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The short answer to the question in the title, according to Will's picture, is that historians of science use case studies to display the evils that ideologies have caused and the people and events that ideology has hidden. In doing so they prefer sociological over philosophical explanations. They also hope to use the resulting insights to enlighten the public. I'll deal in turn with ideologies, case studies, anti-philosophy, and public enlightenment.
Ideologies are intellectual prejudices about how science worked in the past and how it does now. Usually they are prejudices about the relationship between science and society. A “critical insight” is the recognition that a given opinion is a prejudice, ie. that it is false. The belief that the job of historians is to reveal hidden ideologies is the main tenet of the “cult of invisibility.”
Historians are not too fussed about keeping a list of the prejudices they have uncovered to date (on the reasons for this neglect, see my next post). But WT stresses two prejudices in particular: that scientific knowledge is mostly explicit rather than implicit, and that published scientific articles are accurate accounts of scientific activity. Here are some other things that WT identifies (explicitly or otherwise) as views about science that present-day historians regard as prejudices:
[the denial of] the fractious and ad hoc character of the connections between scientific claims and cultural norms, the power plays characterizing the foundation of scientific institutions, the profligate optimism of scientists’ self-promotion. [the denial of] all the discord, contingency, and materiality that inhabits the world. [the belief that science is a] coherently identifiable, objective, uncultural, and therefore privileged activity. reductionism and dogmatismA clarification: WT used to write about the “epistemological imperative” and the “socio-epistemic imperative”. The former was “a sort of obligation [that historians feel] to address general properties of ”science” or 'knowledge.'” The latter was the same obligation, with the added instruction to focus on the entanglement of science and society. Neither of these terms appear in WT's latest summaries. What happened? I guess that the cult of invisibility is the socio-epistemic imperative with another added instruction: study general properties of science that have been hidden by the ideology of science, rather than just any old general properties of science. An update: WT has left a comment at the end of this post in which he clarifies the idea of the "socio-epistemic imperative" and its relation to some posts (culminating here) that he recently wrote on EWP. Ideologies are the result of strains and interests. Scientists perpetuate prejudices (say, the idea that great scientists are solitary workers) in order to serve their interest of gaining cultural authority, with the ultimate aim of getting endless no-strings funding from governments, the military, and private companies. But why do scientists need to perpetuate these prejudices? Because they cannot live up to the expectations that society places on them (for example, science cannot be done by solitary workers--that's just not how science works). Scientists are not fit for their roles, and the resulting “strain” leads to ideology. “Sometimes the entire field of STS seems to be built on this last observation.” Ideologies drive history. Part of the fascination of ideology for historians is that it is a force in history. Intellectual prejudices marked the past scientists that historians study, and through them the public record that those actors left behind and that historians read. The same prejudices are at work in histories of science that were written before more recent historians “saw the light.” They continue to be active in the minds of present-day non-historians, especially journalists, scientists, amateur historians, and writers of Wikipedia articles. Hence the need for public enlightenment, discussed below. Ideologies hide things. One way that ideologies drive history is by covering things up. They are prejudices in the minds of scientists that result in prejudices in the public record written by scientists. These prejudices cause various things to be written out of history, things like lab technicians, disputes about scientific theories, and the social or political interests that figured in those disputes. Ideologies cause evil. Another way that ideologies drive history, according to historians, is by causing evil. To explain evil is to engage in “theodicy.” Historians have a number of “professional theodicies” corresponding to different evils they see in the world. Although they see different evils, the explanation of each is the same, namely self-serving prejudices put about by scientists. The first evil is the historiographical one mentioned in the previous point, ie. the false public record left by scientists. This “historiographical theodicy” appears, for example, in a “maddening” editorial recently published in a major journal, History of Science. But evil happens in past events themselves, and not just in the things that scientists write about those past events. Some of this evil is confined to science, especially the existence of bitter controversies about scientific theories. It is thought that these controversies could have been avoided, or at least could have been less bitter, if the scientists involved had not been burdened with (for example) an overweening faith in the decisiveness of experimental data. WT attributes this particular theodicy to scholars in science studies who intervene in policy debates. The third kind of evil is broader than science, and sometimes much broader. According to some scholars, public policy would be improved if scientists and policy-makers had fewer illusions about how science works. This claim is modest compared to the “theodicy of modernity,” according to which most of the evils of Western civilisation are due to instrumental rationality, the separation of science from the “moral cosmos,” a misplaced faith in objectivity, etc. etc. For real-life examples of such claims by historians of science, see here and here. In WTs view, such claims are striking in their banality as well as their presumption: the theodicy of modernity is a well-worn theme among twentieth-century intellectual historians. Historians study ideologies. Historians purport to study topics such as specific people, events, controversies, techniques, or aspects of those things. But “it would not be off the mark to say that … ideologies are the true subject of investigation.” By this WT means three things, I think. Firstly, historians prefer to study topics or episodes that have been hidden by ideologies or that show the evils done by ideologies. They consider other topics to be less important and tend to ignore them. Secondly, when historians study particular episodes they pay special attention to the particular ideologies at work in those episodes. For example, they are less interested in studying the people and events that helped Newton than they are in studying the people and events that have portrayed Newton as a solitary hero who needed no help. The third thing is the one that WT considers most important, at least on my reading of EWP. It is that historians are less interested in particular people and events than they are in the generalisations of which those people and events are instances. To the historian, what is really interesting about Newton's helpers (and about his disciplines who portrayed him as solitary) is that they are instances of the general prejudice that scientists are solitary heroes who need no help from others. This brings us to case studies. Historians write case studies. Much of EWP can be read as a rebuke of historians' current tendency to write case studies. This rebuke has given rise to some pungent neologisms. The “new internalism” is the historians' tendency to write about tiny slices of historical space-time in order to address very general questions such as whether there is such a thing as a crucial experiment and whether the problem of induction can be solved. The end product of the new internalism is a “gallery of practices,” an array of exquisite portraits that have little in common except for the small number of general themes upon which they all meditate. These case studies have three special features. Any study can be seen as a case of something. Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire could be read as a case study in the decline and fall of empires. WT identifies three things that are distinctive about the case studies in the history of science. One is that they are not just readable as case studies but are written as such: their whole point is to address a general theme or thesis. In other words, “we all want to be Wittgenstein (or somebody) or Wittgenstein's footsoldiers.” Another is the almost comical mismatch between the generality of these themes or theses and the specificity of the cases that are supposed to instantiate them. Finally, the themes or theses are small in number. In our case studies, “the arguments are all structured by one of a rather limited number of insights.” For example, “it has taken twenty-six years to move from a promising new interest in instruments to a promising new interest in broken instruments.” Ideologies plus case studies equal sublime images. Put ideologies and case studies together and you get ”sublime images”. They are sublime in the way that metaphors and symbols are sublime: they are small objects that are supposed to be packed with broader significance. This is (I guess) part of what WT means when he writes about “the deeply aesthetic way in which works of history-writing are commonly judged." As per above, historians' images are also sublime in the sense that they reveal what was hidden. “A sublime image is a work that can be successfully defended against criticisms that it exhibits a critical unawareness … of invisible aspects of the history it reports.” So the sublime image is a curious mixture of ornamentation (the creation of exquisite symbols) and evangelism (the uncovering of ideology). History as anti-philosophy. Insofar as the sublime images explain anything, they do so in sociological rather than philosophical terms. “Comparatively little emphasis seems to have been placed on good-old-fashioned philosophy of science’s ability to describe things like being legitimately converted from one position to another by evidence and logic.” Historians are not much interested in “scientific systematics, argumentation, and heuristics rather than science-as-practice, or science-as-production.” Enlightening non-historians. Historians of science feel that they have a civic duty to bring their critical insights to the general public, including those sections of the public that they consider especially prone to prejudice about science, a group that includes journalists, writers of popular history, and scientists themselves. This sense of civic duty comes out when we write reviews of popular science books, urge each-other to do more outreach, and try to contribute to policy debates. Historians think they make “super important observation[s] about 'how we know' and [that] historians of science should be admitted forthwith to the fourth tier of the punditocracy and everyone should buy our books.” *** Ideologies lead to case studies. I have come to the end of the purely descriptive part of Will's picture. The evaluative and explanatory parts of that picture are summarised in upcoming posts on this blog. But anyone who has read this far might have the following question: why do historians of science use case studies, rather than some other method, to make ideologies visible? This is an explanatory question, so by rights it should belong to the post after the next. But since it links together two of the key parts of the current post--ideologies and case studies--I will try to answer it here. One answer is that once a historian has decided to address a general question (say, the problem of induction) she has no choice but to address it with case studies: the alternative is a priori argument, and that belongs to philosopy not history. But this only explains the historians' use of empirical evidence, and not their use of case studies in particular or the comical smallness of those cases. So a better answer is that one of the prejudices that historians have supposedly unmasked is the idea that there are meaningful continuities or similarities between different kinds of science in different places and times. If there is no such continuity or similarity, the method of case studies is the only honest method for scholars to use. As WT notes here, historians justify case studies with appeals to such critical insights as the primacy of “context” and the “rejection of linear narrative.” A second answer is that, in the eyes of historians at least, the genre of case studies is adequate to the aim of making ideologies visible. It is thought that other genres (such as systematic surveys) would be superfluous to that aim. This second answer needs some clarification. I don't know what WTs view is on whether or not case studies really are adequate to the aim of making ideologies visible, although he does seem to attribute this view to current historians of science. It may seem like a strange view. Suppose you wanted to show that (say) lab technicians have played a crucial role in scientific discovery. Why would you prefer, as evidence of this belief, a small number of detailed case studies of lab technicians as opposed to a systematic survey of many lab technicians? There are I think three replies to this query: Firstly, case studies are indeed a good way to unmask two particular ideologies, namely that scientific inquiry is neat and tidy and that the public record of scientific work is accurate. It is thought that high-resolution studies are better than course-grained studies at showing just how messy science is. And challenging the public record usually means doing archival work, which is time-consuming and makes long durée history impracticable. Secondly, in general the preference for case studies is indeed unjustified, but the persistence of the preference is easily explained in terms of the cognitive biases of historians. One such explanation is that the most successful past efforts to unmask ideologies happen to have been in case study form. Another is that historians have independent reasons to prefer case studies, and since they like both case studies and ideologies they imagine that the two go together naturally. A third explanation (suggested here) is that Latour-style studies of particular cases requires less creative genius than Foucault-style studies of a wide range of texts. Thirdly, WT might reply that even a systematic survey of many lab technicians, although better than a few case studies, would still not be good history. All that the “cult of invisibility” requires is that we find those game-changing lab technicians, not that we link them together or trace their collective evolution or build them into broader historians of changing lab practices. *** Next up, what does WT think is wrong with the way historians unmask ideologies, use case studies, eschew philosophical explanations, and enlighten the public? Expand post.
Alors que font les historiens des sciences de nos jours, d'après la vision de Will? En deux mots, ils utilisent les études de cas pour rendre visible le mal que l'idéologie a causé et les peuples et événements que l'idéologie a caché. En le faisant ils préfèrent les explications sociologiques au lieu de celles tirées de la philosophie des sciences. Enfin ils espèrent édifier le grand public en leur communiquant ces aperçus fascinants de la science du passé. Ici je traite successivement de l'idéologie, des études de cas, de l'anti-philosophie, et de l'édification du public.
Les idéologies sont des préjugés intellectuels à propos du fonctionnement de la science du passé ainsi que de celle du présent. Normalement ce sont des préjugés à propos de la relation entre la science et la société. Une “idée critique” (“critical insight”) est la reconnaissance qu'une idée reçue est effectivement un préjugé, c'est-à-dire qu'elle est fausse. L'idée que la tâche des historiens est de dévoiler les idéologies est l'idée centrale de ce que WT appelle le “culte de l'invisibilité” auquel la plupart des historiens des sciences d'aujourd'hui appartiennent.
Les idéologies résultentdes tensions et des intérêts . Les scientifiques perpétuent les préjugés (par exemple, l'idée que les grands scientifiques ont travaillé tous seuls) afin de servir l'intérêt qu'ils ont d'augmenter leur autorité culturelle, avec le but ultime d'en tirer de l'argent sans cesse et sans conditions de l'Etat et de donateurs privés. Mais pourquoi ont-ils besoin de propager ces préjugés? Parce qu'ils ne peuvent pas se montrer à la hauteur des attentes que le public place en eux (par exemple, il n'est pas possible de faire de la science tout seul--tout simplement, la science ne fonctionne pas comme ça). Les scientifiques ne peuvent pas remplir leurs fonctions, et les tensions qui en résultent donnent lieu à l'idéologie. “Parfois la discipline entière de STS [science and technology studies] me semble être fondée sur cette dernière observation.”
Les idéologies sont des acteurs dans l'histoire. L'une des raisons pour lesquelles les historiens sont obsédés par l'idéologie est qu'elle est un agent proéminent de l'histoire. Les préjugés intellectuels ont marqué les scientifiques que les historiens étudient, et par ce moyen les récits publics que les scientifiques nous ont laissés sont impregnés de ces idées fausses. Enfin elles sont toujours actives dans la pensée des chroniqueurs de nos jours, dont les journalistes, les scientifiques eux-mêmes, les historiens amateurs, et les gens qui écrivent les articles sur Wikipédia. Voici donc le besoin urgent de détromper le public (voir ci-dessous).
Les idéologies cachent des choses. Une façon par laquelle les idéologies agissent dans l'histoire est en effaçant des peuples, des idées, et des événements. Les préjugés des scientifiques entraînent des préjugés dans les articles, les biographies, et les récits qu'ils écrivent. En conséquence il y a des catégories entières qui ne figurent pas dans les documents publics, comme par exemple les techniciens de laboratoire, les controverses scientifiques, et les intérêts politiques et sociaux qui ont eu un rôle dans les resultats de ces controverses.
Les idéologies font du mal. Un autre rôle des idéologies dans l'histoire, d'après les historiens, et de faire du mal. Expliquer le mal dans le monde est s'engager dans la “théodicée.” Les historiens ont construit quantité de “théodicées professionelles” qui correspondent aux mals divers qu'ils observent dans le monde. L'explication de chaque mal est pareille, à savoir l'effet de préjugés intéressés que les scientifiques propagent. En premier lieu il y a le mal historiographique dont j'ai fait mention dans le dernier paragraphe, c'est-à-dire les erreurs et les omissions des documents publics. Cette théodicée se trouve par exemple dans un editorial “exaspérant” qui a paru recemment dans History of Science, un journal majeur de la discipline.
Mais la théodicée ne se limite pas à l'explication de maux écrits. Elle s'étend aux maux hors du texte. Parfois ces maux réels concernent uniquement la science, surtout l'existence de controverses violentes à propos de théories scientifiques. On dit que la plupart de ces controverses ne se seraient pas produites si les contestaires n'avaient pas été encombrés par leur confiance démesurée en la fiabilité des données experimentales. WT attribue ce type de théodicée surtout aux académiques qui participent aux disputes politiques liées aux sciences.
Une troisième type de mal est plus étendu, et parfois beaucoup plus étendu, que la science elle-même. D'après quelques historiens, la politique publique serait plus efficace si les scientifiques et les stratèges avaient des idées plus justes à propos de la science. Cette affirmation est modeste par rapport à la “théodicée de la modernité”, selon laquelle la plupart des maux de la civilisation occidentale relèvent de la rationalité instrumentale, de la séparation de la science et la moralité, d'une confiance aveugle en l'objectivité, etc. De telles affirmations ont paru recemment ici et ici. D'après WT, la banalité de ces affirmations est aussi frappante que leur présomption: la théodicée de la modernité est un thème rebattu parmi les historiens intellectuels du vingtième siècle.
Les historiens étudient les idéologies. Les historiens prétendent étudier des sujets spécifiques comme les peuples, les evennements, les controverses, et les techniques. Mais “on peut dire qu'en fait les idéologies elles-mêmes sont le vrai sujet de leurs recherches.” C'est-à-dire, premièrement, qu'ils préfèrent étudier les sujets ou les épisodes qui ont été cachés par les idéologies ou qui font voir le mal que les idéologies ont fait. Ils estiment que les autres sujets ne valent pas vraiment la peine d'être étudiés.
Deuxièmement, quand les historiens étudient tel ou tel épisode ils se concentrent sur les idéologies qui s'exercent dans cet épisode. Par example, ils s'intéressent moins aux peuples et aux evennements qui ont aidé Newton qu'aux peuples et aux evennements qui ont répresenté Newton comme un traveilleur solitaire qui n'avait pas besoin d'aide.
Trosièmement, les historiens s'intéressent moins aux peuples et aux evennements eux-mêmes qu'aux idées générales dont ils sont des exemples particuliers. Pour prolonger notre exemple, les historiens s'intéressent moins aux gens qui ont aidé Newton (et aux gens qui l'ont répresenté comme quelqu'un de solitaire) qu'a l'idée que l'ensemble de ces personnes forment un cas de préjugé général, selon lequel les scientifiques sont des héros solitaires. Ce qui nous amène aux études de cas.
Les historiens écrivent des études de cas. Nombreux sont les posts sur le blog EWP qui critiquent la tendance des historiens à écrire des études de cas. Cette critique a inspiré quantité de neologismes. Le “nouvel internalisme” (“new internalism”) est notre tendance à écrire des livres et des articles à propos de domaines étroits du passé en vue d'addresser des questions énormes telles que “existe-t-il des expériences cruciales?” et “le problème de l'induction est-il soluble?” Le nouvel internalisme aboutit à une “gallerie de pratiques” (gallery of practices), un éventail de portraits exquis qui n'ont rien en commun sauf la petite nombre de thèmes généraux sur lesquels ils méditent.
Ces études de cas ont trois traits distinctifs. N'importe quelle étude historique peut être considérée comme un cas d'un quelquonque thème général. Le livre Histoire de la décadence et de la chute de l'Empire romain de Gibbon peut être lu comme une étude de cas de la décadence et de la chute des empires. Or, WT identifie trois traits charactéristiques d'études de cas faites par les historiens des science qui les séparent d'autres études historiques. Le premier est qu'elles ne peuvent pas seulement être lues comme des études de cas; elles sont aussi écrites comme telles. Tout l'enjeu de ces études est d'adresser un thème ou une thèse très générale. Leur deuxième trait distinctif est la disparité presque comique entre l'ampleur des thèmes ou des thèses et la spécificité des cas qui sont censés les exemplifiér. Troisièmement, les historiens traitent d'un petit nombre de thèmes et de thèses. Ces études “s'orientent autour d'une quantité limitée d'idées.” WT note ironiquement que “on a pris vingt-six ans pour avancer d'un intérêt prometteur aux instruments jusqu'à un intérêt prometteur aux instruments cassés.”
Idéologies plus Etudes de cas égalent Images sublimes. Ajoutez les idéologies aux études de cas et vous créez des ”images sublimes”. Elles sont sublimes ainsi que les metaphores et les symboles sont sublimes: ce sont de petits objets qui prétendent être chargés de signification. Voici la raison pour laquelle WT parle de “la façon profondément esthétique dont les historiens judgent le travail de leurs collègues.” Mais, conformément à ce que j'ai deja dit, les images des historiens sonts aussi sublimes dans le sens où elles révèlent ce qui a été caché. “Une image sublime est un écrit qui peut être défendu avec succès contre l'accusation qu'il n'est pas conscient … des aspects invisibles de l'histoire qu'il raconte.” Enfin, l'image sublime est un mélange curieux d'ornamentation (la création des symbols exquis) et d'évangélisme (le dévoilement d'une idéologie).
L'histoire comme l'anti-philosophie. Dans la mesure où les images sublimes expliquent quelque chose, elles le font d'une manière sociologique et non philosophique. “On a accordé comparativement peu d'importance à la capacité de la philosophie des sciences à décrire par exemple le processus consistant à changer son avis à la lumiere des preuves empiriques et logiques.” Les historiens ne s'intéressent que moyennement à “la systématique, à l'argumentation, et aux heuristiques des sciences, et ils se focalisent plutôt sur la science-comme-pratique et sur la science-comme-production.” De plus, ce désintérêt amène les historiens à donner la priorité aux parties du passé pour lesquelles les explications philosophique leur semblent le moins appropriées.
Édifier le grand public. Les historiens des sciences se sentent obligés de donner au public le bénéfice de leur sagesse, y compris aux parties du public qu'ils estiment les plus susceptibles aux préjugés à propos de la science, par exemple les journalistes, les auteurs de livres de vulgarisation sur la science, et les scientifiques eux-mêmes. Cette tâche autonommée est en évidence quand on écrit des comptes-rendus de livres de vulgarisation, quand on se pousse à prendre part à l'éducation publique, et quand on essaye de contribuer aux débats sur la politique publique. Bref, on croit qu'il y a des idées reçues à propos de la science qui sont répandues à profusion, qui sont gravement erronées et peut-être dangereuses, et que les résultats de nos recherches peuvent aider à améliorer ces idées populaires.
***
Dans la suite, d'après WT quel est le problème avec ces habitudes courantes qu'il attribue aux historiens des sciences?
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Michael,
ReplyDeleteI'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about as you move through this series on my picture. I'm of the opinion that engagement with someone's ideas, even or especially in a critical way, is a higher compliment than simply saying that you enjoyed someone's work. I really wouldn't have thought that anyone would ever bother to pull this much depth from the EWP archives. And I think you've gotten the picture pretty well correct, though there is probably room for clarification here and there. It's a really fine, and well appreciated compliment.
For the moment, the only thing I would hasten to point out is the descent of many of what we might call "motivating ideas" in the historiography into the subliminal, and with it, a moderation or dilution in the meaning of concepts (and thus often a migration in terminology as well).
So, "ideology" makes particular sense if you start rooting around in the historiography of the '70s and '80s, where the Geertz citations are a lot more dense, but it also transmutes into things like "ideals" or "values" or trust-enhancing rituals, or "epistemic virtues" which seem to have little to do with "ideology" as one might tend to think of it, but function similarly in historians' inquiries. Likewise "evil" (which mainly comes from the utility of "theodicy" as an analytical term, which I owe to Chris Donohue) tends to damp down into "controversy" or even "negotiation" or some other thing that doesn't necessarily have obviously bad consequences, but that is nevertheless considered, in some sense, "hidden" or "invisible", and so comes with some sort of imperative to reveal or highlight it.
I think it's important to emphasize that my critique is of general argumentative forms, which make historiography function inefficiently (but not necessarily illegitimately). Different terminology or different aspects of the critique will ring more or less true in different instances. The thing I would like to do is create a more productive historiography, not challenge a particular Theory, or challenge fighting evil as a motivation for researching history.
Finally, I should clarify that the "cult of invisibility" posts were not so much a summary of my picture as they were an attempt to define a notion I had used in other posts at greater lengths, and to plug it into the picture I had been developing. The "socio-epistemic imperative" (which is really just the final term for a concept I'd been grappling with to that point) is still very much at the heart of my picture. Lately it has become more clear to me just how this imperative came to be through a collapsing of distinctions between the projects of history, sociology, and anthropology (and, of course, the expulsion of philosophy).
Thanks again!
Will,
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for your paying a visit. I agree on the importance of genuine engagement with other people's views, including the bit about "even or especially in a critical way."
1. I take your point that terms like "ideology" and "evil" are not necessarily used by present-day historians of science even if they are useful tools for analysing current practice, and even if we now have terms that serve the same function as terms like "ideology" and "evil."
The big question is: just how much can one infer from such things as analytic utility and functional similarity? Should we infer that "epistemic values" and "ideology" differ only in name? And if we are not saying anything that strong, what *are* we saying?
For the moment I'll carry on using terms like "ideology" and "evil", and invite readers to make whatever inferences they like from the utility of those terms in analysing current practice, and from their functional similarity to terms in current use.
2. "I think it's important to emphasize that my critique is of general argumentative forms, which make historiography function inefficiently (but not necessarily illegitimately)."
I'm not sure what to make of this hedge. In what sense can a historiography be "legitimate" if it is "inefficient"?
Do you mean that current practices are inefficient only with respect to *some* legitimate goals of history-writing, while being efficient with respect to other legitimate goals of history-writing--and that we really should try to be efficient with respect to all of these goals.
Or is your view that current practices are inefficient with respect to the legitimate goals of *history-writing*, but efficient with respect to extra-historiographical goals such as political advocacy?
Or, finally, is the idea that there are lots of goals of history-writing, all of them just as legitimate as each-other; and that your own historiographical goals just happen to be different from, but no better or complete than, those of most current historians of science?
I can understand if your view is one of the first two. But if it's the third view then I must be mistaken about your whole project on EWP. For the third view implies that there is no sense in which current practices are wrong, and no sense in which they should change. Yet I had gotten the impression that EWP was genuinely critical of (some aspects of) current practice, and that according to EWP some things should change.
3. "Lately it has become more clear to me just how this imperative came to be through a collapsing of distinctions between the projects of history, sociology, and anthropology (and, of course, the expulsion of philosophy)."
I hope to summarise this too, if you don't mind! It will come in a post titled "How did they [historians of science] come to do it this way?" Of course, this will have to be a summary of your work-in-progress.
1. The crucial thing is to understand links between how the concepts are used, which might not be a priori obvious. Understanding how "ideologies" operate in historical actors' efforts to define the implication of scientific knowledge for social policy, or within intellectual programs of things like economics or eugenics is one thing. Understanding how "Victorian values" can operate in rhetorical efforts to bolster this or that metrical standard is another. An aestheticized "epistemic virtue" informing differing notions of what makes knowledge objective or valid is a third. Ostensibly, there is no strong theoretical thread running through A) concept formation employing presumptions from social thought, B) using rhetoric to drum up support for a project, and C) interpreting evidence based on aesthetic considerations. At the same time, the three things can be considered related because they are things historians are apt to find interesting because they could be considered "hidden" in standard stories, yet are taken to be elemental to the success or failure of historical knowledge-building projects.
ReplyDeleteIt would, therefore, be useful to consider how and why historians might preferentially focus on these issues, and how they write about them in similar -- perhaps too similar -- ways. If you've abandoned studies of "ideology" and "theory" for studies of "practice" and "experiment" (something SSK was supposed to accomplish) but it all just ends up boiling down to boundary negotiations of one kind of another, it's good to figure out why that is.
2. My view is probably closest to your first point. In my view, the only way for history to lose legitimacy is if it is manifestly false. While I think present history-writing craftsmanship often leads to misleading or incomplete pictures, historians have become clever at downplaying their individual responsibility for contributing to historiographical syntheses, while still producing legitimate works. (This is kind of like our conversation about the Shapiro-Schaffer dispute concerning Newton's prism experiments -- I didn't buy the claim that Schaffer was simply wrong in "Glass Works", but I did think Shapiro's treatment was more constructive in the long-run)
Ultimately, I believe, this downplaying of synthetic responsibility devalues synthesis as a historiographical goal, while not outright rejecting it. Historians can choose to be satisfied with what synthesis manages to drip out of a historiography where no one is responsible for that synthesis. If we devalue synthetic knowledge, while still accepting its validity, then we pursue synthesis (and other historiographical benefits to be reaped from it, such as addressing questions that only arise in the act of synthesis) inefficiently, while still doing legitimate work on a day-to-day basis.
I believe that historians can choose to be satisfied with this situation while still avoiding accusations of professional malpractice. My objective in working out how our arguments and historiography operate is to show why we should probably be less satisfied.
3. Looking forward to it!