I don’t get an awful lot of time to read books these days. Sad but true. I need something with short chapters or — better still — short stories so I can make the most of them before I fall asleep. It is awful picking up a book the next night, opening it right to where you left the bookmark, and realizing that you have absolutely no idea how you got there. But I do read book reviews. And that’s kind of enough, mostly.
So when a friend sent me a link to a review of Cliff Conner’s “A People’s History of Science : Miners, Midwives, and ‘Low Mechanicks’â€, I thought, OK, this will pass the time on the train home.
And it did, but not in the way I hoped it might. I can’t criticize the book (see above) but the review had me reaching for my pen. The idea is a cracker. Tell the story of the people who really did science but failed to receive acclaim or glory. Sounds like a great organizing principle for a little popularization. But Louis Proyect’s review left me gasping.
In chronological order, we have:
“unsung heroes and heroines, like Antony van Leeuwenhoek …†I confess, I find it hard to know exactly what “unsung†means in this context. Does not every schoolchild know that Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope? So the establishment looked down on him. So what? (And if he didn’t invent it, he certainly brought it to an amazing degree of perfection.) Proyect seems to equate “unsung†with “low-born†or possibly even “uneducatedâ€. But Leeuwenhoek’s contributions were welcomed by England’s Royal Society, and when doubt was cast on his observations of microscopic life forms the Society sent a team out to Holland to see for themselves. Leuwenhoek was fully vindicated. Unsung? I don’t think so.
Then there is a section on “the rise of numeric symbolsâ€. And cracking useful they are too. But is that science? Of course I have no idea of how — or even whether — Conner defines science. For me it is about investigating and understanding the way the world works. Numeric symbols are a dandy tool to assist that enterprise. They are important in what Proyect calls “how science is doneâ€. But they are not themselves science. And pursuing the notion of “how science is done,†I’d say that the entire review suffers a bad case of what we biologists call physics envy.
That’s not a crime. But it is the case that too many people have considered Karl Popper’s notions of the nature of science — what it is and how it is done — as definitive. They’re not. They’re just one person’s view of one kind of science. In fact, I reckon the vast majority of scientists do not set out impersonally to falsify their chosen hypothesis, as Popper says they do. They may say that. But in their hearts they are personally invested in proving that their views are correct. Just like other people. So when Proyect writes “The reputation that elite scientists have for being impartial and above superstition …†I have to ask: do they deserve this reputation?
By this stage, being new to Swans and to Proyect I was beginning to wonder where, as the young people say, he was coming from. From a blog called “Unrepentent Marxist,†and a mailing list called Marxmail. Why continue this review of a review, my conscience asked. Well, I’m almost done, I replied.
“Robert Boyle was an aristocrat, who inherited a fortune from his landlord father Sir Richard Boyle.â€
Yes, and? Your point is?
“With his vast fortune, Boyle was able to set up workshops and staffed them with all sorts of craftsmen, from machinists and glassblowers to lens grinders and alchemists (yes, alchemists!). Although Boyle took credit for what happened in his laboratories, recent scholarship concludes that very little of the work was done by Boyle himself. One of the most important inventions was an air pump that was almost certainly constructed by his assistants, despite bearing his name (machine Boyleana).â€
And how, prithee, does this differ from the situation today in science, where the lab head, Dr Grant Swinger, appears on all of its published papers, sometimes as lead author, sometimes not? Just because it was reputation and skills that built the lab, rather than inherited money? I’ve seen inherited money put to worse uses.
Proyect says that “the presence of an alchemist in Boyle’s laboratory would raise eyebrows for a modern reader who is accustomed to thinking of this in terms of astrology, witchcraft and the other ‘black arts’â€. And so it might. But while he praises Conner for explaining that alchemy is much misunderstood today, he thinks it is important because chemistry and metal working (which is how he characterizes alchemy) had their roots in early metal crafts. But what about the even finer link between alchemists and confidence tricksters? If you want to take advantage of the aristos, what better way than to pretend that you can turn base metal into gold. It just needs a little more research, just a little more funding, your highness.
There’s more to find fault with. Like repeatedly misspelling Rachel as Carsons, when the extensive quote he lifts (from Conner? It isn’t clear) has her correctly as Carson throughout. And to marvel that the status quo always defends itself, illustrated by the attacks on Carson, is just more physics envy. So, scientists are human. Welcome to the world.
There are, of course, some who are less human than others. Like the unsung Thomas Henry Huxley, among whose pithier aphorisms is this: “The great tragedy of science—the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.â€
I shan’t be reading Conner’s book, and despite everything, I enjoyed reading Proyects review, because it made me think. I will say this in Proyect’s favour: he uses good blog software.
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I am not sure what to make of this review, although I am convinced that the reviewer will never read Cliff’s book. Here’s a letter from Cliff to an old friend of ours and fellow scientist that might clarify some of the issues, since I have the feeling that Jeremy shares Rod’s objections.
Dear Rod,
My reply to your belated reply is belated, too, so we’re even on that score. (Marush and I were in Arizona, so today is the first time I’ve had a chance to really give this the attention it deserves.)
I appreciate your attempt to avoid airing your disagreements with my book in public, but if you should be drawn into discussing it, don’t worry. It’s a legitimate discussion, and your particular objection is an important one. As long as we both avoid ad hominem attacks, what’s the problem? Friends can have honest differences of opinions.
When I say “your particular objection,” I mean, of course, the one about the relationship between science and technology. As I was writing the book, I knew that this would be the primary challenge I would receive, because it goes right to the heart of my thesis and is a very widely held position. But my opposing position on the science-technology relationship is widely held as well (as you must be aware, because you say you’re an Isis subscriber), so it’s a fundamental issue. Most people who hold the view opposing mine, however, will simply ignore my book and won’t bother to dispute it, so by airing your objection you give me an opportunity to take it head on.
When you raised this objection at the book-reading I did in San Francisco, I don’t remember the exact words I used in responding to you. Extemporaneous speech is often imprecise, so if I really did say that there is no distinction between science and technology, I hope you won’t hold me to that formulation. Of course there’s a distinction; the two words aren’t synonyms. So although I do want to argue in favor of an intimate connection between science and technology, it isn’t my intention to simply “lump them together.”
Even though science and technology are not the same thing, they are not nearly as separate as you suggest. One problem, I think, is that you have an exaggerated view of the purity of science, and tend to idealize it. When you say, “It has been reasonably assumed that the laws of science apply throughout the universe; they have worked before us and will work after us,” I think you are confusing the regularities of the externally existing world of material reality with what you call “our formulation of the laws,” which you acknowledge “may be wildly incorrect.” Science is the formulation, produced by fallible humans, not the external reality itself. Science (as you point out) is a collection of ideas, not material reality.
The question for historians of science is: Where did those ideas come from? Is the gospel according to St. John correct in saying that in the beginning was the word? Or was Goethe correct when he replied; “The word? No, in the beginning was the deed!” Since both you and I consider ourselves Marxists, I think we should be able to agree that we side with Goethe on this issue. The notion that the word is prior to the deed is consistent with Platonic idealism and theistic religion, but not materialism.
The deeds that produced the ideas of science are the activities collectively described as technology. This is not a proposition that I adopted as a matter of “convenience” or to “fit in with my thesis,” it is a historically demonstrable relationship. What this means is that there can be no history of science that does not pay very close attention to the history of technology. That is what I set out to do in my book: to demonstrate the historical dependence of science on technology, and I believe I successfully accomplished that. As a corollary, I showed that ordinary working people—the “deed” people—played a more fundamental role in the history of science than the elite theoreticians—the “word” people.
This historical relationship also means that technology must be accorded ontological priority over science. In simpler terms containing an implicit value judgment: technology is more important than science, at least from a historical standpoint. As much as it galls those who would like to portray science as a prime mover of historical change, it is simply untrue.
From our twentieth- and twenty-first-century perspective, it may seem that science precedes technology, because in some spectacular instances—the creation of nuclear bombs, for example—it has indeed been the case that the “word” (theory) preceded the “deed” (the practical application). But throughout tens of thousands of years of human history the relationship has been just the opposite: science lagged behind technology—usually far behind. The classic example is the steam engine. Idealists might assume that brilliant theorists worked out the laws of thermodynamics, applied them, and voila!—the steam engine was invented. But in fact the steam engine was invented by empirical means, by artisans, and the laws of thermodynamics were produced after the fact by theorists trying to figure out how it worked. For a twentieth-century example, consider the airplane. Was it created through the application of theories of aerodynamics? No, quite the opposite. It was invented by a couple of bicycle mechanics in face of the collective opinion of theoretical physicists that it was impossible, and after the possibility was demonstrated, the theorists studied the mechanics’ accomplishment in order to create aerodynamics as a new scientific discipline.
I used the word “empirical” in the preceding paragraph. That’s a key concept in this discussion. Is knowledge produced by empirical means not science? I think it would be difficult to defend that proposition. One of the central themes of my book is that the main achievement of the Scientific Revolution wasn’t the progression of ideas from Copernicus to Newton that the traditional narratives celebrate, but was the emergence of the experimental approach to investigating nature that emerged from the workshops of artisans. Those who define science to include only theoretical endeavors and deny that empirical methods are part of science can of course draw a rigid line separating technology and science, but they are operating with a very narrow, ahistorical definition of science.
So that’s my position, Rod. I don’t expect to “convert” anyone to my way of thinking on this issue, because I think the exaltation and idealization of science derives from an inner need to find a “rock of eternity,” a source of absolute authority. But there are no absolutes, and science is a particularly shaky rock to try to stand on.
Cliff
Thanks for that Louis.