The Constructivist Interpretation III: Innovation and Selection

I have drawn upon the analogies of systems theory and biological evolution to argue that the constructivist interpretation of scientific enquiry can be plausibly extended

12 The Manufacture of Knowledge

into a contextual model of scientific change in which indeterminacy (or contextual contingency and openness of selections) does not run counter to the idea of scientific success. Let us now examine the negative side of those analogies.

The idea of laboratory selections was introduced here as the link between what is normally separated into the process of acceptance and the process of investigation. I have defined investigation as constructive in order to emphasise the selectivity embodied in scientific results. But the notion of constructiveness not only points to the "decision-laden" fabrication of scientific products, but also alludes to the products of fabrication as purposefully "new" products. We have said that the selectivity of selections is itself instituted in scientific investigation. Previous scientific selections become a resource for further selections, and thus give rise to both a selective solidification and a diversification of scientific products. In biological evolution, the origin of diversification is clearly identified as a mutation. The first difficulty we face, then, is to find the equivalent of such mutations in the process of scientific construction and reconstruction.

Toulmin's model of scientific change is the closest application of the analogy of biological evolution to the process of knowledge production of which I am aware, and he asks us to take it as a literal description.⁴² According to Toulmin, at any given time we have a pool of scientific innovations and an ongoing process of natural selection among those innovations. The former rests with the creative individual scientist, the latter with the community of experts who judge the innovations.⁴³ Mutations are the variants produced by individual innovation, and their number depends on the degree of freedom of design at a particular time. The decisive factor in biological mutations is that they produce chance variations. With Toulmin, the element of chance is located in the freedom and creativity of the individual scientist.

It is precisely this location of chance which creates a major problem when the biological model is carried over to scientific (or, more generally, to societal) development. In Toulmin's adaptation of the model, special parts of this development—the individual and innovation—are carved out and given over to chance operations. Left unaffected by chance are the actions of the scientific group and the process of selection of innovation. Of course we recognise in this separation the classic distinction between discovery and validation. What is highly questionable is the rationale for such a separation. Why should the individual suffer (or profit) from chance while the group does not? Or why is the selection of innovation a process which makes sense and has direction while innovation itself is not?

Moreover, what do we count as innovation? In Toulmin's model, the published but not yet accepted products of scientific work constitute the pool of variations.⁴⁴ As we have seen, however, these products are themselves the result of a complex process of selection in the laboratory. More specifically, they are the result of a directional pro­cess oriented toward the production of the new, or of innovation. This is obviously im­plied when we say that the diversification of scientific products (or the selectivity of selections) is itself instituted in scientific investigation. From the point of view of the individual scientist as well, innovations are the result of intentional, directed work, and not merely chance happenings. It is the scientists' knowledge of what is a problem and what counts as a solution, educated guesses about where to look and what to ignore, and highly selective, expectation-based tinkering with the material that guides them toward an "innovative" result.

The Scientist as a Practical Reasoner 13

Once a result has been obtained, the careful selection of a publisher (and therefore, an audience), as well as various marketing strategies, can turn a laboratory product in­to something which may be widely accepted as "new". Nor should we forget that, to a great degree, scientists select areas of work which have not been covered by previous research; thus, their results are almost guaranteed to pass as new. Moreover, scientists constantly strive to secure personal access to resources which are not readily available to others (e.g., highly expensive or otherwise scarce technical instruments), thereby im­proving their own chances for being "first" with an innovation. In short, there is nothing non-directional or purely random about the individual scientist's efforts toward innovation.

One consequence of the directed and constructed character of scientific "mutations" is that the scientist's socially defined being can be seen as the result of a process of in-dividuation which consists of the identification of a person with the differential par­ticularities of the work associated with the person's name.⁴⁵ Such identifications ap­pear to suppose that a person is somehow more responsible for the products she pro­duces than would be a random generation mechanism.

A second consequence is the relation between the production of the new and the selection of the previously available; that is, between innovation and acceptance. We have already said that, to a significant degree, the locus of selection is the laboratory itself. In the terms used above, it is part of the process of innovation; and we know that, to a significant degree, it draws upon the resource of previous scientific selections. It is tempting to interpret this literally and suggest that the process of "natural selec­tion" in the laboratory will favour those previous results which aid in the production of relevant "mutations", and at the same time further the scientist's interest in individua-tion. In this way, the solidification of previous results through continued laboratory selections can be seen as leading at the same time to an accelerated diversification of scientific knowledge. Note that the reference to the resource-character of selections within this accelerated diversification yields a purely formal specification: it says nothing about the substantial properties or degree of usefulness of the results. The substantial translations from which selections emerge will depend upon the context in which they are taken. In this sense, "natural selection" becomes contextual reconstruc­tion.

Apart from the purposive, directed character of scientific "mutations" and their consequences (which point more to Lamarck than to Darwin), one other aspect of the present conception of research calls such analogies into question: for here, the selec­tions of the laboratory are not linked to individual decision-making, but seen as the outcome of social interaction and negotiation. Consequently, we must reject such equations as that between the individual and innovation on one hand, and between the social group and validation on the other. In a trivial sense, we know that most laboratory work in the natural and technological sciences is conducted by groups and not by individuals. The far less trivial implication is that both the products (including those considered innovative) and the "ideas" of the laboratory are social occurrences which emerge from interaction and negotiation with others, as we shall illustrate in Chapter 2.

Consider now the individual scientists' laboratory manipulations. What they read are the results or proposals of others; what they hold in their hands are the crystallised products of previous scientific and non-scientific work; and what they obtain from

14 The Manufacture of Knowledge

measurement are figures and graphs that are only meaningful within a specific context of communication. In the case of controversy, what the scientist constructs from these activities is an argument to be inserted into a field of discursive interaction with others. More generally speaking, scientific operations can only be conducted and only make sense within a discourse whose crystallisation is found in the scriptures (the authoritative writings) of an area, but which is also constituted by the exegeses and symbolic manipulations in the laboratory.

It need not be emphasised here that science has often been tied to the possibility of a special form of discourse, i.e. written communication. For example, Husserl con­sidered writing to be the condition for the possibility of ideal objects, and therefore of scientific concepts.⁴⁶ Peirce argues that manifestation does not reveal the presence of an object, but the presence of a sign, and reduces the logic of science to semiology.⁴⁷ Derrida reminds us that the very idea of science was born in a certain epoch of writing.⁴⁸ Latour and Woolgar have recently illustrated the importance of writing in the laboratory,⁴⁹ and the sociology of science has long focused on specific aspects of the scientists' written communication.⁵⁰

To say that without writing (in Derrida's wide sense of the word), science could not continue to exist is a commonplace. But the point here is that, first and foremost, the communicative foundation of science constitutes the scientists' operations as a form of discursive interaction directed at and sustained by the arguments of others.⁵¹ In fact, the indeterminacy which the analogy of biological evolution seeks to locate in the in­dividual origin of innovation is rooted in the interpretative basis and the social dynamics of such interaction. This social and symbolic foundation becomes most vis­ible in the concrete negotiations of the laboratory, in the bargaining which marks the highly selective construction and deconstruction of scientific findings and leads to the continuous reconstruction of knowledge.

The point is that the social character of such discursive interaction cannot be limited to some separate context of acceptance through group consensus formation, nor can indeterminacy be isolated in individualised innovation. Innovation and acceptance are temporary stabilisations within a process of reconstruction of knowledge that is at base a social process. The origin of indeterminacy lies within the social, with its symbolic and interactional qualities, and not, as Toulmin appears to suggest, outside. The deci­sions which mark scientific products are locally achieved closures of this indeter­minacy. It is within their social location that scientific facts can be seen as selectively constructed and reconstructed.

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