The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge: Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, 1977 ed. by Everett Mendelsohn, et al (review)

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 221 The Social Production ofScientific Knowledge: Sociology ofthe Sciences Year­ book, 1977. Edited by Everett Mendelsohn, Peter Weingart, and Richard Whitley. Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel, 1977. Pp. vii+287. $26.00. On its face this book suggests that the social study of science is an activity conducted almost exclusively in the European community. North American research seems remote. The gulf between it and European research appears to be almost as wide as the Atlantic Ocean: Each has referent gurus, literatures, and key words. To this North American the gulf is dismaying and unnecessary. For the Europeans operating in a so-called neo-Kuhnian tradition and the rest of us supposedly manacled to the Mertonian paradigm, our tacit or acknowledged differences in approach are no more than emphases within a single research program. Indeed, the theme of this book (i.e., knowledge as a social product) bridges the two traditions as surely as Kuhn and Merton are compatible gurus. This largely European collection marks 1976-77 as halcyon years in the sociology of science. New works abound; this work excels. But the separation of the communities alluded to above is disturbingly evident in these eleven essays. Only three North Americans appear among the authors, and two of these sit on the editorial board for the Yearbook. These numbers are significant since, of the thirteen mem­ bers of this board, eight wrote articles in the present volume. I only hope that a different array of authors appears in the forthcoming volumes, The Dynamics ofScience and Technology: Social Values, Technical Norms and Scientific Criteria in the Development ofKnowledge (1978) and Countermovements and the Sciences: Science and the Anti-Science (1979). To chide the editors for geographic and intellectual ethnocentrism is not to deny the quality of the collection. Indeed, there are some real plums and no bona fide lemons here. Most of the chapters are pro­ grammatic; several contain provocative concepts and hypotheses; few harbor clinching data. Of special interest are Mendelsohn’s and Roger Krohn’s respective contributions to part one, “The In­ stitutionalization of the Sciences.” Here the historical and philosoph­ ical dimensions of the sociology of science are duly stressed. Mendel­ sohn sets the tone by resurrecting—as must still be done—the evil of internal-external history as an either-or proposition and by im­ plementing a sociology of knowledge approach to 17th- and 19thcentury biology. Krohn’s perceptive analysis oflanguage and ideology shines through as the only attempt to focus critically on the social and the cognitive in science as an interface problem which researchers on both sides of the Atlantic have addressed. Part two examines “Social Relations of Cognitive Structures in the Sciences.” Three of the four chapters emerge as exemplary. One is Pinch’s case study of the “hidden variables” controversy in quantum 222 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE theory revolving principally around David Bohm and John von Neumann. The chapter is a tribute to insider-outsider theory, an exposé of how status and reputation effect communication break­ down and forestall disclosure of error. Bohme’s study of rules for experimentation, though less detailed, handily attests to the role of commitment to cognitive norms in subdisciplinary communities. This case contrasts with the hand waving that Whitley does so well, but for my taste, so often. His concern with social and intellectual organiza­ tion is central, not only for this volume, but to the program which underlies the most vital research in the sociology of science today. Whitley, however, has been ubiquitous, and his message is losing clar­ ity in tlie diffuseness of his work. His position in the European com­ munity seems curious; though he is widely cited and has nurtured a visible student following (e.g., Colvin, whose chapter precedes his), Whitley’s theoretical acumen has not been scrutinized (and, therefore, challenged) as closely as Mulkay’s, Barnes’s, or, presently, Bhaskar’s. Finally, part three, “Social Goals, Political Programs, and Scientific Norms,” never fulfills its lofty goals. “The Political Direction of Scien­ tific Development,” by van den Daele, W. Krohn, and Weingart, is a highly schematic effort to synthesize the wisdom derived from seven case studies on topics...