Nature - autonomous learning

the dis/unity of geography 189David Bloor, Harry Collins, Barry Barnes, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgarin the 1970s – five philosophers, sociologists and historians interested inhow scientific knowledge is generated and legitimated. SSK researchers holdto the ‘symmetry principle’: that is, the idea that scientific beliefs held to betrue should be analysed in the very same, socially constructionist terms asthose held to be false (see Figure 4.1).These researchers argue that if we’reto understand the truths about nature discovered by scientists we need tolook at the scientific community itself not the natural world. In other words,SSK researchers maintain that scientific facts do not ‘speak for themselves’but are spoken for and stage-managed by scientists.This is not to suggestthat scientists consciously try to deceive people or to wilfully concocterroneous findings. Rather, SSK researchers argue that it is the unconscious,tacit and taken-for-granted elements of scientific practice – like the routineways in which data is gathered and analysed – that inevitably produceconstructed rather than realistic knowledge. Indeed, Collins (1985)maintains that scientists can never really know whether their understandingof the world is accurate or not. For instance, where disagreements betweenscientists arise it is unclear whether the methods used to investigate realitywere flawed or whether the data gathered is actually correct and contradictsprevailing (and erroneous) scientific beliefs. (Good introductions to SSKand STS have been written by Hess [1997] and Sismondo [2003]).Figure 4.1 Two ways of explaining the truthfulness and falsity of scientificknowledge. Adapted from Latour (1993)