{"id":6461,"date":"2010-06-29T19:48:09","date_gmt":"2010-06-29T23:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=6461"},"modified":"2010-06-29T19:48:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-29T23:48:09","slug":"life-at-the-boundary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2010\/06\/29\/life-at-the-boundary\/","title":{"rendered":"Life at the\u00a0Boundary"},"content":{"rendered":"

For decades now, historians of science and their allies in science studies have had an enduring fondness for boundary studies.\u00a0 The “boundaries” in question are taken to be places where agreements that define what constitutes a legitimate claim no longer clearly apply.\u00a0 In Thomas Kuhn’s idea of the “paradigm” (Structure of Scientific Revolutions<\/em>, 1962), arguments across paradigms cannot be decided based upon evidence, because the standards of interpretation that would allow a decision to be made differ.<\/p>\n

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Kuhn’s point spoke to a potential philosophical irreconcilability, but sociologists would adopt the basic idea to discuss the importance of social coalition-building in knowledge-building, which could be hidden beneath an apparent epistemological smoothness where arguments were well-accepted, but which became visible in instances of controversy along coalition boundaries.<\/p>\n

Harry Collins wrote in 1981, “In most cases the salience of alternative interpretations of evidence, which typifies controversies, has acted as a level to elicit the essentially cultural nature of the local boundaries of scientific legitimacy—normally elusive and concealed” (“Introduction” to a special issue of Social Studies of Science<\/em> 11 (1981): 3-10).\u00a0 Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer wrote in Leviathan and the Air Pump <\/em>(1985):\u00a0 “Another advantage afforded by studying controversy is that historical actors […] attempt to deconstruct the taken-for-granted quality of their antagonists’ preferred beliefs and practices, and they do this by trying to display the artifactual and conventional status of those beliefs and practices” (p. 7).<\/p>\n

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A particularly pressing place to look for agreement was at the boundary of what did and did not constitute “science”.\u00a0 Robert K. Merton’s sociology of science sought to determine the sociological preconditions of science as well as the impacts different social contexts could have on the content of science.\u00a0 Combined with Merton’s identification of a series of “norms” associated with science, his sociology was understood to take “science” as a granted activity, which society both made possible and influenced.<\/p>\n

While I tend to think the reaction against Merton was overly strong, and the abandonment of explicit Mertonian institutional-functional analysis ill-advised, later sociologists were correct to point out that establishing a zone of “science” was also a sociological activity that gave those within the zone access to certain polemical resources.\u00a0 “Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists” American Sociological Review <\/em>(1983): 781-795, written by Thomas Gieryn (a former student of Merton’s), was a landmark contribution to the anti-demarcationist movement<\/a> in the sociology, history, and philosophy of science.\u00a0 Writing alongside historians examining the Victorian establishment of “science” versus “the sciences” (mainly via X-Club<\/a> activities and the British Association<\/a>), Gieryn argued that varying aspects of the amorphous sciences could be emphasized to justify “scientists’ claims to authority and resources”.<\/p>\n

However, as Gieryn himself noted, boundary studies were not limited to just the boundary of “science”.\u00a0 Conflict and demarcation existed within and beyond science wherever disagreements about credibility and plausibility existed.\u00a0 Figures such as Collins and Bruno Latour would take the prospect of arguments’ succeeding to be reliant on recourse to other<\/em> things already<\/em> deemed credible or plausible.\u00a0 This is the basis of Collins’ sociological “relativism” and Latour’s “hybrids” and “networks” (see this post<\/a> for some discussion of the difference between their positions).<\/p>\n

Because rational agreement made recourse to trusted resources, the underlying <\/em>basis of knowledge was taken to be grounded in a shared culture, as referenced in boundary polemics<\/em>.\u00a0 As Gieryn later wrote in Cultural Boundaries of Science: Credibility on the Line <\/em>(1999): “Interests, rhetorical tropes, power, identity, hands-on practices, tacit skills, instruments, experimental systems, and (as a catchall) culture are now standard ingredients in sociological studies of the construction of scientific knowledge” (viii-ix).\u00a0 Such cultural matters were understood both to draw sets of continuities between scientific credibility and broader sources of cultural credibility, and to emphasize the role of trust in credible sources within <\/em>the scientific community.<\/p>\n

However, the importance of boundary polemics, and the cultural objects and ideals referenced by those polemics<\/a>, remains unclear.\u00a0 One temptation has been to write the question off as a matter of personal taste.\u00a0 Even Jed Buchwald has resorted to the position<\/a>.\u00a0 In his 1999 book, Gieryn made the point vividly<\/a> by likening the depiction of the relations between the cultural and the natural in scientific work to a stew in preparation: “What happens to nature in all this kitchen work depends upon the chef you ask…”\u00a0 As deeply unsatisfying as saying the matter is subjective is, it is not much better to imagine that the relationship is essentially some inscrutable mix, which varies in its proportions depending on “contingencies”.\u00a0 A better alternative would be to develop an analytical taxonomy to help discern the significance of boundary polemics, since it is likely that fairly superficial historical issues have been repeatedly emphasized as the crucial objects of historical inquiry on the blind assumption that boundary polemics are automatically of interest wherever they occur, simply because they reflect the supposedly heretofore hidden cultural aspects of science.<\/p>\n

Let us begin by taking to be a trivial observation the idea that basic presuppositions must be accepted for informed consensus to be reached.\u00a0 When people do not share your presuppositions, engagement with such individuals can be frustrating, and it becomes easier to hurl a polemic than to try and bring them through all the necessary steps that would ostensibly bring them around to your point of view: they are superstitious, corrupted by economic interests, ill-mannered, and undisciplined.\u00a0 However reflective these polemics may be of broader cultural ideals, your resort to them, to my mind, does not so much signify the social foundations<\/em> of your epistemology as they are surface effects that serve to reinforce the reality of an internal-external divide between your work and the outside world.\u00a0 Little need be said about the cultural stalemates, policy conundrums, and open power struggles that boundaries create, except to say that they exist.\u00a0 It should not be surprising that they do.<\/p>\n

Of course, sometimes things get existential—the resources needed to go on are at stake—which forces a “negotiation”.\u00a0 At this point, whatever one’s own motivations, one must portray one’s work as more broadly valuable: contemplation of the work elevates the mind, the work leads to useful technologies, it employs workers, it predicts the future, it suggests new policies, or it is a signal of national prestige.\u00a0 When one’s work becomes such a “boundary object”—Star and Griesemer, “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translations’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39,” Social Studies of Science <\/em>19 (1989): 387-420—one assumes its continued existence is dependent<\/em> on its cultural surroundings.\u00a0 One needs local workers to build an observatory, one needs military funding to build a laser, one needs amateurs to gather specimens.<\/p>\n

The fact of multiple meanings and values is inherent to the idea of exchange, and is not novel.\u00a0 While there is much to be said about the long-term<\/em> history <\/em>of particular dependencies, the actual multiplicity of meaning in a dependent relationship strikes me as only a marginal spin on classic Marxist and Mertonian observations about science-society relations.\u00a0 What is of interest here is not the fluidity of meaning at the boundary, per se<\/em>, but rather meaning within<\/em> either the history of the particular science, or the political\/economic\/cultural history of the surrounding society.\u00a0 The boundary object is only of interest insofar as both sides of the boundary agree that it should be supported (or either or both sides think it should not).<\/p>\n

Of course, not just support, but meanings themselves can also be negotiated.\u00a0 Again, there are very strong precedents in Marxist and Mertonian sociology concerning the relationship between science, ideology, and economic interests.\u00a0 That the content of science and surrounding social norms can reflect each other is a well-rehearsed point, particularly for sciences such as psychology, ethnology, sociology, population genetics, and so on.\u00a0 In the mid-twentieth century ideological influence over physics and genetics in totalitarian states, and the prospect of politics and vested interests influencing expert witnesses, was likewise much discussed.\u00a0 Efforts have also been made to connect the core intellectual content<\/em> of the physical sciences to culture, notably with Paul Forman’s argument about Weimar culture and causality in quantum theory, albeit with rather less sustained success.\u00a0 In any event, while contributions to long-term histories of ideas remain of interest, individual case studies struggle to maintain relevance.\u00a0 As Steven Shapin wrote<\/a> 28 years ago<\/em>, “work is often thought to be completed when it can be concluded that \u2018science is not autonomous\u2019, or that \u2018science is an integral part of culture\u2019, or even that there are interesting parallels or homologies between scientific thought and social structures.\u00a0 But these are not conclusions; they are starting points for more searching analyses of scientific knowledge as a social product.”<\/p>\n

Within<\/em> the sciences, meanwhile, Peter Galison has described productive exchange<\/em> across boundaries occurring through “trading zones” (originally in 1989, but canonically in 1997’s Image and Logic<\/em>).\u00a0 Here concepts and objects at boundaries take on a stripped-down meaning as they are passed between weakly linked domains.\u00a0 Accordingly, he refers to exchange at the boundary in terms of “trading languages” of “pidgins” and “creoles”.\u00a0 Galison’s point that pidgins can develop into creoles and thus new research programs is important, but to my mind, the more important point is that, as with the above examples of conflict, dependence, and negotiation, the most meaning-rich environments are away from boundaries—hence his argument for the “intercalation” of the histories of autonomous domains<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To my mind, to determine the significance of what happens at boundaries, it is important to have a full and detailed knowledge of what happens away <\/em>from the boundaries.\u00a0 This is especially important, because boundary polemics are not necessarily superficial, as the now-largely-defunct<\/a> historiography of natural philosophy as its own distinct genre<\/a> <\/em>has shown.\u00a0 When questions of matter, cosmology, physiology, spirit, thought, virtue, and theology coexist within the singular plane of philosophy, there is practically no such thing as a boundary.\u00a0 In more recent times, certain sciences can indeed undergo profound epistemic shifts, and in such instances, it is likewise important to attend to boundary issues because successful installment of a new epistemological regime can make, break, or instantiate enduring instabilities into certain scientific fields.<\/p>\n

However, I want to finish with the provocative suggestion that, despite their porosity, boundaries are not, in general, very interesting places, mainly because they are intellectually impoverished.\u00a0 They are filled with superficial and often cliched polemics and items of exchange that only gain meaning when understood in the context of the more complex ideas lurking deep within particular territories.\u00a0 Until the main contours of these various territories are better mapped, these deeper meanings will remain opaque.\u00a0 Studies of life at the boundaries are more apt to rehearse what we know about the chaos and contingency of boundaries, and what we imagine we already know about life within the surrounding territories, than they are to reveal something genuinely new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For decades now, historians of science and their allies in science studies have had an enduring fondness for boundary studies.\u00a0 The “boundaries” in question are taken to be places where agreements that define what constitutes a legitimate claim no longer clearly apply.\u00a0 In Thomas Kuhn’s idea of the “paradigm” (Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962), arguments<\/p>\n

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