Kristin Buck

Philosophy of Science

Dr. Charles Ess

May 2, 2000

Outline: Evelyn Fox Keller

"Critical Silences in Scientific Discourse: Problems of Form and Re-Form"

1. Nature of Scientific Knowledge

1. Five Points

1. Neither mirror nor correspond to reality (anti-realist)
2. Like all theories, they are models and tools for changing the world (instrumentalist)
3. Theories are human conventions, and humans interact with other humans as well as nonhumans (Kantian)
4. The effectiveness of the tools in changing the world has something to do with the relation between theory and reality and possess a kind of "adequacy" in relation to a world that is not itself constituted symbolically, which she calls "residual reality"
5. Different perspectives and languages lead to different theories that attach to the real in different ways (toward the direction of social constructivism)

1. Choice operates in the construction of scientific knowledge
2. As routinely as the effectiveness of science is invoked, equally routine is the failure to go on to say what it is that science works at, . . . "working" is a necessary but not sufficient constraint (Popper)
3. Models/representations permit us to manipulate parts of the world in particular ways (historically masculine intent of science—male domination over mother earth)
4. Problems

1. There are no criteria by which to measure science’s instrumental success
2. Feminist critiques suggest that particular directions that the forms of scientific knowledge have taken since the 17^th century are grounded in (or at least supported by) a historically explicit identification of scientific values with the values our particular cultural tradition takes to be masculine, and . . . equally explicit exclusion of those values which have been labeled "feminine"
3. Feminist theory has helped us to revision science as a discourse, but not as an agent of change

1. Feminist critics of science have been almost totally silent on the subject of physics
2. Historical and social conditioning has lead the majority of women to accept physics as a pure science, despite the admittedly masculine nature of science

1. Polarity

1. Understanding vs. Manipulation
2. Control vs. Prediction
3. Rosalind Franklin: "I just want to look, not touch"

2. Physics

1. Image of the discipline as the most rarefied, purely mental—and pristine—endeavor of which human beings were capable

1. Promise of touching the world at its innermost being by the power of pure thought

1. World War II

1. Transformation in American science, especially in physics, that left the demarcation between pure and applied science, between science and technology, increasingly difficult to locate
2. Convergence between pure and applied, between basic and mission-oriented research—and more generally between academic science, industry, and the military
3. Einstein’s theories resulted in such a catastrophically destructive weapon that the belief in choice and responsibility was radically confounded

1. Duty to increase fund of knowledge despite possible predicted horrifying consequences
2. Can the scientist be blamed for his role in the development of deadly technology…issues of responsibility
3. Belief in the a priori aimlessness and essential purity of scientific knowledge, even in the face of the unprecedented dangers that knowledge has enabled

1. Form and content of scientific knowledge have been shaped by the motivations driving it; such confidence prevents us from thinking about the possibility of redirecting science, of doing it differently

3. History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science

1. Prevailing conventions in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science worked collectively and separately in ways that tacitly supported the inviolability of the scientific preserve

1. Historians

1. Concentrate their attention on the internal or strictly cognitive development of science

1. Philosophers

1. Embrace of logical positivism
2. Attention shifted to the debate between rationality and realism
3. Unspoken agreement to privilege questions of truth over questions of consequences

1. Sociologists

1. Focus on professionalization of scientists
2. Scientific knowledge "as simply another commodity"

1. Effects

1. Demarcating the internal dynamics of science from its social and political influences
2. Changing character of American science was largely confined to the subject of external changes in the relation of society to science
3. Dual rationale of science

1. intrinsic good
2. activity to be supported because of its utilitarian outcomes

1. Profile of scientific research…depends on funding priorities

1. Ian Hacking

1. "Menu View" of Knowledge

1. Focus on the content of scientific knowledge deflects us from thinking about the forms of scientific knowledge
2. The "menu," or what’s out there to be discovered, doesn’t change, but humans choose what part of the menu to concentrate on and the ways in which the study should be done

1. Revolution

1. Ideal of pure science is itself a historical construction, maintained by normative conventions of scientific discourse
2. "The very distinction between ‘social’ and ‘technical’ is produced through scientists’ own interpretive practices"
3. Social studies of science describe a science that is if not exactly out of control, for all practical purposes, beyond the possibility of control

1. Naturalist rather than empirical
2. Descriptive rather than predictive
3. Representing, not intervening
4. Basic order of things is good—is gone
5. Shift from naïve realism to relativism

4. What We Need For the Task of Revisioning Science is a Better Understanding of How Science Works

1. Scientific theories impinge on the real, but they do so selectively, not naturally, effecting some kinds of change rather than others

1. Need to account for the process by which such selectivity operates
2. Effectiveness of the resulting theories must be judged in terms of all the interactions that generate them (Kantian)
3. A certain amount . . . of the work that a successful theory or research program must do can be described in strictly human (psychosocial, political, and economic) terms
4. Physics, for example, has been able to realize so many of the needs and desires of the public hat it has produced a body of theory that matches the world well enough to satisfy this network of overlapping interests, that has given us stories good enough to enable us to change the world in ways that we seem to want
5. Scientific predictive success must enable the production of at least some of the technological "goods" the public thinks it is paying for

C. What Needs to Be Done

1. We could develop representations of natural phenomena adequate to the task of changing the world in different ways
2. This change involves breaking away from traditional and historical ways of conducting the business of science, as well as recognizing that positivism is a failure

5. Conclusions

1. We are smart enough to learn what we need to know to get much of what we want; perhaps it’s time we thought more about what we want
2. Our interests are neither unitary nor consensual, nor are they themselves free of the network of interactions that make science "work"
3. The thing that grounds this entire process is the matter of survival

Keller is clearly an instrumentalist. She presents a middle ground from the realism of physics and the feminist critiques that lean toward social constructivism. She recognizes scientific knowledge as a model or tool, and challenges the reader to determine the purpose and motivation for accumulation of knowledge, as well as to be responsible for and aware of possible consequences of such.