CSE 275: Social Theories of Technology and Science

6. Social Theories of Science and Technology

Having briefly discussed the intertwining of social, technical and ethical issues, we will now consider the sociology of technology (and science) a bit more deeply. A sociological approach must concern itself with what engineers and scientists actually do, which is often different from what they say they do. This is a special case of a very general problem in anthropology and ethnography, called the say-do problem. Among the factors that produce this discrepency are taboos (things that people are not allowed to talk about in their culture), tacit knowledge, false memory syndrome, simple not knowing (which may not stop them from saying!), and the myths that all professions have about their work; very often the discrepency is not a deliberate deception. Tacit knowledge is knowledge of how to do something, without the ability to say how we do it. Instances are very common in everyday life and in professional life; for example, few people can describe how they tie their shoes, brush their teeth, or organize their schedule. As an illustration, numerous case studies have shown that a large part of "routine" office work actually consists of handling exceptions, i.e., of doing things that by definition are not routine; but if you ask (for example) a file clerk what he does, you will get only a description of the most routine activities. One clear example is the difference between what open source "hackers" say they are doing (their "ideology" or self-mythology) and what they actually do, as described in Homesteading the Noosphere, by Eric Raymond (at this time, you should read the abstract and section 3; we will read the whole paper later in the course).



6.1 Actor-Network Theory


Latour's view that people and machines should be treated as equal is called the Principle of Symmetry, and it is sometimes applied in ways that may be surprising. For example, he says we have to negotiate with machines just as with people, we need to recruit them as allies, to authorize and notify them, and to mobilize and delegate them; he claims that this kind of language should be taken literally not metaphorically. Of course, this is opposite to what most people think. Perhaps these terms seem strange because they are so anthropomorphic. Personally, I consider them as to be suggestive metaphors. What do you think?

Latour's book Aramis is the sad story of a project to build a highly innovative public transport system in the suburbs of Paris; the story is sad because the project fails, and the Aramis system is left without any friends (the system actually appears as a character in this book, and speaks for itself!). Latour claims that only in successful projects can you figure out what actually happened; this is perhaps a bit shocking. Does objectivity really only exist for successful projects? This strange viewpoint comes from his requirement that you (as the researcher) should take the viewpoint of the actors, plus the observation that the actors will not agree among themselves about what happened when the project failed, due to the dissolution of the alliances recruited to create the project in the first place. (There is a parallel here with the rational reconstructions that occur after a paradigm shift - see Section 5 of the class notes for these terms, which come from the theories of Thomas Kuhn.)

Another piece of Latour's unusual terminology is continous chains of translation, which refers to the ever ongoing efforts to keep actors involved with the project, by "translating" into their own languages and values along the links in the project. This process is also called recuitment, and the word mediate is sometimes used for the role of intermediate actants in chains of translation; this terminology provides a nice way to avoid the deterministic bias of the more usual ways of speaking of the role of (for example) a machine, a paper record, or a technology, in some project or part of a project.

In Aramis, Latour says (p.99, 101):



These quotations not only deny the separability of the social and the technical (even munging them into a single word), but they also make the same point as mentioned above, about the necessity for translations. Note that this way of thinking has the effect of overcoming technological determinism, which Latour has described in terms of "heroic narratives of technological innovation." Heroic narratives, also called grand narratives and master narratives, are a major theme of contemporary cultural studies, including the sociology of science and technology; in essence, such narratives emphasize, or valorize, certain actants (e.g., Sir Isaac Newton), themes (e.g., physical theories of the solar system), and values (e.g., precise descriptions and predictions) at the expense of others (e.g., astrology, fate, and personal identity). Thus, grand narratives create coherence, a good story line, at the expense of diversity.

I would like to step outside this exposition of classical ANT for a moment to emphasize a feature that is usually quickly passed over, using ideas from Chapter 5 of our class notes. First notice that translation, mediation, or recruitment involves values in a crucial way, since the point is to "interest" the actors by appeal to their own values, using their own languages. This way of thinking about socio-technical systems includes a clear understanding of the fact that many different value systems and languages may be involved, and that communication is likely to be happening in all of them. For non-human actants, these languages and values may be technical, e.g., gears have some number of teeth per meter, and need oil. (It is amusing to note that the politics socio-technical systems is sometimes described using similar metaphors of gears and oil.)


When all the translations succeed, the technology "disappears", i.e., it becomes "transparent" and can be taken for granted. But if the translations fail to "interest" the actors enough, then the actors go their own ways again, each with a different view of what the project is (or was).



On page 108 of Aramis, Latour argues that the "division of labor" into subprojects (and other aspects of projects) can only be made after a project has succeeded (I called this the retrospective hypothesis in Requirements Engineering as the Reconciliation of Technical and Social Issues). This may sound like a radical claim, but it is what you see in real projects, and quotes from Latour's interviews, as well as my own experience, back this up empirically.

Pages 118 to 120 contrast VAL (a different French public transportation project that actually succeeded) with Aramis, arguing that VAL can be described "heroically" only because it succeeded (again, compare with "rational reconstruction" in Section 5 of the class notes). There is no "grand heroic narrative," no hero, because each actant has its own story to tell, based on its own values. Moreover, Latour argues that VAL succeeded because it continued to compromise and Aramis failed because it did not continue to compromise.





In particular, Latour denies that sociology can ever attain a viewpoint that is "objective" - above and beyond the viewpoints of the participants - or of a metalanguage in which to express such a viewpoint.





This is the only case where "classical" sociology might apply. Latour claims that technologists, in doing their jobs, are actually doing better sociology than the classical sociologists.
(The neologism valorimeter just refers to some way of measuring how well an actor's requirements are being met; examples are passenger flow, cost, publicity, etc.)
(Performatives are speech acts that actually "perform" what they say, i.e., they cause it to be the case; standard examples are christening and marrying; this notion was introduced by the logician J.L. Austin. Here it is being used as a metaphor about the effects of successful chains of translations.) This explains how it can come to seem that classical sociology does apply. A similar but weaker point is that all stories told by the various actants are consistent with one another, due to the chains of translations, even though they differ in ways that reflect the different values of the different actants.

It is interesting to contrast the view of ANT with the "dead mechanical universe" of classical mechanics; the ANT universe is very much alive, full of actors and their actions, full of all kinds of interactions, that are constantly reconfiguring the network. This is a very non-classical point of view.

Actor-network theory can be seen as a systematic way to bring out the invisible or hidden infrastructure that is usually left out of the "heroic" (or "hagiographic") accounts of scientific and technological achievements that are unfortunately the norm. Newton did not act alone in creating the theory of gravitation: he needed observational data from the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, he needed publication support from the Royal Society and its members (most especially Edmund Halley), he needed the geometry of Euclid, the astronomy of Kepler, the mechanics of Galileo, the rooms, lab, food, etc. at Trinity College, an assistant to work in the lab, the mystical idea of action at a distance, and more, much more (see the book on Newton by Michael White listed on the course homepage). The same can be said of any scientific or technological project: a network is needed to support it. Other examples of famous heroic narratives in technology and science for which there exist good actor network studies which take a non-heroic view emphasizing infrastructure include Edison's invention of the electric light bulb and Pasteur's work on bacteria (the latter in a classic study by Latour). No doubt Newton, Edison, Pasteur, Einstein, etc. were extraordinary individuals with extraordinary talents, but they were also parts of extensive networks that had to be mobilized in order to accomplish any significant tasks.



Throughout the above, I have tried to make clear any differences between what Latour says and what I think; it is also interesting to compare these two texts (Aramis and these notes) with the Kling reading that begins on page 32, "Information and computer scientists as moral philosophers and social analysts," and with classical sociology.

6.2 Science Wars

In the 1950s, CP Snow pointed out a large gap between the sciences and the humanities in a famous book called The Two Cultures. He noted that highly educated people in literature, classics, etc. typically had very little understanding of what (for example) Newton's laws say, and that highly educated people in physics, chemistry, etc. typically had very little understanding of current trends in the arts and humanities. Not only has this mutual ignorance increased over the years (due in part to increasing specialization, and to decreasing standards in education), but there has been an ominous, and very sad, new development, sometimes called the "science wars," in which scientists attack current movements in the arts and humanities, and scholars in the humanities counterattack.

One notorious exchange in this so called war was a hoax perpetrated by a physics professor at New York University, Alan Sokal, who submitted a piece of deliberate (but carefully crafted) nonsense to Social Text, a leading journal in so called "critical studies"; after some discussion, the editors agreed to accept the paper without their suggested modifications, for a special issue entitled Science Wars (Spring/Summer 1996). Sokal's paper, Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity (dated "28 Nov 94, revised 13 May 99") is available from his homepage, along with much else; though very one-sided, this site shows the large scale of the debate that ensued. A less biased and even more complete website on this topic is maintained by Gen Kuroki of Tohoku University in Japan; this site has links to virtually everything of interest, and even a keyword search facility. (I have selected some items as readings.) Sokal described his effort as "an experiment" to determine whether or not academic standards were lower in the field of science studies than in the natural sciences; however, his real motive seems to have been considerably less "objective" than that description might suggest. In any case, an uncontrolled experiment that produced exactly one data point is not an adequate basis for confirming (or denying) such an hypothesis. (However, it is amusing to note that, as often happens in the social sciences, simply reporting this one result has greatly changed the social context in which any future experiments of this kind would have to be conducted.)

What is important for us about this affair is the way that it focuses attention on some key methodological issues for the social study of science. But first, let's backtrack a bit. Suppose that (like Galileo), you are interested in objects rolling down an inclined plane. Although, as discussed in Section 5 of the CSE 275 class notes, it is impossible to avoid making some theoretical commitments (such as the notion of length), it would be wrong to simply assume the outcome in advance; this would be completely contrary to the nature of empirical science (but it is what the Aristotelian physicists of Galileo's time did). In the same way, no scientific study of science could assume that the outcome of the science-in-progress being studied is already known; this would not only violate the scientific method, it would also mean assuming that the social scientists are better at science than the scientists they are studying.

Instead, a social scientist must "follow the actors," as Latour says; this principle is more technically known as methodological relativism. It seems to be the most contentious point in the science wars debate. Sokal believes it is wrong, insisting that priority must be given to the objective truth, instead of the momentary opinions of the scientists involved (of either stripe). The trouble with this view is that "the objective truth" is not in general known. This is of course true by definition for research that is still in progress, such as the currently much debated experimental confirmation of gravity waves. But it is also true for "classical" theories, which (in general) eventually get superseded by some closer approximation; for example, Newtonian mechanics has been superseded by quantum mechanics and relativity theory, and these two will, it is hoped, in turn someday be superseded by a general unified field theory. Of course, many lower level scientific assertions are almost entirely unproblematic (e.g., ice melts), and this fact must also be taken into account by any competent sociologist of science. But the situation is by no means so simple as Prof. Sokal would have us believe. In my opinion, a careful reading of Sokal's writings (e.g., A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies) shows the following:

  1. Sokal does not understand methodological relativism (e.g., see his goading remarks about jumping out the window of his apartment);
  2. in fact, he confuses it with philosophical relativism, which asserts that all truths are a matter of opinion; and more generally,
  3. Sokol confuses the sociology of science with more extreme movements (which are especially prevalent in France) such as extreme forms of deconstructionism and post-modernism.
For example, Sokal asserts that sociologists of science deny that there is a real world; but it is very easy to check that this assertion is false. By the way, it is interesting to think about the kind of relativism that is advocated by classical ANT: it appears to be a somewhat strong variant of methodological relativism, but the rhetoric used might suggest that it is instead a weak form of philosophical relativism.

On the other hand, the sociologists of science are not without their own problems. For example, some have claimed that they do not need to actually understand the science that they are studying, others have themselves confused methodological and philosphical relativism, and a few have seemed to embrace extreme forms of relativism and postmodernism. Many have been guilty of using difficult langauge and obscure jargon, and few have been prepared to explain methodological relativism in clear and simple terms; perhaps Harry Collins comes closest, in his very nice short piece What's Wrong with Relativism? in Physics World (in case that link doesnt work, try this one). In any case, physicists are also guilty of using obscure jargon (e.g., "superstring") and difficult language (e.g., tensor analysis), and of sometimes embracing (or seeming to embrace) ridiculous sounding philosophical positions. Some sociologists have pointed out that, since physics has been losing funding and prestige in the current post-Cold War period, it is natural that physicists should feel frustrated or even bitter, and look for scapegoats; of course, the physicists involved vehemently deny that this relates in any way to the so called science wars.

One thing that I find interesting is the way that both sides have, in the most recent items, avoided what seems to me to be the key issues concerning relativism. Perhaps this is because the social scientists know that they can easily be made to look foolish, as well as politically vulnerable (from the "family values" right), and because the physical scientists know that this is the weak point in their own arguments. In any case, this is an interesting example of a highly public debate about important philosophical issues that underlie the subject of this course. It is typical of important public policy debates that they are messy, with participants often taking strange public positions for tactical reasons.

Please note that I do not think this is an area where the views of the teacher should be taken as definitive. I do feel somewhat strongly about my views, having been recently involved in a skirmish on the frontlines of the science wars through my position as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Consciousness Studies (see the January 2001 editorial), but I don't expect that everyone reading this material will agree with me; my main goal here is simply to encourage people to think things through for themselves. However, you can find my point of view in my Review of Intellectual Impostures, by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont (second edition).

6.3 Sociology of Technology and Science


Another criticism, which applies to most work in the sociology of technology and science (abbreviated STS) is that it destroys the credability of science, by leaving no place for the objective truth that science (allegedly) uncovers. The fact that sociologists deliberately avoid making commitments of this kind was discussed in detail above in Section 6.2. So this is definitely not a valid criticism.

ANT is part of an area of STS that is often called constructivist, because it focuses on how social systems get constructed by their participants. The developers of ANT (Latour and Callon) have recently declared that ANT is over, but of course it's too late now to stop others from using, criticizing, and modifying their ideas, or even using the name.


Leigh Star has defined boundary objects to be data objects or collections that are used in more than one way by different social groups, and that therefore provide an interface for those groups, translating across their differences. One reason this idea is important is that it provides a model of cooperation that does not require consensus. The notion of translation used here comes from ANT. Boundary objects would seem to be especially relevant for studying many social issues in computer science, and should therefore have interesting applications to many design problems. This is important as a counter-balance to extreme post-modernist and relativist positions.

To Section 7 of CSE 275 notes.
To Section 5 of CSE 275 notes.
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