Turning Matters of Fact into Matters of Concern

Within the arena of science studies, critical analysis has often focused on experimentation. Indeed, experiment has long been extolled as both the defining characteristic of science and its greatest strength. In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, positivist arguments sprang up describing the nature of scientific progress. For scholars like Otto Neurath, observation was the bedrock of science; it allowed experiment to see behind nature’s veil and build a knowledge base that moved incrementally toward truth. Opposition to these positivist claims came from ant-positivist thinkers like Thomas Khun. Khun found that science had not a linear trajectory that it followed, from observation to theory, but was rather fragmented. Breaks in theoretical understandings brought about new paradigms of understanding, constraining what could be observed in the first place. While many people have treated these two analytic camps as wholly distinct, there is a shared belief in what Hans-Jorg Rheinberger has called the “totalization” of science (in Biagioli, 1999, p 418). Both positivists, in their “[growth]…toward truth” and anti-positivists, during non-revolutionary “paradigms”, describe science as “a normative process… [with] an overarching chronological coherence to the process of gaining scientific knowledge” (Biagioli, 1999, p 418). While Rheinberger goes on to explore the temporal aspects of knowledge production and its depiction in science, for this paper it will suffice to add a parallel reading of the function of experimentation, rather than to extend his arguments. This paper will argue that there is another conclusion to be drawn from the debates between the positivists and the anti-positivists, whose acceptance of experiment as a “matter of fact”[1] hides the intricacies that work to carry experiment through to practice. Experimentation, as a sharply defined practice in science, does not exist; rather, it is the capacity of the experimental system to be reconfigured at critical times that lends strength and, crucially, unity, to scientific practice. This paper will first explore the origin of experimental practice in science, working to develop what the “experimental system” is actually made up of. Attention will then be turned to the treatment scholars have given individual components of experiment. It will be seen that it is not in a “totalization” of science, and experimentation, that we can find its most precious of virtues, but in the delicately balanced bricolage of experimental work.

The making of experiment

It is often taken for granted that experiment is a part of scientific life. Simon Shaffer and Steven Shapin were some of the first to ask what an experiment is in the first place, and why we actually do them (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 3). In Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Shaffer and Shapin address the debates between Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle over appropriate methods of knowledge production. For the purposes of this paper, however, it is not the debate between these natural philosophers that is of critical import. It is the result of those debates, the category of experimentation championed by Boyle, whose characteristics will be important[2]. Shaffer and Shapin demonstrate that Boyle made use of three technologies to produce his experimental matters of fact. First, Boyle made extensive use of “material technologies” in the form of the air pump (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 26). The air-pump embodied the objectivity of experiment[3]. Facts, for Boyle, were “machine-made”, quite elevated from human perceptions (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 26). The authors note that it is in the “capacity to enhance perception and to constitute new perceptual objects” that the air-pump, and many other material technologies of the time, found their place (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 36). Similarly, the capacity of instrumentation to enhance the senses calls attention to the foundation of Boyle’s empiricism: observation. Observation had a dual role, however. It was not just the material technology in which the qualifying “observation” would be made by the objective scientist, but also in the public witnessing of experiment as well. The second technology Boyle used to his advantage was a “literary technology” which allowed “virtual witnessing” of experimental processes (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 55-57). In order for knowledge to be empirically based, and experimentally sound, a “multiplication of [witnesses]” was necessary (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 57). Witnessing was facilitated through public access to laboratories, and through inscriptions containing appropriate practices, and through construction details for the replication of experiments (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 59). The last technology that Shaffer and Shapin describe is a “social technology”, which “incorporated the conventions experimental philosophers should use in dealing with each other and considering knowledge-claims” in to discourse about those experiments (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 25). The conventions that Shaffer and Shapin describe are not important for the purposes of this paper, rather, their presence and the implications they have, are. An importance presence in experimental work on the air-pump was the “long standing debates over whether or not a vacuum could exist in nature” (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, p 41). Boyle’s social technology was constructed such that “there were to be appropriate moral postures, and appropriate modes of speech, for epistemological items on either side of the boundary that separated matters of fact from the locutions used to account for them: theories, hypothesis, speculations, and the like.” (Shaffer, Shapin, 1985, pp 66-67). Boyle made it taboo to talk of matters of fact without certainty, and he ensured that debate was conducted with the same gentlemanly conventions that would operate in social settings. But Boyle did more with his social technology. Boyle described the way theory should be treated in discourse; once an experimental program had distilled from theory to matter of fact, there was a new way to speak of it. These three technologies, material, literary, and social all worked together to embody objectivity, instrumentation, observation, and theory in various ways. This particular system of experimentation has since become the common practice of laboratory work. However, this is not to suggest that all experimenters and laboratories deploy these three technologies to the same end as Boyle. Rather, the examples taken from Boyle show the way in which particular and local understandings of these categories can become embedded in more than just those particular and local results. It is not Boyle, or Shapin and Shaffer’s, three technologies that exist today, but their precursors. Notions of particular forms of objectivity, of the power of observation, of theoretical discourse, and of laboratory and scientific practices are the components of rhetoric that popular discourse about science has inherited. It is precisely these notions, these matters of fact, which need to be explored, and it is to an exploration of each of these seemingly categorically unproblematic characteristics that this paper now turns[4].

 

Making Matters of Concern

 

If Robert Boyle deployed his three technologies, leveraging support for his experimental program, and turning that program into a matter of fact, then the aim of the following sections will be to do the opposite. An exploration of objectivity, observation, instrumentation, and theory will work to rob the category of experimentation of its autonomy over science and to demonstrate that, against our more conventional notions of what experiment actually is, there is no grand narrative to be found. In Rheinberger’s terms, it will be to remove the normative element from science and to destroy the chronological cohesiveness that history affords to scientific progress.  Further, it will be to extol this vision of science; a vision of disunity, of difference, and of interpretive flexibility, as the root of scientific strength.

 

In the case of Boyle and his air pump, objectivity is used in what Lorraine Daston would call a “hopelessly but revealingly confused [way]” (Biagioli, 1999, p 110). On the one hand, Shaffer and Shapin brought to light the way in which material technologies can have an objectifying quality, that is, they can do away with the failings of the human faculties, even enhancing them. On the other hand, objectivity figured prominently into the efficacy of Boyle’s literary technology, suggesting experimental results lacked the taint of human subjectivity due to the multiplication of witnesses. How best to reconcile the dual role objectivity seems to play with a descriptive image of scientific progress? Daston herself has explored the changing roles that objectivity has played not only in science, but in human discourse in general. Daston notes that the word “objectivity”, though often marshaled now as a removal of individual perspective in matters of science, was used originally far from the realm of scientific discourse. The initial use of the word was “of ontological, and not epistemological import”, indeed it appears in the works of Descartes when describing an “objective reality” (Biagioli, 1999, p 112). Even when the familiar “perspectival” connotation was attached to the word it was found not in discussions of “material nature… [but in] that of ‘catholic and universal beauty’” (Biagioli, 1999, p 114). Daston also describes the alternative uses of objectivity that were found in Boyle’s material and literary technologies. An important parallel might be drawn here as Daston notes that the adoption of any familiar sense of the term “objectivity” followed “global and local…changes in the organization of science” (Biagioli, 1999, p 120). Importantly, it is within Boyle’s literary technology, within what Daston calls “impersonal communication and a refined division of scientific labour”, that aperspectival objectivity manifests its self fully, at least in a way that is known to contemporary accounts of scientific work (Biagioli, 1999, p 119). It will be to the chronological aspect of the adoption of objectivity in science that resonance with Rheinberger’s concerns can be found.

 

Observation enjoys equally complex treatments within the history and philosophy of science. Observation also plays an obvious role in the empirical foundations of the experimental matter of fact. It was seen that observation had two prominent roles in Boyle’s experimental program; it was at once a cornerstone of his own interaction with experimental phenomena as well as of the virtual, and multiplied, witnessing his literary technology embodied. How can these two seemingly different operational functions of objectivity be reconciled with a satisfactory image of science? The answer: they do not need to be. Ian Hacking, in his introductory text on the philosophy of science Representing and Intervening, has explored the status of observation in science. Hacking notes that observation has taken a central role since the positivist thinkers and was rarely used before them by even the most prominent of philosophers like Francis Bacon (Hacking, 1983, p 168). The positivists claimed a sharp distinction between observation and theory, suggesting observation always came before theory, for instance. While what Hacking calls “realist” and “idealist” responses argued that observation and theory had a vague distinction or that all observations were theory loaded from the outset, respectively (Hacking, 1983, p 171). These two camps, the positivists and their opponents (whether realist or idealist), should remind us of yet another similarity that parallels Rheinberger’s. While there is ground for competing notions of primacy in the observation/theory debate, there seems to be a common conviction that observation, like objectivity, enjoys some stable and unwavering definition. Hacking has shown the opposite to be true. In fact, Hacking has described, contrary to the perceived importance of observation in philosophical discourses surrounding science, observation as a relatively small part of experimental life. Indeed the scientist does not spend their “life…making…observations that provide the data to test theory”, rather, they are more often engaged in “[getting] some equipment to exhibit phenomena in a reliable way” (Hacking, 1983, p 167). The more apparent observational practices that go on, says Hacking, are those that require a sort of ‘knack’ for noticing anomalies in experimental set-ups or results (Hacking, 1983, p 167). Even the question of ‘what it is to observe’ has come under fire by Hacking. He notes that rarely do scientists even observe in any physical sense of the word, rather, they “observe objects or events with instruments” (Hacking, 1983, p 168). The parallels with Boyle should be apparent. In keeping with the tone of this paper it will be important not to decide which observational niche Boyle’s experimental matter of fact occupies however, but to recognize that, contrary to positivist and anti-positivist conceptions, observation can be theory loaded, purely observational, aided or unaided, and still work to strengthen and demarcate scientific practice.

 

Lorrain Daston and Ian Hacking both present arguments that have resonance with another of the aforementioned characteristics of experimental life: instrumentation. For Daston, instruments figure heavily into conceptions of “mechanical” or “method” objectivity. For Hacking, instruments can be use to qualify the category of observation in interesting ways. But how can instruments be seen as more than just background noise in the analysis of science? How can those instruments be seen as vibrant sources of analytic interest? One answer is to be found within Peter Galison’s Image & Logic: A Material Culture of Micro-physics. Galison has worked hard, much in the same spirit as this paper has, to strip down the grand narratives of positivist and anti-positivists and reveal the strength and beauty of disunity in science. If the question of this paper is “what reason do we have to believe that experimentation is a necessary condition for scientific practice”, Galison might answer that there is no good reason. Galison destroys the way in which positivist and anti-positivists alike can speak of theory and observation. There is no longer a foundation of observation, nor are there incommensurable breaks in theory. There is, rather, an “intercalation” of theory, observation, and instrumentation (Galison, 1997, p 799). Again, the point will not be to find examples where breaks in theory, or observation, can be seen to be bordered by instruments. This would be to follow Galison’s argument which, admittedly, he expounds with much more rhetorical skill that this paper can. The point will be to take the case of instrumentation seriously when considering its interaction with theory and observation, especially in the case of Boyle and the experimental matter of fact. What exactly are instruments for Boyle? Are they the embodiment of a theory? Do they structure an observation? Or do they perhaps conjure up images of mechanical objectivity? Asking whether or not the seemingly dynamic role of instrumentation should alter static understandings of experimentation is crucial for the purposes of this paper.

 

Dudley Shapere has noted close relationships between theory, instrumentation and observation that echo of Galison’s intercalation and inform an understanding of what it is to do an experiment. Shapere is interested in the question of theory laden observations and the implications those theories have for the autonomy that science enjoys. In the case of Boyle, it might be asked to what degree theoretical commitments or theoretical axioms shaped what it was to do an experiment. If Hobbes and Boyle were debating over competing views of knowledge production, certainly their commitments to plenism or vacuism, respectively, should be taken into account. Surely Hobbes’ commitment to geometric precision and Boyle’s confidence in probabilistic certainty shaped not only their debates, but Boyle’s experimental form of life and those characteristics that contemporary experiment can call its ancestors. Framed differently, the concern is of sociological import. Constructivist accounts of science largely rely on natural causes for controversy and social closure in those controversies. To what degree, Shapere asks, does theory, or socially constructed matters of fact, shape observation or experiment? It would seem to a large degree in Shapere’s case on neutrino research. Shapere shows the way in which theories about the source, transmission, and reception of neutrinos “plays an extensive role in what counts as an ‘observation’” (Shapere, 1982, p 505). This idea is not troubling for the scientist, but it is the foundation for positivist and anti-positivist debates surrounding experimentation. Shapere localizes this dispute in the language with which each side approaches the same object. For the philosopher, says Shapere, observation has a perceptive value to it as well as epistemic import, but for the scientist perceptive and epistemic merits have become separated when dealing with the category of observation (Shapere, 1982, pp 507 – 508). If objects simply can not be accessed with the human eye, observation can still take place for the scientist, through the various instruments and inscription devices at their disposal (Shapere, 1982, pp 508). This is not true for the philosopher, who demands to know “how perception could give rise to knowledge or support beliefs” (Shapere, 1982, p 508). Thinking back to Boyle, can he be read as advancing a scientific or philosophical understanding of observation? Are his theoretical assumptions a threat to the validity of his observations? Again, it must be stressed that a single answer to these questions should seem absurd by this point. It may be that the theory did or did not structure his observational findings, and indeed the debate between himself and Hobbes; the important thing to remember is that theory can play the role of facilitator, as in the neutrino case, or it can be read as an inhibitor of observation and experimentation.

 

Thinking Beyond

 

In the case of objectivity, as in the case of observation, of instrumentation, and of theory, there remains a great deal of flexibility in the roles that each of these characteristics can occupy. What is it then to wonder about what experiment is, or in which form it must exist in? First, it is a question of semantic import. To answer the question ‘what is experiment?’ or the closely related ‘which form of experimentation should be preferred?’ one can only wrestle with ambiguity. The answer to the first question lies in a temporal characterization. For there is a point when even those most basic of experimental characteristics, like observation, objectivity, instrumentation and theory, are in flux; their roles, relative strengths and weaknesses, and their power to shape scientific practice can, and should, cater to any problem for which a scientific answer is desired. Where would Boyle’s experimental form of life be without his particular understanding of mechanical objectivity? Without his literary technologies bolstering a particular form of observation? The answers to questions about experimentation are not easily arrived at, nor are they always the same answers. Whatever the function of experiment, it can not be denied that a great deal of truly impressive work has been done with various incarnations of the experimental form of life. Second, it is a question about power and authority. If an experimental form of life is to become the matter of fact to be emulated, what power does it entitle to those that practice that form of life? Similarly, on what grounds does authority rest? The case of string theory is a classic example of the prowess of experimental practices in some of the highest funded science on the planet. Indeed, debates between string theorists and experimental physicists might be linked back to their particular understandings of objective observations, theories, and instrumentation. Where is it that the line can be drawn, once experiment is removed as in the case of string theory, where the practice can no longer be described as science? When can it gain the mantle of autonomy? If a demarcation must be drawn between science and non-science, on what grounds can it be drawn? The conclusion that this paper might be said to arrive at is at first very simple, but upon further inspection, subtly powerful. The logical empiricism of George Reisch suggests that science be allowed to demarcate its self. That is, that those theories, observations, instruments and otherwise ‘practices’ that science chooses to involve its self with, on local or global levels, be regarded as science. It would be a mistake to appropriate the label of “logical empiricism” to the demarcation of science since it would simply take one back to a grand narrative, depicting science as a cohesive practice. Rather, it is in the freedom that Reisch’s logical empiricism embodies that this paper would call attention. What is scientific or unscientific becomes largely a case of that which science does or does not make use of. This leaves room to reconcile the numerous roles of experimental characteristics, without accepting any single definition therein. Boyle and Hobbes, regardless of how the history of science has been written, both retain the mantle of “scientist” without the burden of experimentation. It is only in the restraints, in the application of normative characteristics, and in grand narratives that science can be burdened. It is in recognition of the capacity of experimental systems, and their constituent parts, to adapt to local and global needs that science can be free to produce knowledge without philosophical constraint.

 

References:

 

Biagioli, M. ed. (1999). The Science Studies Reader. New York: Routledge

 

Galison, P. (1997). Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Micro-Physics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

 

Hacking, I. (1983). Representing and Intervening. New York: Cambridge University Press

 

Shaffer, S. Shapin, S. (1985). Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

 

 

Shapere, D. (1982). “The Concept of Observation in Science and Philosophy” Philosophy of Science. (49) 485-525. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

 

---

[1] “Matter of fact” here is used for two reasons. First, Robert Boyle used the term explicitly when referring to the outcome of his experimental program, and second, it is to call attention to the work Bruno Latour has done regarding the abandonment of matters of fact for matters of concern (Latour, B. “Matters of Fact vs Matters of Concern”. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). This paper follows in those footsteps, attempting to demonstrate the nature of experiments as a matter of concern.

[2] The focus on Boyle is a result of his historical “victory” in the Hobbes and Boyle debates. As the authors of Leviathan and the Air-Pump suggest, it is Boyle’s experimental program that won, and that is still with us today. Given that this paper deals with the construction of an “experimental system” as a matter of fact, an object, or a category that is unproblematic, it is to the victor and to its legacy that this paper must focus.

[3] The use of objectivity here is to call attention to the way it is used to leverage support for the material technology Boyle employed. Chapter 6 of Leviathan and the Air Pump describes, as the authors note, “a striking instance of this usage”, and it should be reviewed for further understanding.

[4] This is not meant to be a complete list of the constituent parts of experimental practice, rather, it is meant to be a short list, derived from a common source, that is seen to persist into contemporary science and that can each be made problematic for the purposes of this paper.

 

A discussion concerning chapters 32 to 81 of the Tao Te Ching

The second half of the Tao Te Ching continues Lao Tzu’s discussion on his central themes: understanding of the Tao, ways of living the Tao, and applications to social governance (or lack thereof). A summary of the Tao Te Ching resists coherence as a number of the chapters are ambiguous in nature, subject to a great deal of interpretation, and are not presented in a distinct order. In the interest of space it will then be helpful to focus on a theme throughout this summery. Focusing on the Tao Te Ching’s application to social governance will allow summation of a great number of his chapters between 32 and 81, effect a degree of structure throughout this large section, and allow for space considerations. [1]

 

Perhaps one of the most provoking themes throughout the section is the applications of the Taoist system of thought to social governance. This theme provides a pragmatic link between Lao Tzu’s metaphysics and ethical actions taken therein. This is reminiscent of the overall structure of Plato’s Republic insofar as both set out a metaphysical understanding of the world, and both have a focus on what that metaphysics means for ethical governance. In chapter 32 Lao Tzu writes of the Tao, “Though its simplicity seems insignificant, none in the world can master it. If kings and barons would hold on to it, all things would submit to them spontaneously” (pp. 156, Chan). However, where Plato is careful to enumerate rules that ensure successful governance Lao Tzu entreats readers to ponder a system of rule without hard and fast rules. Chapter 60 likens ruling to cooking a small fish, wherein too much handling will spoil the dish. Lao Tzu notes that “the more taboos and prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people will be” (pp. 166, ch. 57, Chan), instead believing that by “[taking] no action…the people of themselves will be transformed” (pp. 167, Chan). Similarly where Plato envisioned a hierarchical system with philosopher kings ruling from atop the imaginary Kallipolis, Lao Tzu’s kings are to place themselves beneath the people. Chapter 66 illustrates Lao Tzu’s ideal of rulers who, “in order to be the superior of the people…must…place himself below them. And in order to be ahead of people…must…follow them” (pp. 171, Chan). This notion of common social caste between ruler and ruled is the cornerstone of the application of wu-wei to the governing system, harkening to a lessaiz-faire ideology. Indeed in his translation Wing-Tsit Chan marks a line in chapter 48 carefully in parenthesis, noting the similarities between the “…order by having no activity” and lessaiz-faire ideals (pp. 162, Chan). Another strongly related discourse found in this section of the Tao Te Ching is Lao Tzu’s proposed traits of leaders. It is by “being greatly tranquil”, says Lao Tzu, that “one is qualified to be the ruler of the world” (pp. 162, ch. 45, Chan). Lao Tzu’s ideal rulers are humble, they “never [strive] for the great, and thereby the great is achieved” through wu-wei (pp. 157, ch. 34, Chan). They do not “dare to be ahead of the world” in Lao Tzu’s words (pp. 171, ch. 67, Chan). These traits all point toward the overarching theme of the Yin, or feminine qualities Lao Tzu had discussed in more detail in the first half of his major work. Where leaders for Plato are rigid like the old branch, Taoist leaders are flexible like the young plant. It is by becoming Yang, by forcing action upon nature that “things reach their prime” and “begin to grow old” like the rigid branch, liable to snap when it is forced against Tao (p166. ch 55. Chan).

It would seem a foolish thing to disagree with a single section of a major work, and as such I will not try to do so. There are however, in the opinion of this scholar, a number of problematic proposals in the Tao Te Ching. One of the most intriguing and shocking notion presented in this section is that of governance by wu-wei. If we are to take Lao Tzu seriously as he has been summarized above, we find ourselves in a peculiar position; we are ready to accept a state wherein people always govern themselves satisfactorily (provided all of Lao Tzu’s conditions are met). This is peculiar precisely because all our knowledge of human history is wrought with incidents of a seemingly harmful or destructive nature. In response to this, we might expect Lao Tzu to argue that there is no such historical example that we can find where the Tao was aptly followed, and superiorly virtuous leaders (by Lao Tzu’s definition) were in power. In this case our objection would become an argumentum ad ignorantiam; simply because there is no evidence that the system could not practically work does not suggest it can not. However, we can extend this argument to include a contemporary worldview. Human beings do not live, in general, according to the Tao. With this in mind, the question of ideal implementation (i.e. everyone is a blank slate waiting for a humble ruler to lead them without leading)  need not be asked given that we must, in reality, get past the problem of convincing every person to live without the conventions, values, and possessions they already have. This task seems much more daunting than engaging in a thought experiment to evaluate the efficacy of Lao Tzu’s system. It is in light of this practicality that I locate my objection. If a system of thought, and a system of governance, is to be implemented, it must do so with all the ramifications that supplanting a current governing paradigm would entail. To this query Lao Tzu has no apparent answer. Past problems of implementation, it seems problematic that while social conventions are detested by Taoists, it is simply another set of values that lie at the heart of the Tao Te Ching. These values and conventions are precisely the ones that Lao Tzu has offered us; non-action, humility, moderation, ect…. How can Lao Tzu handle the charge that the Tao Te Ching is simply a text that expresses values and conventions in the same manner as formative Christian texts (for example) which served as a foundation of a great number of western values and conventions? Is it simply because the Tao Te Ching promotes simplicity and accordance with its own definition of nature that it is to be considered prized? It is in the rejection of one set of values for what seems to be another that this objection can localized.

---

[1] While every chapter is not addressed individually (in an effort to cover all the material, but to avoid redundancy), this summary encompasses a large portion of the themes presented in chapters 32 through 81 and connects the section’s major discourse (that of governance) to the themes presented in the first 31 chapters for consistency.

 

Reflections on the Maha-satipatthana Sutta from the Pali Cannon of Buddhism, Section D & E

Section D of the Maha-satipatthana Sutta is divided into five categories. The first category concerns the five hindrances: sensual desire, ill-will, sloth and drowsiness, restlessness and anxiety, and uncertainty (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 1). The monk is directed to recognize that there is, for instance, sensual desire within them or, conversely, that there is not. Once desire has arisen and is recognized the monk should then recognize the abandonment of that desire. An understanding of that abandonment is said to negate any future sensual desire from arising. In this way is the monk to understand the origination of sensual desires, and the passing away of sensual desires (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 1). The second category, concerning the aggregates, is focused the same origination and disappearance theme with relation to form, feeling, perception, fabrications and consciousness (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 2). These aggregates seem to be the closest we get to a total picture of the human experience. Next the sixfold internal & external sense media are considered; it seems best to describe the sense media as the faculties that facilitate ‘clinging’ to the aggregates. The eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and intellect are the sense media included, each, once again, subject to the same process of recognizing origination and disappearance (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 3). The fourth category, awakening, is then considered. Within the category of awakening is found mindfulness, analysis of qualities, persistence, rapture, serenity, concentration, and equanimity (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 4). Finally, mental qualities with reference to the four noble truths are addressed. The first noble truth is that of stress, depicted as including any range of aggregates, from birth and aging to loosing loved ones (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 5a). It seems that the term ‘stress’, as used, connotes any form of suffering, physical or mental. The second noble truth concerns the origin of stress, and its origin is said to be in ‘Whatever is endearing & alluring” (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 5b). Things that are endearing and alluring are said to be those sense media that cling to aggregates. This definition is illustrated, for instance, by the progressive line of though: “the ear…sounds…ear-consciousness…ear-contact…feelings born of ear-contact…perception of sounds…intention for sounds…craving for sounds…thought directed at sounds…evaluation of sounds” (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 5b). It is the finalization of this progression in evaluation that is said to be “endearing and alluring in terms of the world” (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 5b) and where the origination of stress is to be found. The noble truth of the cessation of stress is said to be the cessation of the aforementioned progression, the abandonment of “Whatever is endearing & alluring in terms of the world” (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 5c). Lastly is the noble truth of the “path of practice leading to the cessation of stress” (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 5d). The path is said to be the “noble eightfold path”, including “right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration” (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 5d). Each of the eight parts of the path is described in practical terms, for example, “abstaining from lying” in the case of right speech (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, D, 5d). The conclusion, or section E, very briefly contends that if the four frames of reference, mental qualities being only one, are developed correctly over any amount of time, the result will be gnosis. If, however, there is any clinging remaining there will be non-return, a term that seems to not be defined (Maha-satipatthana Sutta, DN22, E).

 

While I do not suppose to have access to a privileged interpretation of the material, I do have some reservations about the claims as I have summarized them. An overarching criticism might be one of contradiction. Having the desire for mindfulness, regardless of the declaration that it is “classed not as a cause of suffering, but as a part of the path to its ending” (Bhikkhu, Introduction), is ultimately a desire and as such should fall under the umbrella of ’causes of suffering’. The first category presents a problem in the form of the objective treatment of a hindrance. For instance, if ill-will toward someone leads to an understanding of ill-will as a displeasing thing, could it still be considered a hindrance? The second and third categories seem to present a confused ontological picture. A question about what entity could be clinging and sensing in relation to aggregates and sense media might be raised. If the self is left out of experience, as its absence in the aggregates suggests, what is there to make use of the proposed sense media? The fourth category presents a confused image of the relationship between ‘how things are’ and ‘how we should act’. A point might be raised about the potential for solipsism (were it not for the insistence on compassionate living) if the monk is to abandon the reality of even those mental qualities that would assist in the ultimate goal. Put more simply, if one is to live compassionately, but also to abandon the reality of mindfulness, would not the ability to live compassionately be threatened under the scheme outlined? In the last category, the text remains ambiguous with regard to evaluation. One might wonder if evaluation is the final part of a process needing to be relinquished or abandoned, or if any part of this process is subject to the same treatment and to the same end. Similar to the criticism of category 1 claims, the relinquishment or attachment to any of these things would seem to be at least potentially helpful under the right circumstances. A final inquiry worth pursuing concerns the notion that things that are endearing and alluring in terms of the world should be abandoned. It would seem to follow that there is a proposition to appeal to some objective reality, rather than the fictions of the world, a reality that brings the ontological picture the Buddhists construct into question.

 

References

 

Bhikkhu, T. (2000) Mahasatipatthana Sutta: The Great Frames of Reference, PTS: D ii 289 (translated from the Pali)

 

Learning to Tie Gordian Knots

“Our intellectual life is out of kilter. Epistemology, the social sciences, the science of texts – all have their privileged vantage point, provided that they remain separate. If the creatures we are pursuing cross all three spaces, we are no longer understood. Offer the established disciplines some fine sociotechnological network, some lovely translations, and the first group will extract our concepts and pull at the roots that might connect them to society or to rhetoric; the second group will erase the social and political dimensions, and purify our network of any object; the third group, finally, will retain our discourse and rhetoric but purge our work of any undue adherence to reality – horresco referens – or to power plays. In the eyes of our critics the ozone hole above our heads, the moral law in our hearts, the autonomous text, may each be of interest, but only separately. That a delicate shuttle should have woven together the heavens, industry, texts, souls, and moral law – this remains uncanny, unthinkable, unseemly. “

 

-         Bruno Latour (1993, p5)

Introduction

It is by now a truism of STS, as a field, that scholars find themselves more occupied with disagreement and contention, than with a unified context in which to place the elusive actors about whom we claim to know…something about. Camps of sociological, anthropological, philosophical and historical scholars, it is true, can be seen as generally united (though contention never fully vanishes); each tends to position their objects of study in such a way that they become accessible to particular forms of analysis. The effect of social groups and power relations, for instance, come to dominate cultural beliefs, epistemological concerns, and historical rhetoric; the case, however, is not unique to sociological inquiry. Indeed, each group of scholars takes up a prosperous vantage point and does away with contentious lines of inquiry that might force intellectually uncomfortable positions. The intractable problem we find across these camps has for too long had the Alexandrian solution applied to it; the Gordian knot, unwilling to be unraveled in all its complicated beauty, was simply cut up into pieces that were more intellectually palatable[1]. This problem is by no means a new line of inquiry and has been expressed by a number of authors in much more vivid terms[2]. This paper seeks to explore methodological alternatives to the Alexandrian solution by examining where problems in analysis arise, and how they might be subverted to accord more prosperously with the complicated enterprise of science. This paper represents the culmination of a project started by a great number of students producing, at first, ethnographic records of laboratory practices in a university setting. The ethnographic data was then distilled into individual analyses; organized by groups, and spanning four different laboratories. The entire set of local analyses produced, by all individuals, from all labs, serves as the ground work for this non-local analysis. It will be argued that the individual analyses point, not to a perfect, unified picture of scientific practice generally; but to the way in which the collective nature of the investigation serves as a methodological answer to the problem presented by the Gordian knot. It is not by a bold stroke, a stroke that severs the ties that bond scientific practice together, that the scholar can gain better access to science, but rather by appreciating the complexity of the many knots that bind it up so intricately.

 

 

The Influence of Approach

The nature of the project that this paper seeks to bring together in a cohesive manner was ethnographic at its heart. The rough data, from which individual analysis was later derrived, is comprised of interviews, observations (in lab and in class), laboratory-world investigations, and readings of scientific texts. The investigators involved in the project positioned themselves along one of these four paths and set out to obtain data from these vantage points. This was one of the first bold strokes, one of the first Alexandrian moves that demanded a categorical split in the object of study. A single laboratory became the source for four distinct types of data. The first analyses produced, it should be noted, did bring together the four disparate data sets. The bifurcation, however, had already occurred and there were glaring examples of it to be found in the resulting analyses. The quotation by Latour at the beginning of this paper, along with an examination of individual analyses, will serve to show lines of inquiry beginning to develop their own “vantage points”, subsequently ignoring “uncanny, unthinkable, unseemly” interconnections (Latour, 1993, p 5)[3].

 

The Social Scientist

An investigator engaged in lab-world investigations showed a distinct proclivity toward economic and political influence on the laboratory. Carla Murphy presented a sophisticated reading of the funding her laboratory receives and came to the conclusion that “the interests and motivations of the members of the deciding organizations affect the type of research that is done” (Murphy, 2009, p9). Supporting evidence from other group members serve to strengthen this argument; Murphy notes that her group members Prital and Colin have shown the degree to which decisions to pursue graduate work are largely dependant on “social factors” (Murphy, 2009, p11). The lab-world investigation Murphy presented is a socially constructed account of science; the laboratory is guided by particular economic trends, which serve to structure the research done therein. Similarly, the supporting evidence used depicts a socially constructed enterprise; accounting for the choice to become an investigator in a particular lab with direct reference to “social factors”.  The point to take from this account is not one of truth or falsity, but one of selective representation[4]. There could have easily been an example given of the way in which the laboratory, in turn, comes to shape the world. Indeed, another member of Murphy’s group had done extensive interviews and had come to the conclusion that the lab “is not the start-up or the culmination of the research on the aforementioned drugs” and that “work can be requested or implemented into other forms of research” (Young, p23). Colin Young has presented a line of inquiry that might, coupled with Murphy’s, paint a more complete picture of the work inside the lab[5]. Young demonstrates that it is not just that the laboratory is exclusively social, but that the laboratory and its products move out into the world and affect change. This point is passed over by Murphy, however, and the social is given dominance over the objects of study themselves; Murphy becomes representative of Latour’s “social science”, “[purifying the] network of any object” (Latour, 1993, p5). This is a function of the approach taken initially by Murphy; to explore the laboratory-world interactions was, in this case, to explore the way in which science, claiming to be objective, is actually socially constructed. It was to marshal evidence to that front and to leave out the equally important reading that Young hinted to; it was to leave severed the Gordian knot rather than to retie it.

 

Emily Martin might be a kind of prescription for this particular affliction. Martin’s “Anthropology and the Cultural Study of Science” offers us a number of metaphors that illustrate the ways in which the social sciences might retie the knot. The concept of a Citadel forms a major piece of Martin’s paper and it is worth exploring briefly in relation to the problem of the social scientist. The Citadel represents the image of science that STS scholars have tried to break down; it is a great autonomous building, untouched by the world and yet reaching out of its impenetrable walls to affect change in every aspect of life (Martin, 1998, p26). Culture, Martin suggests, is the key to breaking down these walls, or at least re-imagining them. Culture’s shared pasts, beliefs, and values bring into view the way in which “the walls of the Citadel are porous and leaky”, allowing “action and initiative to go in both directions” (Martin, 1998, p30). If the problem Murphy ran into is in the inability to deal adequately with the influence the objects of science have, then Martin assures us that it can be brought back through the porous walls. This is the move that Murphy needs to make, to turn to the crack Young found in the wall and exploit it; to demonstrate that while objects are coming in and constructing life within the walls, there are yet more coming from another Citadel of knowledge, itself warranting treatment.

 

The Rhetoricist

In a beautiful examination of the rhetoric of the scientific enterprise, Ira Goldman presented an argument about the way in which language gets used in the laboratory. Goldman notes that there is a way in which the social lives of the scientists pervade even the language they use to do their work. The laboratory under investigation uses “bands” to mark birds considered “pairs”; Goldman notes that these bands “can be seen as one of the most widely recognizable signs of monogamy: a wedding band” (Goldman, 2009, p9). There is a linguistic and cultural heritage bound up within a wedding band, and it is Goldman’s observation that this opens up a range of questions concerning the extension of that heritage to the research being conducted in the lab. Goldman navigates through the linguistic complex to arrive at an argument regarding the nature of our understanding of monogamy. Monogamy, notes Goldman, appears in scientific studies of birds precisely through the linguistic legacy that scientific rhetoric brings with it. But what of the incredibly complex and detailed cultural accounts we have of monogamy? What kinds of realities are being created in the lab when something as human as monogamy is being engaged with while examining birds? Goldman stops short of answering these questions, he “[purges his] work of any undue adherence to reality…or…power plays” (Latour, 1993, p5). What vision of monogamy dominates the power structure inherent in a University laboratory that is hierarchical by its very nature? Does this dominant vision structure the method and objects of investigation? How? There is no answer for these questions. The target was not the power relations, or the realities that might lay behind the language; Goldman’s interest was in “[retaining]…discourse and rhetoric” and not to those extant questions regarding power relations, objective realities, and extensions beyond the laboratory (Latour, 1993, p5). Nor was Goldman’s group devoid of such concerns, indeed Meer Islam was predominantly interested in how facts move outside of a laboratory and to what degree a fact could be understood as being true (Islam, 2009, p5). The concerns that Islam brought to light are precisely about those things that Goldman did not address; the reality of fact production as a functionary outside of a laboratory. Islam notes that we often “embrace” scientific facts with “excitement”, forgetting that seemingly objective facts have traveled a great distance, and at great pains, to achieve the autonomy they have over us (Islam, 2009, p5). Somewhere between these two accounts, between a linguistic analysis and social analysis, lies the real truth about facts; a truth that might only be accessed through a union of these two approaches, through a tying of the Gordian knot.

 

That textual analysis might obscure the realities and power relations that lay behind the words is merely a choice of approach. Indeed, with Joseph Dumit’s “Picturing Personhood” we find an exemplar of the textual approach that explicitly takes into account those realities and power relations. Perhaps the best way to access Dumit’s approach, in this context, is in his suggestion to his reader. Dumit pleads with his reader to become aware of the way in which “objective self fashioning” operates, and further to take command of it (Dumit, 2004). Objective self fashioning does indeed point to the ways in which our identity is bound up in objective facts; facts developed in laboratories. Another “perspective” that Dumit invites the reader to explore is the way in which our selves are “fashioned by us out of the facts available to us through the media, and these categories of people are, in turn, the cultural basis from which new theories of human nature are constructed” (Dumit, 2004, p164). Dumit takes a most innocuous and mundane of rhetorical classifications, that of being “normal” (or not-normal). He demonstrates not only that the walls of Martin’s Citadel are porous, allowing the social in to construct the very instruments and practices that give us the PET category of “normal”, and allowing those objects to move into wider realities like the media, but that these movements imply new kinds of persons and new kinds of power relations of our own making! Dumit moves seamlessly from a textual analysis, to a social analysis, to a cultural analysis and back again; truly this is what it might mean to tie our Gordian knot.

 

 

 

 

The Epistemologist

A final example derrived from my own work should quell any reservations one might have about this process. Richard Gignac selected a “textual analysis” as his initial line of questioning. His analysis is, in Latour’s scheme, epistemological. He is examining the ways in which knowledge is getting made from the ground up. With a focus on concepts and analytic tools derrived from Sharon Traweek and Bruno Latour, Richard provides an analysis of the changes in laboratory studies that contemporary laboratories might force upon the analyst (Gignac, 2009)[6]. What is noticeably missing from Richard’s analysis is any reference to socially mediating forces. Shaharyar Javed, a member of Gignac’s group, noted that the scientists actively working in the lab have “full confidence that figures spewing out of the inscription devices are accurate” (Javed, 2009, p 10). Concerns and beliefs about the nature of mechanical objectivity might help paint a more vivid picture of the process by which the laboratory has extended its reach with another technology in which great faith has been placed; the internet. Gignac’s argument relies upon describing the “new actant as a crucial part of modern science” (Gignac, 2009, p 15). The choice to do textual analysis, from an epistemological perspective, has resulted in the jettisoning of social, political and rhetorical forces as analytic subjects. No where does Gignac discuss the nature of the technological actor he is mobilizing to support his claims about contemporary laboratory studies; this should come as no surprise. Gignac was working on a textual analysis that explored the differences between the laboratories that Latour and Woolgar had studied, and the contemporary laboratory that served as a site for his own research. The choice of a particular approach has left a potentially fruitful avenue for investigation out of contemplation. The first Alexandrian move has come back to haunt Gignac; leaving questions about these new technologies to another analyst with a more appropriate approach, another analyst that will leave the Gordian knot untied.

 

Does the epistemological inquiry necessitate an ignorance of the rich analytic landscape that technologies provide? Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar give us good reason to think quite the opposite. In the book “Laboratory Life”, and in particular chapter 2, Latour and Woolgar demonstrate that “by pursuing the notion of literary inscription, our observer…can explain the objectives and products of the laboratory…he can…understand how work is organized and why literary production is so highly valued” (Latour, Woolgar, 19 , p87). It is not just that, as Gignac exemplified, laboratories have changed the way literary production is done by a variation in scale; it is that the internet and the new practice of inscription needs to be re-evaluated in order to understand what changes in the organization of work, the objectives, and the products of the laboratory might have occurred. It is by paying attention to the way in which changes in a crucial material device affect changes in the whole organization, practice, and results of science that Latour and Woolgar tighten the knot; it is in the method and not the content.

 

The Limits of Analysis

This is not a point of criticism, but rather a description of the function of approach. It is to affirm that what we set out to do has a detrimental effect on the conclusions there drawn; a bifurcated and limited path of investigation, regardless of the capacity to follow other paths, results in a limited view of the way in which the laboratory and the world interact. It is to do exactly what Latour predicts; to use, for example, the social sciences to write out the role of the object and to leave us with some abstract concept of a socially constructed entity devoid of any conceptual or material extension in to the world. This might be considered a reflexive point about science studies in general; as scientists bring with them perspectives, beliefs, and experiences, so too does the analyst carry a great number of preconditions with them.

 

This paper would be ill informed if it did not take into account a beautiful, and much shorter, exposition of the very problem we are dealing with by one of its participating members. Meer Islam, in crafting his analysis from his group’s raw data, noted that after reading his groups work there were “a lot of things missing from [his] work” (Islam, 2009, p5). Islam makes mention of the work that Marina did on the machines in the laboratory, noting that a “better idea of what was going on” came from expanding his perspective (Islam, 2009, p6. Marina 2009). Similarly, another group member attended to questions about the products of the laboratory which helped Islam connect ideas about objectivity, fact production, and social influences (Islam, 2009, p6). This is precisely the action this paper urges its readers to take. To understand science as eluding the analytic eye of one discipline or approach, to extend our understanding of knowledge making past the scientific enterprise and into the entire gamut of human life.

 

The limits of analysis, then, are not to be found in what we can not attend to because of our line of inquiry, but rather the degree to which we can recognize and include approaches within that inquiry. What else is Jenny Reardon asking of our scientists when she confronts them with the co-production paradigm, than to turn their curious and scrutinizing eye toward all the relevant extensions that knowledge has in the world? What else does Donna Harraway’s situated knowledge and feminist objectivity demand than recognition of all those intermediary connections between the subject and the object, between the laboratory and the world? It is not enough to merely understand science in this way; it must be a point of action. It must be an action that the scientist, the science studies scholar, the intellectual, and the layperson recognize, and more importantly, put into practice.

Conclusion

 

There is no single report from the field that will adequately capture the work done in laboratories, for they all suffer from a similar bifurcation, by virtue of discipline, administrative constraint, or what ever else might plague the scholar. This is not to put forward a nihilistic view; rather, it is to point to the entire body of work that has been generated for this project, when looking for answers. It is only by recognizing the way in which each analysis plays an intricate part in making up scientific practice at York University, that this project can be truly understood. The laboratory study, the scientific controversy, the world, the language of science – these are categories that the modernist in us wants to defend, but we have never been modern. Our very existence as a people is a messy grouping of laboratory defined, scientifically justified, controversy laden, globally and socially (whatever this might mean) influenced, and linguistically contingent forces; how could we ever expect to treat these most intimately connected forces (and how many others?) holistically?. The power of this argument lies not in what it does for us directly, but in the doors that it opens. It is in the realization that no approach, no discipline, no method, can hope to capture science in all of its brilliant spectacle; for none could capture life in such a manner – and make no mistake, it is life, all of it, that the science studies scholar confronts in even the simplest of scientific objects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

[1] See Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Porter, C., trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Chapter 1.2)

[2] The Latourian argument is obvious.  One might also find Reardon, J. (2004) Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics. New Jersey: Princeton University press. to provide a methodological answer, much in the same way as this paper does, in the form of “co-production”, obliterating categorical separations in knowledge production (for our interests, the problem of appealing to categories). Similarly, a more pragmatic answer might be found in Dumit, J. (2003) Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. New Jersey: Princeton University press. Dumit argues for an engagement in the “objective self fashioning” that we are entangled with. This example is, however, only analogously representative of a solution to the aforementioned problem. (It would be a mistake to take ANY of these examples to be more than ways to access a general idea in this context)

[3] It should not be understood that “ignoring” here means an act of scholarly deception. It could be more accurately understood under the framework of Michel Foucault’s “episteme”. See Foucault, M. (1994) The Order of Things. Vintage, for extended use of episteme; in our context it is meant to imply a lack of possibility of engaging in particular avenues of discourse due to strictures in the current ones.

[4] Again the point must be made that it is in the nature of administrative constraints, and not individual character, that analysis comes to avoid particular topics (the same is true for all examples following).

[5] The implications of Young’s analysis are particularly interesting in this context. The reader might be interested in Robert E. Kholer’s “Crossing the Threshold” from Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life, University of Chicago Press, 1994, pp 18-52. In this chapter the move into and out of the laboratory is described beautifully and has particular resonance with the movement of research that Young is talking about here, where in Kholer’s case the fly serves as the moving object.

[6] This should remind the reader of the current work, which puts forward a similar methodological argument on a more generalized scale.

 

References

 

*All references to student analyses (Murphy, Young, Goldman, Islam, Javed, Gignac, Marina, and Anonymous) scientific papers, interviews, and observations are protected by anonymity; please contact Natasha Myers for more information.

 

Dumit, J. (2003) Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

 

Latour, B. trans. Porter, C., (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

 

Latour, B. Woolgar, S., (1986) Laboratory Life. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

 

Martin, E., “Anthropology and the Cultural Study of Science”. Science, Technology & Human Values. 1998, 23(1), pp 24-44

 

Reardon, J., (2004) Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

 

Co-production, Biosocialities, and Objective-self fashioning

The production of scientific knowledge, its propagation outside the walls of the scientific laboratory, and the relationships it forms with human actors represents processes whose nature, function and effects are a source of tremendous academic contention. More recent trends in scholarship have led to a number of frameworks that favor an obliteration of the well known subject-object distinction. Long standing debates over this issue in philosophy have extended themselves into the realm of science studies; within this new realm evidence has come to be marshaled in favor of either the subject, or the object, in analytic discourse[1]. This paper will attempt to position three more recently developed frameworks within this well known debate. Jenny Reardon, in her book Race to the Finish (2005), has put forward a theory she calls “co-production” to understand the way in which knowledge and power get constituted simultaneously. Heather Paxson, in her essay “Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese” (2008) has explored the way in which knowledge about the human body has come to structure not only the received understanding of the body, but also how this knowledge structures what Paxson calls “biosocialities”. A final theorist whose work will inform this paper is Joseph Dumit, whose arguments from his book Picturing Personhood (2004) culminate in a prescriptive account of the way in which actors can engage with the production and reception of knowledge through “objective-self fashioning”. This paper will attempt to show that not only are these three theorists reorienting science studies within the subject-object debate, but that by understanding co-production, biosocialities, and objective-self fashioning, it is possible to extend both the two descriptive accounts, and Dumit’s prescriptive account, beyond the biological realm. The paper will be structured by three discussions whose topic will be the three theories presented above, and whose incremental structure will serve to show both the strength of each theory, as well as the capacity to move beyond the biological knowledge from which each theorist has begun.

 

Co-Production and the Biosociality

 

In her book, Race to the Finish, Jenny Reardon is interested in addressing the curious opposition that the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) encountered in its formative days. Reardon’s argument is that frameworks that would otherwise cast “science and power as already-formed entities that oppose each other”, a “co-productive” framework is more appropriate (Reardon, 2005: 3, 6). The nature of “co-production” and its relationship to both the subject-object debate, and the work of Paxson and Dumit are of interest to this paper and as such it is Reardon’s understanding and employment of the theory that this section will address.

 

Co-production, for Reardon, is a framework which posits that knowledge and power are formed “simultaneously”; that when objects of scientific interest are constructed they require the simultaneous construction of “scientific ideas and practices and other social practices” (Reardon, 2005: 6). Reardon is arguing along familiar lines; the construction of an “object” comes hand in hand with the construction of a subject that embodies scientific and social ideas and practices. It would be difficult on this account of co-production to fit it neatly into a subject or object oriented argument. This is the case precisely because, as Reardon’s diversity example demonstrates, to argue from the object or subject position is to presume a two coherent matters-of-fact exist; that “human genetic diversity” and “ethical research” can be marshaled in support of  a particular scientific endeavor. It is this presumption, then, that Reardon points to as the source of dissent over the HGDP. A crucial example of the way in which the presumption of objects and subjects of study is counter-productive is found in chapter 4 of her book. Reardon notes that a “lack of involvement of anthropologists” in the project was a source for scrutiny of the project (Reardon, 2005: 74). The application of the co-production framework is to be found in an ignorance of it. Enlisting of anthropological expertise fostered questions about the “[constitution] of this expertise” (Reardon, 2005: 96). How this expertise related to “authority in society” and concerns over the role that the particular expertise had played in historically “[colonialist]” and “racist” research were bound up tightly with the unproblematic addition of an anthropologist. The particular knowledge being imported in to the project was seen, by project organizers, to be divorced entirely from questions of social power that Reardon reminds her readers are always present; this is the meaning of co-production. A simple object or subject account of science, then, is disadvantaged in its inability to recognize the simultaneous construction of knowledge and power, of objects and subjects; it is in this way that co-production is particularly useful in understanding the failure of HGDP.

 

Heather Paxson provides us with another case in which co-production is occurring and uses it as a launch pad for an examination of the social groups that build up around power-knowledge relations[2]. Paxson is investigating the way in which the paradigm of Pasteurian hygiene is being supplanted by a post-Pasteurian “biosociality” through the production and consumption of raw-milk cheeses. The place of co-production is overt in the story that Paxson tells. Co-production can be seen in the nature of the Pasteurian paradigm that “people in the United States live in” (Paxson, 2008: 15). If co-production argues that knowledge and power are simultaneously constructed, this argument seems justified in Paxson’s case when she states “Pasteurian regulatory practices work not only to produce safe food” (objects or knowledge): “they also work to cultivate germophobic subjects” (Paxson, 2008: 28, emphasis added). Important to this paper, in this case, is the way in which subject-object debates have no place where the co-productive framework works to both redefine the terms of the debate, as well as to show that the knowledge about germs is detrimentally linked to the power to regulate the body[3]. It is in this way that co-production can be useful in understanding power-knowledge relations beyond the HGDP case.

 

Biosociality and Objective-Self Fashioning

 

Biosociality seems, to common sense understandings of subject-object distinctions, contradictory in its message: ‘that which is biologically factual has a social component’. It is precisely in the recognition that the term is anything but contradictory that Paxson’s definition, as well as her place in the subject-object debate, can be found. The term is not contradictory precisely because Paxson recognizes that co-production is at work; that knowledge and power are simultaneously constructed, that discussion of an object or subject is constrained without looking at that simultaneous construction, and that human actors can impact this construction. In the previous section the links between co-production and Paxson’s work were located in her understanding of the Pasteurian tradition with which a majority of US citizens live. Paxson’s story is hardly finished here, however. Co-production can be seen to be at work in the same way with regard to the post-Pasteurian resistance that has come to combat the power relations inherent in the production of knowledge about microbial objects. Paxson notes that new forms of knowledge about cheese production, about microbial actors are springing up; the microbes become “a microbiopolitical object” of a distinctly new kind (Paxson, 2008: 39). No longer do the microbiopolitical objects induce risk and fear, promoting a reliance on an authority for mediating between the human and the threat. Rather, “alternative ways of thinking about what Pasteurians would simply dismiss as irrational risk behavior” produce new power relations, relations that the human actor, previously passively influenced by the Pasteurian power relations, now come to dominate and direct that power (Paxson, 2008: 36). This is precisely what a new biosociality entails; “a self-fashioning organized around a collective sense of biologized identity” (Paxson, 2008: 37). No longer does the knowledge produced just involve power relations that human actors are subjected to. Recognizing that “microorganisms are our ancestors and our allies”, that “eating raw-milk cheese…can…be perfectly safe, even healthy”, puts the power to define the human, to regulate the human squarely in the human’s hands. This is no slight distinction, the capacity to subvert the “modern risk” that “the FDA” puts forward as “the most relevant framing of certain food choices” is nothing less than emancipation, then a revolution in the battle to define ourselves for ourselves. If co-production teaches us that the object-subject distinctions can only be made on the assumption that they exist in an unproblematic way, the appearance of new biosocialities in Paxson’s story informs us further that human actors are an integral part of the very construction of objects and subject. In their descriptive accounts, Reardon and Paxson show a definitive weakness in the character of any object-subject debate; the object and subject are continually and mutually redefined along an axis shaped by the interaction its human actors have with it. To understand better the place of the human actor, it will be beneficial to turn to the biosociality that might be seen coming alive in the pages of Joseph Dumit’s book.

 

Joseph Dumit’s book, Picturing Personhood, is a formidable example of the dual appearance of biosocialities. Similar to Paxson’s outline, in that there is a biosociality of people for whom the unchallenged reception of power-knowledge is the order of the day, and there is a growing biosociality constructed around individuals that objectively-self fashion. In Dumit’s case the ‘collective sense of a biologized identity’ comes from a received understanding of the objectivity, or autonomy of PET brain scans. It is in the power of these brain scans to, on Dumit’s account; create a semiotic link between the object of knowledge, and the subject of power relations. Dumit demonstrates that, in legal battles of the kind John Hinckley was involved in, the image of a brain scan comes to dominate any supplemental information and “promise…to tell us about the mind” (Dumit, 2004: 110). This is so much the case that the judge presiding over the court, while allowing the brain scans as evidence, tempered the way they could be seen as to avoid the outright influence that they might have on the jury (Dumit, 2004: 110). The biosociality that can be seen in this case is particularly in the collective sense that our identities, our insanity, or our normalcy, are to be found within objects of knowledge; objects whose very mechanical form of production purport to lack subjectivity.

 

 

Objective-self Fashioning and the Subject-Object debate

 

Tightly bound up in Joseph Dumit’s process of “objective-self fashioning” are a myriad of terms that merit explanation; indeed, an understanding of exactly what objective-self fashioning is, how it is connected to co-production and biosocialities, and how it avoids the subject-object debate all together, would be incoherent without this explanation. Objective-self fashioning relies upon the existence of a “biomedical identity” and an “objective self”.

 

The “objective self”, as Dumit understands it, regards the “acts that concern our brains and our bodies that we derive from received-facts of science and medicine” (Dumit, 2004: 7). This self, then, is wholly different from our common sense understanding of the self; this self is a bio-scientific blend of received understandings and reactions to them. Closely aligned with the objective self is the nature of identities that come bound up with it. As Dumit notes, our objective selves “always pull at issues of normality”; it is in this capacity, in the power of received facts to be translated through images and seemingly innocuous, even objective, statements that the construction of identities can be formed (Dumit, 2004: 8). The biomedical identity, then, is one in which the objective self has come to dominate a characterization of identity. In Dumit’s case, this regards the process by which the “creative and laborious” production of both PET technology and the resulting images work to shape our objective selves and to inform a biomedical identity about what a normal, depressed, active, or psychotropic afflicted brain would look like. It is in the power of the images there produced to defy critical questioning. In this regard, Dumit points to the semiotic work that the images labor at; they play on our identity-bound assumption in that “because most of us think that the brain of an insane person should somehow be different from a sane person’s, we hope that there is a way to detect this difference” (Dumit, 2004: 127). Similarly, the sense in which our selves are “objective” are mediated through a number of paths including the autonomy science is granted, the need for singular accounts of scientific fact in popular media, but also in more subtle ways. Dumit points particularly to the capacity of mechanical objectivity to lend a great deal of strength to the images that make their way around our world; although “brain images are produced by people, they are coproduced by scientific machines. And it is the machines, especially computers, that leave their mark” (Dumit, 2004: 119)[4]. These are the ways in which knowledge, images, identity, selves, and objectivity are tightly bound together in a grand mangle of practice.

 

From this description, a better understanding of objective-self fashioning emerges; an understanding that implores us to acknowledge, take command of, and direct our selves to fashion, rather than be fashioned, a notion of self. This is the prescriptive aspect of Dumit’s account, and one that we can learn from. Dumit writes:

 

Objective self-fashioning is thus an acknowledgement of local mutations in categories of people highlighting the active and continual process of self-definition and self-participation in that process. Objective self-fashioning is how we take facts about ourselves…that we have read, heard, or otherwise encountered in the world and incorporate them into our lives.

(Dumit, 2004: 164)

 

This, however, is not the end of the story; objective self-fashioning is not about a subject oriented account of scientific knowledge, or knowledge in general. It is precisely the recognition of the role that both the object and the subject have in any practice of knowledge production. It is “not just to the social construction of mental illness” or “a simple story of the gradual emergence of the right view of depression, schizophrenia, and PET scanning”; objective self-fashioning is the “hope that responsibility might be multiplied – that accountability might adhere to experts, mediators, and laypersons alike for their participation in objective self-fashioning” (Dumit, 2004: 168). Here then is the crucial distinction; Dumit finds a way out of the subject-object debate. It is not a rejection of either the subject, or the object of knowledge production, nor a dismissal of the debate. It is recognition of what Donna Haraway calls “situated knowledge”:

 

The object of knowledge [must] be pictured as an actor and agent, not as a screen or a ground or a resource, never finally as slave to the master that closes off the dialectic in his unique agency and his authorship of “objective knowledge”

 

(Haraway, 1988: 592)

 

Thinking Beyond

 

With a line of inquiry that starts first at the understanding that knowledge and power are co-produced, proceeding through the construction of biosocialities based around this power-knowledge, and concluding with a tool for dealing with and engaging in the construction of biosocialities, we can at least two ways our three epistemological accounts are brought together. First, it is precisely because knowledge and power are co-produced that biosocialities can develop in the first place; for if the two were divorced one would never find a group of people, or individuals who commune around a shared understanding of identity. And it is with objective self-fashioning that we find a prescriptive recommendation to seize control of this process; to not leave things to the “master…and his authorship of objective knowledge” (Haraway, 1988: 592). Second, all three accounts serve to engage the same subject-object problem in the same way. It is not by ignorance, or preference that the debate is settled, but by situating knowledge between the two. In this way these modern science studies scholars reposition themselves in the age old debate, and in this way they are united.

 

One final point worth relating is the extension beyond the biological realm that these approaches might have. It is true that Reardon, Paxson, and Dumit are dealing with exclusively (for lack of a better term) biological practices. However, keeping in mind the way both Dumit and Paxson rely on a co-productive force to reinforce their cases, there is nothing strictly biological in an account of co-production[5]. This is to say that the implications might be stretched further, perhaps to engage any aspect of human activity in which identity and understandings of the self are furnished out of the seemingly objective semiotic devices we encounter. One example that can not be fully dealt with here is the nature of technologies and their impact on our identities. The recent development of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has lead to the development of what could only be described as new biosocialities[6]. The capacity for RFID’s to monitor people’s movements, spending habits, and the overt use of the tags for inclusion/exclusion in physical spaces work to redefine where the human can go, how suspicious their activity is, and questions over the control of this technology. It is in this way that RFID’s, as a technology, engage questions of identity and it is in this way that a co-productive force is at work. Already there are groups of individuals not willing to rest content in subjecting their bodies to technological surveillance and who have began to fight back. Cheap scanners and even cheaper Arduino microcontrollers are the identity-redefining forces around which new biosocialities are appearing, and with them practices of objective self-fashioning that Joe Dumit would no doubt be pleased to see[7]. It is in this way, then, that these new modes of inquiry that defy the strictures of distasteful subject-object categories might come to serve the responsibilities implicit in defining humans along biological and technological lines (and perhaps many more).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References:

 

Dumit, J. (2004) Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans and Biomedical Identity. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

 

Haraway, D. (1988) “Situated Knowledge: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. Feminist Studies: 14(3), pp. 575-599.

 

Reardon, J. (2005) Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press

 

Paxson, H., (2008) “Post-Pasteurian Cultures: The Microbiopolitics of Raw-Milk Cheese in the United States”. Cultural Anthropology: 23(1), pp. 15-47.

 

---

[1] The reader should be reminded of long standing debates starting first with positivist thinkers like the famed Vienna Circle. Rudolf Carnap, a principle actor in the Vienna Circle, represented the strictest in defenses of the object, in subject-object debates (Der Logische Aufbau der Welt, 1928, Leipzig, represents a phenomenological exploration of science along these lines).  Theorists like David Bloor later explored the capacity for the subject to structure the nature of the reception of an object of study in his “strong program” (see Bloor, 1983, 91, 97).

[2] Clarification is needed here. This comment should not be taken to mean that Paxson uses the term “co-production” openly; rather, the co-production that Reardon has outlined can be seen to be present in the case Paxson is interested in. Similarly the groups that “build up” will be discussed in more detail in the next section that addresses biosociality directly.

[3] Regulation of the body can not be fully developed here, but will be discussed more in the next section. The most overt form of regulation, or the exercise of power, can be found in the pharmaceutical industry’s ability to capitalize on the “germophobes” who need antibodies, and a whole host of other practices/objects to mediate the risk they perceive to be living with.

[4] The reader would be informed further on the notion of objectivity and the way in which Dumit’s conception of the power of machines is bound up in a remarkable dual historicity concerning the use of the term “objectivity”, see Daston, L., Galison, P., (2007) Objectivity. Boston: Zone Books.

[5] This is not meant to imply that Dumit or Paxson express this reliance, but rather that, as the paper has attempted to show, the two are bound up in an acceptance and understand of co-production.

[6] For a general, and non-scholarly, explanation of the RFID technologies as well as some of its potential applications see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID, accessed May 27, 2009. The reference list at the end of the page should be observed carefully.

[7] The reader would be informed further on the rise of this “biosociality” by referencing the websites of community members. http://www.arduino.cc/ holds information about just one of the many technological sites for the redefinition of identity. Projects that engage these types of redefinition and specifically the power relations that they upset can be admired at http://www.hacknmod.com/hack/top-40-arduino-projects-of-the-web/. Both websites are active as of Wednesday, May 27, 2009.

 

Guattari meets STS – Academic Lines of Flight and the fight for Intellectual Emancipation

Felix Guattari was a French philosopher (and many other things). Guattari wrote a beautiful, and suprisingly short, essay entitled “Like an echo of a collective melancholia” that was largely a response to the notion of violence, and the use of violence by “urban guerrillas” in revolutionary contexts. His essay deals with the Red Army Faction and their 1970′s guerrilla tactics (kidnapping, public murders, hijacking of planes, ect…). If you are interested in political arguments revolving around violence, Frantz Fanon is an amazing source and indeed the RAF in their manifesto write very much in the tradition of Frantz Fanon (although they are notably perscriptive in their outlook on violence, where Fanon is much more descriptive of its place in revolution). The earlier arguments surrounding violence are not what concern me, Dumit’s text, or our class; Guattari’s message is.

 

The RAF argue that because capital pervades every part of the globe and has an equally oppressive character everywhere, that every part of the globe is a legitimate battle ground and that every place is as good as any other for a violent resistance. Guattari turns this guerrilla ideology on its head and agrees that indeed capital is global, but in stopping there, in only recognizing its spatial extension in our world, the RAF have missed out on the other ways in which the rest of the world interacts with the global phenomenon of capital, particularly its political interaction with popular media. If a binary power relation exists between the native/settler, capitalist/worker, ect…and this relation is maintained by force (legal bounderies, acctual physical force, guns, ect…)….the only way to fight back against that oppression becomes force its self (Fanon’s legacy). Ok…so far so good…Guattari agrees that indeed force seems like the only way to mount an offensive against an often times more powerful oppressive state. But, Guattari asks us, what is it that violence ends up doing once used?

 

First, Guattari notes that the choice to use violence is its self not a free choice, but represents an entrenchment in the very system you are trying to fight. If an oppressor uses force, and demonstrates that force is the law of the land, then any use of force, even against an oppressor, positions the revolutionary within the predefined catagories of the oppressor (ie. using violence is the only choice you were given by the oppressors, using it is giving in to those oppressors). Second, Guattari notes that capitalist (imperialist, nationalist, colonialist….it doesnt matter) media outlets pick up violence and use it to their advantage. The more familiar example might be 9/11. The violence that was used against the US was picked up by the US media and those involved became publicly demonized; the media used the violent acts to further define the us/them, native/settler, capitalist/worker, normal/not-normal lines. No great number of US citizens were sitting around thinking “we hate freedom fighters, and we love oppressing others” (one possible depiction of “terrorists” intentions), but the power of a symbol like the twin towers falling is such a powerful semiotic device that, for the general public, it is enough to embolden the lines of “us or them” and lend popular power to a war that seeks to erradicate terrorism…rather than erradicate freedom fighters (however anyone chooses to see either side if of little importance here). The point Guattari is making is that, by ignoring what Jenny Reardon would have called a co-production of knowledge and power (the knowledge that we can strike back with violence….and the power relations that come bound up in it in the form of media politics and their capacity to further catagorize people), the RAF’s violent tactics simply give general assent to a revolt AGAINST the RAF. Simply stated, those people that attacked the US were neither terrorists, nor freedom fighters any more than the US was until the media was able to construct those catagories by capitalizing on the violent visuals there produced.

 

If violence only leads to a futher polarizing of beliefs, if it only gives more strength to the oppressor through support, violence should simply be jettisoned as a means toward revolution. What then, is there to do? Guattari’s answer is that films like “Germany in Autumn” provide the context for real political action, real revolutionary action. What a film like Germany in Autumn does, says Guattari, is it offers, in its stark realism, “lines of flight” from the binary distinctions forced on people. Where capital serves to say “you are either with us or them”, where the US media says “You are a terrorist or you are fighting terror”, where Dumit has shown the public reception of PET scans to say “you are either normal or not normal”, Guattari says we are in need of a new way to think, of a line of flight from those most constricting and empty of choices. Instead of accepting one of the two polarized views on the RAF’s actions (namely, they are bad or they are good….violence is bad or it is good), the film shows how people tend to really act, before they are distilled into the more familiar positions discussed above. The characters spend scenes getting sad, angry, horny, drunk, high, and every other state imaginable that humans might react with; these are the lines of flight, this is what it means to be a real revolutionary of Guattari. If you cant use violence because it is the oppressors designated method of resistance for you, and it only serves to strengthen the oppressor and kill the revolution….create a Germany in Autumn….refuse to choose between their catagories…develop a new line of thought.

 

I will offer two examples that I find particularly illustrative of Guattari’s method before I link it to our work. The famous beat poet Alan Ginsberg (see Howl) was an openly gay man. His homosexuality permeated his work, lectures, speeches, and obviously his personal life. The interesting thing is that what Ginsberg and his partner Orlovsky’s work embody, is an artistic expression, in the mode Guattari has pointed to, of a line of flight from old tired catagories and modes of speech about homosexuality. They offer something more open, something real on the topic of homosexuality. It is just after Ginsberg’s graduation from high school that his recognition of his sexuality occurs. This also happens to be a time, early 1940s, that a great rise in homosexual activism occured, following World War 2. The point, in Guattari’s view, would be that these types of expression (of which there were many more and in many forms), opens up for the public what Foucault might call a new episteme; it makes possible new ways of thinking and speaking, it makes possible a political revolution without the pitfalls of violence. This process, or idea might better be caputed in a quote i was recently made aware of by the German composer Schtockhausen. After 9/11 Schtockhausen was asked what he thought of the attacks. Rather than play to the predefined catagories of “its horrible, kill the terrorists”, or the classic “it was an inside job”, rather than play to the native/settler, oppressor/oppressed catagories, Schtockhausen said that it was one of the most powerful pieces of art ever made (the image of the towers, he means). The point is that you cant fit Schtockhausen’s comment into those other two catagories, it represents a line of flight FROM those catagories and opens up something new to think about and do; it offers a revolution.

 

So how are we going to connect this to Dumit’s book?

 

There are two ways that I find compelling and would like to share with you. I believe that Guattari’s arguments (which do EXCLUSIVELY concern revoltion and politics) have extension past merely political contexts. I believe that Guattari has pointed to a means to any type of revolution. The notion of violence can easily be made into the notion of “force”, or any overt and oppositional push toward a new way of thinking. If this leap is made, I soon find myself reflecting on what it would mean to bring change to any part of human life, be it educational, intellectual, or scientific. During his entire book, Dumit is wrestling with the dangers, problems, and benefits of PET depictions of normalcy, of personhood, of our objective selves. Dumit pleades with his audience to recognize that not only are these catagories being constructed on uncertain ground, but that we are involved deeply in the way those catagories turn out. What else are we concerned about than the way in which ideas of normal/not-normal structure power relations (that then move into courts, public discourse…ect….a la Dumit), and the way in which those catagories dont capture the reality of the situation. If we are faced with a system that says “it is us or them”, a system that says “it is normal or abnormal”, what tools might we have at our disposal to bring about a revolution? I believe that Joseph Dumit’s book is a intellectual tool for revolution in the strongest Guattarrian sense. I feel that the book represents, in its descriptions of the making of brain images, to their uptake in popular discourse, a line of flight from stifling catagories developed therein. If objective self fashioning is what Dumit urges us to engage in, to recognize that there are a great number of catagories, not just dominant ones, at work that we might choose from, then Guattarri would no doubt say Dumit’s piece is nothing short of an intellectual revolution. It forces us to consider the chaotic, not so well ordered world that lay at the intersection between science, engineering, public discourse, personal psychology, social ideologies, politics, power and the whole lot; it responds to the affirmation “you are normal or not normal” with a resounding “oh yeah?”.

 

But I think the revolutionary metaphor can go further. I would point with great enthusiasm to the entire discipline of STS (or science studies) as a masterful and important line of flight. It is important not for what guarentees it makes, not what catagories we want it to tell us are clean and palatable, but precisely because it explodes the notion of those catagories and indeed the very NEED FOR those catagories. Perhaps I was simply feeling nostalgiac as I was brushing over my “Intro to Science and Technology Studies” class notes from years ago, perhaps I want to intrigue more minds with STS inflected thought, what I do know is that, for me, STS has functioned in much the same way as Guattarri’s expressive revolutions; it has taught me about the need for critical inquiry over catagorical acceptance, about contextual understanding over content based regurgitation.

 

This is not, however, the end of the story. We can not, after all our readings in this class that bring to light power relations and epistemological paradoxes, fall into complacancy. Guattari’s final lesson is one of impermanence, never stop running to a new line of flight…even when your standing still – keep moving. It is a mistake, on Guattari’s account, to stay in one place, to stay with the Ginsberg mode of expression about sexuality, to rest comfortably in Schtockhausen’s refreshingly different understanding of a “terrorist” attack; we must take from where we are what we can, and move on – we must ALWAYS look for a new line of flight that might help us hurdle the encumbering nature of stagnating thought. Already in the realm of STS there are whispers of lines of flight all about. Professor Myers’ work on visual culturs and practices, reconceptualized thoughts about technology….whatever they are…they are new….they bring with them something new….and they promise nothing more than a way out of the drudgery of catagorical imperatives. Never stop running, even when your standing still.

 

Haraway’s Feminist Objectivity and Barad’s Meeting the Universe Half way

I want to adress an issue that I found to be relatively prominent in both readings for this week; reflexivity. My first introduction to the concept of reflexive arguments was, curiously enough, in Harry Collins’ outline of his Empirical Program of Relativism (EPOR). The curiousity was to be found in his denial of the importance of reflexive arguments. For scholars like Collins, reflexivty was largely a waste of time as it put you in a position of perpetual circular reasoning. If you are a constructivist, for example, and you argue that some artifact of science has been “socially constructed” (I will leave this contentious term unqualified for the time being), then you would be irresponsible if you were not to consider the construction of your social constructivism. Another failing of the reflexive position, according to Collins, is that it forces the sociologist to see scientists in a differnet light than they see the world. After all, it is scientists themselves who, according to a number of science studies “camps”, spend their time defending their theories in a Khunian tradition. For a scientist, victory in defending a theory would be hard to find if a majority of their time was spent questioning their theories perpetually. I do not want to imply that Collins, or Bloor (who advocated the use of reflextive scholarship in his Strong program), are correct in their assumptions about reflexivity, but I would like to stress my own apreciation for that type of scholarship.

 

Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, in my opinion, both present largely reflexive arguments. Haraway, in advocating her feminist objectivity suggests that it is a failing of relativistic and totalizing pictures of scientific practice alike, that the subject is given a particular autonomy. In the case of relativists Haraway points to their “being nowhere while claiming to be every-where equally” (Haraway, 584). Her concern is that, like the scientists that relativists often criticize, there is an advocacy of some imaginary perspective from which conclusions there-drawn can be justified. But what perspective is this? What relativist can truly claim objective critique while remaining truly relativist? To me, Haraway is making a reflexive argument. That is to say, she is turning back on relativists and scientific empiricists their own arguments in order to generate a clear picture of her objectivity. In light of the reflexive failures of both camps, Haraway suggests that it is to “partial, locatable, critical knowl-edges sustaining the possibility of webs of connections” that science studies should look (Haraway, 584).

 

Similarly, Karen Barad advances a reflexive argument with regard to traditional treatments of realism; Haraway’s included. Barad explores the catagory of reality in hopes of giving a foundation to an ontology generated through scientific practice. Where does one find reality? Is it in the manipulation of physical entities as Hacking has suggested? Or perhaps in the reality scientists extol their theories for having? Or is reality just an ideal that we have created? Barad, like Haraway, finds a middle ground by making a reflexive argument. Indeed, Barad’s Agential Realism “entails a conscious, critical reflexivity” (Barad, 186). Agential realism asks of its self where the place of culture as well as nature is, where objects meet subjects, and how reality is constructed out of “shifting and destabilizing bounderies” (Barad, 188).

 

I would like to suggest that, contrary to some of the more eminent of science studies scholars very well formulated opinions, reflexivity has the capacity to enrich our understanding of science. To continually ask ones self the questions that one would pose to the object of critique is to open up the door to those aspects of objectivity, reality, and science that would otherwise stay hidden. I will be working hard to ask of myself the types of questions that helped Barad and Haraway develop their theories while working on my Science@York project. One parallel I have already drawn is in my treatment of my laboratory’s goals. I had, previous to these readings, spend a good deal of time developing what I felt the motivating factors in the lab might be without asking about my own motivations in analysis. What has come out of this practice is a capacity to see my own work as being structured heavily by our course work thus far (another testament to the efficacy of reflective practices is this very change of heart!). The picture I am able to draw now is one that is symmetrical with regard to its treatment of the object and subject of analysis and this is truly a gift. I would be interested to know if anyone else has taken any methodological turns in their work in this way.