6, 1975, 382–95.
The slogan comes of course from E. Durkheim, and M. Mauss, Primitive Classification, trans. R. Needham, London 1963, p. 11.
The materials from the history of science that I have used to illustrate the network model and, in particular, its capacity to provide a new theoretical underpinning for Durkheim and Mauss’s ideas, is taken from the growing literature on Boyle and Newton’s corpuscular philosophy. This work is one of the best sustained studies in the sociology of knowledge that is currently available. For a small sample see, for instance: P.M. Rattansi, ‘Paracelsus and the Puritan Revolution’, Ambix, 11, 1963, 24–32;
P.M. Rattansi, ‘The Intellectual Origins of the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 23, 1968, 129–43;
J.R. Jacob, ‘The Ideological Origins of Robert Boyle’s Natural Philosophy’, Journal of European Studies, 2, 1972, 1–21.
J. R. Jacob, ‘Robert Boyle and Subversive Religion in the Early Restoration’, Albior, 6, 1974, 175–93;
J.R. Jacob, ‘Boyle’s Atomism and the Restoration Assault on Pagan Naturalism’, Social Studies of Science, 8, 1978, 211–33.
I realize, that my critic has shown that he is aware of some of this literature by his brief discussion of Forman, Shapin and Brown in his book. But instead of putting the cases that he considers in their proper context, he considers them in isolation and produces ad hoc responses to them. This is of course always possible, and is simply a technique for evading the cumulative significance of a growing body of work. This method of response is well illustrated by his reply to the valuable work that has been done on the reception of the mechanical philosophy. ‘It might just be that Walter Charleton accepted the mechanical philosophy because — as he explains in 400 turgid pages — that theory was rationally preferable to its alternatives’. Yes it might, especially if you make sure that you use an historically relevant criterion of rationality. But when you have found out what Charleton thought it was rational to take into account, and when you have explained why Charleton’s judgements differed from those of others around him — and his own earlier views — you will have engaged in the very exercise that Laudan is criticizing. If, on the other hand, there are ahistorical criteria that explain the changes, then why not give the rival account, rather than just say that it might exist?
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Bloor, D. (1984). The Strengths of the Strong Programme. In: Scientific Rationality: The Sociological Turn. The University of Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7688-8_3
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