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From: mjm@rruxa.UUCP (M Muller)
Newsgroups: sci.bio,soc.men,soc.women
Subject: Re: Rape: a genetic catastrophe
Message-ID: <377@rruxa.UUCP>
Date: 8 Feb 88 17:16:45 GMT
References: <517@gtx.com> <5129@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <2201@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <4371@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Organization: Bell Communications Research
Lines: 96
Summary: science is influenced by its social context

In article <4371@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>, dmcanzi@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (David Canzi) writes:

> When *I'm* fabricating beliefs that I want others to believe, as an
> instrument for influencing their behaviour towards the realization of
> my purposes, I at least *know* I'm doing it.

David,  I disagree strongly with this statement -- not as it applies 
only to you, but as it applies to all of us.  I base my argument on
the history and philosophy of science work of T. Kuhn (_The_Structure_
_of_Scientific_Revolutions_ [either edition]), L. Laudan (_Progress_ 
_and_its_Problems_), and on some more specific historical analyses of 
S.J. Gould (e.g., his article on Morton's craniometry research, in 
_Science_ sometime during 1977, and discussed more briefly in _The_
_Mismeasure_of_Man_).  In addition, there's lots of more polemical works
which I think you would dismiss out of hand, but these four sources should
suffice to support the following summary:

Scientific theories are based on a mixture of preceding theories and
available data.  Kuhn's work was important in showing the importance
of theory over data (e.g., in contrast to Popper's approach), but Kuhn
left a large problem to be solved:  If science is not guided primarily
by data, then how can we describe a _rational_ progression of scientific
thought?  Laudan attempted to answer this, by considering two distinct
ways in which theories are used:

  [a] theories which can be criticized -- i.e., competing theories
  within the research tradition or research program or paradigm
  that the researcher is actively pursuing (e.g., one learning
  theory vs. another, or continuous evolution vs. punctuated
  equilibrium).

  [b] theories which are accepted as given -- i.e., theories which
  are considered to form the bedrock of given research (e.g., 
  biological theory is accepted by much of behavioral science, chemical 
  theory by much of biology, physical theory by much of chemistry, etc.).
  I do not claim that psychologists never critique biological
  theories (nor biologists chemists, nor chemists physicists), but
  that the daily bread-and-butter of science takes a great many other,
  external sciences at face value.

Okay, what's the point of all this?  It is pretty easy to demonstrate
that science is profoundly influenced by the culture in which it is
performed -- i.e., that science uncritically accepts some societal
"givens" as the base data on which it works (i.e., as a "theory" which
is taken as a "given" -- type [b], above).  One classic example of
this is learning theory, as it developed in pre-revolutionary Russia and
in the Soviet Union, vs. the way it developed in the United States:

  Soviet model:  From a rigidly determinist, authoritarian society, 
  Pavlov and colleagues came up with a rigidly determinist learning 
  theory.  Organisms learn stimulus-stimulus pairings.  The theory 
  explicitly excludes the ability of organisms to _affect_ those 
  stimuli -- to improve their own conditions.  This becomes a model,
  in small, of Czarist or Soviet society.

  United States model:  From a flexible, entrepreneurial society,
  Skinner and colleagues came up with an entrepreneurial learning
  theory.  Organisms learn stimulus-response-stimulus pairings.
  Organisms manipulate their responses so as to maximize what they
  need from the environment.  This becomes a model, in small, of
  capitalist society.

Note that both of these models describe the same underlying research
approach (reduction of complex behaviors into simple "elements" and
rules), and that they were intended to describe the same range of
phenomena.  Yet they turn out quite different.  Clearly, they weren't
data-driven.  And their non-data-driven aspects were highly related
to their social contexts.
  
There are lots of other examples.  The point is that we tend to include
societal norms as part of our theories, and to do so uncritically and
even unknowingly.  We do this because, in Laudan's analysis, the norms
become a part of the theoretical base of information which we _do_not_
examine critically. By contrast, we think about that restricted area 
of theories and data which we _do_ examine critically.  We call the
latter the topic of our science;  we call the former our analytic
tools, our background, our training, our the "underlying science" upon
which our work depends.

So I disagree with David about whether we _knowingly_ import political
ideology into our science:  I claim that there is the potential to do
so at all times.  I think that, western culture being what it is, this
tendency helps to explain the apparently great appeal of hypotheses
such as the heritability of IQ, or the genetic advantageousness of 
human rape, no matter how shoddy is the evidence on which those hypotheses
are based.  There are numerous other examples that could be drawn from
the study of alleged sex differences or alleged race differences;  you
can find them in the work I referred to in previous posting, that of 
Kamin, Lewontin, Rose, Rose, Gould, and so on.  The title of one
anthology of their articles sums up the problem nicely:  _Biology_as_a_
_Social_Weapon.

Michael Muller
Bellcore                                 I wish that my views were 
Bell Communications Research             representative of those
..!bellcore!ctt!mjm                      of my employer.