Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction

1. Introduction

1 Introduction Science has become an integral part of many issues of public concern-medical, informational, and environmental, to name a few. Scientific experts frequently square off on the evening news. At work, professional discourses have become increasingly technical, and at home we face an ocean of competing claims about topics such as carcinogens in our food or the technical features of competing appliances. Science studies provides a conceptual tool kit for thinking about technical expertise in more sophisticated ways. Science studies tracks the history of disciplines, the dynamics of science as a social institution, and the philosophical basis for scientific knowledge. It teaches, for example, that there are ways of developing sound criteria for evaluating opposing theories and interpretations, but also that there are ways of finding the agendas sometimes hidden behind a rhetoric of objectivity. In the process, science studies makes it easier for laypeople to question the authority of experts and their claims. It teaches how to look for biases, and it holds out a vision of greater public participation in technical policy issues. In short, science studies provides a forum where people who are concerned with the place of science and technology in a democratic society can discuss complicated technical issues. Because ofthat role, science studies is not always a popular field. In the mid-I990s the "science wars"-a wave of attacks on some prominent figures in science studies-became particularly intense. These attacks tended to single out a few feminists and radical constructivists, subject them to distorting readings, then dismiss the entire field as a hotbed of postmodern irrationalism. Although I am not in agreement with the radical relativism that characterizes a corner of the science studies community, I am more disturbed by the attackers' dismissive caricatures and distortions of a huge volume of theory and research. I have experienced science studies as a vibrant intellectual field that is bubbling with novel research and ideas. This book presents some of that exciting work. The issues surrounding science, technology, and society are of increasing 2 Introduction interest in our technological society not only to the public in general but also to scientists and other researchers. Scientists have come to recognize the political nature ofthe institutions ofscience, and their research problems have become increasingly tied to public and private agendas outside their disciplines. Likewise, as humanists and social scientists encounter technological issues with increasing frequency, they also find themselves drawn into the interdisciplinary field. However, as newcomers from all disciplines enter the field, they sometimes end up reinventing the wheel because they do not have a background in its principal concepts and theories. There is widespread need, then, for a concise overview of the key concepts of the interdisciplinary field as a whole, one that points the way to the more specific literatures of the philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and feminist studies ofscience and technology. This book introduces many of the key concepts and provides one map ofa wide range of the terrain. In the process, the debates that have received media attention as the "science wars" are set in their proper context as only one of the issues that are part of an ongoing dialogue within the field. When outside critics dismiss the field for its relativism, they are actually riding on debates internal to the field, and not particularly new or interesting ones at that. The book had its origin as a teaching text for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. Students who were new to the field-including many graduate students who were established professionally in other fields, such as engineering-complained of confusion when they first confronted the interdisciplinary Babel of science studies. They found my focus on some of the interdisciplinary misunderstandings helpful, and they used the text to provide a menu ofwhat to study in more detail. The field can be very confusing for newcomers, as I remember well from my own relatively recent entrance in the mid-I98os. Even the name of the field is not uniform. Some people preferred to use their disciplinary designations and call themselves, for example, philosophers of science. Others preferred the initials HPS (history and philosophy of science) to describe a position known as philosophical historicism, which was considered quite distinct from the more social science-oriented studies of science, technology, and society. Sociologists who studied scientific knowledge at first tended to refer to the field as "science studies" in contrast to the more institutionally oriented sociology of science. As they became more...