Science has changed. The research scientists of today may seem to be doing much the same
things in much the same ways as their predecessors of a generation ago and
earlier, but–or so John Ziman insists in his latest book–their methods and
practices have actually undergone fundamental and far-reaching changes. A proper understanding of these changes is
not just important for practicing scientists; it is also crucial for the public
understanding of science and for the burgeoning academic field of science
studies. Indeed, Ziman wishes to argue
that the so-called ‘science wars’–a dispute in the academy and beyond over the
status and authority of scientific knowledge–should be understood as a failure
to come to terms with these changes. By
laying them bare in this book he hopes to prepare the ground for peace and
reconciliation.

If science has changed, how did it use to be? Ziman bases his account of ‘academic
science’, the status quo ante, on the ‘Mertonian norms’ (31). Robert Merton’s 1942 paper "The
normative structure of science" has long been an influential, if
controversial, account of the standards to which scientists aspire. Merton identified five distinct norms by the
acronym ‘CUDOS’: ‘Communalism’, that scientific results should be shared as
widely and quickly as possible; ‘Universalism’, that science is independent of
the personal or cultural status of the scientist; ‘Disinterestedness’, that
scientific results should be free from personal or corporate biases and
dishonesty; ‘Originality’, that scientific results should contribute something
new; and ‘Scepticism’, that scientific results must be able to withstand
systematic doubt.

While the Mertonian norms represent an ideal for
academic science, industrial science has always had other priorities. (And, as Ziman is well aware (178),
scientists sponsored by government departments and NGOs are no better
placed.) Ziman reprises his earlier
characterization of such work by five contrasting norms, with the acronym
‘PLACE’: the results produced are ‘Proprietary,’ and therefore not necessarily
communal; researchers concentrate on ‘Local,’ technical problems which may not
contribute to general understanding; ‘Authority’ is vested in a managerial
hierarchy, not in the individual researcher; work is ‘Commissioned’ to solve
specific problems, not as a contribution to knowledge as a whole; and the scientist
is valued as an ‘Expert’ rather than a source of creativity (79). Ziman argues
that the science practiced within the contemporary academy is driven as much by
PLACE as by CUDOS. He concludes that
the resultant hybrid should properly be described as ‘post-academic’.

This trend in the management of academic science
will not come as news to any one who has worked in a university laboratory in
recent decades. However, Ziman claims
that the conceptual significance of this shift has not been sufficiently acknowledged. Scientists have adapted to these new
pressures, while consciously dismissing them as temporary and hoping that they
are reversible. They still subscribe to
a characterization of scientific knowledge which, Ziman argues, is no longer an
adequate account of the results of their research: we are stuck with the
changes for better or worse. Indeed,
Ziman seems ambivalent whether they are for worse: he argues that the
transition from academic to post-academic science represents the advent within science
of the modernity that science has done so much to instill in other discourses
(82). In the five substantial chapters
that constitute the core of the book, Ziman demonstrates how each of the
Mertonian norms has been transformed by the culture of post-academic science.

Ziman concludes that philosophy of science and
science studies have paid insufficient attention to dramatic changes in the
object of their study. In particular,
the opposing sides in the science wars are laboring under a common misapprehension. The defenders of scientific truth and
objectivity are committed to an ideal of scientific knowledge which the results
of post-academic science cannot hope to meet: conversely, the critics of
scientific hegemony are attacking what has long since become a straw man.

The detail and authority which Ziman brings to this
work make it a valuable contribution to science studies. However, sociologists and historians may
feel the lack of actual case studies: Ziman is reporting insights gained from
his own (considerable) experience as a scientist and science administrator,
rather than the outcome of specific fieldwork.
Philosophers, on the other hand, may suspect that his resolution of the
science wars is too facile, and misses the real issue: the contrasting
definitions of ‘knowledge’.
Philosophers from Plato onwards have defined ‘knowledge’ as justified
true belief. While there has been much
debate over exactly what sort of justification is required, the truth of a
belief has always been taken as necessary for it to count as knowledge. Anthropologists and sociologists, however,
typically use ‘knowledge’ to describe whatever the subjects of their study
regard as knowledge, irrespective of whether it is actually true. Both of these usages serve the purposes of
their corresponding communities well: the trouble starts when they meet, each
assuming the other shares their definition.

©
2003 Andrew Aberdein

Andrew
Aberdein, Ph.D., School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences,
The University of Edinburgh

Categories: Philosophical