Abstract
Science is without exception customized. The house is haunted and every sound confirms the hypothesis. Although this collection of essays based on a conference about the customization of science is not about haunted houses, nor about the science of exorcizing haunted houses, demons, dybbuks, and ghosts, it is about the hidden agendas of science. The previous sentence needs qualification: according to Steve Fuller’s essay (chapter 9), his theory of Protscience akin to Protestantism, where everyone has equal religious authority (in theory), so every consumer of science, has complete authority to modify the science they acquire according to their individual belief system, including demonology, spectrology, phatasmology, or paranormal studies (my example). I mention Fuller’s essay as an extreme instance of the customization of science hypothesis advocated by all the authors in the book. Although, the Postscript (chapter 12) admits that the view of noncustomized science is out there, the noncustomized science hypothesis is not one accepted by the authors and editors. There is one essay by Ullica Segerstrale (chapter 6) that verges on disagreement with the customization hypothesis in its discussion of what the author calls Mertonian norms for science (92). Also, another author, Lynn Hankinson Nelson (chapter 6), takes a moderate view of the customization hypothesis where certain aspects of science seem to be agenda-neutral and virtually universal and objective—in particular, scientific methodology. However, some so-called scientific disciplines such as sociobiology have a hidden androcentric agenda.
One difficulty unacknowledged by the adherents of the customization hypothesis is that in a sense, the hypothesis is trivial: science is a human activity and as such is embedded in society. Whether scientists like it or not, society has a way of imposing agendas on science, as society does on all social institutions. In other words, the book and its hypothesis of customization closes off public discussion or rational disagreement in the public forum of reason—the Rawlsian and Habermasian forum discussed in chapter 10 by Ulf Zakariasson. On one hand, the hypothesis of customization carries an aura of the obvious and trivial and so makes any denial of it by defenders of science as an autonomous discipline that searches for truth and knowledge for its own sake regardless of the personal and even public belief systems of scientists, ridiculous if not impossible. On the other hand, the hypothesis of customization appears novel and revolutionary involving an unspoken assumption that its denial is only made by people who adhere to an old-fashioned and obviously outdated theory of science, barely worthy of mention in the Postscript, and not worthy of argument at all in the main body of essays.
Let us take a step back and figure out why the conference and its offshoot publication were thought to be of interest and were thought to serve some intellectual purpose. Of course, such conferences and books serve career purposes and even propaganda purposes for the philosophical movement of the authors—neo-pragmatism with a dash of Quinean holism: but I am asking the question—what do we expect to learn from the socially embedded aspects of science? First, science as embedded in religious society: science is full of people who are religious or who are embedded in religious society. Second, science as embedded in the society of naturalist philosophical scientists: science is also embedded in the society of the new natural philosophers: the loose society of those who espouse the outlook of science or worldview of science or who extrapolate a worldview from the science of the day. Third, science is embedded in general society. Science as a human activity is driven by various public and private economic interests and political bandwagons such as green (environmentalists), blue (reformists), red (leftists), and chameleons (opportunists). These three forms of the social embedded aspect of science (religious society, naturalistic philosophical society, and general society) form the three main sections of the book—giving the book the appearance of an exhaustive, consistent, and comprehensive, though brief, study of science as a society in a society that is customized by and for society.
If we dare propose a contrarian position, we open up the possibility that the book, though consistent, is neither exhaustive nor comprehensive. The contrarian position is that hidden agendas are unimportant for science, and that science over time, in the long view, escapes imposed agendas and creates growing bodies of knowledge that gradually eliminate bugs in the information system of science. It is an information system open to all, where there is not much that the study of hair-styles and hidden agendas adopted by and/or imposed on scientists can contribute to our understanding of science.
However, if we look a little deeper into the book, we find that the customization hypothesis does have more content and is less trivial than it appears on first acquaintance.
I want to focus on three essays that do enrich the customization hypothesis and escape the narrow bias and circumscribed agenda posed by the agenda-setting editor of the book, Mikael Stenmark, and the introductory essay of chapter 1. The enriched version of the customization hypothesis in the three essays I will highlight is as follows: science is a disruptive force in society, and society struggles with the disruption by attempting to put brakes on science, but society almost always falters and ends up becoming destabilized at the least, or radically transformed at the most. This is an interesting and nontrivial version of the customization hypothesis: let me call it science as a trans-formative social force hypothesis, to distinguish it from the trivial hypothesis that science is just another human social activity subject to all sorts of fashions and outside agendas, and I will call that trivial version of the customization hypothesis, the bandwagon effect.
Scientists like members of other social groups join bandwagons—clothing styles and intellectual fashions—and become swayed by various ideologies, some in religion, some in general intellectual outlooks, and some in various political and social/economic trends and movements. Steve Fuller describes between the lines of his essay what I call the bandwagon effect in his discussion of the economics of the selling of science to the general public as composed of customers and consumers in the age of Protscience. “. . . science needs to devote an increasing amount of its own resources to proactive marketing, or promarketing” (152). The main problem of science today is, “How can science build its customer base?” (153). Huh? How about the unsolved problems of physics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics) such as the elusive and perhaps illusive Theory of Everything? Focusing on marketing as opposed to intellectual enquiry results in a pursuit of the trivial and in the trivial version of the customization hypothesis that I call the bandwagon effect. However, there is a more debatable and controversial version of the customization hypothesis that I call the science as a trans-formative social force or the trans-formative shock effect for short. Now here are the three essays that delve into the trans-formative shock effect of science.
Although chapters 2, 4, 5 (in part I) and chapters 7 and 8 in part II concern the trans-formative shock value of science for theology and religion, most function as theological and religious apologetics. I will pick one of the apologetical essays because it actually admits that the trans-formative shock of science is basically a cognitive or intellectual conflict, a cognitive dissonance, where both science and religion have the same goal: seeking and finding Truth. In chapter 4, “Christianity and Science,” Rene van Woudenberg considers many of the conflict-avoidance techniques of religious apologetics and dismisses them with the following argument. All conflict-avoidance techniques presume a demarcation criterion for science. However, if science is not distinguished by one feature that makes science what it is, but rather shares all of its various attributes, including the logic of discovery according to Popper (60ff.), then there is no way to isolate off other disciplines and social activities from the impact of science. Moreover, van Woudenberg argues that since . . . science is an open-ended affair, it goes, and ought to go, wherever the evidence leads. And how can one assume in advance that science will never lead in the direction of a God, or a creator, or of items that are causally inert? (64)
However, van Woudenberg does not ask whether religion is an open-ended affair. He actually assumes it has a large list of what van Woudenberg calls “. . . ‘Moorean truths’ . . .” (67). Thus, science as truth seeking, when it conflicts with Christian Moorean truths, requires accommodation and assimilation to Christianity or customization. Thus, van Woudenberg implicitly admits that science has had a trans-formative shock effect on religion and that the only way that religion can regain its stability is by closing down science when it conflicts with religion: “. . . there are truths that science cannot touch, although they can still be known” (70). The unintended upshot of van Woudenberg’s approach of hermetically sealing the Moorean truths of religion is to stymie the intellectual development of religion by blocking off religion from science in its open-ended search for unexpected truths, and this is supposed to be a customization of science.
Apart from the trans-formative shock effect of science on religion, as indirectly discussed in van Woudenberg’s essay, we have the trans-formative shock effect of science on various general outlooks called “worldviews” in this book. This type of trans-formative shock effect is discussed, also indirectly, in chapter 6, “Implicit and Explicit Customized Science: The Case of Evolutionary Biology” by Ullica Segerstrale. The outlooks of science, whether those in which science is embedded or those that are extrapolations of current science, can often disrupt, or at least, destabilize traditional viewpoints. How those who hold the traditional viewpoints respond to interference by science is subliminally realized in Segerstrale’s observation: “One of the important, unrecognized issues on both sides [ . . . of total world views in conflict . . . ] had to do with different convictions about the nature of ‘good science’” (95). The core point of the essay is that the “total world views” produced by various offshoots of evolutionary biology, of new species of science that evolved from Darwinian evolutionary theory and from genetic studies, conflict with other “total world views” that deem the science of those offshoots of respected biological theories as “bad science.” However, the sub-text of the essay is that the defenders of the new extrapolations of respected biological theories modify the criteria of “good science.” Actually, science, according to Segerstrale, is customized such that the various conflicting “total world views” are considered as scientifically based: “. . . this field of science [evolutionary biology] may be employed to prove almost any point one wishes . . .” (103). Thus, the reaction to disruptive science is to find a supposed scientific basis for one’s preferred position. This type of reaction buffers the shock effect of science, as indicated but not explicitly stated in the essay.
Given the apparent malleability of customized science, one may wonder about the malleability or lack of malleability of the general society in which customized science is embedded. The only essay in the book that directly addresses the problem of malleability in science and society is chapter 11, “Bioconservatism as Customized Science” by Adam Briggle. The question of malleability—who should be malleable, science or society—is a response to the disruptive force of customized science, the trans-formative shock effect of science. Here is the issue as Briggle states it: “In the main, their [‘bioconservatives or biocons’] customization work consists of drawing lines and limits for biological research and biotechnological applications—to rein in or prevent the disruptive potentials of technosciences that threaten the “known goods” of the present” (176). What can the “technosciences” disrupt? Basically, what can be disrupted is not so much belief systems, though Briggle does not rule out that form of disruption, but an even sociologically deeper layer of society, “the conservative disposition” (181ff.) and the fundamental principle of the conservative disposition, “the precautionary principle.” Briggle explains the precautionary principle, which he says is really “. . . a conservative disposition, a prevailing temperament, or basic attitude or comportment toward the world” (181), in the following way: . . . innovations should be given particular scrutiny with respect to risk . . . uncertainties should be reduced to risk . . . prior to action, and . . . proponents of innovations bear the burden of proving beneficence (rather than opponents proving harm). (181)
The precautionary principles sound similar to two familiar engineering rules of thumb: (a) If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and (b) Murphy’s Law—what can go wrong will go wrong.
All in all, the most interesting aspect of the customization issue is not so much the social observation that science is embedded, nor that scientists are humans and follow fads and have hidden agendas, nor even that science is a corporate entity where sales and marketing are all important. Rather, to my mind, what is interesting about the customization issue is how science and the critics of science are enmeshed in an attempt either to promote destabilizing and transforming current society or conserving “the known goods.” However, this book shelves what I think is the most important problem of science as a society and science as embedded in outlooks, and general society: how do such embedded people who pursue science, produce information systems that are universally available and comprehensible, unlike the specialized jargons of theology, philosophy, and postmodern humanities? Moreover, even beyond science, how do technologists, engineers, and mathematicians also produce information systems that transcend the limitations of culture, creed, and language?