Historical-Epistemological Prospects on Science as Power (ESHS-Symposium)

7th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science Prague, Czech Republic, 22–24 September, 2016.

Symposium 374: Historical-Epistemological Prospects on Science as Power
Organizers: Sascha Freyberg (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany),
Pietro Daniel Omodeo (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany)

Chair: Sascha Freyberg (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany)
The growing interest in the close connection between science and society/science and power casts doubt on reductionist epistemologies (very much in vogue from the 1950s onwards), and calls for a wider conception of science. This is where historical investigation and the theoretical reflection can converge and reinforce each other. In this session we assess the ways in which considerations on power challenge established views on science in history and force us to revise established epistemological outlooks.
Recent developments in the history and philosophy of science seek for a richer understanding of science capable of encompassing its cultural and political dimensions. This is not only due to (inter-) disciplinary reasons pertaining to methodology of inquiry. Rather, political motivations have come to the fore—questions pertaining to the role of science in society, to scientists' public responsibility, the global impact of human activity and technology on the terrestrial systems, the agendas underlying scientific and academic discourses, and so on.
 However, the meaning of this turn for Science Studies in general and Historical Epistemology in particular is still waiting for a clarification. If the different strains of Historical Epistemology and culturalist historiography can be seen as a critique of reductionist treatments of science (Feest & Sturm 2011), the different historiographical methods and their consequences have to be discussed.
 We invite contributions to our session to engage in this discussion bearing one or more of the following questions in mind:
How deeply does the political turn in science studies affect our historiographical and epistemological apparatus?
Is Historical Epistemology so far limited to a critique or itself an agent of the aforementioned reconstructive development? Is it mainly uncovering cultural, sociological or political constraints or does it work with a positive agenda in mind?
Can this agenda be a concept of science as a contested field in which cultural-political struggle intersects with socio-economical interdependencies (Gramsci)? Does an enlarged Historical Epistemology call for a reassessment of the project of enlightenment – of "reconstructing" (Dewey) the concept of science as a way of world disclosure or of its character as a "symbolical form" (Cassirer), that cannot be reduced to nominalist logic or instrumentalist levels of technological applicability?
What are the limits of the different aims and methods employed in Historical Epistemology? Is it possible to uncover explicit or implicit political views in the methodology?
How are differences of socio-political context reflected? Does a global concept of science allow for a local understanding of its role as a power?
This kind of theoretical, historical and methodological (self-) reflection should clear the way for a better (self-)understanding of the research done in history and philosophy of science, the necessary relationship between these aspects and its role in shaping the concept of science.
Keywords: Meta-Science, Historiography and Philosophy of Science, Concept of Science, Science and Society, Political Epistemology, Historical Epistemology, Methodology
 
 
Narratives of Superiority in the Historiography of Pre-modern Science (ID 408)
Sonja Brentjes (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany)
This paper discusses the political background of narratives on pre-modern science from the viewpoint of a global history of cross-cultural exchanges. Twentieth-century historians of science throughout the Cold War have generally been trapped in an approach that can be aptly depicted as teleological, linear, mono-cultural and static. Some examples will be presented, discussed and critically assessed. Whereas Eurocentric mainstream narratives have often established themself at the level of commonsense, alternative approaches proved not less monolithic and static, as is the case with recent 'Islamocentric' historiography. It will be argued that such mono-cultural approaches are not apt to account for the history of knowledge. Intellectual history has rather to be seen as a cross-cultural process. What's more, the one-sidedness of the aforementioned 'narratives of superiority' is not only misled from a methodological viewpoint but also is affected by ideological shortcomings that have to be understood in political terms. Such a criticism of implicit and explicit politico-cultural agendas underlying historiography is aimed to foster a dynamic and non-linear model. Such a change of perspective would make justice to the participation of many different cultures in the production, transfer and advance of science. The presentation will include a discussion of some instances of historical inquiry developed from such point of view. Such cases will show the fruitfulness of an approach devoted to the study of the in history of knowledge as the field of cross-cultural exchanges.
 
 
Epistemological and Political Configurations of the Sciences of Man The Society of the Observers of Man (France, 1799–1830) – Methodological Reflections (ID 406)
Martin Herrnstadt (Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt/M., Germany), Laurens Schlicht (Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt/M., Germany)
From 1799 to 1804 the Société des observateurs de l'homme (Society of the Observers of Man, SOH) tried to create a universal science of man, that, in the eyes of the actors, should encompass physical, moral and intellectual aspects of man. Up to now existent research concerning the SOH concentrated on its intellectual heritage and sociological configuration, thereby claiming, that the SOH was rooted in the French science of ideas – the so called Idéologie – and mainly indebted to sensualist philosophy. While this perspective on the SOH and more generally the sciences of man around 1800 is essentially adequate, it is too little known about the concrete practices of the sciences of man and their political functionality. Our research project thus raised the question, in what ways these interrelated epistemological and political aspects of the sciences of man could be analyzed symmetrically.
Inspired by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's analysis of experimental systems we therefore proposed a methodological framework to study what we call "epistemical and political configurations". Our way of analyzing these configurations assumes that much can be learned by appreciating their situatedness in local epistemical and political contexts. Thus we proposed to start the analysis with the identification of central epistemic and political terms and of their connectedness to specific epistemic and political practices. By differentiating several of these practices connected to epistemic and political terms it was possible to discern different epistemologies and politics – the totality of explanations of epistemical or political terms. In our contribution we want to clarify this approach of historical epistemology further and show on the basis of examples from our research how it can be useful for analyzing past procedures of knowledge production in their entanglement with the political realm.
Keywords: Human sciences, history of the Société des observateurs de l'homme, Methodology, Political and Historical Epistemology
 
 
Cultural Hegemony, Historical Epistemology and the Concept of Science (ID 409)
Pietro Daniel Omodeo (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany)
This paper addresses the ideological embedment of 20th-century history and philosophy of science as emerged and was discussed from the threshold of the Cold War onwards. In particular, it departs from the analyses on this issue carried out in the 1930s by the Italian intellectual Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks. On those pages, he critically discussed the views presented by Bukharin in his popular introduction to Historical Materialism and in his epoch-making talk at the International Congress of History of Science and Technology (London, 1931). Although the question about the ideological embedment of science and natural conceptions had already been raised in the 19th century—for instance by Engels in Anti-Dühring and Dialektik der Natur—nonetheless it is only in the 1930s that the focus of ideology criticism shifted from epistemology to historiography. Bucharin's provocation produced a debate echoed by other Marxist intellectuals such as G. Lukács and A. Gramsci. It moreover influenced the most important developments of the history of science after WWII: an ideological bifurcation that is clearly documented, in the 1940s, by the theoretical opposition between Koyré's intellectual historiography and Zilsel's materialist approach to early modern science, and by the later clash between "internalist" and "externalist" historians of science. Still, a reflection on the political-cultural embedment of the history of science has often been overshadowed by claims about the objectivity and neutrality of science and its historiography. Thus, the seminal discussions of the 1930s remain one of the most lucid moments of reflection about the role of science and history of science as cultural phenomena shaped by political struggles. In particular, Gramsci's views on culture, ideology and the intellectuals are crucial in the assessment of the interrelations between science, history and cultural hegemony. His criticism of science as cultural hegemony can also be extended to post-WWII hegemonic approaches to the very concept of science (along the lines indicated by Koyré/Popper/Kuhn) as embedded in the values and political oppositions of the Cold War.
As I will argue on the basis of several cases, neo-Gramscian historical epistemology permits us to examine and assess the many ways in which hegemonic values and science have been continuously intertwined in the concepts of science brought forward either by historians or by philosophers of science up to the most recent merging of the fields as Science Studies.

 
The use of historical theater play in science education (In memoriam Arthur Stinner) (ID 435)
Juergen Teichmann (Ludwig-Maximilians-University and Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany)
There are several ways to use science history in University or school education. Theater play is an until now relatively unusual kind of making history of science alive for students. Since 1999 Arthur Stinner and me developed some examples which we tested at conferences, teacher and student seminars and in public performances, for example the "Age of the Earth's debate", "Count Rumford", "Galileo, Kepler and Cardinal Bellarmin", "Einstein and Newton". (Complete texts are available from the homepage arthurstinner.com, which is still existing.) Of course such reconstructions of history have to be effectively based on relevant historical secondary literature and sources. But theater plays gain their influence from dramatic effects, especially by factual or personal conflicts, controversies, contradictions in specific historical developments. That means – for a theater play of 1 to 2 hours – the historical material has to be concentrated and translated in personal actions and direct speech. And within this time an arc of suspense has to be erected.
Students get by such a play an immediate living introduction to specific research processes, to their role in society, to the power of science as a medium of rational beliefs, but also to its weakness because bound to the events and preconditions of its time. By being themselves actors in such a play they can "actively" participate at history.
The problem of such historical reconstructions of course is much larger than at reconstructing single elements like experiments, decisions or used prior knowledge of scientists in specific situations. Theatre plays are in danger to come too close to a novelistic compaction of otherwise complex historic processes – intensified by the use of direct speech and the contraction of events, which happened at different locations and different points in time.
It is then necessary to combine those performances with further study of good secondary and primary literature to bring any deeper understanding of history.
Keywords: theater play, science education, reconstruction of history
References:
http://www.gn.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/personen/emeriti/teichmann/index.html
 
 
Machines as metaphors: a 'big picture' of the history of modern science (ID 521)
Frans van Lunteren (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Over the last few decades there have been several calls for a 'big picture' of the history of science. There is a general need for a concise overview of the rise of modern science, with a clear structure allowing for a rough division in periods. Here I would like to propose such a scheme, one that is both elementary and comprehensive. It takes its cue from Norton Wise's work on 'mediating machines'.[1] It focuses on four machines, which mediated between science and society during successive periods of time: the clock, the balance, the steam engine and the computer.
Following an extended developmental phase each of these machines came to play a highly visible role in Western societies, both socially and economically. Each of these machines, moreover, was used as a powerful resource for the understanding of both inorganic and organic nature. More specifically, their metaphorical use helped to construe and refine some key concepts that would play a prominent role in such understanding. Finally, in a refined form, each of these machines would eventually make its entry in scientific research. This remarkable pattern repeated itself every hundred years or so, thereby presenting us with a convenient scheme that can serve as a backbone for the rise of modern science during the last four centuries.
A scheme such as this cannot be all inclusive. Grand narratives inevitably involve selectivity in terms of the facts they marshal. This scheme tends to privilege natural philosophy, physics and physiology and to highlight ontologies at the expense of method and practice. It remains to be seen whether such missing elements can be included in the scheme in a natural way.
[1] Wise, M. Norton, "Mediating Machines", Science in Context, 2 (1988): 77–113
Keywords: Big picture, modern science, machines, metaphor, society, energy, information
 
 
Sharing Knowledge, Challenging Power? (ID 576)
David Steinman (University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada), Dolores Steinman (University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada)
"Knowledge is power and it can command obedience. A man of knowledge during his lifetime can make people obey and follow him and he is praised and venerated after his death. Remember that knowledge is a ruler and wealth is its subject."
— Imam Ali, Nahj Al-Balagha, Saying 146
Power, as "the ability or right to control people or things", will be addressed in our paper, specifically referring to mastering medical-imaging technology and establishing the ranks in the communication between patient and health-care provider.
The meaning we chose to associate with "knowledge" refers particularly to the education in science, more pointedly the way the information imbedded or accompanying medical images can be shared with the lay public. 
Over the centuries, production of (scientific) knowledge as well as imparting it, were the fief of the few. Starting with the moment it became a field of research and not "merely" a collection of cures and remedies, the importance of information sharing became more acute. A healer or a witch doctor would protect his or her knowledge, setting him or her apart from the congregation to which they belonged. They were authoritative, respected and revered, even. All this as a result of the knowledge they had and the power that came with it: the power to heal or to let die.
The skill set required to operate and the "smoke and mirrors" of technology give power to the educated, the specialists.
Within the span of a century, from the initial X-ray to today's myriad of computer-mediated/generated medical images, there is a great shift in style and attitude.
The dynamics of knowledge-based power became less dramatic with time, and one would expect that – with the popularization of (medical) science and, lately, with the plethora of medical images freely flowing on the internet, as well as the easy access to information – the public would be more knowledgeable. In fact, what is so often noticed, is a misinformation and misinterpretation of the data, be it personal one (patient) or research (public at large).
The research conducted in our laboratory aims at bridging the patient-collected data with the physician, the technologist, while also addressing the demand to respect the patient's needs. Images are part of the public domain, but their meaning remains, sometimes obscure or obscured.
An elite of the technologically-knowledgeable feel responsible and empowered and fighting the tide of "common knowledge" as spread by the easy-access internet sites. Their attempt at stopping the "democratization of information" is made with the overt intent of avoiding misunderstandings and misconceptions but, at the same time, lead to a lessened input of the patient regarding decisions concerning the course of treatment and the potential outcome.
Over the last couple of decades, a shift in attitudes as well as in the use of data provided by the medical images occurred: the familiarization of public at large paralleled by the health-care provider interaction with both the novel technologies, as well as with the new public awareness.
We consider and would like to discuss the hypothesis that making the scientific communication clear and concise for the benefit of the public is both difficult as well as potentially misleading, thus adding to complexity of the task.
Keywords: medical imaging, patients, healthcare, technology, democratization
References:
1. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/power, accessed 29 Feb 2016.
2. Hangan Steinman DA, Steinman DA. The art and science of visualizing blood flow dynamics. Leonardo 2007 Feb; 40(1): 71–76.
 
 




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