Science as Social Existence , livre ebook

SCIENCE AS SOCIAL EXISTENCE


Science as Social Existence
Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Jeff Kochan






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© 2017 Jeff Kochan


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Jeff Kochan, Science as Social Existence: Heidegger and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge . Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0129
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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-410-7
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DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0129
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Contents
Introduction
1
Chapter One The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, Phenomenology, and the Problem of the External World
17
1.
Introduction
17
2.
Scepticism and SSK
24
3.
SSK and External-World Realism
27
4.
Phenomenology and the ‘Natural Attitude’
33
5.
The Phenomenology of Subjectivity in Heidegger’s Being and Time
37
6.
Heidegger’s Response to External-World Scepticism
43
7.
A Heideggerian Critique of SSK’s Response to External-World Scepticism
47
8.
Conclusion
50
Chapter Two A Minimal Realism for Science Studies
53
1.
Introduction
53
2.
Heidegger’s Existential Conception of Science
59
3.
Getting at the Real
68
4.
A Phenomenological Reformulation of SSK’s Residual Realism
76
5.
Rouse on Heidegger and Realism
83
6.
Minimal Realism and Scientific Practice
93
7.
Conclusion
101
Appendix
106
Chapter Three Finitude, Humility, and the Bloor-Latour Debate
111
1.
Introduction
111
2.
Kantian Humility and the Thing-in-Itself
116
3.
Latour’s Attack on Social Constructivism
120
4.
Bloor’s Defence of Social Constructivism
122
5.
Where the Dust Settles in the Debate
125
6.
Heidegger and the Thing-in-Itself
128
7.
Putting the Bloor-Latour Debate to Rest
135
8.
The Humility of Science Studies
140
9.
Conclusion
149
Chapter Four Things, Thinking, and the Social Foundations of Logic
151
1.
Introduction
151
2.
Heidegger on the Unity of Things and Thinking
157
3.
Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Plato
161
4.
Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Aristotle
164
5.
Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Descartes
170
6.
Heidegger’s Phenomenological History of Logic: Kant
176
7.
‘The Argument Lives and Feeds on Something’
188
8.
Time and Tradition at the Existential Root of Logic
194
9.
From the Phenomenology of Thinking to the Sociology of Knowledge
206
10.
The Social Foundations of Logic
209
11.
Conclusion
222
Chapter Five Mathēsis and the Emergence of Early-Modern Science
225
1.
Introduction
225
2.
Modern Science as Mathēsis
232
3.
Renaissance Regressus and the Logic of Discovery
247
4.
From Renaissance Regressus to Early-Modern Mathēsis
256
5.
Mathematics and Metaphysics at the Cusp of the Early-Modern Period
261
6.
Nature, Art, and Final Causes in Early-Modern Natural Philosophy
269
7.
Conclusion
281
Chapter Six Mathematics, Experiment, and the Ends of Scientific Practice
283
1.
Introduction
283
2.
The Galilean First Thing and the Aims of Experiment
289
3.
Releasing Experimental Things
302
4.
Boyle versus Line: A Study in Experimental Fact-Making
311
5.
Social Imagery and Early-Modern Science
328
6.
Conclusion
340
Chapter Seven Conclusion: Subjects, Systems, and Other Unfinished Business
347
Appendix
381
Acknowledgements
385
Bibliography
387
Index
415


Introduction


© Jeff Kochan, CC BY 4.0 http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0129.08
One sure-fire way to write an unsuccessful book is to try to make everyone happy. Because I had hoped to write a successful book, I started out by making a number of choices which I thought would make at least a few people unhappy. First, I chose to write a book promoting Martin Heidegger’s existential conception of science . Second, I chose to write a book promoting the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK). Third, I chose to argue that the accounts of science presented by SSK and Heidegger are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing. Hence, my choice of title: Science as Social Existence . In this book, I combine Heidegger’s early view of science as a form of existence with SSK’s view of science as a social activity. Through this combination, both accounts turn out to be more vital and interesting than they may have been when left to themselves. The book thus presents a tale of intellectual friendship between two perhaps unlikely companions. Of course, no friendship, no matter how promising, will please everyone. But this one happens to please me, and I hope that it will please you too.
SSK emerged in the 1970s, predominantly in the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh. The ‘Edinburgh School ’ introduced what they called the ‘strong programme’ in SSK. This signalled a dramatic step beyond what was now, retrospectively, identified as the ‘weak programme ’ in the sociology of science. The weak programme focussed mainly on institut ional studies of the scientific community: how scientists were organis ed into group s; and the social relationships which existed between them. The actual products of scientific activity — theor ies and fact s — and the means by which they are produced — techni ques and method s — were excluded from sociological analysis. These were thought to form the hard centre of science, the rational core, which sociology was not meant to touch.
In the 1970s, SSK practitioners began to touch this core. This disturbed some people. In the view of critics, SSK was undermining the rationali ty of science by addressing its conceptual and methodological core in sociological terms. Effectively, this meant that scientific rationality was being treated, through and through, as a social phenomenon, a phenomenon necessarily dependent for its legitimacy on local social and historical circumstances. Critics of SSK urged that this was wrong-headed, and they educed diverse intellectual arguments to support their view. Perhaps more importantly, however, these critics felt it was wrong: their distaste was not just intellectual, it was also moral — it came from the gut. For SSK practitioners, none of this appears to have been surprising. They saw their critics as harbouring a quasi-religious desire to preserve the alleged ‘sacredness’ of scientific rationality against the secularising impulses of a self-consciously naturalis tic and methodologically empiric ist social science. As social scientists who set out to study science itself, SSK practitioners were determined to treat scien