A Social History of Truth

Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England

Steven Shapin

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780226750194, 9780226750187
• eBook ISBN: 9780226148847
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: Social Sciences

How do we come to trust our knowledge of the world? What are the means by which we distinguish true from false accounts? Why do we credit one observational statement over another?

In A Social History of Truth, Shapin engages these universal questions through an elegant recreation of a crucial period in the history of early modern science: the social world of gentlemen-philosophers in seventeenth-century England. Steven Shapin paints a vivid picture of the relations between gentlemanly culture and scientific practice. He argues that problems of credibility in science were practically solved through the codes and conventions of genteel conduct: trust, civility, honor, and integrity. These codes formed, and arguably still form, an important basis for securing reliable knowledge about the natural world.

Shapin uses detailed historical narrative to argue about the establishment of factual knowledge both in science and in everyday practice. Accounts of the mores and manners of gentlemen-philosophers are used to illustrate Shapin's broad claim that trust is imperative for constituting every kind of knowledge. Knowledge-making is always a collective enterprise: people have to know whom to trust in order to know something about the natural world.

Notes

Notes on Genres, Disciplines, and Conventions

1. Here and elsewhere I use historicism in its loose ‘new’ sense: the practice devoted to interpreting historical action in historical actors’ terms.

2. E.g., Macfarlane, Origins of English Individualism; idem, “Socio-economic Revolution in England.”

3. Oakeshott, “Political Education,” 129.

4. For a survey of the English courtesy genres, see, e.g., Mason, Gentlefolk in the Making, and, for a well-known treatment of the relationship between courtesy literature and European macrosocial change, see Elias, The Civilizing Process, esp. I, ch. 2.

5. Whigham (Ambition and Privilege, 27), e.g., writes about the relative homogeneity of the courtesy literature as “a corpus of strategic gestures.”

6. For broadly parallel usage, see, notably, Revel, “Uses of Civility,” esp. 168.

7. For pertinent methodological discussion, see Collins, “The Meaning of Lies,” esp. 71–73.

8. For amplification of these comments, see, e.g., Shapin and Barnes, “Darwin and Social Darwinism: Purity and History”; and Mills, “Situated Action and Vocabularies of Motive.”

9. Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the History of ideas,” esp. 6, 28, 49.

Chapter 1

1. Gellner, “Relativism and Universals,” 83. For a review of dominant philosophical views of truth, see, e.g., Davidson, “Structure and Content of Truth”; and R. Campbell, Truth and Historicity; and, for sociological criticism, see McHugh, “Failure of Positivism.” Pragmatist philosophers count as a major exception to this disciplinary generalization, though they routinely fail to appreciate the locally obligatory character of truth-judgments: see, e.g., W. James, “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth,” in idem, Pragmatism, 87–104.

2. Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery, 37–45.

3. E.g., Durkheim, Elementary Forms of the Religions Life, 436–47; Arendt, The Human Condition, 15–16, 301–04; Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, 150–151, 254–56, 265–68; Shapin, “‘The Mind Is Its Own Place.’”

4. For a philosophical framework broadly compatible with the position developed here, see Welbourne, Community of Knowledge.

5. Wittgenstein, On Certainty, sects. 110, 192, 204; see also Bloor, Wittgenstein, esp. 116, 119, 162.

6. Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, Pt. II, 74; see also idem, Philosophical Investigations, Pt. I, sects. 325, 485.

7. W. James, “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth,” in idem, Pragmatism, 88–91.

8. Rorty, “Science as Solidarity,” 11.

9. McHugh, “Failure of Positivism,” 320–21, 333–35. McHugh’s formulation was prominently cited by H. M. Collins early in the development of the sociology of scientific knowledge: Collins, “Seven Sexes,” 205; cf. Collins and Yearley, “Epistemological Chicken,” 303.

10. Blum, “The Corpus of Knowledge as a Normative Order,” 125.

11. B. Barber, Logic and Limits of Trust, esp. 9; Luhmann, “Familiarity, Confidence, Trust,” esp. 97–98; Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, 29–34.

12. Holzner, “Sociological Reflections on Trust.”

13. A derivation for the modern English trust is, indeed, tryst—an appointed meeting.

14. Cicero, Offices, 8–14, 111, 136–39, 152–62. On “the power of promise” in antiquity, see Arendt, The Human Condition, 243–45.

15. Elyot, The Governor (1531), 181–82.

16. Montaigne, “Of Liars” and “Of Giving the Lie,” in idem, Essays (1580–1588), 23, 505.

17. Bryskett, Discourse of Civill Life (1606), 49; cf. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 151.

18. Ray, Collection of English Proverbs (1670), 6.

19. Mason, New Art of Lying, 88, 96.

20. Mackenzie, Moral Paradox, 18; idem, Moral Essay Preferring Solitude, 58–59.

21. Tillotson, “Sermon III. The Advantages of Religion to Societies,” in idem, Works, I, 37; Wolseley, Unreasonableness of Atheism (1675), 153.

22. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, e.g., Bk. II, sects. 110, 155–56, 226–27; see also Dunn, “Concept of ‘Trust’”; Silver, “‘Trust’ in Social and Political Theory,” 52–54.

23. Dunn, “Trust and Political Agency,” 80–81. Dunn here quotes Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, Bk. II, sect. 14.

24. Johnson, Adventurer 50 (20 April 1753), quoted in Bok, Lying, 19–20.

25. Montaigne, Essays, 24.

26. Hutcheson, System of Moral Philosophy (1755), II, 2–3, 28–29, 35.

27. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), 336–37.

28. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), 519–22.

29. Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), 112.

30. Durkheim, Division of Labor in Society, esp. 280.

31. Barnes, Nature of Power, 33–34, 88–89 (drawing upon social-psychological work by Colwyn Trevarthen, e.g., “Foundations of Intersubjectivity”); cf. Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society, 45. Wittgenstein speculated (Zettel, sect. 566) that “the attitude, the behaviour, of trusting” might be a human universal.

32. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 192–93.

33. Bok, Lying, 28–29, 185–91, quoting 28; see also B. Barber, Logic and Limits of Trust, esp. chs 1–2, 7–8.

34. Ezrahi, Descent of Icarus, ch. 2, quoting 44; see also T. Porter, “Quantification and the Accounting Ideal in Science”; idem, “Objectivity as Standardization.” I return to this theme in the epilogue.

35. E.g., Goffman, Presentation of Self, 1–14; idem, Interaction Ritual, esp. 5–45; idem, “Interaction Order,” 3.

36. Becker, “Notes on the Concept of Commitment,” in idem, Sociological Work, 269.

37. Goffman, Strategic Interaction, 104. It might also be added that social occasions vary enormously in their tolerances: contrast dealing with salespeople, teasing, and flirting with formal oath-giving. Truth-telling is policed according to what is understood and expected in the circumstances.

38. Simmel, “The Lie,” in idem, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 312–13; idem, Philosophy of Money, esp. 179; see also Holzner, “Sociological Reflections on Trust,” 337–38.

39. Luhmann, Trust and Power, esp. 4, 7–8, 10, 21–22; see also idem, “Familiarity, Confidence, Trust”; Holzner, “Sociological Reflections on Trust,” 333–34, 340–41; B. Barber, Logic and Limits of Trust, 10–11; Silver, “Trust’ in Social and Political Theory,” 59–63; Dunn, “Trust and Political Agency,” 85; and, for extended treatment of the relationship between trust, credibility, and social order, see Elster, The Cement of Society, 272–87.

40. Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, esp. 21–27, 79–85. To be sure, if planes routinely crashed we would not place much trust in these systems of expertise, and I will deal later with the source of the factual knowledge we might use to make a judgment of that sort. The epilogue picks up an important claim Giddens briefly makes in this connection about personal “access points” in one’s relationship with the institutions that house expertise.

41. Montaigne, “Of Physiognomy,” in idem, Essays, 792.

42. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations, 5, also 15–18.

43. Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrœ (1662), 7.

44. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Bk. I. ch. 3, sect. 24; Bk. IV, ch. 15, sect. 6; see also ibid., ch. 17, sect. 19; ch. 20, sect. 17. Locke’s formulation closely paralleled that of Boyle (“Christian Virt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Series Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Genres, Disciplines, and Conventions
• The Argument Summarized
• One. The Great Civility: Trust, Truth, and Moral Order
• Two. “Who Was Then a Gentleman?” Integrity and Gentle Identity in Early Modern England
• Three. A Social History of Truth-Telling: Knowledge, Social Practice, and the Credibility of Gentlemen
• Four. Who Was Robert Boyle? The Creation and Presentation of an Experimental Identity
• Five. Epistemological Decorum: The Practical Management of Factual Testimony
• Six. Knowing about People and Knowing about Things: A Moral History of Scientific Credibility
• Seven. Certainty and Civility: Mathematics and Boyle’s Experimental Conversation
• Eight. Invisible Technicians: Masters, Servants, and the Making of Experimental Knowledge
• Epilogue: The Way We Live Now
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index