Frames of Meaning

The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science

HM Collins, TJ Pinch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135028732
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Originally published in 1982. Taking a radical interpretation of the Kuhnian concept of paradigm incommensurability, the authors begin by discussing the difficulties of gaining access to the ideas of communities with different rational categories, and then define the subject area of parapsychology, offering a review of the relevant literature. After exploring parapsychology's compatibility with science, physics, psychology and quantum theory, the authors move on from this predominantly theoretical framework, and devote the middle section to an empirical study of metal bending. They conclude with an examination of the results, analyse diverse interpretations and investigate the consequences for the idea of scientific revolution.

1 THE IDEA OF SOCIO-COGNITIVE DISCONTINUITY AND ITS PROBLEMS

Understanding and the universality of rational categories — paradigm incommensurability — its organic quality — idea of paradigm — idea of incommensurability — Kuhn's terminology — problem of progress — problem of relativism — neither problem substantial — methodological considerations — identification of revolutions — revolutions can be studied contemporaneously if an idea of an unsuccessful revolution in science be accepted — paranormal metal bending a suitable area — problem of access to ideas of communities with different rational categories — participation as a solution — evidence of success in understanding

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Arguments about the appropriate way to understand primitive cultures are of long standing (see, for example, the collections of Wilson (1970) and Horton and Finnegan (1973)). The same sort of problem has given rise to a debate over our ability to understand ways of thought pertaining to past epochs (see, for example, Collingwood, 1939, 1967; Krausz, 1972, 1973). At the root of both these sets of debates is the question whether the ways of thought that seem rational to us are appropriate categories for understanding primitive or past ways of thinking and acting. If we believe that our ways of thinking are universal, in other words, that rationality remains constant through social change, then we may be entitled to consider certain actions of unfamiliar peoples irrational, where these actions do not seem to make rational sense to us. It is likely that we will choose to explain irrational actions differently from rational actions (Maclntyre, 1962; Laudan, 1977). On the other hand, if we believe that each society's form of life is self-contained and cannot necessarily be understood through categories pertaining to another society, we may have to accept that we will never understand certain strange actions — or at least never be able to translate them into our categories. This does not mean that we are entitled to label these actions ‘irrational’ (Winch, 1964). In this case, the explanation of action would not differ according to its apparent rationality.

This study takes seriously the idea that the categories which inform social action are self-contained and may not be mutually translatable. The study deals with a contemporaneous ‘conceptual discontinuity’ such that the researchers had access to members whose actions belonged, apparently, to two such ‘incommensurable’ sets. What is more, in the area studied, the actors were themselves confronted with problems of conceptual change. Rather than being in the isolated position of members of primitive tribes, both sets of actors lived and worked within the institutions of Western natural science. However, they worked in an area, and at a time, of schism.

Of course, the suggestion that the notion of self-contained socio-cognitive systems can be taken seriously throws into question the very possibility of an empirical investigation. How can investigators, let alone readers, understand a self-contained system that is not their own? The answer would seem to be a negative one, but the authors have taken their cue from scientist respondents and got on with the research in a pragmatic frame of mind. As will be seen, our claim is that we did achieve this understanding. The reader must find the proof of the pudding, or otherwise, in the eating.

Conceptual discontinuities are to be found in the contemporary and accessible world if it is true that periods within the development of science exhibit similar discontinuities as those between ourselves and primitive societies or between epochs within history as a whole. If this is true, then science is an excellent location for research on the problem of culture. The suggestion that this is indeed the case has arisen with greatest vigour out of the work of the historian of science, T.S. Kuhn (1962). Kuhn's ideas about the history of science contrast strikingly with the cumulative progressive model which underlies the usual brand of scientific education. Textbooks suggest that current knowledge has been built up by successive additions, one upon another, until the present edifice was constructed. According to this model a full understanding of the conceptual history of science would be gained best from the contemporary vantage point, where it is easy to separate the chaff of mistakes and blind alleys from the wheat of genuine contributions to current true knowledge. In contrast, according to Kuhn's model the history of science exhibits periods of ‘normal’ science characterised by progress along the lines of the canonical model, but these are separated by periods of ‘revolutionary’ science during which the whole conceptual basis of science is turned over. Thus the ensuing period of normal science cannot easily be related to the previous one through the idea of cumulativeness. The new science is a different animal. In some respects it may seem to be more powerful, but an elephant is not made by accumulating ants. Within the Kuhnian model, understanding the history of science requires that the concepts pertaining to each scientific epoch be understood in their own terms, not in the terms of modern science.

PARADIGM INCOMMENSURABILITY

In developing his picture of science Kuhn used two words which have caused great controversy. He spoke of each period of normal science as being based on a ‘paradigm’ and he spoke of the relationship between paradigms as being one of ‘incommensurability’. Subsequently, both of these words, particularly the former, have been used in a variety of different ways in a variety of different contexts. This has happened because the words were not carefully defined in terms of more readily available concepts. Most commentators (e.g. Masterman, 1970) find this irritating and Kuhn, latterly disavowing the more radical interpretations of his ideas, seems prepared to accept their criticisms in his later writings (Kuhn, 1970a, 1970b; Pinch, 1979a). Thus, Kuhn (1970a, p. 175) wrote of his earlier usage:

… the term paradigm is used in two [undistinguished] different senses. On the one hand, it stands for the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques, and so on shared by the members of a given [scientific] community. On the other, it denotes one sort of element in that constellation, the concrete puzzle-solutions which, employed as models or examples, can replace explicit rules as a basis for the solution of the remaining puzzles of normal science.

Some sociologists have also adopted an analytic approach in their prescriptions for the proper application of the new model of the history of science in sociological research. Whitley (1975), for example, separates out five components of scientific activity, ranging from ‘research practice’ to ‘metaphysical assumptions’. His examples suggest that these may be looked at separately in practice. Within this type of approach similar research practices may be underpinned by different metaphysical assumptions. Applied to the study of primitive societies, this approach would make it sensible to search for tribes who used the same techniques for poisoning chickens as the Azande (Evans-Pritchard, 1976), but did not share the Zande concern with magic and oracles.¹

In contrast to this analytic approach, our understanding of the notion of paradigm is a radical interpretation of Kuhn's 1962 (unrevised) text. Our reading is informed by Winchian/Wittgensteinian ideas about the integral nature of the practical and cognitive aspects of social activity.² This integral nature is captured in Winch's description of the development of the germ theory of disease. In his book, ‘The Idea of a Social Science’ (Winch, 1958, p. 122), he wrote that this development

involved the adoption of new ways of doing things by people involved, in one way or another, in medical practice. An account of the way in which social relations in the medical profession had been influenced by this new concept would include an account of what that concept was. Conversely, the concept itself is unintelligible apart from its relation to medical practice.

This quotation will be repeated throughout the text. We can read the following comment, typical of Kuhn's early work, in the same vein. Kuhn wrote (1962, p. 47):

the process of learning a theory depends upon the study of applications, including practice problem-solving both with a pencil and paper and with instruments in the laboratory. If, for example, the student of Newtonian dynamics ever discovers the meaning of terms like ‘force’, ‘mass’, ‘space’, and ‘time’, he does so less from the incomplete though sometimes helpful definitions in his text than by observing and participating in the application of these concepts to problem-solution.

It is the mixture of the practical and the conceptual that gives the notion of paradigm its special appeal. When it is taken to imply that concepts are not separable from action — in this case, experiments — then the notion of paradigm is the equivalent within science of the Wittgensteinian idea of ‘form-of-life’. It is this reading that lends Kuhn's version of self-contained socio-cognitive communities its sociological and philosophical excitement and sympathy. This is why it falls naturally alongside the equivalent ideas pertaining to primitive cultures and to past epochs. To analyse the notion into its constituent parts is to lose the combination of concept and practice that makes the term so useful.

Incommensurability is another problematic idea. A dictionary definition is ‘having no common measure’.³ A clear application of the term concerns the relationship between the side and the diagonal of a square. It can be shown by a simple proof that the length relationship between the side and the diagonal cannot be expressed as a fraction, that is, as one finite sequence of digits divided by another. That is equivalent to saying that there is no way of constructing a ruler so that if the length of the side is an exact number of divisions of the ruler, the length of the diagonal can be an exact number too. Literally, the side and the diagonal cannot be measured (exactly) with the same systems of measurement — they are incommensurable.

In ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ Kuhn seems to use the term figuratively, to refer to the relationship between whole paradigms, the forms-of-life which define different epochs within science. However, most commentators seem to have thought about incommensurability as ‘incomparability’ or some kind of logical ‘incompatibility’. This emphasis on the logical use of the term, an emphasis which Kuhn himself was later to endorse (Kuhn, 1977, p. xxii; Pinch, 1979a), again wastes the opportunity of adding a word to the sociological vocabulary which draws its usefulness from its synthesis of conceptual and behavioural life. Incommensurability refers to a relationship between sets of actions, and there is a shortage of such words in sociology.

Incommensurability describes a relationship between two social groups such that no actor can do actions appropriate to both groups at the same time. This inability is not like not being able to run and stand still at the same time. It is less purely logical than that. Nor is it like not being able to play ice hockey and perform brain surgery at the same time. It is not only a question of lack of dexterity. One could imagine an extremely dextrous brain surgeon/ice hockey player who continues with operations during the game with the aid of an operating table on skates! But one cannot imagine that the acquisition of even the most bizarre social and intellectual skills would enable an actor to partake of the life of two different paradigms at once. What we suggest, pace Kuhn, is that ‘incommensurability’ and ‘paradigm’ are best interpreted as belonging to a vocabulary that refers to social actions, not to thought or behaviour alone. When thus interpreted they remain outstandingly useful.

That said, no empirical work informed by the new notions can be undertaken unless one has some idea of what to look for in situations of paradigm incommensurability. Kuhn's book (1962) offers the following formulations regarding the relationship between succeeding paradigms, the consequences of this relationship , and certain concomitant properties of the relationship. These formulations will guide the analysis in this work as a whole.

On page 7 of ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ the professional community is said to re-evaluate traditional experimental procedures, alter its conception of entities with which it has long been familiar, and shift the network of theory through which it deals with the world, when the commitments of normal science change. Later it is suggested that ‘Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life’ (p. 94). Differences between paradigms are said to be irreconcilable (p. 103) and ‘not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable’. It also is suggested that there is a sense in which paradigms transform the world (p. 106).

As a result of these changes, laboratory procedures change, in so far as certain measurements become irrelevant and new ones relevant (p. 129); also, old manipulations in new roles may be indices of quite different natural regularities, or may even yield new concrete results (p. 130), though much of the scientist's language and most of his laboratory instruments remain the same. In such situations, scientists belonging to different paradigm communities can be seen as ‘responding to different worlds’ (p. 1ll), as disagreeing about problems as well as results (p. 148), and as inevitably talking through each other (p. 109). Communication will inevitably be partial, for the same terms, concepts and experiments will assume different relations with one another (p. 149).

These problems cannot be settled by recourse to any extra-paradigmatic observation language (p. 114), nor do scientists have freedom to compare paradigms by switching from one to the other like the subject of a gestalt switch (p. 85). What is more, the changeover to a new paradigm (like a gestalt switch) cannot be done a step at a time; it has to be accepted all of a piece (p. 150). These qualities of involuntariness and wholeness are stressed by the setting up of a distinction between accepting, but not internalising, the correctness of a new paradigm as a result of persuasion and being converted in the sense of ‘going native’ (pp. 203–4).

AN INFLUENTIAL BUT MISTAKEN OBJECTION TO THE IDEA OF PARADIGM INCOMMENSURABILITY

The last phrase in the preceding section draws attention once again to the similarity between Kuhn's suggestions about the relationship between paradigms and discussions pertaining to the relationship between societies as a whole, especially between Western and primitive societies. Several writers have discussed the philosophical problems of the notion of paradigm change alongside the problems of understanding primitive societies (e.g. Giddens, 1976; Trigg, 1973). These writers are concerned, above all, with the problem of relativism which is seemingly precipitated by any notion of radical cultural discontinuity. In the case of scientific paradigms the relativistic consequences of the notion grow out of Kuhn's suggestions that there is a sense in which paradigms ‘transform the world’ so that scientists belonging to different paradigm communities can be seen as ‘responding to different worlds’ and will inevitably talk through each other; that their disagreements cannot be settled by recourse to any extraparadigmatic language; and that conversion to a new paradigm has to be accepted ‘all of a piece’. From this it follows that there is no way of standing outside a debate between proponents of two paradigms and finding ‘rational’ arguments which would show the correctness of one picture of the world and the incorrectness of any picture that conflicts with it. Nor can members of different paradigm groups ‘refer to the world outside’ in order to settle their differences, for they will see different worlds.

The ‘familiar and banal’ objection to this viewpoint is put by Giddens (1976, p. 145), who points out that to claim that ‘all knowledge is relative’ is to make a universal claim the possibility of which is precisely what is denied by the claim itself. It seems then that all such claims are ‘self-negating’. Giddens also suggests that in any case the problem of cultural discontinuity has been overstated (p. 144). However, evidence is not brought to support this latter claim. In any case, it is at best an empirical claim so it cannot rule out the notion of radical cultural discontinuity a priori.

More extended criticisms of Kuhn's position have been made, for example, by Roger Trigg (1973) and Israel Scheffler (1967). Both of these authors argue that the relationship which Kuhn claims to hold between paradigms cannot hold; that is, that incommensurability could not be the relationship between periods of scientific history. Thus Scheffler (1967) writes ‘I cannot myself believe that this bleak picture representing an extravagant idealism is true. In fact it seems to me a reductio ad absurdum of the reasonings from which it flows.’ And Trigg finds a host of incompatible consequences flowing from Kuhn's ideas, among which is the consequence of a notion of scientific progress which is not progress towards the truth (1973, p. 116):

… a more fundamental question … is what possible grounds Kuhn could have had for talking about ‘progress’ once he scraps talk about progress towards the truth? … Kuhn seems to think it is possible to have progress even when it is not ‘progress’ in any direction. This is absurd.

Part of the reason why these authors find Kuhn's position not only distasteful but also absurd is that they consider, with Giddens, that any full-bloodedly relativist position is unacceptable. Kuhn lends weight to their arguments when he attempts to defend himself while retreating from the radical interpretation of his ideas. For example, in the Postscript to the second edition of ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ (1970a, p. 206), he suggests that progress in science is recognisable by succeeding paradigms by such criteria as :

[increasing] accuracy of prediction, particularly of quantitative prediction ; the balance between esoteric and everyday subject matter; and the number of different problems solved. … [Also but less important] such values ...