Kuhn and the Sociological Revolution

Paul Hoyningen-Huene has recently presented a fascinating systematic exposition of Thomas Kuhn’s work. ¹ I have suggested elsewhere that his presentation both rescues Kuhn’s real achievements from the misinterpretations they have suffered at the hands of philosophers and sociologists, and provides us with resources to bring these diverse trends in science studies together in a new moderate position that avoids the excesses of realist philosophy of science and irrealist sociology. ² I believe that the philosophical and sociological work that grew out of Kuhn’s early position is historically objectionable for very similar reasons. In the present paper I will sketch the historiographic deficiencies of the most popular positions in current sociology of science. I will go on to suggest that the resources of Kuhn’s mature account provide a way of avoiding the “platform problem” identified by Hoyningen-Huene as a source of difficulties both for Kuhn’s mature position and for sociology of science. ³

Universal Foundations in the Sociology of Science

Why, one may reasonably ask, was Kuhn so persistently misread by philosophers and sociologists of science? I believe the answer is similar in both cases and depends upon deeply held convictions about universal standards underlying all scientific knowledge that should have been, but were not, modified by reading Kuhn. If they cared about history at all, philosophers set out to find a single atemporal standard of rationality that applied at all times throughout the history of science. Twentieth-century latecomers were privileged to know more about it than their predecessors, but whatever had changed during the development of science, all these changes were expected to be referred to a single, all-encompassing set of rational standards. Early works by philosophers with a historical orientation—for example those of Imre Lakatos and Larry Laudan in the 1970s—assumed that the goal of research in philosophy of science was to define these standards. ⁴ Some later accounts admitted the possibility that standards change over time, but the authors continued to assume, and in some cases to actively argue, that modern standards were the measure of all earlier ones. ⁵ And even the most historically inclined philosophers of science regarded their most important rational standards as atemporal: the laws of logic were assumed to be beyond the reach of historical change. The position I have just sketched shows how limited was the understanding of Kuhn’s work on the part of philosophers. Although Kuhn made at least some people aware that they had been Whigs about the history of science, almost no one got the same message about the history of rationality.

The sociologists were eager to reject the universal atemporal standards of rationality advocated by the philosophers. As Kuhn has noted, their rejection took the form of an overreaction. From historical studies that failed to reveal a single uniform standard of rationality, they concluded that there were simply no operative standards of rationality. In place of these standards they proposed causal theories, invoking either actors’ interests (in the Edinburgh variant) or power relations mediated by actor-networks (in the Paris variant). Thus, they replaced the universal, atemporal, and frequently a priori accounts of the philosophers with universal, atemporal, and empirical accounts. Let me briefly review these sociological theories before considering the “platform problem” to which this kind of analysis leads.

The Edinburgh Strong Program in its original incarnation advertised the importance of considering sociological, psychological, economic, and other factors in understanding scientific change. ⁶ As the Strong Program gained strength, this ecumenical rhetoric was quietly abandoned. The practice of the Program was to seek explanations of only one sort—using human interests. A theoretical defense of this focus was even offered by David Bloor in a later book. ⁷ The concept of interest deployed by the Strong Program was clearly political in its antecedents. As Steven Shapin showed in his work on phrenology in Scotland, class interests were an important example. ⁸ Others allowed a technical and almost cognitive sense to the term: in a study of the introduction of weak neutral currents in physics, Andrew Pickering showed that scientists could...