Social Studies of Science

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Stages in the Empirical Programme of Relativism

H.M. Collins
Social Studies of Science 1981; 11; 3
DOI: 10.1177/030631278101100101
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INTRODUCTION

Stages

in the

Empirical Programme

of Relativism

H. M. Collins

Modern philosophy of science has allowed an extra dimension into descriptions of the nature of scientific knowledge.
Theories are now seen as linked to each other, and tQ observations,
not by fixed bonds of logic and correspondence, but by a network,
each link of which takes time to be established as consensus
emerges and each link of which is potentially revisable
given
time. Many contributors to this new model intend only to make
philosophy of science compatible with history while maintaining an
epistemological demarcation between science and other intellectual
enterprises. One school, however, inspired in particular by Wittgenstein and more lately by the phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists, embraces an explicit relativism in which the
natural world has a small or non-existent role in the construction of
scientific knowledge.2Relativist or not, the new philosophy leaves
room for historical and sociological analysis of the processes which
lead to the acceptance, or otherwise, of new scientific knowledge.
One set of such analyses is gathered in this issue of Social Studies of
Science.
The studies reported here emerge out of the relativist approach,
the approach which has given rise to some of the most vigorous
social analyses. Studies of modern science in this genre have been
reported since at least 1975 but the reports have been either un-

time

3-1

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4
or, when published, scattered or diluted with programmatic material. This has led one commentator to miss the empirical
face of the relativist programme altogether! More important, it
has tended to make authors feel that every new report must defend
the relativist position anew. This collection, it is hoped, in addition
to its substantive contribution, will reveal clearly the flourishing
empirical programme associated with relativism and thereby obviate the necessity for further defences and re-affirmations.4
The substantive contribution of the papers can be thought of as
threefold. First, they develop the empirical programme in its
sociological details. Second, they contribute to the understanding
of the relationship between scientific knowledge and broader social
a point which needs no expansion - each
processes. And finally
of the five papers is a study of an area of modern science: memory
transfer; the detection of gravitational radiation; the detection of
magnetic monopoles; the experimental study of quantum nonlocality ; and the detection of solar neutrinos. Four of the papers
discuss overt controversies, while one discusses a case (non-locality)
in which the latent controversy did not develop. The areas of
science looked at are nearer to the mainstream of respectable
research than to the margins of science. In each study the investigator has built on a good understanding of the technical details
of the science in question, and has used extended informal interviews with relevant scientists as part of the method. In most cases
the salience of alternative interpretations of evidence, which
typifies controversies, has acted as a lever to elicit the essentially
cultural nature of the local boundaries of scientific legitimacy
normally elusive or concealed.5 All the papers confirm the potential
local interpretative flexibility of science which prevents experimentation, by itself, from being decisive. In particular, the sociallynegotiated character of experimental replication is further
documented. This interpretative flexibility was the main message of
the first stage of the relativist empirical programme.6At the same
time the papers go on to begin what might be called the second
stage of the programme by describing mechanisms which limit interpretative flexibility and thus allow controversies to come to an
end.
Traviss paper is, in the main, a replication of earlier work on
replication! It refers, however, to a new area of science. In the case
of worm running experiments, up to seventy factors could be invoked to justify the failure of an intended test of a memory

published,

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transfer effect. These factors included the phase of the Moon at

the time of the experiment and the orientation of the experimental
worm with respect to the Earths magnetic field. However, few of
the unlikely possibilities were taken seriously. Only a sub-set of
the possible experimental configurations was exhausted. What is
more, the constraints on interpretative flexibility in the case of
worm experiments in general seem to have been more severe than in
(much better understood) experiments on laboratory rats. For example, in the latter case, care in pre-experimental handling, which
was often ignored when worms were the experimental subjects, is
considered an important experimental safeguard. Thus, deficiencies in pre-experimental handling can be used to discount the results
of rat experiments, but not the results of most worm experiments.
Most of Traviss paper is concerned with one aspect of the memory
transfer controversy
the ability of worms to learn. That they can
learn was initially a heterodox suggestion, and one attempt to
discredit the idea appears to have been made through the selective
reporting of negative results in a prestigious professional outlet. In
the long term, however, this move failed, and the once-heterodox
view is now virtually the orthodoxy.
-

Collinss paper is

development of earlier work on replication in

gravity
experiments. It deals with a more recent chronological
cut of material. Again the potential openness of the debate is
shown, and one mechanism of closure is discussed
namely, the
use of rhetorical and presentational devices by one group of experimenters to make their own interpretation of the experimental
series the one credible possibility.
a

wave

Pickerings study of the magnetic monopole again confirms the

indecisiveness of experimental data taken by themselves. However,
Pickering concentrates his discussion on the way that debate was
curtailed, making the monopole interpretation untenable. He suggests that the debate was brought to an end by decisions, on the
part of experimenters and critics, to preserve the maximum number
of prior agreements on what could count as correct experimentation and what could be seen as credible experimental results. Since
it is theories which enable scientists to marshall previous sets of
agreements behind their views, by linking one area of science with
another, theoretical consensus becomes all-important. Pickerings
stress on theory as the major effective constraint on interpretative
flexibility leads him to recommend a shift in research emphasis

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distribution.

6
toward studies of the establishment of theoretical consensus
often established, he claims, without controversy.
Harvey looks at experiments on non-locality
experimental
tests of quantum theory. In this case conflicting experimental
results did not lead to overt controversy since the minority result,
which was not in favour of quantum theory, was not supported by
the scientist who found it. Nevertheless, Harvey is able to show the
important non-scientific assumptions that had to be made for this
experiment to be dismissed. Harvey introduces the term plausibility to summarize the pre-existing cultural constraints which allow
scientists to make such assumptions with confidence. When pressed, Harveys scientist respondents themselves referred to the implausibility, or screwiness, of the assumptions and arguments that
would be needed to allow the minority result to stand. It was shared
agreements about what constitutes screwiness which allowed
closure of this debate.
In the last part of his paper Harvey shows the particular value of
the blanket term plausibility when he looks at the changes in
plausibility that have attended one assumption associated with the
non-locality experiments - the timing hypothesis. He suggests that
the plausibility of this hypothesis has increased because one experimenter has planned an experiment to test it. According to
Harvey, then, experimental activity need not produce data to
change the pre-existing plausibility of an idea; the activity itself is
sufficient. This suggestion seems to contrast in an interesting way
with Pickerings conclusions about the power of pre-existing
-

theory.
Pinchs paper, on the solar neutrino debate, looks at scientists
claims about the certainty of the findings of the various sub-fields
within the overall controversy. By showing the differences in opinion he reveals that each of the sub-fields can be seen as either open
or closed. In the main, Pinchs scientist respondents claimed
closure for their own fields and interpretative licence for those of
others. On the other hand, it appeared that when they felt that they
were not making a public statement they were prepared to admit to
the possibility of interpretative licence in their own fields too.
Perhaps Pinchs paper reveals the way in which ideas about certainty, or plausibility, or closure, are maintained outside the inner circle of scientists who are in direct contact with the data.
I have said that the papers collected here contribute to two stages
of the empirical programme of relativism
showing the inter-

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distribution.

pretative flexibility of experimental data,

and showing some of the

mechanisms through which the potentially endless debate about interpretation is limited. As more studies are completed, similarities
and differences across scientific disciplines will emerge. So far the
degree of similarity in the central body of findings is as encouraging
as it is unusual in sociology.
Another part of the programme is to relate the sort of work
presented here to the wider social and political structure. Historians
have already produced studies which suggest homologies between
political and scientific views. The papers here show that the consensual interpretation of day-to-day laboratory work is only possible within constraints coming from outside that work. Thus the
homologies found in the historical studies are not incompatible
with the apparent methodological autonomy of science.8 The missing link is the detailed relationship of the constraining mechanisms
to the wider structure. It would be very satisfying if the establishment of a piece of knowledge belonging to a modern mainstream
science, with substantial institutional autonomy, could be described in terms of all three stages. The impact of society on knowledge
produced at the laboratory bench would then have been followed
through in the hardest possible case.

NOTES

Steve Shapin originally suggested the idea of an edited volume of papers to be taken
from the proceedings of a Conference on New Perspectives in the History and
Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, jointly sponsored by the British Society for the
History of Science and the British Sociological Association Sociology of Science
Study Group, at the University of Bath, UK, 27-29 March 1980 a conference of
which we were the joint organizers. Four of the papers in this issue are, in fact, based on work presented at that conference, but Shapin nobly withdrew from joint
editorship as it became clear that the final collection would consist of studies of
modern science only. Shapin has been an inspiration throughout. David Edge and
Roy MacLeod provided the opportunity of bringing these five studies together by inviting me to edit this issue of Social Studies of Science. David Edge also did most of
the routine editorial work and made extensive comments on the papers which have
proved to be of great value. Ron Westrum refereed the papers and provided notes
-

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8
which

are so helpful that it would be unfair for him to remain anonymous. Without
the help of Edge and Westrum this would be a much inferior issue. Nevertheless,
final responsibility for all editorial mistakes, omissions and infelicities rests with
myself. Finally, I would like to thank the authors for putting up with me and my,
sometimes substantial, suggestions for re-drafting.

1. Among the philosophers who have contributed, not always intentionally, to

this new view are Stephen Toulmin (see, for example, Human Understanding [Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1972]); W. V. O. Quine and Mary Hesse, for the revisability
of network links (see, for example, their respective works, From a Logical Point of
View [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953], and The Structure of
Scientific Inference [London: Macmillan, 1974]); Karl Popper, in his stress on the
temporary nature of contemporary knowledge (see, for example, The Logic of
Scientific Discovery [New York: Harper & Row, 1959]); and, in particular, Imre
Lakatos, for his negative thesis concerning the revisability of judgements about
falsification (see, for example, Proofs and Refutations [Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1976]). It is impossible to separate philosophical contributions
from the contributions of historians. T. S. Kuhn in particular has been influential in
breaking down the timeless quality of philosophy of science (see, for example, The
Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2nd
edn, 1970]). Paul Feyerabend has given the new view its most florid treatment in his
Against Method (London: New Left Books, 1975). We also now know that Ludwik
Fleck anticipated many of the new ideas about the analysis of scientific knowledge in
The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1979). A historian/sociologist who has stressed that findings can only become facts in certain circumstances is J. R. Ravetz, in his Scientific Knowledge
and its Social Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). Finally, John Ziman has
written about the consensual aspects of science in his Public Knowledge: The Social
Dimension of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
2. In this regard the best known books of Ludwig Wittgenstein are
Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1956). Peter Winchs book, The Idea of
a Social Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958) has shown the importance of Wittgenstein to many non-philosophers and has given rise to the rationality
debate (see, for example, B. Wilson [ed.], Rationality [Oxford: Blackwell, 1970]),
around which the early arguments about relativism were centred. David Bloor, in his
Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics, Studies in the
History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4 (1973), 173-91, and Knowledge and
Social Imagery (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), and Barry Barnes, in
his Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1974), have carried the relativistic argument to science in particular. In this
regard, see also H. M. Collins and G. Cox, Recovering Relativity: Did Prophecy
Fail?, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 423-44. A useful entrée to the interpretative sociology input to the debate is P. McHugh, On the Failure of
Positivism, in J. D. Douglas (ed.), Understanding Everyday Life (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971), 320-35. The phenomenological aspect in particular may be approached through P. Berger and T. Luckman, The Social Construction of Reality (London: Allen Lane, 1967). The source of the ethnomethod-

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9
ological input is H. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1967), but for the case of science this should be examined in conjunction with B. Barnes and J. Law, Whatever Should be Done with Indexical Expressions?, Theory and Society, Vol. 3 (1976), 223-37. M. J. Mulkays recent book,
Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Allen and Unwin, 1980) draws
together large areas of the debate in a very useful way. David Edges paper, Quantitative Measures of Communication in Science: A Critical Review, History of
Science, Vol. 17 (1979), 102-34, draws together criticisms of the major contemporary non-relativist approach to sociology of science.
3. J. Ben-David, Emergence of National Traditions in the Sociology of
Science, in J. Gaston (ed.), The Sociology of Science: Problems, Approaches and
Research (San Francisco, Calif.: Jossey-Bass, 1978), 197-218.
4. Empirical studies within the relativist programme include the following:
H. M. Collins, The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, or the
Replication of Experiments in Physics, Sociology, Vol. 9 (1975), 205-24; Collins,
Upon the Replication of Scientific Findings: A Discussion Illuminated by the Experiences of Researchers Into Parapsychology, Proceedings of the 4S/ISA Conference on Social Studies of Science, Cornell University, November 1976 (unpublished mimeo); Collins and T. J. Pinch, The Construction of the Paranormal:
Nothing Unscientific is Happening, in R. Wallis (ed.), On the Margins of Science:
The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge (Keele, Staffs.: Sociological Review
Monograph No. 27, 1979), 237-70; Collins and Pinch, Science and the Spoonbenders : Frames of Meaning and Extraordinary Science, final report (1978) on (UK)
SSRC-sponsored project on Cognitive Dislocation in Science (Bath: Bath Science
Studies Centre Manuscript, 1979), to be published by Routledge and Kegan Paul;
J. Dean, Controversy Over Classification: A Case Study from the History of
Botany, in B. Barnes and S. Shapin (eds), Natural Order: Historical Studies of
Scientific Culture (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), 211-30; B. Harvey, The Effects of Social Context on the Process of Scientific Investigation: Experimental
Tests of Quantum Mechanics, in K. D. Knorr, R. Krohn and R. D. Whitley (eds),
The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook,
Vol. 4 (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1980), 139-63; D. MacKenzie, Statistical Theory and
Social Interests: A Case Study, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 8 (1978), 35-83;
A. R. Pickering, The Hunting of the Quark, Isis
, Vol. 72, No. 262 (June 1981), in
press; T. J. Pinch, Normal Explanations of the Paranormal: The Demarcation
Problem in Parapsychology, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 9 (1979), 329-48;
S. Shapin, The Politics of Observation: Cerebral Anatomy and Social Interests in
the Edinburgh Phrenology Disputes, in Wallis (ed.), op. cit., 139-78; G. D. L.
Travis, On the Construction of Creativity: The Memory Transfer Phenomenon and
the Importance of Being Earnest, in Knorr et al. (eds), op. cit., 165-93; B. Wynne,
C. G. Barkla and the J Phenomenon: A Case Study in the Treatment of Deviance
in Physics, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 307-47. A number of other
studies by the same authors are still in draft form. An anthropological/
ethnomethodological approach may be found in B. Latour and S. Woolgar,
Laboratory Life (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979), and S. Woolgar, Writing an Intellectual History of Scientific Development: The Use of Discovery Accounts,
Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 395-422. Ethnomethodological studies by
other authors will be forthcoming. M. J. Mulkay and G. N. Gilbert are currently
completing a large study of an area of biochemistry oxydative phosphorylation.
-

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10
Their work, which uses the same methods as most of the other studies, promises
much valuable new and comparative material. R. Westrum has produced studies of
the process by which information about anomolous events
sea-serpents,
is received and processed by the scientific establishment. His
meteorites, and the like
work is exactly compatible with the relativist programme — see R. Westrum, Social
Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of UFOs, Social Studies of Scrence, Vol. 7
(1977), 271-302; Science and Social Intelligence about Anomalies: The Case of
Meteorites, ibid., Vol. 8 (1978), 461-93; and Knowledge about Sea-Serpents, in
Wallis (ed.), op. cit., 293-314.
5. M. J. Mulkays article, Norms and Ideology in Science, Social Science In, Vol. 15 (1976), 637-56, discusses the ideology of science. Mulkays arguformation
ment would explain why parochial cultural boundaries might be concealed behind a
universalistic face.
6. One might say that this part of the programme showed the Quine-DuhemLakatos position to be more than an abstract, or long-term account of science. It uncovered the equivalent of this philosophical and historical argument in the day-today activity of contemporary laboratory science.
7. Paul Formans long paper, Weimar Culture, Causality and Quantum
Theory, 1918-1927: Adaptation by German Physicists and Mathematicians to a
Hostile Intellectual Environment, in R. McCormmach (ed.), Historical Studies in
the Physical Sciences, No. 3 (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1971), 1-115, is the best known article in this genre. Shapins paper, The Politics of
Observation..., op. cit. note 4, is the most complete attempt to link fairly highlevel political structures to the technical details of a scientific debate. He shows how
Edinburgh politics affected observation of the intricate formations of the human
brain. There are, of course, many compatible studies, at a more abstract level, in the
Marxist tradition.
8. For an argument reconciling social contingency with scientific method see
H. M. Collins, The Role of the Core-Set in Modern Science: Social Contingency
With Methodological Propriety in Discovery, History of Science
, Vol. 19 (March
1981), in press.
-

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