Sociological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge

© 2008 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Sociology Compass 2/1 (2008): 337–351, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00073.x

Blackw ell Publishing LtdOxfo rd, UKSOCOSo cio lo g y Co m pass17 51-9020© 2007 The Autho rJo urnal Co m p ilatio n © 2007 Blackw ell Publishing Ltd07 310.1111/j.17 51-9020.2007 .0007 3.xNo vem ber 200700337 ???351???Orig inal Articles Sociological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge Sociological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge

Sociological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge

Matthew David*University of Liverpool

AbstractSome significant insights in relation to science and its claims emerged in earlysociology. However, sociologies of knowledge and science remained separate untilthe late 1960s. Questioning scientific knowledge raised questions about careerinterests, language, interaction, class and gender in shaping scientific claims. Offeringinsights, this new sociology tended towards ‘epistemological polarisation’. Newwaves further distanced themselves from the validity claims of ‘scientists’. Insulatingwithin a self-referential field of peers, journals, conferences and subdisciplinary norms,epistemological polarisation, emulated natural sciences, but had a marginalisingeffect. Attention to symmetry in the social study of scientific beliefs, such thatsocial causation of belief is not said to invalidate such belief, was often ignored,and the sociology of scientific knowledge tended towards debunking. This articlechallenges this spiral and suggests a ‘reflexive epistemological diversity’ that recognisesthe value of many forms of explanation, promoting interaction between differentexplanations, at different levels of causation, and across the divide between naturaland social sciences. Recent feminist science studies go furthest in developing thistrend. In line with recent developments in the natural sciences, such an approachdoes not suggest that ‘anything goes’, yet opens up explanation beyond narrowconceptions of expertise, reductionism and relativism.

Sociology as science?

It is not surprising, given the Enlightenment context, that the emergingdiscipline of sociology sought to present itself as a ‘science’. However, evenas the founding figures of the discipline drew on the authority of ‘science’,a number of critical elements were introduced. In his later work (1912/1995), Durkheim tentatively parallels the role of religion in sustainingsocial order in pre-modern societies and the power of scientific rationalityclaims in modern societies. Engels (cited in Dickens 2000, 26) observedthe extent to which Darwin’s state of nature replicated capitalist marketrelations. Marx (cited in Dickens 2000, 29) paralleled Newton’s universeof atoms and forces and Hobbes’s social contract between individuals andthe leviathan. Weber’s Science as a Vocation (1918/1991) pointed out the‘inevitability’ by which today’s ‘truth’ will be rejected as misconception

338 Sociological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge

© 2008 The Author Sociology Compass 2/1 (2008): 337–351, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.00073.xJournal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

tomorrow. Such intimations concerning the social function, structuringand contingency of scientific knowledge, however, did not play more thana minor part in the emergence of a field primarily concerned with assertingits own scientific credibility rather than questioning the nature of scientificcredibility as such.

Sociologies of science and knowledge but not scientific knowledge

Interwar sociologies of science and knowledge remained separated by aself-flattering belief in science (social and natural). Mannheim’s sociologyof knowledge (1928/1960) proposed a general theory of ideology to explainbelief systems in relation to shared experience. Knowledge is ‘relational’,not ‘relative’, with some groups’ beliefs being seen as ‘more true’ thanothers. Where Mannheim addressed the belief systems of social class andgenerational groups, Merton (1938/1970) focused his attention on theorganisational and cultural systems that came to make modern Westernscience distinctive. Leaving scientific knowledge unquestioned, Mertonasked how science’s validity was sustained. Institutional autonomy, alongsidecultural values of universalism, scientific ‘communism’, disinterestednessand organised scepticism (1942/1972) fostered creativity and objectivity.Both men opposed critics who pointed to the relatively narrow classbackground of scientists, and neither questioned science’s male character.Accepting the initial (tenuous and contradictory) premises that sciencewas socially accessible yet culturally insulated, both worked on paralleltracks, the former addressing ‘lay’ knowledge without questioning science,the latter addressing science without questioning knowledge.

Similar questions emerged within science from writers who also shapedthe future sociology of scientific knowledge. Bernal’s The Social Function ofScience (1939/1964), located science within the forces of socially organisedproduction, and therefore identified scientists as workers within suchrelations. In the struggle against want, war and ignorance, science wasseen as a force for potential liberation, fettered by mismanagement,misapplication and misappropriation. Bernal’s work highlighted the socialnature of scientific work, its political nature and the increasing centralityof state funding. Bernal’s disciple de Solla Price (1963) highlighted thetransition from little science to big (state-managed) science in the era afterthe development of the atom bomb. In both the West and the SovietUnion, Bernal’s call for a rational management of scientific potentialbecame a call for increased state funding and direction. Initially supportiveof Soviet political involvement in science and scientific management ofpolitics, Bernal distanced himself after the Lysenko affair (Rose and Rose1999). While attractive to the state as a blueprint for scientific management,Bernal’s ideas were also attractive to scientists, offering greater careeropportunities and ‘progressive’ status. This complemented the doctrine of


Sociological Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge 339

neutrality (Rose and Rose 1970) whereby scientists claimed their workwas neutral, and that it was up to society to decide on its application.Science could thereby be progressive and/or neutral as required.

Some scientists feared greater social management of their affairs. Fromthe 1930s, Polanyi (1957) challenged state management of knowledgeclaiming such an enterprise assumed the possibility of making rationaladministrative calculations about the relative merits of field specific scientificdevelopments. While Polanyi defended the idea of objectivity in science,he rejected the idea that all knowledge could be shared, even withindisciplines. Polanyi asserted that the criteria and capacity to evaluate thework of others was field specific and that only a shared and tacit knowledgeof the practices and craft-like routines of very particular domains allowedone researcher to meaningfully judge the work of another. Tensionsbetween internal peer-review and external management of science weredefused by exponential growth in science funding. The rise of big scienceseemed to vindicate rationalist faith in state management. More recentlyattention to tacit knowledge, the opaque character of scientific judgements,and the problematic nature of knowledge transfer have come to the fore,particularly in disputes over risk society, science policy and the role ofscientific expertise in technocratic governance (Beck 1992; Collins andPinch 1998b).

‘Internal’ sociologies of scientific knowledge

With the Mertonian faith in the institutional norms and structures ofscience corresponding with Popper’s (1934/2002) philosophical accountof falsification in science, quite striking claims about inequalities in scienceand the career interests at work within it did not threaten the view thatsociology had nothing to say about scientific knowledge. Within a broadlyMertonian framework, Hagstrom (1965) proposed a ‘gift economy’ modelto explain the non-market forms of exchange operating within science.While giving one’s ideas away for free and encouraging others to usethem seems to defy a market model of rationality, reward in science,appointment, promotion, funding and prizes are based in part at least onthe recognition conferred on scientists by their ‘peers’, variously defined.Hagstrom also suggested that field differentiation could be explained inpart as the result of career building. Merton himself proposed his‘Matthew effect’ thesis (1968). This highlighted the strength of associationbetween the success of someone’s scientific career and the status of theirPhD supervisor.

Kuhn’s (1962/1970) observation that scientists are trained to see theworld through particular paradigms was initially dismissed by sociologistsas social psychology. It took a number of years for sociologists to beginto engage with Kuhn’s assertion that even scientific seeing is theorydependent. In fact, the earliest sociological engagements with Kuhn were



quite critical. Mulkay (1972), following Hagstrom, noted that as changein science was more by defection than revolution, Kuhn’s model ofrevolutionary paradigm change in physics was hardly paradigmatic.

Kuhn’s 1969 postscript asserted belief in scientific progress, by ‘better’paradigms rather than by facts and falsifications (1970, 174–210). Kuhndistanced himself from radical debunking of science. Yet, his attention tothe social character of scientific knowledge and his continued belief in thevalue of science and scientific method leaves him closer to today’s sociologyof scientific knowledge than he himself believed.

As Zimmito (2004) observes, Kuhn’s work drew heavily on WillardQuine’s ‘incommensurability thesis’. Quine asserted the underdetermina-tion of theory by evidence, the theory-laden character of observationand the consequent incommensurability of accounts drawn up withindifferent theoretical languages. Where Quine asserted a radical challengeto empirical transparency and scientific objectivity, Kuhn spent much ofhis later life seeking to temper the more extreme interpretations of suchconjectures. As Zimmato shows, Quine’s philosophical demonstration ofthe impossibility of absolute objectivity and certainty is not sufficient todemonstrate the necessity of absolute scepticism and relativism. However,the opposite is also true. Even if grounds for good empirical researchcan be theorised in philosophical abstraction, it remains an empiricalquestion whether such principles determine the outcomes of scientificdisputes, and whether such principles are themselves even clear at thecutting edge of scientific innovation. Zimmato rightly challenges thetendency within sociologies of scientific knowledge to suspend philosophicalquestions concerning the rational grounds for choosing between competingbeliefs. Yet, if sociologists resist the convenient suspension of questionsbest suited to philosophers, the issue of what scientists actually believeand how they actually behave, judge and resolve disputes has to berecognised as a sociological question. Zimmato concludes that scientificbelief is always socially produced but asserts the possibility at least thatsome socially produced beliefs can be judged better than others. LikeKuhn, Zimmato remains relatively optimistic in this regard. As will beseen below sociologists of scientific knowledge, while adopting a moresceptical stance, and despite some ‘radical’ self-representation, remainlargely in agreement.

Only in the late 1960s and early 1970s did a sociological approach toscientific knowledge develop. Drawing on Durkheim, Kuhn and Polanyi,the ‘strong programme’/‘Edinburgh School’ claimed that all beliefs requirecausal explanation as to why they are believed. It is not enough to saythat people believe the world to be round because it is round. The strongprogramme adopted a causal, sceptical and symmetrical view of belief(Bloor 1976). All beliefs should be explained as social events with socialcauses. Such an approach did not seek to debunk science and claimed tomirror science’s ‘causal naturalism’. Any such account of causation should



also be applied to why sociologists would want to believe social causalexplanations. The strong programme highlighted the tension within itsown ‘empirical programme of relativism’ (Collins 1985), whereby specificempirical studies were used to show social relationships shaping scientificknowledge claims and determining outcomes in scientific disputes. Bloor(1976) rejects the suggestion that relativism cannot be true if to be true wouldmean it was no longer relative. Knowledge may be relative (correspondingto the social conditions of its production) and true (corresponding withexternal reality). We simply cannot verify this latter correspondence.Bloor’s model is respecified by Collins (1985) in terms of interpretiveflexibility and social closure. All scientific knowledge claims can be contested.Every research design, data-collection strategy, sampling technique, analyticalcalculation, calibration device, accepted margin of error and interpretationof results is open to challenge. Evidence is never enough to compel assent.How then is closure achieved? Collins uses an array of case studies tohighlight how disputes are closed through the action of social interests.These may be internal to the scientific community, but are often securedthrough alignment with wider economic and political interests (Collinsand Pinch 1998a, b).

Natural scientists (Wolpert 1992) believe ‘the empirical programme ofrelativism’ is fatally flawed as empirical studies of the limits of evidenceare themselves susceptible to the observation that their evidence isquestionable. Similarly, discourse analysts, ethnographers and ethnometh-odologists within sociology (such as Latour and Woolgar 1979; Potter 1996;Woolgar 1981, 1988) see a fatal flaw in ‘social interests’-based accounts,in that causal sociologies play the same explanatory game as the naturalscientists they relativise. These latter critics proclaim a suspension ofcausal explanation, giving attention only to description (of interaction ordiscursive iterations, constructions and representations). This escape from‘causation’ is, however, illusory.

‘Irreduction’, what Latour (1988) defines as the first principle ofactor-network theory (ANT; a fusion of ethnography and discourse analysis)calls for an attendance not to the ‘social’ as an explanatory resource, butrather to the assembly of events by actants. Sociology becomes ‘associology’,the flat (cartographic) charting of connections between human andnon-human actors in the formation and sustaining of relatively stable patterns.ANT applies ethnography and discourse analysis to the study of humans,artefacts and organisms (germs, scallops, ships, instruments, machines andpeople). It attends to the novelty that new networks generate. It does notattend to the reverse, the extent to which established patterns ‘shape’technology. ANT suspends attention to causal ‘social’ explanation. It aimsrather to highlight how networks ‘translate’ multiple and complex mixesof actions into relative stability.

Actor-network theory drew attention to the limits of social causalaccounts that took for granted the causal categories being deployed (such



as class, gender or interests) as these variables themselves were assembledthrough networks of action. ANT sought to focus on the contingentwithin unfolding events/innovations. It also sought to show how suchevents and innovations might themselves change the social world. AsLatour notes: ‘The two traditions [social causation approaches and studiesof social assembly] can easily be reconciled, the second being simply theresumption of the task that the first believed was too quickly achieved’(2005, 14). In conducting ethnographies of technically complex collectivities,Latour and others strategically sought to suspend interest in what laybeyond the scope of their methodology. The suspension of ‘the social’, asa ‘superfluous hypothesis’, is a form of ‘being unreasonable to be provocative’(Latour 2005, 13). Discounting other approaches enabled a new attentionto what was once neglected.

Disputes and inconsistencies over the meaning of actors and networks(ethnographic humanism set against a discursive anti-humanism) tore apart theconcept of ‘translation’ as a means of moving beyond naturalistic causation,intentionality and purely textual construction. This undermined ANTsclaim to have surpassed previous approaches (Law and Hassard 1999). Morerecent statements have been more modest in suggesting reconciliation(Latour 2005).

‘Externalist’ sociologies of scientific knowledge

While the 1960s and 1970s saw the rise of a new ‘internalist’ approach toscientific knowledge, this period also witnessed the growth of a radicalscience movement and a range of new social movements challengingscience’s relationship to war, exploitation and oppression. Earlier radicalresearchers in science had sought to liberate science from dominant interests.The new generation sought to highlight the position of science as bothmaterial and ideological instrument of power. Drawing on the earlierwork of Adorno and Horkheimer (1944/1979), for whom science wasboth truth and source of modern mythology, Marcuse (1964/1991) pointedout the particular conception of knowing as grasping/controlling thatunderpinned Western technoscience. The Vietnam War showed the levelof barbarism that science could provide in the name of progress, but itwas the ecology and anti-nuclear movements that went furthest in undoingthe ‘cognitive immunity’ of science. It was not just objective truth appliedunethically, but rather a science ordered in the interests of power thatproduced knowledge geared to domination and destruction. Nowotny(1977) observes that the nuclear industry, when forced to explain thebaseline assumptions underpinning its safety calculations, was forced toadmit that such calculations were always built on selective, and so political,judgements about risk and benefit. Assuming safety until risk is proved isvery different from assuming risk until safety is demonstrated. The nuclearindustry, in parallel with the tobacco industry, agribusiness and many



others, fought to discount safety concerns by dismissing risk claims as‘unproven’ or as ‘theoretical risks’ (i.e. probabilities rather than certainties).In highlighting the political nature of their critics’ ‘precautionary principle’(assume all things unsafe until proven otherwise), the nuclear industrybecame vulnerable to the counter claim that their own opposite principle(that things should be assumed to be safe until proven otherwise) wasequally a political rather than an evidence-based judgement. The nuclearindustry was caught in a cleft stick. Either it challenged the scientificfoundations of its critics and in so doing drew attention to its ownpolitical assumptions, or it refrained from such challenges and therebyceded to its critics the legitimacy of scientific status. In either case ‘science’is brought into question. Scientists were caught between the possibilitiesof appearing political or as appearing incapable of deciding on the verythings it was supposed to be their job to know. While the cleft stickapplied to both establishment and critical scientists, those in authority,who had until then enjoyed what Newotny called ‘cognitive immunity’,had most to lose. Radical science writers and sociologists went on tohighlight the embedded nature of scientific knowledge within wider socialrelations. Eugenics, genetics more generally, medicine, psychiatry andagricultural science to name but a few fields, as well as supposedly puresciences such as physics and chemistry are political ( Jacobsen 2000; Roseand Rose 1970). For internalists, such ‘politics’ refers to the humancharacter of scientific knowledge, a community-produced knowledgeirreducible to brute fact and contested by those who’s actions constructit. For externalists, such politics relates scientific knowledge to widereconomic and social conflicts.

Just as critics within the internalist account of scientific knowledgeproduction came to question the position from which sociologistssought to account for scientific knowledge, so within externalist critiquesof knowledge and power there came critical voices. In particular, feministcritics came to question the primary attention on class relations of powerin explaining the structuring of scientific knowledge production. Whatbegan as the attempt to map the sheer scale of exclusion that characterisedscience’s male domination (in both composition and hierarchy, see David2005, 112–17), and to reclaim the lives of those women who’s contributionsto science had been neglected (Keller 1983; Rose 1994; Sayre 2000), soonbegan to question the knowledge generated in such a ‘homosocial’ field(Keller 1993). Standpoint feminists, whether from the standpoint of anatural (Merchant 1980; Mies and Shiva 1993) or socially constructed(Harding 1986; Rose 1994) outsider position, sought a successor scienceto the very science that liberal feminists had demanded greater access toand recognition within. Post-modern feminists (Flax 1986; Haraway1997) questioned the unity of any singular female identity upon whichsuch a singular standpoint could be founded, and rejected the need toreplicate the masculine desire for unified knowledge.



Epistemological polarisation

Karl Mannheim believed all belief was relational, but that the standpointof the relatively classless intelligentsia, represented a self-correcting socialposition. This view is paralleled in Merton’s sociology of science. Strongprogramme critics of both highlight the naivety of such claims to haveidentified a social position that suspended its own influence upon knowledgeproduction. Ethnographic and discursive critics asserted the naivety ofsocial interests theorists as being blind to the influence of their ownsociological interests in the assertion of the overriding influence ofsociological interests. In a similar vein early Marxists, such as Bernal andPrice sought to challenge the simplicity of seeing science as a pure realmof detached intellectuals. Later, radical scientists and sociologists challengedthe neutrality of scientific knowledge. Feminist sociologists underwent asimilar progression, as both critic of the naivety of others who ignoredgender in the construction of scientific knowledge, and then in a seriesof steps by which each wave comes to see the one before as having been toomuch in the shadow of the very scientific model it sought to challenge.

Hagstrom observed in 1965 the extent to which scientific careers arecarved out as much through the creation of new subfields as they are inrising to the top within, or overthrowing, existing fields. This observationwas also made by Mulkay (1972). Along with field differentiation comenew journals, editorial positions, conferences, prizes, chairs, departmentsand even new teaching and/or research institutions; as well as new criteriaby which members of the new field come to define their ‘peers’ andthereby value and validate their own work. The short history of thesociology of scientific knowledge has witnessed such a process of fielddifferentiation and insulation at an unparalleled pace.

Collins and Yearley (1992) refer to ‘epistemological chicken’, a form of‘brinkmanship’ where the person who backs out first is the loser and thechallenge is to make the boldest claim. In sociology, this will be the claimthat cedes most ground to social construction and least ground to science’sobjectivity claims. Collins and Yearley accept the challenge to ‘social’explanations of scientific knowledge as legitimate, but reject the assertionthat such a challenge is sufficient to debunk such an approach, any morethan ‘social’ accounts debunk the natural sciences as such. In playing thegame of epistemological chicken players present epistemological differences(ways of seeing) as ‘ontological fundamentals’ (differences in the underlyingcomposition of reality). Players discount the reality of those objects ofstudy best observed by the epistemologies of their rivals. Latour andWoolgar’s (1979, 1986) claim to have discounted the ‘social’ in causingthe construction of scientific knowledge, is misleading. While raisinglegitimate concerns over attributions to social causes, they then proceedto focus attention upon other forms of social relation. Language and inter-action within the scientific field is foregrounded by delegitimising other



conceptions of ‘the social’. What acts to open up new spaces also acts toinhibit interactions and insights between such innovations and establishedlines of inquiry. The history of ANT highlights the same game ofdiscounting and refocusing. Epistemological chicken can be understoodas boundary setting and field differentiation. Every field will generatetendencies towards epistemological chicken, reducing the world to the levelof understanding best suited to its tools. But that is never the whole story.

Setting the relativist account of scientific knowledge as a new orthodoxythose who seek to defend scientific objectivity play the game in reverse,building careers and a research agenda out bidding each other in thedefence of authority and expertise in science (Sokal 2001; Furedi 2002;Douglas 1994). Rather as in the ‘empirical programme of relativism’, thisproject involves the cataloguing of examples of dispute, contradiction anderror within the work of those under examination (in this case ‘relativists’and ‘post-modernists’); a theoretical construction of ‘their’ underlyingmisconceptions; and an explanatory framework for this ‘irrationalism’ interms of an underlying social causation. The game of epistemological chickenconvinces science’s defenders of their unique correctness when able todemonstrate the oversights of others. The editorial flaws highlighted bythe publication of Sokal’s spoof article in the journal Social Text (1996)forced reflection, but no more debunked science studies than did Collinsand Pinch’s (1998a, b) studies, of interpretive flexibility and social closurein science, act to debunk science in general.

The hostility directed towards Steve Fuller for defending the right for‘creationist science’ to call itself scientific and so to be discussed in schools(Corbyn 2006), highlighted mainstream scientific anxiety. Dissent fromthe line that science is unique, indivisible and unquestionable raises fear.Those wishing to take the title of ‘scientific’, but who will not take theorthodox communion, are branded heretical and face hostility and ex-communication. Fuller’s suggestion, that dissent is fundamental to science,was ignored. In defending science, Fuller’s critics adopted a certainty closerto religious faith. Collins (1998) questions the tendency of scientists todefend science on such religious grounds. He points out that sciencecannot deliver such faith-based securities. Collins, like Fuller, argues thatscience should defend itself in an open discussion with all comers on thebasis of evidence and argument. However, this might highlight disputes,confusions and uncertainty, not least over what counts as ‘science’, ‘evidence’and ‘argument’.

The argument that disputes within science should be kept behindclosed doors, and only between experts, with the public only fed simpleand reassuring messages, has come under sustained criticism. The Phillipsinquiry into bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) called for greateropenness in defining, recruiting, consulting, engaging and disseminatingscientific expertise. It is no good government scientists highlighting theabsence of evidence of danger when the public are asking about uncertainty



or demanding evidence of safety. Stilgoe et al. (2007) examine the BSEcrisis and subsequent disputes over the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR)vaccine, health scares around mobile telephones, medical cyberchondriaand nanotechnology. In each case opening scientific debate up to widerdefinitions of relevant expertise, recognising the limits and contingenciesof specialist knowledge, trusting the public to handle complexity andencouraging transparency in the translation of ‘evidence’ into ‘policy’ hasbeen recognised by government and scientists alike as the way forward.Stilgoe et al. (2007) cite the Phillips inquiry (2000) into BSE, the Stewartreport (2000) into mobile phones and health, the Wanless report (2002)into healthcare engagement and the Royal Society/Royal Academy ofEngineering (2004) report into nanotechnology. All call for science to‘open up’, to listen and be more transparent. Stilgoe et al. (2007, 24) write:

Our argument is not that we should reject the received wisdom in favour ofthe wisdom of crowds. Specialist knowledge is vital and arguments for moredemocracy do not on their own get us very far. It would be foolish to asksociety at large whether the MMR vaccine causes autism, or whether BSE istransmissible across species. Expertise and evidence are necessary for thesequestions. But they are not sufficient to give us complete answers or policydecisions. The wisdom of crowds can still teach us something.

Non-experts represent a challenge for experts to learn from. Becauseexperts define issues in terms of their specific tools they can learn fromcrowds who frame issues in terms of real lives and practical applications.Awkward questions, even potentially ignorant questions, should not beignored, as such questions may offer or at least provoke insights, triggerinnovation and clarification and prohibit the tendency for ‘groupthink’among insulated experts. Open thinking, open discussion and open systems(real processes outside of controlled conditions) challenge scientific expertsto clarify, apply and cooperate. This challenge aims not to debunk. Ratherit ought to revitalise.

As we have seen, the sociology of scientific knowledge has, in theprocess of field differentiation, all to often sought to insulate itself withindefinitions of ‘the question’ and of who counts as a legitimate ‘peer’, thatare best suited to the epistemological tool kits and communities of itsemerging traditions. Recent controversies in the physical sciencesrelating to expert advice have challenged these fields to break out of suchepistemological self-referentiality. It should be hoped that the sociologyof scientific knowledge may also take up the challenge of reflexiveepistemological diversity.

Conclusions: Reflexive epistemological diversity

The socially produced nature of scientific knowledge does not invalidateit as such, even while on occasions it does. The multiplicity of levels of



causal explanation in the production of knowledge and of other thingsrequires a reflexive epistemological diversity; recognition that complexityand contingency require more than just one level of explanation. Reflexiveepistemological diversity means neither that anything goes, nor that allinsights stack neatly in a complementary whole. Debates will remain heatedand consensus may be elusive. Scientific expertise requires a reimaginationof the boundaries around the term ‘peer’, as the criteria for relevant andreliable expertise will shift and be contested from one issue to the next.While reflexive epistemological diversity is what the sociology of scientificknowledge initially promoted, it is also a lesson the sociology of scientificknowledge needs constantly to learn.

A frog sits by a pond. A snake approaches and the frog jumps into thepond. Evolutionary, ethological, molecular, physiological and developmentalbiologists’ explanations all differ, but do not cancel each other out (Rose1997, 10). Rose suggests different explanations require translation, notreduction. Chemistry cannot be reduced to physics, nor society to biology.Lower levels of complexity condition higher-level systems, even whilesystems condition the elements that make them up. No single epistemologicalapproach can attend to all aspects of a complex and multi-levelled reality.Rose suggests that, as such, it is essential to accept epistemological diversity.A unified ontological reality remains too complex for just one unifiedapproach. Midgley (1996, 512) uses the example of an atlas. The world isno more made up of the continents displayed on one page as it is thecountries displayed on another. The chemical deposits shown on one mapno more represent ‘reality’ than do the rivers, mountains, communicationssystems or cities shown elsewhere. It might be one world, but it is acomplex one.

Epistemological diversity, simply presented, suggests that science is ajigsaw puzzle (or an atlas) made up of discrete, but complementary, fields,each contributing a part to an overall understanding. Science is rathermore complex and contradictory that that. Field differentiation and disputeswithin and between fields highlight tensions. These tensions do notinvalidate science, even while they force us to adopt a reflexive attitudeto all claims to truth, and especially all claims to providing a total accountof reality. As such attendance to complexity and contradiction require areflexive epistemological diversity.

Within the social study of science field differentiation has seen theemergence of a set of relatively discrete approaches (Marxism, feminism,social interests and ethnographic/discursive – the latter sometimes callingitself actor-network theory). While challenging the totality of each otherexplanatory model (forcing reflexivity), such epistemological diversityoffers scope for interesting insight, even as it has tended to be subsumedwithin career-building forms of differentiation, polarisation, insulation andchicken. Nevertheless, the scope for reflexive epistemological diversity canbe witnessed through the study of diverse approaches to similar themes



within the science studies literature. The examples below are drawn fromthree areas: the social study of medical genetics, behavioural genetics andgenetic modification of non-human organisms.

The work of the feminist writers Mies and Shiva (1993), Rose (1994) andHaraway (1997) highlight tensions between variations of feminist standpointtheory, Marxist feminism and feminist post-modernism. Haraway’s challengeto the unreflexive assumption that the category ‘woman’ is either naturalor unified parallels other ethnographic/discursive critiques of explanatorycategories such as class and interests. Yet, Haraway refuses the equation ofsuch a challenge with any form of debunking. Where she seeks to disrupt,she also seeks to reconstruct explanations in which class, interest andgender play a part (1997, 99). The social study of genetic modification ofthe non-human (to which Shiva, Rose and Haraway have all contributed)contains an array of insightful studies from within Marxist, ethnographic/discursive, social interest as well as feminist frameworks, while some studieshave combined discourse analysis within either Marxist, feminist or socialinterest approaches (see David 2005, 133–43). The value of acceptingreflexive epistemological diversity lies in confronting the limitations of allexplanatory categories and levels of analysis, while resisting the assumptionthat the limitations of others confirms the absolute priority of one’s ownway of seeing.

Social studies of human behavioural genetics similarly draw on the fullspectrum of social causal explanation (in terms of gender, language, class,career interests and the routines of interaction) (see David 2005, 143–55).Again, it is in the writing of feminist researchers that most valuable work hasbeen done in bridging perspectives and working through the challengesand insights that emerge when working beyond rigid epistemologicalinsularities (see Nerlich et al. (1999), Rose (2000) and Rothman (1998)).My own work in relation to the critique of evolutionary psychology(David 2002) also highlights the value of bringing together, but alsochallenging in the process, perspectives that draw on class, gender, careerinterests and discursive explanatory frameworks.

Within the social study of medical genetics the work of Mulkay (1997)and Barnes (1999) usefully combines social interests with a discursiveapproach, Jeanette Edwards combines feminist standpoint theory andethnography research, Ettorre’s (2002) work highlights the value of feministdiscourse analysis, while Fortun’s (2001) study of DeCODE genetics creationof a DNA database in Iceland draws out the tensions and the benefits ofcombining ethnography, discourse analysis and attention to the politicaleconomy of genetic information.

The value of reflexive epistemological diversity is not simply to assemblegood ideas and interesting discoveries within an uncritical ‘big picture’.Rather, the tensions that emerge between approaches are all the moreclearly illustrated, even as scope for integration and insight are also heightened.While feminist researchers have been most developed in this regard, and



while others have shown signs of moving beyond insular epistemologies,a good deal more work is needed to be done before the sociology ofscience and scientific knowledge can truly claim to have learnt the lessonsof its most significant insights.

Short Biography

Matthew David’s research addresses science and technology in society, inrelation to questions of method, epistemology, power and control. He isauthor of Science in Society (Palgrave, 2005), Social Research: The Basics (withCarole D. Sutton, Sage, 2004) and editor of the four volume set CaseStudy Research (Sage, 2006). He has published articles in International Sociology,Current Sociology, Sociological Research Online, New Genetics and Society, Telematicsand Informatics, Systemica and the International Journal of Social ResearchMethodology. His work highlights the value of ‘reflexive epistemologicaldiversity’ in understanding the complex causal processes underpinning theproduction of cultural and physical objects and processes. He is currentlySenior Lecturer in Sociology and director of taught graduate studies withinthe School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Liverpool.He holds a BS in Behavioural Sciences from the University of Glamorgan,as well as an MA in Political Sociology and a PhD in Sociology from theUniversity of Kent at Canterbury. He is currently writing a book onfile-sharing for the Theory, Culture and Society monograph series.

Note

* Correspondence address: University of Liverpool, Eleanor Rathbone Building, BedfordStreet South, Liverpool L69 7ZA, UK. Email: [email protected].

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