How to Think About Science.” Our Guest Is Brian Wynne of Lancaster University in the North of England

IDEAS HOW TO THINK ABOUT SCIENCE: BRIAN WYNNE Paul Kennedy colleagues. Many of them were studying what goes on in I'm Paul Kennedy, and this is Ideas on “How to Think scientific laboratories or analyzing scientific About Science.” Technological science exerts a pervasive controversies⎯trying to observe scientific knowledge influence on contemporary life. It determines much of still, as it were, under construction. Brian Wynne wanted what we do, and almost all of how we do it. Yet science to understand how scientific knowledge exerts its and technology lie almost completely outside the realm of authority in public arenas. I interviewed Brian Wynne in political decision. No electorate ever voted to split atoms the fall of 2006. Fighting a bad cold, he told me a little of or insert DNA from one organism into another. No his story. He grew up in a village in the northwest of legislature ever authorized the iPod or the internet. Our England, and his academic ability got him to Cambridge civilization, consequently, is caught in a profound where in 1971 he completed a PhD in material science, the paradox. We glorify freedom and choice, but submit to the branch of physics that studies the properties of transformation of our culture by technoscience as a virtual engineering materials. Up to that point, he said, he had fate. Today on Ideas, we explore the relations between never really thought about the politics of science. But then politics and scientific knowledge, as we continue with our he had a fateful conversation. series “How To Think About Science.” Our guest is Brian Wynne of Lancaster University in the north of England. Brian Wynne He’s the associate director of an institute that studies the My PhD supervisor at Cambridge said to me, well do you social and economic aspects of genetic technologies, and want to do a post-doc? And I’d had a ball really, so I one of Britain’s best-known writers and researchers on the thought, well why not? It was the obvious thing to do. So I interplay of science and society. “How To Think About said yeah, great, I’d love to. So he said, well just write Science” is presented by David Cayley. down a few thoughts about what you'd like to do, and hand them in and we'll talk about them in a week or two. David Cayley So I thought about it, and that was the time when oil In 1942, an American sociologist by the name of Robert prices began to go through the roof. So energy, energy, Merton wrote an influential essay called “The Normative energy was on everybody's mind. And I just thought, well Structure of Science.” Science, he said, was guided by as a material scientist, I ought to be able to do something four principles: communalism, universalism, helpful in all of this. What about smart materials for disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. These energy efficiency and energy saving? So I wrote down a became widely by their acronym CUDOS. The gist of few thoughts around that kind of thing and went to see CUDOS is that science has one over-riding him, and he treated me like I'd just come from planet commitment⎯the truth⎯and in pursuit of this grail, Mars, you know. He was just very dismissive. And I'd got scientists are expected to sacrifice all parochial on with him fine as a supervisor. But he was very concerns⎯that’s the universalism⎯all private dismissive, and I was really disappointed. So I went off, interests⎯the communalism and disinterestedness⎯and and I was having a drink with a friend in the Cavendish all prior intellectual commitments⎯the organized lab, a physicist. And I was lamenting to Pete about what skepticism. This heroic image of science still had some had gone on because I was so puzzled and disappointed. cultural traction when I was growing up in the 1950’s and And he said, Brian, just stop and think about it. Where 60’s, but by 1970, it was being strongly challenged by an does the funding money in your department come from? intellectual movement that emerged first in Great Britain. We’re speaking of the Cambridge Material Science Scholars at the Universities of Bath and Edinburgh, the Department, one of the leading material science first two centres of the new thinking, proposed a radically departments in the world? And he just asked me that very revised sociology of scientific knowledge. According to simple question. And I didn't know the answer. I'd been these scholars, science was a social enterprise, and just as there for six years and I didn't know the answer to that capable of parochialism, self-interest, and superstition as simple question. This friend was much more politically any other social institution. For them, the genius of alive and aware than I was. science lay in its social organization, and not in some heroic ability to stand outside society. So I then stopped and looked, and did a bit of prodding around to see. And of course not surprisingly, most of the Brian Wynne was part of this movement. He joined the bloody money that was keeping the department afloat was Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh in the coming from military or quasi-military outfits. If I'd early 1970s. But his interests differed from some of his wanted to do a post-doc on something like the next 84 IDEAS HOW TO THINK ABOUT SCIENCE: BRIAN WYNNE generation of alloys for tanks, or missiles, or God knows get an anomaly that can't be explained we throw away the what, there'd have been money flowing like there was no theory and look for a better one. As Kuhn put it, every tomorrow. But for something that I thought was theory is born refuted. There are always anomalies. Every scientifically interesting and socially useful, there was no single theory that exists on the face of the planet has interest, and presumably therefore no money. always had anomalies associated with it. The key thing is So at that point I started to think, well, maybe this isn't whether the scientists can persuade themselves to suspend what I want to do for the rest of my life. I really don't want and shelve the anomalies for the time being in the faith to give my life to being an appendage of the military that eventually they'll be explained. As we develop the industrial complex. theory we will be able to explain those. David Cayley David Cayley Brian Wynne’s revelation pushed him from science into Thomas Kuhn helped Brian Wynne to see science as a the emerging field of science studies. He went to the cultural enterprise⎯a mixture, Wynne would say in his University of Edinburgh and immersed himself in the first book, of “rationality and ritual.” This was surprising, literature that was beginning to put science in a new light. even shocking, because natural science until the time One of the crucial texts, for almost everyone involved in we’re speaking of had enjoyed an extraordinary privilege. the field, was written by American philosopher Thomas Other forms of knowledge might be shaped by Kuhn. circumstances, but science was a transparent revelation of nature itself. What scientists believed, the story went, was Brian Wynne simply what was the case. Kuhn’s famous book of 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, really delineated the ways in which science Brian Wynne is a cultural practice. It’s cultural in the sense that there It’s believed because it’s true. That was the explanation of are forms of closure around particular, effectively scientific truth. But when you actually look at why dogmatic commitments to ways of seeing nature. And scientists believe the things they believe, it's rubbish. They these are reflected in methodological commitments and in don't believe them because they're true. They might be theoretical paradigms as he called them. That was really true, but that's not why they believe them. And, having where the famous term paradigm came from. So the been through six years of scientific education, I can speak particular theoretical commitments in any given speciality from personal experience. I know that's the case. So then are not necessarily the objects of scientific skepticism and a key question is, okay, so if we're saying that scientific skeptical critical testing, but they are actually the truth requires a sociological explanation, does that mean framework within which observation and analysis and that scientific truth is just socially constructed, as people testing take place. So there are important elements, in often say? Does that mean nature has no voice in the other words, of dogma. And Kuhn wrote a famous paper matter? And that’s where I think people often make a called “The Functional Role of Dogma in Science.” So a crucial mistake. There’s no logical reason at all why certain ambiguity, in Kuhn’s view, is essential to modern saying that something is socially negotiated and science. He called it the essential tension. constructed as a belief should imply that nature’s not playing a role in it. Because most of the time when we’re David Cayley constructing and negotiating—sociologically This tension in science between free inquiry and dogmatic negotiating—what counts as valid knowledge, we're also commitment became a key idea for Brian Wynne. It building in there the question, does it work? You know explained, for example, why scientific theories can we don’t particularly want knowledge that doesn't work.

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