'method' indicates, the sciences lay down a certain Book Review Section path, from the local to the global, that cannot be Compiled by John Jenkin* mon sense define their ties with the global. Even if John A. Schuster and Richard R. Yeo (Eds.), we recognise the local character of the rails, we The Politics and Rhetoric of ScientiJic Method: understand that they are laid down in a particular Historical Studies - Australasian Studies in way that allows trains to speed along them; they are History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4. not laid down to interrupt, side-track or slow down Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986. 305 pp., $106 the trains. Even if we recognise science as an archi- approx. pelago, how is it that each of the islands has dis- coverers who wave their flag and say that the whole I have always wondered how ancient navigators world is theirs? could, in the name of their Sovereign, occupy terri- Since, for an edited volume, this book has a tories dozens of times greater than their own simply remarkable unity of intent, it seems reasonable to by planting a flag and saying a prayer. This interest- comment on it as if there was but one author. The ing book is about the ways tiny groups of scientists book is divided into two main parts. The introduc- are able to plant a flag and claim ownership of vast tion and the first two chapters are the most domains they will never be able to fully colonize. ambitious, and try to uproot what has been taken Is science universal? Of course it is, or such is, at for granted as the scientific method of the great least, what used to be its most essential trait. heroes - Newton, Galileo, Descartes. The second Beliefs, religions, customs, laws, even ethics are part is less ambitious but nicely documented: what hopelessly local and peculiar, but the results of sci- is the use of 'method talk' in scientific contro- ence escape these contingencies and are universally versies; when others fail, tell your colleague that valid. Indeed, this is a tautological definition: there they are not 'really' doing science. are valid scientific results only in so far as they are Feyerabend's work on Galileo rendered a great universal. disservice to the study of science by using polemi- Then things began to deteriorate. Studies by his- cally the bizzare notion of propaganda. Galileo was torians, sociologists and even anthropologists accused, 'not only' to discipline rigorously 'but also' tended to break down the universality of science to indulge in propaganda. This is a most damaging and replace it by local, technical, crafted, idiosyn- definition of rhetoric, since, inevitably, defenders cratic achievements. Writers as different as of science point out that 'in addition' to a flourish Duhem, Koyre, Kuhn, Collins and Shapin made of rhetoric, Galileo did demonstrate some of his many diffident about the universality of scientific laws. Then we are back where we started; that is, principles. A new, much more fragmented picture with a dichotomy between rhetoric and the rest, the of science started to emerge. Universality is a real science. The author of the first chapter, pleasant myth of science as it is taught, but it is not Chalmers, rightly debunks Feyerabend's pretention. a property of science as it is made. Sciences are no After all, if Galileo wished to propagate his results, more universal than the freeways or the railways. to extend them, to generalise them, then propa- To be sure they extend in many directions, but not ganda is just one way among very many; the inven- everywhere, and certainly not for free. Instead of tion of mathematical physics is another, that allows being a continuous land, blotted here and there by one to go on from one result to another. Equations a few pockets of disorder, the sciences are now often themselves trace a fascinating path from the local seen as an archipelago of tiny islands, disseminated (the variables) to the global (the structure of the over a vast sea. equation itself). Why call rhetoric the first, if no This new picture, however, also has its short- study of the second is made? comings, and this is where the book under review Unfortunately, Feyerabend's dualist position con- enters the discussion and makes a valuable contri- taminates even Chalmers, who cannot find a com- bution. Although the sciences are practised in local, mon ground for all operations of propagation and is isolated and contingent settings, they do claim to be forced (p. 23) to reintroduce the dichotomy he universal, and this claim is to be taken seriously. wished to attack: 'as far as the creation of social No-one has ever heard a scientist boast at once that space for the new science is concerned, it is cer- his or her results are local, temporary, tainly the case that there was much more involved irreproducible, impossible to expand, and not tied than rational argument, given the variety of to any other fact or theory. Even the social interests at stake'. Ah, this little 'more than': how constructionists who insist on local studies of scien- many crimes have been committed in your name, tific practice pride themselves on the universal val- whether on the side of the old Whiggish positivism idity of their method; they do not suggest that is is or, as is now the case, on the side of social a local, isolated achievement that leads nowhere. historians. Even Feyerabend turns his own destructive method Methods play in science the same role as consti- into another '-ism'; he favours anarchism. Thus tutions do in politics. Although sociologists can there is something essential, if not in method, at argue that no-one ever follows exactly their rules, least in claims to method. As the very name nevertheless, the constitution plays much more than a cosmetic role. It organises assent and dissent, *Dr. J.G. Jenkin is a Reader in Physics at La Trobe University, loyalties and procedures. The methods of Galileo or Bundoora, Victoria, 3083. Descartes cannot be dismissed as window-dressing, Historrcal Records ofAustralian Science, 7 (3) (December 1988) because they are as important as Hobbes' social Historical Records ofAustralian Science, Volume 7, Number 3 it is local, but it is our way; we love it or leave it and contract or the Declaration of Independence. do our own thing'. This sort of talk does indeed Galileo's decision to believe mathematical physics occur, as nicely illustrated by the folk-sociology of instead of common sense in experimental matters is as important as Descartes' reshuMing of who science collated by Sapp. But it is never officially should be trusted. articulated as an acceptable way of talking. Is this The first one is taken seriously by Chalmers, but reworking an ideology or a legitimisation of what the second is treated as a mere literary resource - really happens, as some remarks of the authors too in the old sense of the expression - by Schuster. often suggest? Or is the notion of paradigm simply Schuster's chapter is an interesting case of self- wrong? Of course, in many instances an appeal is contradiction. He does not hesitate to offer a uni- made to method when everything else has failed; it versal definition of methodology, from the Greek to is the last straw to break the camel's back. But this the present day - deleting the constant dispute does not solve the problem. Although there is no between scholastic rhetoric, Renaissance Platonism unique definition of science, and although groups and Cartesian rhetoric - in a book dedicated to the disagree on what is and is not good science, few can local achievements of scientists; and he criticises resist the temptation to talk of a universal method. the whole literature on Descartes for its failure to If there is no common method, then something see his rules of method as a literary trick, without essential to science is threatened. If the local realising that this is indeed the success of Descartes idiosyncrasies of paradigms are accepted as such, - to have provided the resources, the vocabulary, science ceases to exist. the tricks, the formats, for everyone else thereafter, The book as a whole takes this problem less including Cartesian scholars and Schuster himself seriously than one might expect from the Introduc- in his formalised presentation. If this equipment tion. Generally, it is suggested that there is bad faith had been seen as a literary trick, it would have lost involved in the scientists' flag waving. It seems that strength immediately. Why? Because Descartes, they could or should do without method talk, if they like Boyle, invented the very distinction between were honest and not self-serving and self-righteous. literature (or rhetoric) and demonstrated (or exper- But it might very well be the case that methods play imental) science. The definition of rhetoric and the same role in science as standards do in industry. literature used by Schuster to explain Descartes has Each industry, each country, imposes its own stan- been made unfit for this sort of usage by Descartes dards in order to build its own markets. It cannot himself do without standardisation, for it is an essential Bacon, Boyle and Descartes may never have lived part of that which makes an industrial product up to their rules of method, but they invented a way industrial rather than (say) craft. The fierce fights of proceeding from the local to the global. for computer compatibility offer a parallel with the Descartes, like Leibniz, was fascinated, as Schuster ruthless debates among scientists to define what a rightly points out, by the model offered by algebra good, respectable science should look like.