A Philosophical Commentary

Book Review

Kim, Kyung-Man (2023)

Bourdieu’s Philosophy and Sociology of Science:

A Critical Appraisal.

Rutledge Focus (xii + 137 pp)

 

 

Hossein Jorjani

2024-04-06

 

 

 

I started to read this book almost a year ago. For some reason, I started to develop hostile feelings about the book. This led to a lot of nasty comments being written in the book’s margins. Here, I have written some general comments and tried to soften my harsh words from the book’s margins. I hope the words that are reproduced here are not too offensive.

 

 

 

General comments (in no special order)

 

Branches of knowledge

Human mental faculties and the knowledge areas emanating from them have no natural borders. The separation of these is the result of our own pedagogical efforts to facilitate their understanding. As such, I do not value any knowledge area more than any other. To put it simply, science is not more valuable than art, philosophy, etc.

 

The difference is that each one of us may be more conversant in one area than the other.

 

 

Science and its history and its philosophy

For different scientific subjects, it is prudent to distinguish among three areas:

 

(1) The science of that subject as such; (2) The history of that scientific subject; and (3) The philosophy of that scientific subject. Keeping this distinction in mind, I do not distinguish between natural sciences and social sciences (or many branches of humanities). Further, it is easy to see that the methods used in different scientific subjects are similar, as are the methods used in their histories or philosophies. It is also easy to see that the methods used in one scientific subject are different from the historical (or philosophical) methods used in another scientific subject.

 

 

Scope of a theory, Simple and composite theories

‘I have been told’ that Kuhn’s ideas are in response to Popper’s ideas! In any case, I see a misunderstanding. To me, Popper’s demarcation line applies to simple (elemental) hypotheses/theories, while Kuhn’s ideas (as well as ideas of Lakatos or Bourdieu and many others) apply to composite hypotheses/theories.

 

I have two reasons for considering Popper’s ideas to be valid only for simple hypotheses/ theories. First, we need a quantitatively measured demarcation line (and not just a 0/1, yes/no, or all/none criterion). Second, we need to have an operational definition of fulfillment (or lack thereof) of the demarcation line. The first reason is in line with assigning a probability for the hypotheses/theories. The second reason is in line with common (and especially Frequentist) statistical tests of the null hypothesis.

 

 

Extrapolation problem

The concept of “extrapolation problem” is used in mathematics, especially in Frequentist statistics. However, I believe the “extrapolation problem” can be raised to a general logical principle. What “extrapolation problem” means is that no inference can be extrapolated beyond the range of data that was used in the deduction of that inference.

 

My understanding is that most of the heated debates in science (and other knowledge areas) are caused by the ‘unjustified’ extrapolation of ideas to places not included in the inference of the original idea. Some examples may help in clarifying this point.

 

Example 1 – An obvious example would be Newton’s mechanics. It cannot be extrapolated beyond average sizes and average speeds. For extreme-sized objects (subatomic particles or galaxies) and for speeds close to the speed of light, we need other theories.

 

Example 2 – Darwin used information on the form and function of living and dead (fossil) organisms visible to the naked eye to arrive at his theories. Later, during the development of the ‘new synthesis,’ Darwin’s ideas were extrapolated to the molecular structure of organisms. Then, when Lewontin/Hubby discovered the huge amount of variation at the molecular level, they, and later many followers of Kimura, took it for granted that Darwin’s theories were insufficient.

 

Example 3 – The theories of Marx for Western societies could not be applied to the Asiatic mode of production, not to mention their validity for the Asiatic societies. In the case of Marx, I venture to claim that his ideas for Western societies have no relevance when ownership and management are not so strongly intertwined as they were in the mid-1800s. 

 

 

Evolution of concepts and their nomenclature

 

It is so difficult to find the beginning. Or, better, it is difficult to begin at the beginning. And not try to go further back.   Ludwig Wittgenstein (On Certainty)

 

A new concept formed in the mind of a person eventually receives a definition (content) and a name (term). If the concept spreads among others, the definition and the name may start to change bit by bit. Other users may knowingly or inadvertently modify the definition but keep using the same name. The same concept may also be formed in the mind of another person from another discipline, and even though the same definition is used, it may receive a different name. So, users from different disciplines may use two different names for the same concept. It is quite conceivable that two concepts starting with the same definition diverge a little bit and, after a while, are claimed to be different by different users. The opposite is also conceivable, i.e., two different concepts formed in the mind of two persons converge to the same definition but may have different names.

 

To me, a concept used by many users is like a population of a species. The population may go through sub-division and divergence or merging and conversion. A species may go through anagenesis or cladogenesis. Parts of a definition may be homologous or analogous.

 

It is sometimes the case that a definition changes so much from its inception to the present that the original name may lose its relevance. I know, at least in the natural sciences, many examples of this. One example is the concept of the “gene,” which has changed so much since its inception in the first decade of the 1900s that many geneticists, including myself, prefer not to use it! I wonder if the concept of the “mass” in physics when Newton used it and now in the post-Higgs era has the same meaning?

 

I guess similar phenomena can be observed in the humanities and social sciences. Is the thing that we call “democracy” the same thing that Socrates was against it? Or does the concept of “worker” have the same meaning as Marx had ascribed to it about 150 years ago?

 

I have a faint memory that a very wise man, Ernst Mayr, had said once that by every small change in the definition of a concept, we cannot use a new name for it because if we do so, the flood of the terms will wash us away. Therefore, it is prudent to explicitly state what we mean when we use an old term. What “science” is today, what a “university” is today, differs from what it was before WWII.

 

 

The intellectual milieu of university departments

With respect to this book, I cannot see if the opinions expressed 80 years ago are of any relevance to today’s discussions. The terms used 80 years ago have lost at least some of their relevance. A good example is the structure of university departments. Before WWII, virtually all university departments, at least in Europe, were single-professor departments. In some countries, for example, in Sweden, the departments were single-professor departments until the 1980s! This is not the case anymore. At one time, my department had 11 professors. No single professor could create such an intellectual environment to which young scholars must submit. It is not possible to do such a thing!

 

 

One general concept, many specific names

From my point of view, I cannot see much difference between the views presented by Kuhn, Lakatos, Bourdieu, Hull, and many others. They all discuss the same multifaceted phenomenon, but they look at it from different angles. Each one of them emphasizes a few aspects and neglects a few aspects.

 

Paradigm, strong program, habitus, research program, perspective, frame of mind, framework, … all look the same to Morpheus.

 

 

Genealogy of an idea/generation interval

The concept of “generation interval” is widely used in the genetics and breeding of animals and plants. Its “conceptual definition” is the average age of parents when the offspring are born. Like any other genetic concept, it has many “operational definitions” and needs to be re-estimated every now and then. In humans, the estimated generation interval is about 25 years (and increasing!). In dairy cattle, the estimate is about 5 years (and decreasing!). The use of generation interval is most useful when the genetics of animals (or plants) are genealogically traced back in time. The question posed in this regard is how many generations of “animals (plants) with data” should be included in the analyses. Based on careful considerations, using equivalent to 2-3 generations of data of living animals is optimal. Adding more data leads to more noise! The reason is that population structure and trait definitions change in 2-3 generations to such a degree that analyses are rendered useless. In practice, for dairy cattle, we should not go further back in data acquisition more than 10-15 years of data compared to the oldest living animal (plant) with data.

 

I propose we consider an academic generation interval as the average age difference between doctoral advisors and their doctoral students. Based on my observations and depending on the operational definition used, the academic generation interval is between 15 and 25 years. Applying the concept of generation interval to philosophical (or historical or sociological) studies, it is prudent to restrict ourselves to a maximum of 2-3 academic generation intervals, i.e., 30 to 75 years in time. Although we might use the same words as people used 80 years ago, the words often have different meanings. Also, the population structure has changed. Societies are more multiethnic now than they were 80 years ago. Technological changes have changed the way humans function. etc. Tracing back the genealogy of ideas should be restricted to recent times.

 

 

Choice of the audience

This book is full of terms that have not been defined when they have been used for the first time. For example, how do I know what Kim means by ‘hypothetico-deductive method’? I know of Hempel’s version; I know of what has been attributed to Popper. I know of the version that many scientists unknowingly use through statistical tests. But I am not aware of what Kim means by that. Another example is “positivism” and “positivists.” I know people who call any mathematical/statistical treatment of a subject as positivism and consider Popper to be a positivist. I believe a short explanatory sentence by Kim about such terms would help to make the text clearer.

 

 

Conceptual and operational definition

In natural sciences, we may have a definition for a concept (a conceptual definition). However, the conceptual definition may not be amenable to measurement; there might be several ways of measuring it, or we may simply have more than one instrument to measure it.

 

For example, a simple definition of poverty is “the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount” (Oxford Dictionary), which can be measured by many methods. We know that at least one person has been awarded the Nobel Prize for measuring poverty. So, these are not as straightforward as we may think.

 

The fictional story of Niels Bohr measuring the height of a building by a barometer may be used as an example.

 

The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen: “Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper using a barometer.” One student replied,

“You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building.”

This highly original answer so incensed the instructor that the student failed. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct but did not display knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem, it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer, which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the principles of physics.

For five minutes, the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers but couldn’t decide which to use.

On being advised to hurry up, the student replied as follows,

“Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer.”

“Or if the sun is shining, you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper’s shadow, and thereafter, it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper.”

“But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the restoring force T = 2 pi sq. root (l /g).”

“Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up.”

“If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground and convert the difference in millibars into meters to give the height of the building.”

“But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor’s door and say to him, ‘If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper’.”

 

 

Publication dates

This is a very important issue! An example may be helpful in clarifying it. Hume has died in 1776. If you want to refer to his Treatise of Human Nature, you know that it was published in 1739-1740. Now, if you want the reader to be able to trace the citation to a recently published version of that old book, do it in the following manner: Always use the original publication date in the text. Then, add (with or without the Latin abbreviation cf.) the new publication date and the Page number, as it has been done in the case of “Duhem [1954] 1991: 187” in this book.

 

I think referring to the recently published version of the book must have some psychological effect on the writer and the reader! When the newest publication date is used, one may lose the real sense of outdatedness! Whatever Hume or Kant had written in the 18th century must have been fully understood (and digested) by their contemporaries and those who lived in the 19th century. And, again, whatever the brilliant people of the 19th century had written must have been fully understood (and digested) by their contemporaries, and those who lived in the 20th century, and so on and so forth. Using the new dates, one may lose the historical place of the dialogues between different people.

 

There are other examples of “false dates.” For example, Merton (1973) is a collection of Merton’s papers, which were originally published between 1938 and 1972. Another example is Duhem ([1954] 1991), which is a collection of papers, with the oldest one being from 1893. In the natural science tradition, we seldom use books as a reference. Further, when we use a book as a reference, we refer to that book by the actual publication date of the edition used and not the reprinting date.

 

The referencing convention used in this book sometimes seems as if a book had been criticized many years before it was written. I point to some examples in the text.

 

 

The thermometer example  

Following Bourdieu and others, this book refers many times to how the cultural background of a scientist affects their understanding of a subject. Here, I present a constructed example, which I will use later during my specific comments.

 

Consider a large room in a university full of scientists from different departments. In the middle of the room, we hang a thermometer with a large display showing the room temperature in degrees Celsius. Does the cultural background of these scientists affect their reading of the thermometer? Of course not!

 

 

Mendelians-Biometricians controversy

I believe the picture of the Mendelians-Biometricians controversy presented in this book is not entirely accurate!

 

The background to the Mendelians-Biometricians controversy goes back to Darwin’s ideas about the gradualness of evolution. Darwin was aware of mutations (or called sports in his time; look especially for “sporting plants” in his Origin to see a definition of mutation). In response to Darwin, it was argued that gradual evolution requires a long time, which was considered unrealistic at that time. Among others, Lord Kelvin originally believed that Earth could not be more than 100 million years old. In his revisions, Lord Kelvin increased his estimate of the Earth’s age to 250 million and 500 million, which was still considered too short. Thus, the argument against Darwin’s views was that evolution must have proceeded in jumps. In other words, the background to the Mendelians-Biometricians controversy was the question of gradualness or mutations. Darwin’s followers, from Galton to Pearson and Yule, were trying to resolve this issue. All evidence that they had managed to collect pointed to the gradualness of evolution.

 

When Mendel’s rules of inheritance were rediscovered, the question was not about “genes” being the stuff of evolution or not; it was about the role of “genes” in gradualness or in jumps. The first “genes” discovered after 1900 all had the characteristics of creating a jump. This was used by Mendelians to claim that mutations were the driving force of evolution. Among others, Yule (from 1902 to 1907) had excellent arguments in favor of gradualness. However, his (and other Biometricians) mathematical models were not convincing because he wrongly assumed that “dominance gene action” was universally complete, as all Mendelians of that time did. The overall result, for a short period (let’s say 1900 to 1918), was that Mendelians were right, and therefore, evolution must have been through jumps. However, during the same period, evidence in favor of gradualness also accumulated through the works of Castle (1905) and East (1910, 1916). In effect, they showed that there is no conflict between Mendelism and gradualness if more than one “gene” is involved in the expression of a trait. Later, Fisher (1918) could mathematically/statistically show that the aggregate effect of a large enough number of “genes” of small effects could lead to continuous distribution and gradual evolution. 

 

 

Suppositional, conjectural, speculative, fanciful

I find many statements, both in this book and elsewhere, that are in the realm of “possible”, but not “probable.” They are conceivable but are more exceptions than the rule. Whatever definition of reality is used, the analysis (or a model, a theory, etc.) cannot be as detailed as reality. Not every possible phenomenon needs to be included in the analysis. It is also not productive to be caught in the realm of low probabilities. The analysis should try to be as complicated and as simple as needed. The following passage from “Sylvie and Bruno Concluded” by Lewis Caroll, which I call “When a map is a map?” is a lesson in keeping the analysis to a useful scale.

 

 

“That’s another thing we’ve learned from your Nation,” said Mein Herr, “map-making. But we’ve carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?”

 

“About six inches to the mile.”

 

“Only six inches!” exclaimed Mein Herr. “We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country on the scale of a mile to the mile!”

 

“Have you used it much?” I enquired.

 

“It has never been spread out yet,” said Mein Herr: “the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.”

 

 

Truth

The following is not a scientific study!

 

I have PDF copies of more than 2700 published papers on my laptop. About 95% of them are related to genetics/evolution. I searched these papers for the occurrence of the word ‘truth’ (by the advanced search option of Adobe Acrobat). I have saved the results in an Excel file and marked different papers in different colors! Here are the results.

 

The word ‘truth’ appears in                                           112 papers.

The author(s) is not a natural scientist                              30 papers.

The author(s) is a natural scientist; the paper is > 75 years old 11 papers.

Remaining papers                                                      71 papers.

 

Used by a natural scientist in a statistical context                  25 papers.

Used by a natural scientist as a figure of speech                     10 papers.

*Used by a natural scientist in a philosophical way                   36 papers.

 

 

I have included in this group all cases where the separation of “philosophical way,” “mathematical/statistical truth of a model or simulation,” and “figure of speech” was not easy. 

The list of papers in each category appears at the end of the text.

 

Conclusion:

The use of the term ‘truth’ is very rare among natural scientists.

 

 

 

 

Specific comments (in Page order)

 

In this section, I quote some text from the book, preceded by the page number, and then I make some comments about the quoted text. My comments are written in blue so that they can be easily distinguished from Kyung-Man Kim’s text.

 

Page 0

Definition: A philosopher of science is a person who studies the way that scientists might have been thinking and working hundreds of years before.

 

Do I have any evidence for this definition?

 

Yes! I have not read anything from a philosopher of science about a living scientist.

 

This amalgamates to a huge problem if someone’s understanding of natural sciences is based on the understanding of old philosophers of science of science!

 

 

 

Page 2

What handicaps the existing studies on Bourdieu is their failure to take into account the fact that Bourdieu wants to ‘transpose into the field of the social sciences a whole epistemological tradition represented by Bachelard, Canguilhem, Koyré … [and] Kuhn’ (Bourdieu et al. 1991: 248).

 

Applying the extrapolation problem, I believe Kuhn’s (or Popper’s or Lakatos’) inferences cannot be extrapolated beyond natural sciences. This is the dilemma: you cannot use Kuhn if you do not use natural science methods in social sciences/humanities.

 

 

 

Page 2

The common denom­inator that binds them together is that facts are ‘constructed’, not simply found.

 

I assume this makes Kim an instrumentalist.

 

 

 

Page 2

Why, in the epistemological tradition to which Bourdieu belongs, is priority given to the ‘theoretical construction’ rather than to observations? On what grounds does Bourdieu argue that his theoretical ‘construction’ corresponds to empirical reality better than those of others?

 

These and other questions are not even raised in the existing studies on Bourdieu because most Bourdieu scholars fail to take into account the influence of the philosophers of natu­ral science on Bourdieu’s thinking about the epistemic status of social sci­entific knowledge and, as a result, distort Bourdieu’s arguments about the epistemic status of sociology in particular and social science in general.

 

I don’t remember if this book shows the influence of philosophers of natural science on Bourdieu. However, if that is the case, then is Bourdieu justified in adopting those ideas for sociology? I will come back to this question shortly (see my notes on “extrapolation problem”).

 

This question can be asked in a different way: on what grounds does Bourdieu base his understanding of natural sciences?

 

 

 

Page 2

Nor would they find a detailed exegesis of Bourdieu’s empirical studies of the various fields of cultural production such as art, literature, taste, and photography.

 

Art, literature, taste, and photography are a part of the extrapolation problem.

 

 

 

Page 3

It would also include a dis­cussion of Popper’s falsification theory and Lakatos’ revision of Popper’s naïve falsificationism and how Kuhn and other historical philosophers of science and the relativist sociologists critically responded to the traditional ‘logocentric’ view of science.

 

Be precise! How is Popper’s falsification naive? 

 

This is very important! The “extrapolation problem” also applies to the use of Popper’s ideas, even if Popper himself does not realize it! Even Popper is capable of misunderstanding Popper!

 

I claim that Popper’s falsifiability is concerned only, and only, with small and simple hypotheses or theories. It cannot be extrapolated to composite hypotheses or theories. Conversely, Kuhn’s ideas, especially his concept of “paradigm,” are about large and composite hypotheses or theories.

 

Logocentric? I think this is the beginning of many allusions to the general ideas of Wittgenstein, and further developed by others, without really discussing them.

 

 

 

Page 4

Rather, it is embodied in a historically evolved social space called the scientific field in which scientists struggle for the imposition of a particular definition of science as the universal truth.

 

I hope the term ‘science’ in this sentence applies to all sciences, whether natural or social. However, because the distinction (or rather lack thereof) is not clear, I can interpret the word “science” as equal to natural science.

 

The main point is that I do not believe in ‘the universal truth,’ and I believe no prominent scientist after 1900 has had such a view. Many scientists may use the word truth in a manner of convenience, as many use a teleological language.

 

This is a recurrent problem in this book and many other books on the philosophy of science, i.e., they attribute things to natural scientists that are totally strange to me.

 

How does the author of this book, or Bourdieu, know about how a natural scientist thinks or works? Where does this kind of knowledge come from? Are they themselves natural scientist? Have they observed natural scientists in the “intellectual milieu” of natural scientists? I do not believe they have first-hand experience of it.

 

 

 

Page 5

As predicted by the field theory of science, both Rudwick’s sociological/historical narrative of the consensus formation among the 19th-century geologists and my own sociological analysis of the reception of the Mendelian genetics among the British and American biologists dur­ing the first decade of the 20th century show that the struggles for power, dominance, and symbolic capital are constitutive of the historical evolution of these two scientific fields.

 

I believe the picture of the Mendelians-Biometricians controversy presented in this book is not entirely accurate!

 

About the historical evolution of these two scientific fields (or any two scientific fields) I can say the following.  If this is what the book wants to say, and that is all that the book has to say, then if we have read “Hull’s (1989) Science as a Process”, then we would not need to read the book at all!

 

 

 

Page 5

These studies, however, also show how such struggles are regulated by the habitus of the scientists working within the autonomous scientific fields and, as a result, produce truth through what Bourdieu calls the ‘rational dialectic’ of the scientific field.

 

Again truth!

 

Rational dialectic?  It would be good to give a hint as to which version is the ‘rational dialectic’ this book is referring to!

 

 

 

Page 5

Although, as I have shown in Part I of this book, Bourdieu contributes much to the resolution of the relativism/objectivism debate in the philoso­phy and sociology of science, his claim to have provided novel solutions to enhance the ‘uneasy epistemic status’ of the social sciences cannot stand up to scrutiny.

 

Given my distinction of a scientific field from its history and its philosophy, should I (or we) consider the sociology (and psychology and economics) of science?

 

I guess not! Because using sociology (or psychology or economics) of science is science applied to science!

 

((I understand philosophy being the source of all systematic knowledge. But where does the independent status of history come from?))

 

 

 

Page 11

Philosophy and sociology of science of the last generation explain the high degree of consensus observed in natural science in terms of the existence of a set of objective epistemological criteria against which the relative merit of contending theories can be weighed. What both of these otherwise distinct disciplines share as the common assumption about the workings of science is that science could be sharply demarcated from other intellectual endeavors by its remarkable capacity to precipitate a cognitive consensus among its practitioners (Collins 1994; Kim 1994; Kuhn 1962; Laudan 1984; Ziman 1968).

 

The cognitive consensus comes from “the existence of a set of objective epistemological criteria”!

 

Why the 1962 edition of Kuhn? Why not the 1970 edition?

 

 

 

Page 11

Of course, by the philosophy and sociology of science of the last gener­ation, I mean logical empiricism and the Mertonian sociology of science respectively.

 

Why is this relevant? Why old ideas are important? Haven’t they been absorbed by the new philosophers and sociologists of science?

 

What is the academic generation interval of philosophers, historians, scientists, etc.? My limited observations indicate that the academic generation interval is about 15-20 years. What is the use of going back in time in tracing back the genealogy of ideas?

 

Now, given that logical empiricism is at least 75 years old, what is its significance?

 

 

 

Page 11

While logical empiricists assert that ‘all disputes about matters of fact can be impartially resolved by invoking appropriate rules of evidence’ (Laudan 1984: 5; see also Collins 1985), Merton (1973) and his associates argue that scientists are governed by the social norms such as universalism and disin­terestedness that in turn ensure that they conform to the positivistic meth­odological canons of science (see Kim 1994 for details)

 

Merton (1973) is a collection of 22 papers published between 1938 and 1972. 

 

I guess there is no empirical evidence behind this claim! Is there a “questionnaire” investigation about natural scientists having these social norms and positivistic views?

 

 

 

Page 11

Inspired by the post-positivist philosophers of science such as Hanson (1958), Hesse (1974), Kuhn (1962), and Toulmin (1972) who deny the existence of clear-cut epistemological criteria which can decide the relative validity of contending the­ories, relativist sociologists of science during the last four decades (Barnes 1982; Bloor 1982, 1991; Collins 1985; Latour 1987; Shapin 1979, 1982, 1995) claim to have shown that no conclusive proof or disproof of a scientific theory is possible and therefore science is as subject to social and political influences as any other cultural practices.

 

Well! The first part has been known since Hume. The second part needs an explanation.

 

There is a simple example that can distinguish natural sciences from other “things”. Consider a large number of people, each representing one of the departments of a university in a room. Further, consider a thermometer hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. Do these people have different temperature readings from that thermometer? My guess is that all of them read the same number, say 21 degrees Celsius. Why is that? And to what concept do you attribute their agreement on the reading of the thermometer? Is it objectivity? Is it reality? What is it?

 

 

 

Page 12

Such neglect, as I shall argue in this book, is responsible for a wide variety of misunderstandings of Bourdieu’s argument about scientific truth.

 

According to the first lesson of the frequentist statistics, we cannot know the truth (the true value of a parameter). In other words, truth is unknowable.

 

 

 

Page 12

In an article (Bourdieu 1968) and a book (Bourdieu et al. 1991) which have been largely neglected by Bourdieu scholars, Bourdieu offers an explicit phi­losophy of science that specifies the relation between theory and external reality.

 

Define reality. My answer: External reality is that which is measurable.

 

 

 

Page 12

As I shall show below, Bourdieu’s philosophy of science has strik­ing similarities with that of the post-positivist philosophers such as Popper, Quine, Kuhn, and Hesse. The common denominator that binds these philos­ophers and Bourdieu together is Pierre Duhem’s argument that scientific facts are ‘hypothetically constructed’ rather than simply discovered.

 

How is this different from Poper 1935/1959?

 

 

 

Page 12

I have been particularly interested in the philosophy of the sciences, epistemology and so on. I tried to transpose into the field of the social sciences a whole epistemological tradition represented by Bachelard, Canguilhem, Koyré, for example, little known abroad, except by peo­ple like Kuhn … That tradition, which cannot be easily labelled with an “ism”, has as its common basis the primacy given to construction. The fundamental scientific act is the construction of the object; you don’t move to the real without a hypothesis, without instrument of construction.

 

((Is the following comment relevant to this sentence? In any case, science has no mind for itself. It is the scientists who think in this way or another way. Scientists of today are different from scientists of 80 years ago.))

 

My guess is that neither Bourdieu nor Kim realized that the history of natural sciences suffered a massive break from determinism to stochasticity around 1900. As much as I like to attribute it to Darwin’s evolutionary theories, the break was brought about by physicists around 1900 and afterward. The break was completed by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in 1927. Thus, the truth died in natural philosophy. 

 

 

 

Page 13

What is this epistemological tradition with which Bourdieu identifies himself? In the aforementioned epistemological writings (Bourdieu 1968;  Bourdieu et al. 1991), Bourdieu draws on the arguments of a French phys­icist, Pierre Duhem, and argues that the ‘method of hypothesis’—or what the contemporary philosophers of science now call ‘hypothetico-deductive method’—which played a central role in the progress of natural science dur­ing the 17th century (Harré 1964; Laudan 1981; Mandelbaum 1964) should be adopted to ensure the progress of social science.

 

Popper suggested this in 1961!

 

Two points.

First, this is not entirely accurate!  Scientists of that era considered themselves as non-deductivist (following Francis Bacon’s advice, I presume).

 

Second, I totally agree that social sciences should use some variant of the hypothetico-deductive method.

 

 

 

Page 13

Although most 19th-century scientists do not believe that complete verification of a theory is possible, they nevertheless believe that scientific progress can be ensured through the successive elimination of inadequate theories through crucial experiments.

 

That is probably correct, but I require evidence!

 

My understanding is that the scientists of the 19th century were aware of Hume’s arguments but found them too restrictive. Consequently, they chose to ignore Hume.

 

 

 

Page 13

Against such myth, Duhem argues that the falsifica­tion of a theory through the crucial experiment is not as unambiguous as the positivists assumed because testing a theory involves testing not just an iso­lated hypothesis but a ‘system’ of hypotheses that are related to one another:

 

This sentence arises from not distinguishing between simple (or, as Kim puts it, ‘isolated’) and composite hypotheses/theories.

 

 

 

Page 13

[T]he physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses; when the experiment is in dis­agreement with his predictions, what he learns is that at least one of the hypotheses constituting the group is unacceptable and ought to be modi­fied; but the experiment does not indicate which one ought to be changed. (Duhem [1954]1991: 187)

 

No. No. No.

This is also about confusing simple and composite hypotheses/theories.

 

On the other hand, Duhem died in 1916 and, therefore, could not have published a book in 1954! By using these artificial dates, you are masking the age of the ideas. Duhem’s book has two editions from 1906 and 1914. The English translation was first published in 1954 and later in 1982 and 1991. The 1991 edition has an introduction by Jules Vuillemin.

 

 

 

Page 13

This in turn means that the only thing a scientist is entitled to infer from the disagreement of the theoretical prediction and empirical data is that at least one of the hypotheses in the reticulated network of hypotheses and tacit assumptions is false.

 

First, this is the continuation of confusing simple and composite theories. Second, be specific! Give three examples.

 

 

 

Page 14

For Duhem, to press experience into a certain language necessarily involves interpretation because language cannot capture the full richness and complexity of the real world.

 

As Devil’s advocate, I must ask why. Am I justified in rejecting all of your statements because you have a collection of theories and language that cannot describe your experience?

 

 

 

Page 14

Consider the following theoretical fact: ‘The temperature is distributed in a certain manner over a certain body’. This theoretical fact, according to Duhem, can be subject to the mathematical analysis in which numerical specification of the temperature distribution and the mathematical formulation with respect to the geometry of the body can be made.

 

((This is a cryptic comment)). This is hypocrisy! State your purpose with the same accuracy as you demand from a physicist.

 

In any case, diffusion models (mostly forward diffusion models and sometimes approximate diffusion models) have been used for a long time for the distribution of heat over a certain body. Including the geometry of the body in the analyses poses no problem. If you move away from rigid determinism, then ‘everything will be fine’!

 

 

 

Page 15

Let me briefly illustrate the coherence aspect of the network by using an example from the history of early genetics. In the early days of genetics, Mendelians’ classification of the coat color of the experimental rodents into discrete categories has been severely criticized by the Darwinians who argued that the coat color of the rodents should be treated as a ‘continuous’ rather than a discrete variable. To maintain the coherence of the Mendelian theory, however, the advocates of the Mendelian theory pressed certain clus­ters of coat color of the experimental rodents into a specific color category, ignoring minute color variations as negligible or theoretically insignificant (Kim 1994).

 

This is an inadequate description of the debate. The group arguing against Mendelians were not called Darwinians but biometricians. Further, the debate was not because of a composite theory or a collection of theories. The debate was about the (phenotypic) variation important in evolution being explained by one gene or several genes. Furthermore, the difference was resolved pretty soon. And finally, what is the social element in this? This deserves a more detailed description.

 

The Mendelians-Biometricians controversy was not about the role of “genes” in inheritance but their role in evolution. The controversy had its roots in Darwin’s insistence on gradual changes (small differences) being important and large changes (large differences) not being important in evolution. This resulted in the debate on the age of Earth with Lord Kelvin. So either Earth should be much older than Lord Kelvin assumed it to be, or the “hopeful monsters” (“genes” or mutations with very large effects) should be more important than Darwin admitted. In this debate, Lord Kelvin was on the wrong side because he did not know about the extremely hot iron core of the Earth. Then, when Mendel’s rules were rediscovered in 1900, Mendelians claimed that “genes,” with the ones initially discovered, had large effects and should be the stuff of evolution. Biometricians, who were more under the influence of Galton and his study of normally distributed traits, discarded “genes” as the stuff of evolution. This discussion had a spill-over in the sense that gradual evolution was discarded by the Mendelians, and the role of “genes” was considered not relevant in inheritance by Biometricians. Very soon, it turned out that Mendelians were right about the role of “genes” in inheritance (so Mendelians won the battle). Some years later (I would say from Castle (1905), through East (1910 and 1916), and to Fisher (1918)), it was shown both empirically and mathematically that the aggregate effects of “genes” with very small effects were the stuff of evolution (so the Biometricians won the war).

 

((Do I need to write more?))

 

 

 

Page 15

But what about the falsification of a theory?

 

… The answer offered by Hesse and many other post-positivists such as Popper and Quine is that scientists are not equally suspicious of the validity of various hypotheses and assumptions that constitute the network.

 

If my division of theories into simple and composite is accepted, then there is no need for Hesse to explain it.

 

 

 

Page 15

Contrary to the misunderstanding of many scholars who unduly exaggerate the difference between Popper’s and Kuhn’s view of science, as Kuhn (1977) freely acknowledged, they are in complete agreement as far as the epistemological status of the observation statement is concerned.

 

The difference between Popper’s and Kuhn’s views of science also disappears if we accept that their views have different scopes.

 

 

 

Page 16

If the falsification of a theory is a ‘circular process’ in which theories are tested not against the naked observation but against the observation statements that are also theory-laden, why did Popper suggest falsifiability as the demarcation criterion that can be used to distinguish science from pseudo-science? More specifically, how could science get out of such an irreducible circle? For Popper, basic statements are not basic in the sense that they don’t need further empirical tests. Rather, they are called basic statements because the scientific community puts collective (or social) trust in those statements and uses them to test theoretical statements. For Popper, the background knowledge including basic statements has been regarded as more trustworthy and reliable not because it is infallible but because it was obtained through the test and retest of one another’s arguments and demonstrations through the history of the discipline.

 

First, the falsification of a simple theory is not circular.

 

Second, based on what you are saying, Popper does not have a monopoly over his own ideas! Why? Based on your understanding, Popper’s observational statement does not need to be taken at face value.

 

 

 

Page 16

Making Popper’s argument more perspicuous, Hesse argues that scientists are reluctant to modify those parts of the theoretical system which are more deeply entrenched within the theoretical network.

 

The actual process (apart from the difference in the scope of views of Popper and Khun) is that after falsifying a theory and discarding it, the scientist will need a lot of time to come up with a new theory, which is very costly.

 

 

 

Page 17

In an article entitled, ‘Structuralism and Theory of Sociological Knowledge’ (Bourdieu 1968), Bourdieu attributes the impor­tance of structuralism not to the ‘death of subjects’ as many French phi­losophers of the 1960s assumed.

 

Which French philosophers? Name them!

 

 

 

Page 17

When Bourdieu quotes Freud’s remark that ‘even at the stage of descrip­tion’, scientists cannot avoid applying certain ‘abstract ideas to the material in hand’ that in themselves are not derived from ‘observations alone’, he, like Duhem and Hesse, argues that no observation can be made meaningful unless it is interpreted against the backdrop of certain ‘coherence [or inter­pretive] principles’, i.e., what Freud calls ‘abstract ideas’ above, which in themselves are not derived from observation.

 

There is nothing, nothing at all, “out there” that is independent of a scientist’s understanding.

 

The following comment also applies here!

 

 

 

Page 17

Experiencing something as meaningful and/or significant thus means that one is already applying certain extra-observational schema, or to use Durkheim’s word, ‘classification principles’ to the observational data that make each observation related to one another in an orderly way.

 

This is more or less ridiculous! Why? Because a thermometer shows the same value independent of a scientist’s social allegiances.

 

 

 

Page 17

Experiencing something as meaningful and/or significant thus means that one is already applying certain extra-observational schema, or to use Durkheim’s word, ‘classification principles’ to the observational data that make each observation related to one another in an orderly way. And this indicates the inseparability of experience and theory.

 

This is a typical case of imposing the mind to/on nature. This reminds me of the confusion between the “epistemological method of examining nature” and the “nature.” A good example is Engels’ delusion of assuming nature to be dialectical. It was Engels who was deluded, but both Hegel and Marx have a part in building up the delusion. 

 

 

 

Page 18

In ceasing to place in opposition to each other that which is formal and that which is real, reason and experience conceived as a mere “Rhapsodie von Wahrnehmungen”, structuralism places its foundation on the postulate that experience is a system. (Bourdieu 1968: 683) [italics added]

 

I don’t know Bourdieu’s definition of “formal” and “real.” In my opinion, “formal” equals “conventionally constructed,” like mathematics! “Real” is that which can be measured or “experienced” with an instrument. “System” is a composite theory.

 

 

 

Page 18

The theory is not a literal translation based upon a term-by-term correspondence with the “real”, merely reproducing the apparent elements and properties of the object after the fashion of the mechanical models of ancient physics. (Bourdieu 1968: 688)

 

This, and the previous citation from Bourdieu, makes me worried! The theory is the mental systematization of our knowledge of how nature works. I do not recognize and reject the idea of “truth” as used in this book or as usually used in humanities and social sciences. However, I understand the term “true.” There are two sorts of “true”. One is mathematical and/or statistical, i.e., “formally” or “conventionally constructed.” The other is the correspondence between “observation=real” and theory.

 

The mechanical models of old physics are not what modern physics is. This writer (Bourdieu) and those who have been influenced by him need to abandon the old fixed/immutable models.

 

 

 

Page 18

It is their totality, or more exactly, in their mutual relations that such concepts represent their objects, so that their “necessary consequences in the sphere of thought” are always “symbols of the necessary consequences in the realm of things of the objects represented”. (Bourdieu 1968: 688) [italics added]

 

This is very fanciful!

 

 

 

Page 18

To strengthen his argument for the method of hypothesis, Bourdieu adds that Herz, another renowned physicist of the 19th century, endorsed the method of hypothesis as the only sound scientific method.

 

Yet another example from an old dead physicist.

 

 

 

Page 18

The definition of the process of science as a dialogue between hypothesis and experience can, however, easily degenerate into the anthropomorphic image of an exchange in which the two partners take perfectly symmet­rical and interchangeable roles. But it should not be forgotten that reality never has the initiative in this exchange, since it cannot reply unless it is questioned. Bachelard put it another way when he postulated that “the epistemological vector … points from the rational to the real and not, as all philosophers from Aristotle to Bacon professed, from the real to the general”.

 

I have three comments about this.

 

One is that the very idea that “reality” is or is not in an “exchange” with a scientist (I presume) is very anthropomorphic.

 

Second, it is often the experience (an observation of nature or society, if you like) that initiates the exchange. It is the experience that demands an explanation. Further, the experience has already responded to any question before you articulately ask it.

 

For example, consider taking your infant to a pediatrician or, even better, taking your dog to a veterinarian. There is an exchange between the doctor and the patient, and it goes both ways, sending and receiving signals.

 

Third, can you show how “the rational of the real and … the real to the general” works in relation to the thermometer example?

 

 

 

Page 19

Whether we deal with historical or natural phenomena, the individual observation assumes the character of a “fact” only when it can be related to other, analogous observations in such a way that the whole series “makes sense”.

 

Yes. This is true, but not for the reason of being a part of a “series.” There are two main reasons. First, every phenomenon is multifaceted and in (statistical) interaction with other multifaceted phenomena. Second, depending on the “background” (paradigm), a phenomenon will have two different meanings.

 

 

 

Page 20

This is why, in a debate with Popper, Kuhn argues that a theory would not be abandoned even when it fails to produce the expected results.

 

The theory is not supposed to produce any result. The theory is supposed to “predict” yet unobserved phenomena. If Kuhn and Popper had realized that their views have non-overlapping scopes, they did not need to debate.

 

 

 

Page 20

All theories can be modified by a variety of ad hoc adjustments with­out ceasing to be, in their main lines, the same theories. It is impor­tant, furthermore, that this should be so, for it is often by challenging observations or adjusting theories that scientific knowledge grows. Challenges and adjustments are a standard part of normal research in empirical science.(Kuhn 1970b: 13)

 

By quoting Kuhn 1962 or 1970, you seem to have a very static understanding of his “theory.” Please make your life easier. Consider a “theory” like a biological species that changes. In this particular case, it is not only that theories evolve, but the whole concept of the “theory” evolves. Buckle up, Dorothy. The “theory you knew in Kansas is no more”

 

 

 

Page 20

Being an extra-observational and metaphysical framework used for interpreting observational data, Kuhn argues, paradigm works as a kind of coherence condition of the theoretical network, which in turn determines which part of the network needs to be adjusted to restore the agreement between theory and experiment.

 

I had suspected that Kuhn might have been influenced by some sort of Marxism, or at least there are similarities between his views and Marxists’ views. What does Kim say about that?

 

 

 

Page 21

Kuhn’s ‘essential tension argument’ attracted Bourdieu’s attention because it implies that ‘revolutions are rooted in the paradigm’ (Bourdieu 2004: 16).

 

See the above comment!

 

 

 

Page 22

Following Durkheim, Bourdieu sociologizes Kant’s transcendental the­ory of knowledge and argues that scientists’ ‘categories of perception’ are the product of social construction and, as such, have ‘historicity’.

 

This paragraph doesn’t make much sense because “the evolutions in science view” contradict this view. There is a break with the sociologized concepts presented here. See also the next excerpt.

 

 

 

Page 22

Bourdieu found Kuhn’s view of the scientific revolution interesting pre­cisely because Kuhn shares with him the Durkheimian view that scientific knowledge can be understood only against the backdrop of socially constituted conditions and a prioris of which it is a product.

 

See the previous comment.

 

 

 

Page 22

Although taken as a set of ‘collective a prioris’, however, similarity rela­tions are in fact the inductive achievement of a group of scientists because they ‘have withstood the tests of group use’ and, as such, ‘have been selected for their success over historic time’ (Kuhn [1962]1970a: 196).

 

I would not call it inductive. These are just some useful tools that can be used for a short time.  If I want to put a name on it, I will call it abductive or alternatively inference to the best explanation (of course, at least for the purposes of this book review, I consider the differences between abduction and IBE to be non-consequential).

 

 

 

Page 24

For, although Kuhn, in various places of his writings, alludes to a number of sociological factors that should be taken into account in the explanation of the paradigm change, he has never been able to suggest any plausible social mechanism that can account for the paradigm change.

 

Please add psychology to this sentence!

 

 

 

Page 26

Some points deserve to be described here.

 

The first point is what a naive dialectical view of evolution would look like. Would it be anything like Lysenkoism? What happens if we make it a bit softer? Would it become more Gouldian?

 

The second point is what is a species, and what are the (sub)populations of a species? This is like an idea (or a theory) and its “daughter” ideas (or sub-theories) or a composite theory and its constituent simple theories. It is equivalent to the multitude of simple theories under a paradigm.

 

The third point is that all the discussions about science’s sociological aspects are about competition between different research groups. For this point, see “Science as a Process” by Hull (1989).

 

The fourth point is the choice between anagenesis or cladogenesis and between Darwinian and Gouldian.

 

Finally, scientists usually have a pragmatic view of theories, including theories of science philosophy.

 

 

 

Page 27

Bourdieu’s Sociological Theory of Scientific Truth

Truth and Struggle

 

I just realized that “truth” has not been defined in this book. What is that (the truth)?

 

 

 

Page 28

Suppose that scientist A works on a paper that criticizes scientist B.

 

I cannot recall seeing such a paper! A scientist criticizing another scientist must be very rare. It is the work of another scientist or the ideas of another scientist that are criticized. So, please show 3 examples so that I can believe you!

 

 

 

Page 28

But, to enter the symbolic space created and shared by the scientists, both A and B have to pay what Bourdieu calls the entry cost. To qualify them­selves as competent participants of the shared symbolic space, both A and B should not only ‘equip’ themselves with a wide variety of theories and methods currently available within the symbolic space, but should be able to critically assess the merits and demerits of those theories and methods.

 

This is exactly my understanding of how philosophy works!

 

But in science, there is something that you cannot find in other places. “Measurements  and counts, counts and measurements.”

 

 

 

Page 28

In the graduate school syl­labus, for instance, both A and B would have encountered a list of reading materials that they and their classmates are ‘forced’, as it were, to read and digest.

 

Is it different in philosophy or sociology schools? And how long was the list in your school?

 

 

 

Page 28

The first thing they learn during their early intellec­tual career, therefore, is that not every participant of the symbolic space they are interested in has the same intellectual status and power.

 

And I guess it is not like that in philosophy departments?

 

Do all trees in a forest receive the same amount of sunlight? And are all trees the same length?

 

 

 

 

Page 28

Seen from this perspective, the scientific field can be delineated as a ‘structured space of positions whose properties … can be analysed inde­pendently of the characteristics of their occupants’ (Bourdieu 1993: 72) [italics added].

 

Unfortunately, this is not the case. I have observed many Ph.D. holders in my own department who did not know R. A. Fisher, S. Wright, or A. Roberson. I almost got a heart attack on one occasion because a certain Ph.D. holder did not know Robin Thompson. It’s totally unforgivable.

 

 

 

Page 29

These rules and criteria which are shared and used by the participants of the symbolic space tell them what kind of arguments would be counted as original and persuasive by their colleagues as well as how to effectively criticize the intellectual opponents so that those criticisms make the opponents’ arguments look less convincing and persuasive. The second thing they learn therefore is that, to be counted as serious and respected scientists, they have to embody those rules set by the elite members of the field.

 

Not applicable. In my department, they learn a lot of quantitative genetics intertwined with mathematical statistics. They learn about equations, how to use them, and how to compare results!!!

 

 

 

Page 29

To put it differently, this means that they have the inclination to honor the often implicit presuppositions and prac­tical wisdom that everyone else in the field takes for granted and shares with them.

 

Can you give an example? Where do these observations of yours come from? Is it just your fanciful views from the realm of possibilities and not the realm of probabilities?

 

 

 

Page 29

In short, scientific habitus tells the scientists ‘how to go on’, in Wittgenstein’s sense (Taylor 1993), in a wide variety of different situations.

 

Wittgenstein (who died in 1951) did not know much about post-WWII universities. Did he?

 

 

 

Page 29

At this point, however, Bourdieu introduces an ‘epistemological break’ and argues that, when observed from a detached point of view, those rules or criteria which scientists accept as legitimate rules of conducting their research and evaluating the value of one another’s research are in fact a ‘cultural arbitrary’ imposed on them by those who accumulate the largest amount of symbolic power and prestige, which he calls ‘the symbolic capi­tal’.

 

Do you mean that Bourdieu was trained in such an environment with this kind of attitude? Or maybe you have had such a training?

 

 

 

Page 30

Rather, it is embodied in a ‘structured social space’—the scientific field—in which scientists struggle for the imposition of a particular definition of science as the universal one.

 

Most natural scientists do not have such a universal understanding. What I have seen indicates that the level of philosophical awareness is very low among natural scientists of the “lower levels/ranks.”

 

 

 

Page 30

Consider a mosaic mural designed to picture a street scene. While it embodies knowledge of the street, people, and buildings depicted, the mosaic mural nevertheless cannot accurately represent the details of the street scene because the size of the stones, the thickness and color of the cement, the range of natural colors available, and the restriction to a two-dimensional surface all contribute to the diminution of the mosaic mural’s validity of mapping the street scene.

 

Are there any examples of such a view/behavior among natural scientists? If such scientists existed, they would be very rare.

 

 

 

Page 31

Translated into Bourdieu’s terminology, the vehicular requirements corre­spond to the efforts made by those scientists with the largest amount of sym­bolic capital to keep other scientists in line with the epistemological doxa they manage to set up so that they follow the succession strategies rather than the subversion strategies in the struggle for the hegemony of the field. According to Bourdieu, the currently accepted classification of the natural world, the explanatory theories associated with it, and the host of other taken-for-granted assumptions that reflect the topography of the field—those ‘social a prioris’ discussed in the previous chapters—are in fact social arbitrary imposed on the scientists by those who accumulated the largest amount of symbolic capital in the history of previous struggles. Pre-reflexively accepted by the scientists in a given field, the habitus, or the embodied disposition of scientists, gives scientists the specific sense as to what kind of research would most likely bring her the results that would be regarded by her colleagues as important and worth pursuing. The complicity of the social agents engaged in the game of science makes all such maneuvering possible.

 

I admit that there is a struggle for the hegemony of the field by natural scientists, but in most cases, it is for personal position and not for their special brand of scientific thinking. A comparison with biological populations might be useful. The absolute bulk of natural selection occurs within the population by depriving other members of resources. Nature is not red in tooth and claw. Predators killing and eating prey is just a minute fraction of natural selection. For natural scientists, it is the higher “grant ability” that is desired.

 

Which previous chapters? There was only one chapter before!

 

 

 

Page 32

As I have discussed above, all of the vehicle maintenance requirements—trust in the sense of dogmatic adherence to the previous consensus, clique-formations, tribal leadership, adherence to the dominant positions beyond competence, ideologies that bind the members together, and the pursuit of power and capital—seem to work against the enhancement of the validity in science.

 

 

Three points deserve to be mentioned here.

 

First, this description is “valid” for every workplace, scientific or not.

 

Second, many of these descriptions are true for philosophy, art, and other fields.

 

Third, the author is confusing two things: (a) how the process of accumulating knowledge is based on verification of previously gained knowledge and giving credit to that, and (b) how natural science organizations work.

 

 

 

Page 32

However, theorists of science who still believe in science’s capacity to improve its collective representation of reality—let me call them sociologists of scientific validity—argue that, despite such liabilities, the social system of science can improve the mapping of the physical world precisely because of the special features, or assets, that the successful natural sciences have developed over the past 300 years (Campbell 1986; Hull 1978; Kim 1994, 2009; Rudwick 1985).

 

With respect to the first part of this sentence, I can say that sociology, as such, is a part of the natural sciences. Therefore, “sociology of scientific validity” can be written as “science of scientific validity,” which is nonetheless “science.”

 

With respect to the first part of this sentence, I can say that I agree with the claims.

 

 

 

Page 33

Bourdieu locates that specific feature in the autonomy of the scientific field that grants scien­tists the exclusive power to distinguish truth from falsehood.

 

Again, the use of the term ‘truth’ is very rare among natural scientists.

 

 

 

Page 33

This helps them mutually moni­tor and cross-validate each other’s solution without being interfered with by the nonexperts outside of the field.

 

This is not the case! Nowadays every natural scientist is partially or totally dependent on “soft money” for research. The so-called ‘nonexperts outside of the field’ have overwhelming power over the choice of grantable field, review panels for grant approval, and review of results. 

 

 

 

Page 33

Kuhn, for example, argues that, being exclusively addressed to and evaluated by other members of the profession, the creative work of a scientist needs not to be concerned with lay approbation.

 

First, see the above comment.

 

Second, this is a cheap kind of populism! What is the problem here? Should I be ‘concerned with lay approbation’ when I use a complicated Bayesian model of across-generation estimation of genetic variance?

 

 

 

Page 33

Thus depending on the degree of the autonomy of the field, a field of cultural produc­tion can be positioned somewhere between the religious (or literary) field where social arbitrariness of belief is maximized through the imposi­tion of official truth and the scientific field where the social arbitrariness of belief is kept at the minimum level through the social mechanism of cross-control and mutual criticism (1975: 34–35; see also Bourdieu 2004).

 

In my experience I find natural scientists more humble than people from humanity and social sciences.

 

 

 

Page 33

I feel some confusion in the author.

 

 

 

Page 34

The antagonism which is the basis of the structure of and transfor­mation of any field tends to become more and more radical and more and more fruitful because of the forced agreement in which reason is generated leaves less and less room for the unthought assumptions of doxa.

 

Including philosophy and sociology (and history).

 

I guess the source of the opinions expressed by Kim (and especially Bourdieu) in the previous Page and this Page , which I interpreted as populism, is the misguided notion that ‘science’ (and even knowledge) should be democratic! That’s not the case. Not every action or institution needs to be democratic in all stages. A good example is the relationship between teachers and students. When I teach quantitative genetics, I have no regard for the (un)thought assumptions of doxa.

 

 

 

Page 34

Now, if every scientist tries to overthrow other’s ideas and instead get his ideas accepted in its place, what would be the consequence of this selfish behavior? The answer is evidently the growth of knowledge, the manifest goal of the scientific institution. Science works so well because the pursuit of selfish goals by individual scientists happens to coincide with the manifest goal of science as an institution. Such ‘rational dialectic’ within the field, as Bourdieu calls it, contributes to the ‘alchemical transformation’ of the private pursuit of interest into scientific knowledge.

 

I agree with this statement. However, I sense a little bit of Adam Smith in here. AS regards Adam Smith, he might be right if the number of actors is large enough.

 

A remark not related to this part of the book is that this book is written by someone with no understanding of the natural sciences and for other philosophers who have no understanding of natural sciences. The evidence for my claims is that up to this point in book there has been only one example from natural sciences (and even that one was a misunderstanding).

 

 

 

Page 35

Bourdieu argues that the two essential elements for the rational dialectic that transforms the private interest of scientists into the progress of science are the ‘closure’ (or competition within the autonomous field) and what he calls the ‘arbitration of the real’.

 

I emphasize that the term ‘dialectic’ has so many meanings that I find it impossible to understand the meaning that this author intends for it.

 

 

 

Page 35

In arguing so, Bourdieu participates in the tradition of Popper (1957), Campbell (1986), and Hull (1978, 1988), who argue that scientific objec­tivity comes not from the individual scientists’ effort to be objective and impartial, but from the intersubjective criticism directed to correct each other’s intellectual work (Bourdieu 2004: 82–83).

 

This is not the first time that Bourdieu (at least according to Kim) is showing agreement with Popper and other like-minded philosophers of science. This is in contrast to what some of my own friends from the field of social sciences/humanities understand.

 

 

 

Page 35

Central to such a con­ception of scientific validity is the notion of the ‘scientific city’ (Bourdieu 1991b)—or what he calls in the above quote ‘closure’—in which scientists with different theoretical and metaphysical orientations stay together in a focused controversy, attending to and monitoring each other’s arguments and demonstrations, and keeping each other honest.

 

I interpret these parts as sympathetic to natural sciences and in contrast to the previous chapter.

 

I let the reference to ‘metaphysical orientation’ go uncommented.

 

 

 

Page 35

Being a carrier or vehicle that contains scientific knowledge, the scientific field imposes on itself a set of requirements—or to borrow Bourdieu’s phrase, ‘social conditions of the possibility of knowledge’—that are needed to maintain science as a social institution.

 

This is very “internal,” or as you may call it ‘metaphysical.’ There is also the “external” aspect of “that which can be measured”.

 

 

 

Page 35

But as Bourdieu and other sociologists of scientific validity argue, such social conditions of the possibility of knowledge are being constantly challenged and over­come through the  argumentation as to which of the competing social con­structions can be counted as the most plausible representation of reality. Scientific truth thus produced can never attain the status of final truth but it still can retain the correspondence meaning of truth precisely because it is obtained in a specific way that constantly challenges the very social conditions of which it is a product.

 

The first sentence is irrelevant. What is the ‘social construction’ of a thermometer reading?

 

The second sentence reminds me of the opening statement of the science-fiction television series Star Trek! “Final truth”? What is the “truth”? Show me some examples of papers or books where this phrase has been used by natural scientists.  The only place I have heard about “truth” is in court scenes in Hollywood movies. Incidentally, in one case, the character (Jack Nicholson, alias Colonel Nathan R. Jessup) has said, “You can’t handle the truth!“

 

 

 

Page 36

In his last lecture at the Collège de France (Bourdieu 2004), however, Bourdieu sets himself to correct all those misunderstandings by taking up the challenge of the relativist/constructiv­ist sociology of science represented mainly by the strong programme and the laboratory studies and argues that his argument made 30 years ago can still work as a corrective to these approaches to scientific practice.

 

This is another definition of paradigm, habitus, research program, constructivism, and other similar terms.

 

 

 

Page 36

Reviewers of Bourdieu’s last lecture (Camic 2006; Gieryn 2006; Inglis 2005; Mialet 2003; Sismondo 2005), however, all agree that because Bourdieu’s dismissal of the relativist sociology of science is based only on the perfunctory reading and hence profound misunderstanding of the rel­ativists’ main arguments, Bourdieu’s criticism of the relativist sociology of science could not have any impact on the current practice of the soci­ologists of science.

 

If he had a misunderstanding about this issue, could he have misunderstandings in other areas as well?

 

The way the terms ‘sociology’ and ‘science’ are used in this sentence makes me conclude that according to Kim, ‘sociology’ is not ‘science’!

 

 

 

Page 36

First, all of the critics argue that, despite Bourdieu’s efforts to distance his approach from that of Merton, Bourdieu’s field theory of science ultimately degenerates into the ‘idealist view’ of science propagated mainly by Merton and Habermas.

 

I wouldn’t call it an ‘idealist view,’ but fanciful.

 

 

 

Page 36

Second, critics argue that, even if Bourdieu is right in arguing that his field theory is quite distinct from that of Merton, he is not able to offer any empirical evidence to support the validity of his field theory of science.

 

I wonder if Merton’s studies and ideas from 1938 are relevant to the discussions in this book published in 2023.

 

 

 

Page 36

In short, critics argue that Bourdieu’s argument about the rationality of scientific practice is simply assumed rather than demonstrated.

 

This is both fanciful and mean!

 

 

 

Page 37

As I will explicate below in detail, the field analytic perspective shows why the two dominant approaches in the sociology of scientific knowledge, i.e., the strong programme and the interactionist approach cannot capture the ‘specificity’ of the logic of scientific practice.

 

This comment applies to the previous sentence and this one. What we may call “reality” is so multifaceted and has so much variation that no single explanation can capture all of it. About the ‘interactionist approaches,’ I wonder how much experience Bourdieu has with “interactions” in a statistical manner.

 

Let me give a mundane example. I knew the definition of variance in statistics. Then, in my workplace, I was part of a team performing the practical part of selecting chickens when they were eight weeks old in a poultry house that was 1200 square meters large. Our routines demanded that the discarded chicken be carried away to one end of the poultry house immediately. We could not hire an extra workforce for this practice. Therefore, we, ‘the scientists,’ also participated in moving away the chickens by holding and carrying 5 chickens in each hand. It was then that I acquired the experience of variance.

 

 

 

Page 37

Bourdieu argues that, in a series of ethnographic studies of laboratory which he claims are evidently influenced by his early paper (Bourdieu 1975) on the interested nature of sci­ence, Knorr-Cetina (1981, 1983) and Latour and Woolgar (1986) mistakenly argue that the main reason for scientists’ action is not epistemic but polit­ical.

 

What a mess! Knorr-Cetina (1981, 1983) and Latour and Woolgar (1986) assume that they are talking. What I hear is gibberish, utter gibberish.

 

 

 

Page 37

Scientists, they argue, do not seek truth but only symbolic profit that in turn can be reinvested for the larger amount of symbolic capital.

 

Do these people receive salaries for producing this nonsense?

 

 

 

Page 37

This, however, Bourdieu argues, results from their hopeless misunderstanding of the central message of his 1975 article, that is, scientists’ research strategies are simultaneously political and epistemic (scientific).

 

Does this apply to humanities and social sciences as well?

 

 

 

Page 38

As Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘following a rule’ tells us, although scientists can judge whether a particular action violates the rules of the scientific game by giving specific reasons, they themselves find it impossible to formulate those reasons as a body of explicit rules.

 

First, this is relevant for any field. Second, I agree that very few scientists have an overall view of their own field.

 

 

 

Page 38

For Bourdieu, scientists’ actions can be said to be determined precisely because of the specific habitus that makes them appreciate, honor, and abide by those rules.

 

First, it might be of interest to the reader that I have asked many colleagues about why we set the null hypothesis to something that we try to reject. No one referred to any “philosophical” reason. Second, habitus is just one of the many names for the same phenomena that can otherwise be called a paradigm, research programs, field theory, etc. etc.

 

 

 

Page 38

Bourdieu thus argues that the interactionists ignore the fact that under­standing scientific practice requires an understanding of the rules (and reasons which are inextricably related to them) inscribed in the specific, autonomous social space of symbolic production.

 

Petit fights!

 

 

 

Page 38

Bourdieu thus concludes that the search for the causes of action (preferred by the Mertonians and the strong programme sociologists) and the search for the reasons for acting (preferred by the interactionists) are both shown to be futile and impossible once we adopt the field analytic perspective.

 

Petit fights!

 

 

 

Page 39

A scientist is a scientific field made flesh, an agent whose cognitive structures are homologous with the structure of the field and, as a con­sequence, constantly adjusted to the expectations inscribed in the field.

 

Det finns Inget djur som är så bångstyrig som vetenskapsmänniska. (HJ)

There is no animal that is so difficult to steer as a scientist. (HJ)

Bourdieu has ignored within-field variation to come to this conclusion!

 

 

 

Page 39

These rules and regularities, which ‘determine’, so to speak, the scien­tists’ behavior, exist as such—that is, as factors effectively capable of orienting scientists’ practice in the direction of conformity with the demands of scientificity—only because they are perceived by scientists endowed with the habitus that makes them capable of perceiving and appreciating them, and both disposed and able to implement them. In short, the rules and regularities determine the agents only because the agents determine themselves by a practical act of cognition and recognition which confers their determining power on them, or, to put it another way, because these agents are so disposed … that they are sensitive to the injunctions they contain and prepared to respond meaningfully to them. It can be seen that it would be no doubt be futile, in these conditions, to ask which is the cause and which is the effect, and if it is even possible to distinguish the causes of action and the reasons for acting.(Bourdieu 2004: 41) [italics added]

 

For the sake of argument, let’s assume this is the case. Then, I assume we can use the same argument to claim that this is the reason that we can, more or less, understand what natural scientists say, and at the same time, it is the reason why so many non-natural scientists just talk gibberish!

 

It occurred to me just now that Bourdieu’s whole understanding of how scientific communities work is based on how the universities were working when he was a post-graduate student!

 

 

 

Page 39

Now, the foregoing discussion shows that the inveterate mistake made by the sociologists of scientific knowledge, i.e., scientists’ research strategies are only political strategies of increasing symbolic capital, dominance, and power, can be corrected only when we take into account the fact that these political strategies are pursued in a manner that satisfies the rules of the game—or, to use Bourdieu’s own words in the above quote, ‘the demands of scientificity’—inscribed in the autonomous field of symbolic production and in that sense are also scientific (or epistemic).

 

Is this scientific ‘or’ epistemic? Or are scientific and epistemic interchangeable?

 

 

 

Page 39

The above discussion shows why the critics of Bourdieu have persistently failed to distinguish between the rules embodied in the habitus of the sci­entists and the Mertonian moral norms. …

 

This paragraph is a good example of what I call “no one has a monopoly over his/her own ideas.

 

 

 

Page 40

For Bourdieu, the Mertonian or the Habermasian norms are merely one among a wide variety of political (linguistic) resources sci­entists deploy to justify their beliefs and actions in particular situations (see also Mulkay 1976, 1980).

 

First, every time this author uses the word  “linguistic,” it reminds me of Wittgenstein.  Second, are we supposed to assume that political  = linguistic?

 

 

 

Page 40

Scientists do not mechanically follow the norms enjoined by the scientific community but ‘flesh them out’ to fit their purpose of maximizing their symbolic power in the scientific field.

 

Once more, is this restricted to natural sciences? If not, then why do you take it up here? This is a general feature of many fields, including academic institutions.

 

 

 

Page 41

Bourdieu argues that, in explaining the production of Heidegger’s conservative philosophy, Adorno adopted the traditional sociology of knowledge approach in which social and class interests of the producer of knowledge are directly related to his/her intellectual products and thereby made the same ‘short-circuit’ error as that made by the strong programme sociologists.

 

This could be the effect of residual Marxism on Adorno!

 

 

 

Page 41

In the 17th-century England, the newly emerging sectaries carried a social message which both Boyle and Newton found disturbing; they demanded social and political equality, the redistribution of property, lay preaching and argued that religious truth and morality could be attained through their own revelations and conscience.

 

In those days, reference to “truth” was common. But claiming that it is still referred to is absurd.

 

 

 

Page 42

Bloor thus needs something more than Boyle’s political ideology and social interests to explain how and why Boyle and his circle adopted the corpuscular philosophy and could wrest dominance from their Aristotelian opponents.

 

My understanding is that Aristotelian deductive thinking was too strong in the church, especially in the medieval Catholic church. My “not yet substantiated claim” that Bacon strongly recommended the use of induction might be able the resolve the issue. ((I looked for the words induction and deduction in Bacon’s book (Noveu oraganum) once, and didn’t find any emphasis on them. However, the emphasis on using the “true inductive method of Bacon” indicates the emphasis on induction was what Darwin and Fisher understood from Bacon.))

 

 

 

Page 42

Such imposition of form is made possible because the participants of the scientific game share what Bourdieu calls the ‘illusio’ of the game, i.e., the belief in the legitimacy of the scientific game (Bourdieu and Waquant 1992). To make his intellectual product look legitimate and justified in the eyes of other participants of the game, Boyle embodied the disposition or inclination to honor and abide by the rules of the game that everyone else in the field took for granted and shared with him; for example, what to honor, what to cherish, what to avoid, what to desire, and so on. This means that, to be taken seriously by his colleagues, Boyle should be able to express his ideas and arguments according to the form imposed by the ‘structural censorship’ of the field.

 

Again! Is this specific to the natural sciences? Of course not. Some of these things are more pronounced in philosophy and other fields of humanities.

 

 

 

Page 43

Ignoring how such medi­ation of the interests of whatever stripes takes place within the autonomous scientific field, Bloor and the advocates of the strong programme showed astounding failures in explaining how and why scientific controversies were closed down (Gingras 1995; Henderson 1990; Kevles 1980; Kim 1991, 1994, 1996; Laudan 1984; Roll-Hansen 1983; Rudwick 1985).

 

The term ‘strong programme’ has been used before in this book. It is also one of the many terms that have not been defined as if everyone has the same understanding of it.

 

(A)

One certain advantage of natural sciences (if not all, but many fields) to non-natural science is that in natural science literature, nothing is left undefined. Of course, the use of mathematical/statistical notation makes it easier for natural scientists to define each term.

 

 

 

Page 43

For example, why did Pasteur want to translate the interest of the hygienists (Latour 1988)?

 

This is the second time a concrete example is used. I wish there were more concrete examples. However, the information provided is so inadequate that a reader would not understand Kim’s purpose unless the reader has a full knowledge of Latour (1988). Further, what Latour (1988) says is just one “opinion.” Furthermore, Latour (1988) is a book of more than 230 Page s of text. Where in that book should find what Kim is referring to?

 

 

 

Page 43

Bourdieu locates the social mechanism involved in such alchemical transformation in the crisscrossing censorship built into the autonomous scientific field that helps scientists mutually monitor and cross-validate each other’s arguments without being interfered with by the nonexperts outside of the field (1975: 34–35; 1991b: 21).

 

“Nonexperts” means philosophers and sociologists of science!

 

 

 

Page 44

Contrary to the critics’ misunderstanding, in arguing this, Bourdieu is again diametrically opposed to Habermas’s argument that the ideal speech situation as a regulative ideal or an ideal norm must be obtained before a rational consensus can be reached through the unconstrained exchanges of reasoned arguments.

 

I am beginning to suspect that the emphasis on language (and speech in this sentence) stems from the opacity in the philosophical/sociological texts because of undefined terminology and non-mathematical language.

 

 

 

Page 44

It is true, as the critics point out, that Bourdieu for whatever reasons did not conduct an empirical study of science that supports his own theory of scientific practice nor did he rely on any empirical studies to exemplify what he calls the rational dialectic operating in the scientific field.

 

So, he just made up some fanciful story about how science works! Why should I trust any of it?

 

 

 

Page 45

They, however, also show how such struggles are regulated by the habitus of the scientists working within the autonomous scientific field and, as a result, produce truth through what Bourdieu calls the rational dialectic of the scientific field.

 

You mean naive dialectic! Isn’t it?

 

 

 

Page 49

What Would a Bourdieusian Sociology of Scientific Truth Look Like?

 

There is no such thing as “truth” in science.

 

 

 

Page 49

In this chapter, I shall discuss two historical-sociological studies of scien­tific change to show how a Bourdieusian sociology of scientific validity can be empirically substantiated.

 

Two? Is that enough?

 

 

 

Page 49

Consider first Martin Rudwick’s detailed narrative of the formation of consensus about the Devonian System (DEV) among the gentlemanly geologists around the 1840s.

 

That is more than 180 years ago! Scientists have changed a lot since 1840. Look also at my comment on Page 1 about philosophers of science clinging to dead scientists.

 

 

 

Page 52

What is interesting about such classification of the geologists in terms of the ‘attributed scientific competence’ or the amount of ‘symbolic capital’ is that those geologists with less amount of symbolic capital acknowledge or accept the competence and authority of those geologists at the top contour line in the map of the topography of the attributed competence (1985: 420).

 

This is not necessarily a reflection of the hierarchy. Example: Many scientists were working outside of the “structures” but were highly respected. Darwin was an example.

 

Well, do you expect the words of a novice to have the same weight as the words of an experienced person? Think about this in terms of Bayesian statistics. An experienced person’s words are, on average, based on a larger number of data points.

 

 

 

Page 52

A map of the social field of the science is at the same time a map of its cognitive topography.

 

Well! This is ridiculous. 

 

 

 

Page 53

[S]cientific status, like the stock market, could go down as well as up. The competence attributed to any individual could change markedly in the course of time, either upward through the production of work that others regarded as plausible and important, or downward by the production of work that was found implausible and trivial, or by simple failure to produce anything. Competence was not attributed once and for all, but earned and cultivated, worked for and maintained.(1985: 420) [italics added]

 

Isn’t it the same in the field of philosophy?

 

 

 

Page 55

Scientific truth thus produced can never attain the status of final truth, but it still can retain the correspondence meaning of truth precisely because it is obtained in a specific way that con­stantly challenges the very social conditions of which it is a product.

 

Very funny. I claim there is no truth. That includes temporary truth and final truth. There is no final frontier, and there is no spoon.

 

 

 

Page 55

The second case study focuses on one of the most acerbic controversies ever known in the history of science, i.e., the so-called biometry-Mendelism controversy that broke out at the end of 19th-century England and lasted until the early 20th century.

 

The name of this controversy was biometricians-Mendelians.

 

This is, of course, wrong. The controversy started in 1900, after the re-discovery of Mendel’s work.

 

Please see my comments on Page 15.

 

 

 

Page 55

As predicted by the relativist sociology of science, the controversy between the biometricians and the Mendelians was so emotionally charged and, above all, interest-laden that it is not even con­ceivable to explain the evolution of the controversy without referring to the personal animosity (Frogatt and Nevin 1971; Provine 1971), sociopolitical interests (Coleman 1970; MacKenzie and Barnes 1974), and the professional interests (Norton 1975) of the three main protagonists of the controversy, William Weldon and Karl Pearson, the biometricians and William Bateson, the Mendelian.

 

This seems to be a cherry-picking activity by non-geneticists. I wrote about this already in 1995.

 

It also seems to me that when the non-geneticists could not understand the science of the debate, they tried to seek reasons for the personal behavior of the scientists involved.

 

 

 

Page 56

Such incompleteness of the various explanations of the biometry-Mendelism dispute, Kevles argues, can be attributed to the unwarranted assumption shared by these interest explanations, that is, the research agenda as well as the intellectual commitment of the genetics research at that time were determined by the three principal actors. To test whether the various explanations of the biometry-Mendelism dispute based only on the three protagonists are also applicable to the ‘community of geneticists at large’, Kevles suggested that the future studies involve an assessment of the role played by the scientific commoners in the shaping of genetic knowledge (1980: 446).

 

Well! You got it all wrong. First, the dispute has a background in Lamarck and Darwin. Pearson was just following Galton. The Mendelians have been defeated over and over again. But they do not know how to accept the defeat gracefully!

 

(Mendelians won the battle in and around 1900-1910/1916. But they lost the war in 1918.)

 

It was wrong of Biometricians to dismiss Mendelian factors (“genes”), but they had good reasons for their refusals (as argued by Yule (1902, 1904)).

 

 

 

Page 56

It is of course impossible to summarize here the narrative details as to the evolution and the eventual resolution of the controversy.

 

Why? I will do it in two Page s for you!

 

 

 

Page 57

Mendel’s experimental work, Bateson believed, showed convincingly that variations in natural population were discontin­uous rather than continuous and the evolution of species proceeded not through the accumulation of small, continuous variations but through the appearance of large, discontinuous variations.

 

 

These misunderstandings stem, probably, from the lack of quantification of “large” and “small”!

 

 

 

Page 57

In challenging the orthodox Darwinian view of evolution, Bateson attempted to impose a definition of science that was quite different from the one advocated by Weldon and Pearson and thereby wanted to ‘redefine’ the space of possibles. If he could succeed in imposing a new definition of science that is in accord with the experimental tradition rather than with the statistical tradition, Bateson could work within a new space of possible that would enable him to wield power over his competitors in the newly institutionalized social space of symbolic production. And that means that Bateson could ‘act upon the structure of the chances for profit and thereby upon the profits yielded by [his] investments’ (Bourdieu 1991: 13).

 

These are irrelevant speculations.

 

In this respect, the “scope” of theories is a relevant point to mention.

 

 

 

Page 58

Such efforts came into fruition and he succeeded in persuad­ing two promising American biologists, Charles Davenport and Raymond Pearl, to undertake biometric works. In 1905, at the invitation of Pearson, both Davenport and Pearl accepted the co-editorship of Biometrika and contributed many articles that were in line with Pearson and Weldon’s law of ancestral heredity.

 

You are forgetting East and Castle.

 

 

 

Page 59

This led Pearl to cast doubt on the assumption lying behind Pearson’s mass selection method, that is, all the high laying birds were a ‘homogeneous mass’ that had a more or less similar genetic constitution. In a series of papers, therefore, Pearl began to explore the possibility of applying Wilhelm Johannsen’s pure line method to the egg production problem and, based on his research data, tentatively concluded that the selection based merely on the external appearance (i.e., phenotype) of the birds rather than on their genetic constitution (genotype) was respon­sible for his failure to increase the egg production.

 

Of course, this was also a misunderstanding of Johannesen, which was clarified later.

 

Johannesen experimented on a self-fertilizing plant, in which there is no genetic variation within any single plant line and, consequently, nothing to select. He could claim that highly homogeneous (or highly inbred) populations do not respond to selection. But it was wrong of him to generalize his findings.

 

 

 

Page 60

As early as 1908, George Shull, a student of Davenport at the University of Chicago, testified that, although he was ‘a faithful advocate of the biometricians’ slogan: Ignoramus in hoc signolaboremus’ (quoted in Kim 1994: 146), the unexpected results from his three-year experiments with maize forced him to recognize that, contrary to Pearson’s law of regres­sion, selection within the pure line had no effect at all.

 

Obviously, anyone trying to see the effect of selection in a pure line is totally mistaken.

 

Again, this is an unwarranted generalization of the results. 

 

 

 

Page 61

Indeed, when Darbishire, Pearl, Davenport, Shull, and other biometricians were converted to the Mendelian theory, Mendel’s theory was in no sense fully fledged. Nor was there an array of complete proof that Mendel’s theory could be ‘universally’ applied to a wide range of hereditary phenomena. If these biometricians were the ‘rational calculators’ or ‘interest maximizers’ as Latour and the strong programme sociologists argue, it would have been more ‘profitable’ for them to stick to the biometric methods and the­ory rather than to defect to the Mendelian side. For remaining within the boundary of the then dominant Darwinian evolutionary theory of which the biometric methods were just a part would more likely to bring them a larger amount of scientific capital and power than to defect to the still incomplete Mendelian theory.

 

Well! No one defected to the other side. This is a misunderstanding.   My note at the end of this Page , when completed, shows how Fisher resolved the issue.

 

This is totally ill-posed.  The controversy was about Darwin’s ideas about small and continuous change against those who believed in hopeful monsters.

 

 

 

Page 62

Isn’t it, however, too ambiguous to argue that these converts’ judgment as to the reasonableness of the Mendelian theory was made according to their embodied dispositions or scientific habitus?

 

Using the word ‘convert’ is not appropriate. One can instead use “convinced.”

There are parts of the sociology of science (whether Bourdieusian or otherwise) that are generally accepted and that have to do with competence, rank, or whatever you may choose to call it (as it is also acknowledged within Kuhn’s views). The competence hierarchy is “universal.” Not every sociologist gets to be as respected as Bourdieu.  I think the allegory of the temple of science should be helpful.

 

((Do I need to mention the allegory of the temple?))

 

 

 

Page 63

Such complicity between the habitus and the field then generates the specific dynamics of the field that bring about the consequence that no individual scientist can anticipate, i.e., scientific truth.

 

I repeat my objection to the word ‘truth!’

 

 

 

 

Page 63

Thus, however problematic the concept of truth is from the viewpoint of the philosophers and the sociologists of science, scientists within the autonomous field can distinguish what is real from what is not.

 

Why is the word “real” used here?

 

 

Page 67

Although sociologists of science have accumulated an impressive amount of sociological research about natural science, few attempts have been made to analyze social science from the sociology of science perspective (for excep­tions, however, see Campbell 1986; Turner and Kim 1999).

 

Interesting. Not preaching to the choir?

 

 

 

Page 67

Bourdieu locates that specific fea­ture—what he calls the ‘rational dialectic’—in the ‘autonomy’ of the scien­tific field that grants scientists the exclusive power to distinguish truth from falsehood.

 

Define!

 

 

 

Page 67

In an autonomous field such as the scientific field, the intellectual products of the field are consumed and evaluated only by the members of the field and this helps them mutually monitor and cross-validate one anoth­er’s arguments without being interfered with by the nonexperts outside of the field.

 

At least in my field, we make a lot of effort to involve nonexperts in our work. I have observed the presence of nonexperts at different levels both in Sweden and in the USA.

 

 

 

Page 68

Although Bourdieu argues that ‘this logic [of successful natural science] is also valid for sociology’ (1990a: 185), he nevertheless argues that, to become a science in the genuine sense of the word, social science must overcome a difficulty that is peculiar to it (2004: 85; 1990a: 185). According to Bourdieu, that particular difficulty can be overcome only by bringing to light the hid­den ‘historical transcendental’, that is, those taken-for-granted assumptions and beliefs that are deeply entrenched in the social scientific research activ­ities (2004: 85–86).

 

These parts are very similar to my understanding of the social “things,” i.e., most sociology students work mainly with the history (and/or philosophy) of sociology and not the science of sociology.

 

Consequently, much of the research becomes “text analysis”.

 

 

 

Page 68

Who, however, are the subjects of objectivation? At first glance, it is evi­dent that the subjects of objectivation are the social scientists themselves for they are objectifying the world of social agents, explaining the latter’s beliefs and actions in terms of a theory not available to the latter. On fur­ther reflection, however, we find that there is another group of participants involved in the objectivation, that is, the agents themselves. In accounting for their own beliefs and behavior, social agents too are objectifying their version of reality by alluding to the various kinds of evidence and relying on common sense reasoning. Therefore, there are two groups of participants objectifying the reality they face; first, those who participate in the scholarly game called social sciences; second, those who participate in the practice of everyday life. According to Bourdieu, however, the latter kind of objectiva­tion produced by the lay agents—usually called by the ethnomethodologists members’ ‘accounting practices’—is a false objectivation resulting from the agents’ misrecognition of the real causes of and reasons for their own beliefs and behavior. Bourdieu thus calls this kind of objectivation ‘collusive objec­tivation’ or ‘spontaneous sociology’ in contrast to the genuine, objective objectivation conducted by the social scientists.

 

This paragraph is very fanciful.

 

 

 

Page 69

To illustrate the nature of such unthought assumptions that are taken for granted in the scholarly practice of the social scientists, Bourdieu (1990b) borrows the term, the ‘scholastic point of view’, from John Austin. Austin illustrates the scholastic point of view by referring to a particular use of language where scholars, in contrast to the laypeople, are preoccupied with examining all the possible meanings of a word without paying any attention to the ‘situated’ use of that word. Extending Austin’s use of the term to include the whole range of social scientists’ activities usually called ‘theorization’, Bourdieu criticizes social scientists’ practice of substituting theories for practices as killing ‘the properly strategic dimension of practices’ (1990b: 385). The strategic dimension of practice here refers to the embodied skills and sense agents deploy to cope with a series of unfold­ing social situations that are replete with uncertainties, indeterminations, and contingencies.

 

Is this John Austin living 1790-1859?

 

This is equivalent to ignoring the frequency of how the words are used by the laypeople, and therefore, the words correspond to a mental construct and not to the laypeople.

 

This is also equivalent to saying that a word has different meanings in different paradigms!

 

 

 

Page 69

Ignoring and unconscious of this gap between theory and practice, Bourdieu argues, social scientists argue as if their theories were objective representations of something transcendental. To narrow this gap, Bourdieu argues that truly reflexive sociology must raise the following question: Under what social conditions, do such scholarly objectifications gain supposedly timeless and universal validity?

 

And do this empirically (and not imaginatively!).

 

 

 

Page 70

In posing this question, Bourdieu sets himself to investigate the social conditions that make possible the transformation of the particular into the universal.

 

I hope you do not mean induction!

 

 

 

Page 70

This means that what is universal and objec­tive is socially constructed and reproduced within a scholastic situation—or skholè—where all the contingencies and temporal urgency associated with the pursuit of practical ends are ‘neutralized’ (1990b: 385).

 

Skholé? Leisure?

 

 

 

Page 70

Engaged in a social construction of the social agents (2004: 88), social scientists should be concerned with ‘breaking with the unthought presuppositions of thinking thought, in other words, to rid of themselves of their inbred scholastic bias’ (2003: 288).

 

Excellent!

 

 

 

Page 71

Bourdieu thus argues that scholastic bias can be removed by progressively constructing a ‘scientific subject’ who can master himself by developing skills—an anthropological eye—to grasp invisible relationships (Ibid).

 

It is interesting that neither Bourdiue nor Kim dare to go into “counting and measuring.“

 

 

 

Page 71

Once social scientists realize that ‘objectivity is a social product of the field which depends on the presuppositions accepted in the field’ (2004: 71), they become conscious of and guard against the illusion that their theo­ries obtain objectivity via their correspondence to the objective reality.

 

In my terminology, ‘objective’ and ‘reality’ are somehow equivalent. If you feel that the temperature is 22 C, it is your “subjective reality.” If you observe a thermometer showing the temperature to be 22 C, then it is “objective reality.”

 

The distinction between “object” and “subject,” as students of humanities/social sciences usually make, is meaningless!

 

 

 

Page 72

The problem, however, is that, depending on the positions occupied by the different participants of the field, a number of totally different accounts—each of which claims to be objective—of the history of the sociology of science have been produced (Camic 2006; Collins 1983; Gieryn 2006; Inglis 2005; Mialet 2003; Shapin 1995; Sismondo 2005).

 

One sound reaction from sociologists would be to leave natural sciences alone and work more on sociology.

 

 

 

Page 72

In short, depending on how the participants reconstruct the social space to which they belong, totally incommensurable pictures of the structure and evolu­tion of the field—its problematics, achievements as well as failures—emerge.

 

I agree.

 

 

 

Page 72

It is clear that it is not easy to construct the history of sociology of sci­ence, not only because of the vast volume of ‘literature’ but also because this is a field in which the history of the discipline is a stake (among others) in struggles. Each of the protagonists develops a vision of this history consistent with the interests linked to the position he occupies within the history; the different historical accounts are oriented according to the position of their producer and cannot claim the status of indisputa­ble truth. One sees, in passing, one of the effects of reflexivity; what I have just said puts my listeners on their guard against what I am going to say, and puts me on my guard too, against the danger of privileging one orientation or against even the temptation to see myself as objective on the grounds for example that I am equally critical of all positions.(2004: 9) [italics added]

 

This is “truly” a mess!

 

When you, I mean you, believe in the “truth,” then you end up in (in)disputability of truth. By allowing different kinds of truth, you are changing science to law. Is the next thing demanding a sworn testimony to “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

 

 

 

Page 73

Bourdieu thus argues that a truly reflexive analysis eventually makes each participant of the social scientific field:

1 – More conscious about how he/she objectifies his/her own view,

2 – Realize that truth is produced within the field as a result of the struggle for domination,

3 – Realize that truth is revisable, and finally

4 – Realize that truth revision should be based on ‘mutual objectification’ or mutual criticism.

 

Now Bourdieu is preaching to the choir!

 

 

 

Page 75

Epistemic reflexivity as recommended by Bourdieu therefore only brings about a number of contesting objectivations, each of which is devised to textually deconstruct the legitimacy and the accuracy of the contending views. Like narcissistic reflexivity, epistemic reflexivity thus leads us only to a deadlock, giving rise to a series of endless internecine criticism as to the accuracy of the competing representations of the field histories.

 

I agree.

 

 

 

Page 75

Bourdieu here argues that, being subject to mutual criticism based on empir­ical evidence, disputes in social sciences, like those in natural sciences, can be resolved in a rational way. Thus, unlike an idée force, genuine progress in the social sciences can be made through the ‘refutation’ of erroneous ideas (Bourdieu 2005: 39), that is, through the ‘mutual objectification’ of one another’s strategies of objectification.

 

I agree. Also following Popper’s advice from 1961 would be useful.

 

 

 

Page 75

Unfortunately, however, Bourdieu himself has never been able to cite even a case in which disputes in the social sciences are resolved through the refutation of false ideas.

 

Interesting!

 

 

 

Page 75

Bourdieu of course escapes from such a charge by arguing that, unlike natural sciences, social sciences have not been autonomous enough to gen­erate the rational dialectic within the field (1990a: 185).

 

I wonder how students of social sciences react to this accusation.

 

 

 

Page 75

Anyone familiar with the historical development of the sociology of science knows that the growth of the discipline is not so much due to the social and political factors as due to the argumentation among the internal members of the discipline.

 

I think Kim is shifting between sociology as such and the sociology of natural sciences in this section of the book.

 

 

 

Page 77

Improvisations, opportune questions, encouragement, and adaptive responses are only parts of the sociological craft or scientific habitus that can eventually ‘help the research respondent give up her truth or, rather, to be delivered of her truth’ (Ibid).

 

The last few paragraphs have been utter gibberish.

 

 

 

Page 77

But, how can Bourdieu make the respondents give up their truth? It is only by ‘redescribing’ the respondents’ situation in terms of the theoreti­cal vocabularies that he allegedly argues correspond to the way the world really is.

 

Again and again! Where does the obsession with the truth come from?

 

 

 

Page 78

Wacquant thus argues that boxers’ own objectivation of the motives, reasons, and meaning of their active participation in the prizefighting business is the result of ‘collective misrecognition’ that makes them ‘collude in their own commercialization’ (2001: 191) and accept their ‘subordinate and exploited position’ (187).

 

The last couple of paragraphs are filled with frightening naivety.

 

In-depth interviews are extremely prone to manipulation.

 

 

 

Page 79

Consider first the objectivation provided by the boxers themselves. Even when they know that they are being exploited, they believe that they have a fair chance of becoming successful in the prizefighting business, provided that they manage their corporeal capital well enough. Richly documented in Wacquant’s interview transcript, boxers’ narrative about their situation is full of optimism and the strong will to carry on the job they choose. In short, boxers’ self-understanding of boxing indicates that boxing is a ‘legiti­mated’ exploitation. For them, boxing certainly is exploitation but a particu­lar kind of exploitation worth participating in.

 

Here is a nasty comment from me: The so-called “qualitative” research with emphasis on “deep interviews” belongs to a pre-science period of many branches of knowledge.

 

 

 

Page 79

Opposed to this objectivation is, of course, Wacquant’s allegedly more scientific narrative.

 

I am leaning more and more towards more emphasis on “counting and measuring” as an indispensable part of the definition of science.

 

 

 

Page 79

In case that boxers do not accept his scientific analysis of boxing, Wacquant might argue that simple statistics will demon­strate the falsity of their beliefs.

 

We need a new word for this kind of using the word “statistics.”

 

 

 

Page 79

There was some emphasis on falsification in these last few pages.

 

 

 

Page 81

As we have seen above, while Bourdieu claims that his objectivation of the sociology of science field during the last four decades enables him to find the objective structures of the field in terms of which he can make intelligible all the seemingly disparate and chaotic discursive exchanges of the sociologists of science, those allegedly objec­tive structures have been rendered implausible by his critics who dismiss Bourdieu’s objectivation as merely reflecting his own interests for dominat­ing the field.

 

Interesting!

 

 

 

Page 86

As is well known, Becker encroaches upon the territory usually occupied by the sociologists by explaining a wide variety of social phenomena ranging from education (1964) to marriage (1981) in terms of the supposedly universal economic principle, that is, the principle of maximization in various cost situations.

 

This is typical. Use a bad example,  criticize it, and condemn all quantitative methods.

 

 

 

Page 87

From the very beginning, a definition of human capital, despite its humanistic connotations, does not move beyond economism and ignores, inter alia, the fact that the scholastic yield from educational action depends on the cultural capital previously invested by the family. Moreover, the economic and social yield of the educational qualifica­tion depends on the social capital, again inherited, which can be used to back it up.

(Bourdieu 1986: 244)

 

How do I know if Bourdieu is right or wrong?  Is there any empirical evidence behind it?

 

 

 

Page 87

Why, Accardo asks, could Sébatien not keep up with the other students of the lycée? Following Bourdieu, he suggests that Sébastien, a son of the emigrant from Algeria, failed since he lacked the cultural capital which is required for academic success at the lycée. Teachers at the lycée took it for granted that those students at the lycée meet the standard expected of the upper-middle class and looked at Sébastien with a jaundiced eye. In his interview, Sébastien testified to the suffering, humiliation, and frustration he experienced during the lycée years.

 

One single example is not enough. But apparently, in the field in which Bourdieu or Kim works, people do not understand these things.

 

 

 

Page 88

Goldthorpe argues that ‘Bourdieu wild’ is simply false because a lot of studies show that it lacks empirical evidence; on the other hand, the weak version, which he calls ‘Bourdieu domesticated’, is merely a repetition of the fact which is already well known among the researchers of social strat­ification and inequality, that is, there is a certain relationship between the academic performance of the students and their class origin. Goldthorpe thus concludes that Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction is neither con­ceptually innovative nor empirically validated.

 

This is worth pondering about.

 

 

 

Page 89

Although I will not summarize their exchanges in their entirety, their critical exchanges about the role played by cultural capital in the social reproduction of class clearly show that, unlike in the natural sciences, Bourdieusian participant objectivation in the social sciences could not produce a consensus as to what counts as facts and evidence upon which further progress of stratification research can base.

 

The use of “counting and measuring” would be very helpful for finding “facts.”

 

What is fact? Fact is a count or a measurement.

 

 

 

Page 89

The single most important issue of their debate revolves around how best to operationalize Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital so that its effect on the educational achievement of the students can be adequately meas­ured.

 

This is close to my definition of conceptual and operational definitions.

 

 

 

Page 89

DiMaggio argues that Bourdieu’s original contribution should not be sought in the empirical adequacy of his theoretical argument. On the contrary, he was skeptical of the empirical accuracy of Bourdieu’s theory from the beginning.

 

This is word-mongering!

 

 

 

Page 90

After reviewing a wide range of literature about the validity of Bourdieu’s social reproduction theory, Lareau and Weininger (2003) conclude that the dominant interpretation of cultural capital in the Anglo-American sociological community popularized by DiMaggio’s article (1982) on cultural capital distorts Bourdieu’s original concept of cultural capital by making a false distinction between the ‘status giving aspect’ of cultural capital and the ‘technical skills’ or ‘ability’, which, in Bourdieu’s original theory, are ‘irrevocably fused’ (Lareau and Weininger 2003: 580).

 

This is certainly a matter that needs to be settled down by statistics. Some sort of factor analysis should be used. Bourdieu cannot fuse these two unless empirically validated.

 

 

 

Page 90

When Bourdieu argues that ‘intelligence’, i.e., ‘ability’ is not a ‘gift from Heaven’ but ‘distributed by society’ (Bourdieu 1999: 42), he is arguing that ability is, like the esthetic pursuit, ‘socially constructed’.

 

Absolutely wrong of Bourdieu! This claim goes against more than 130 years of psychological research (not to mention genetic research) about intelligence.

 

 

 

Page 90

When Omar Lizardo (2008) defends DiMaggio’s argument against Goldthorpe, we can understand why Bourdieu deplores sociologists’ hope­less lack of basic philosophy of science.

 

If Bourdieu is correct, it is a disaster for the field of sociology. If he is not correct, it is a disaster for sociologists of science!

 

 

 

Page 90

As we have seen in Chapter 1, joining the philosophical tradition to which Cassirer, Bachelard, Hesse, and Kuhn belong, Bourdieu made it clear that theory testing cannot be done by subjecting each and every element of a theory to an empirical test.

 

This is a clear case of not distinguishing between simple and composite theories.

 

 

 

Page 91

Herz … radically differentiates himself from positivism in that he stresses that, in order that the theory be verified, it is not necessary to verify each single proposition but only the complete system of prop­ositions.

 

No! No! No! Do not confuse simple and composite theories.

 

 

 

Page 91

This argument of Bourdieu is in fact based on the method of confirmation of a theory widely accepted by physical scientists since the time of Boyle and Newton, which Maurice Mandelbaum, following Donald Williams, calls the method of ‘transdiction’ in his book, Philosophy, Science and Sense Perception (1964).

 

Yet, this is another example of philosophers looking back on history.

 

Maybe I should call the philosophy of science “dead scientists’ society”.

 

 

 

Page 91

Bourdieu argues that theory testing in social science, just like in natural science, can be made only by subjecting the observable effect of the relation among such unobservable theoretical enti­ties as habitus, field, symbolic capital, misrecognition, and symbolic vio­lence to an empirical, i.e., statistical test.

 

Yes! I agree. Then the results of such analyses may show that some of the concepts employed by him have no relevance.

 

 

 

Page 92

Being one of those ‘open’ concepts, cultural capital cannot be operation­alized and measured by the students’ answers to the questionnaire which are supposed to capture the trait being measured without remnants.

 

No single measurement can adequately define a complex phenomenon.  Bourdieu needs many questions in a questionnaire and a thorough statistical analysis in order to measure his habitus.

 

 

 

Page 93

But, as many philosophers of science have shown time and again, physics has abandoned operationalism as an impracticable method long ago. For example, testing the existence of the quark by operationalizing it not only does not make sense but is also impossible.

…

No operationism, no operational definitions [of quarks] need be involved’ (Bickhard 2001: 42).

 

I beg to differ! First, if ‘many philosophers of science’ have this judgment, then you need to give several references. One reference (Bickhard, 2001) is not enough. Second, if anything, I am not convinced that Bickhard is right! In my understanding, in those parts of particle physics, the theoretical work points to a possible entity. Many years later, either that entity is found, or the theoretical work is modified. For example, Higgs field and particle were “predicted” in 1960 but observed in 2011-2012. A simpler example is how Mendeleev predicted many elements of the periodic table. I might add that this is one of the ways the hypothetico-deductive method works.

 

 

 

Page 93

Exactly the same can be said about the ‘genotype/phenotype’ distinc­tion that brought about the revolution in genetics in the early 20th century. Without the operational definition of genotype, biologists could reach an agreement as to the validity of the genotype theory through a series of experiments shortly after it was introduced by Wilhelm Johannsen in the late 19th century. Like the theory of quark, the theory of genotype could not be tested as a single hypothesis containing an operational definition of genotype; rather, it has been tested only as a ‘system’ of mutually related hypotheses, each of which is indispensable for the ‘coherence’ of the the­oretical rendering of reality (Kim 1994).

 

Not again! Johannsen made those distinctions between 1906 and 1911. Before 1900, the word “gene” did not exist. It was Hugo de Vries who named the “mendelian factors” as “gene” in honor of Darwin’s idea on pangenes. Further, Johannsen’s experiment also operationalized the concept of selection.

 

 

 

Page 93

DiMaggio argues that, because of his Marxist philosoph­ical orientation and ethnographic preoccupation, Bourdieu has not been able to recognize that the old class analytic paradigm ‘was in the middle of imploding’ (2007: 5). Like those left-wing sociologists of the 1960s and 1970s who used to reject regression analysis as a badly chosen methodol­ogy, DiMaggio continues, Bourdieu remains hostile to the use of scientific, i.e., statistical, methods to study the problem of social inequality. And this hostility to scientific methods, DiMaggio adds, made Bourdieu and his Marxist followers blind to the collapse of the old class analysis in which the myth of class persistence through social reproduction perpetuates regard­less of the empirical data that falsify that myth. He thus deplores that, ‘had Bourdieu been a statistically trained sociologist’, he would not only have recognized that upward social mobility has been increased a lot but would be concerned with whether that increased mobility was exchange mobility or just structural mobility (2007: 5).

 

Excellent!! I lift my hat to DiMaggio! I call this “residual Marxism”. The person thinks (s)he is not a Marxist anymore but carries a lot of analytic tools originated from Marxism.

 

 

 

Page 94

Rather than rejecting statistical methods in general, however, Bourdieu in fact prefers to use a particular statistical technique known as ‘corre­spondence analysis’ because, unlike the traditional multivariate regression in which causal relationships between the independent and dependent var­iables are sought with significance test, correspondence analysis provides a useful tool in interpreting empirical phenomena in terms of the network of concepts that constitutes a theoretical whole:

 

This is just one sort of statistical analysis. Significance tests also distinguish strong/weak or reliable/unreliable results. In my opinion, significance tests have been criticized for the wrong reasons. In any case, significance tests have a special meaning with frequentist statistics and are not used in, for example, Bayesian statistics.

 

 

 

Page 94

Although, as Bourdieu argues in the above quote, philosophy of science can help sociologists avoid the pitfalls of positivism, positivists such as DiMaggio would not take philosophy of science seriously and continue practic­ing what he thinks is the best way of doing science.

 

I don’t know if DiMaggio is positivist. If he advocated the use of statistics, then he is not a positivist (unless Bourdieu has an old-fashioned definition of positivism). With regards to DiMaggio not taking philosophers of science seriously, I agree with DiMaggio! Why should scientists listen to philosophers? Are philosophers listening to scientists? If they do, my message to them is to stop verbal treatment of different issues. Reading Sober’s (2015, Ockham’s Razors – A Users’ Manual) is a good starting point for all philosophers.

 

 

 

Page 95

Building on Coleman’s and Boudon’s works on rational choice theory, Goldthorpe directly challenges Bourdieu’s argument and argues that the investment in education has little to do with what Bourdieu refers to as learning and habit formation in the above quote. Rather, for Goldthorpe (1996), it must be explained in terms of the rational calculation of the individuals who weigh the cost of contin­uing education against the benefit of early withdrawal on the basis of their relative position within the social hierarchy.

 

This is absurd “referencing.” For example, how can a statement from 2004 be criticized in 1996? Or is the reference to 2014? Which is the right year?

 

This is a very important issue! An example may be helpful in clarifying it. Hume has died in 1776. If you want to refer to his Treatise of Human Nature, it was published in 1739-1740. Now, you want the reader to be able to trace the citation to a recently published version of that old book. Do it in the following manner: Always use the original publication date in the text. Then, add (with or without the Latin abbreviation cf.) the new publication date and the Page number.

 

I think this type of “referencing” that is used in social sciences and humanities must have some psychological effect on the writer and the reader! When the newest publication date is used, one may lose the real sense of outdatedness! Whatever Hume or Kant had written in the 18^th century must have been fully understood (and digested) by their contemporaries and those who lived in the 19^th century. And, again, whatever the brilliant people of the 19th century had written must have been fully understood (and digested) by their contemporaries, and those who lived in the 20^th century, and so on and so forth. Is a text from 200 or 300 years ago so relevant for today’s peoples and societies?

 

 

 

 

Page 96

Challenging the traditional, Keynesian theory of consumption function in which an individual’s consumption is supposed to be independent from the consumption of the other, Duesenberry (1949) argues that individuals’ demands for goods depend on the demand of others and therefore an adequate consumption function should take into account others’ demands for consumption. This means that the traditional assumption that the total demand for consumption is the simple aggregation of individuals’ demand for consumption should now be abandoned; instead, Duesenberry’s new theory suggests that we should take into account the ‘interdependence’ of demand and the preferences of consumers to determine the aggregate level of consumption.

 

Even this point is not new. The “group effect” on individual behavior” is an old concept, while its mathematical integration into the rest of the “theory ” is more recent. Further, in natural sciences, one should start with a first approximation and gradually move to more complicated models. If Keynes’s first approximation is not good enough, then the lazy economists should be blamed. See also the excerpts from “Sylvie and Bruno concluded.”

 

 

Page 96

Unfortunately, however, Duesenberry’s ‘social psychological theory of consumption’ was unwelcomed and rapidly marginalized by the economics community.

 

Theories usually come back periodically in new disguises. Are you sure a new version of Duesenberry’s theory has not reappeared under a new name, for example, by Tversky and Kahneman?

 

 

 

Page 97

Even though many eminent economists such as Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, and A. C. Pigou at first acknowledged the importance of the social psychological factors in the explanation of consumer behavior, they soon trivialized social psychological factors as unimportant in the short run.

 

By 1960, increasing mathematization of economics was well estab­lished, and Duesenberry’s sociological interpretations of preference for­mation posed a recognizable threat to purely econometric measurement of consumer demand. Friedman, in contrast, was offering a diagnosis that lent itself easily to mathematical analysis.(Mason 2000: 561–562) [italics added]

 

This is very important in “my” interpretation of social democracy, i.e., group effects need to be considered in the equation.

 

One additional point to remember is that more complicated models are, of course, more realistic, but the results are more difficult to interpret. This leads to many practitioners preferring simpler models. This should not be confused with the inadequacy of more complicated models.

 

((REMINDER: replace individual’s choice with group average in Arrow’s impossibility!))

 

 

 

Page 98

The immediate marginalization of Duesenberry by the neoclassical economists is just one example of such strong social control exercised by those neoclassical economists who embody the col­lective social aprioris that expel whatever that cannot be easily formulated mathematically.

 

Another example: The term neoclassical has been used several times without being defined first.

 

I am not familiar with Duesenberry’s work. However, it happens that a scientist may have the right idea but be incapable of developing the necessary mathematical models for it.

 

 

 

Page 102

Hirsh et al. (1987) warned sociologists against leaning too much on economics. They argue that although many sociologists are being attracted to the clean and rigorous model of economics, they do not in fact realize that they would pay a high price for borrowing elegant models from economics. If sociologists trade in sensitivity to the empirical details of the real world for the rigorous and clean but unrealistic and empirically vacuous theoretical exercise, Hirsh et al. warned, they will end up having ‘second-rate versions of what economists are already doing so well!’ (1987: 320).

 

That is the source of the problem! Why should sociologists restrict themselves to these two extremes?

 

 

 

Page 102

Sadly, however, as a Harvard sociologist James Davis laments, it is indeed the case that sociologists are becoming the second-rate economists:

On empirical side, stratification research is becoming a satellite of labor economics. On the theory side, we have sociologists drawing on economics and economics analyzing sociological topics … Today eco­nomics doth bestride the academic world like a Colossus and we petty persons walk about around under his/her huge legs and peep about to find ourselves early retirement.

(Davis 1994: 186)

 

This requires a little bit of arrogance from economists! Their methods are just a subset of general methods used in any branch of empirical/natural sciences.

 

 

 

Page 102

For if sociology could not effectively challenge the authority of economics, it cannot play any role in debunk­ing the structure of domination lurking behind the neo-liberal ideology of free-market competition and would degenerate into just one more voice among other voices that are critical of neoclassical economics.

 

Which neoclassical? Neoclassical or the old neoclassical or the new neoclassical? There are so many of them!

 

 

 

Page 103

Rather, they argue that it is the emphasis on esthetic values such as mathematical elegance and coherence of a theory rather than its problem-solving ability that explains the successful institutionalization of neoclassical economics within the university.

 

I think I am repeating myself: the phenomena we are trying to understand, whether economical, sociological, or biological, are too complicated. We need to start from somewhere. A simple and abstract mathematical description is as good as any other starting point. An unorderly verbal and complex description can be debated in perpetuity without providing any prediction tool. Why are philosophical issues ageless? Because they have not been resolved. By employing methods of natural sciences, we gradually chew away any issue.

 

 

 

Page 104

For neoclassical economists, it was ‘theoretical rigor and elegance’ rather than the practical effects that determine the value of a theory:

Words like rigor and elegance portray this element of academic taste, whereas the world of affairs prefers words such as effective and persuasive.

(Stigler 1973: 311)

 

A little bit misguided, l would say!

 

 

 

Page 104

These historians argue that the promulgation of a new set of values that promoted more theoretical and academic economics after 1880 should be sought in the economists’ struggles to overcome the identity crisis during the last quarter of the 19th century.

 

I guess this is a psychological issue. Isn’t it?

 

 

 

Page 105

In arguing so, they demonstrate that the traditional picture of social sci­ence such as Stigler’s in which social science evolves from lore to objective science is only a myth fabricated by those who want to emulate the progress of natural science.

 

This is where my definition of science, history, and philosophy becomes useful. There is no lore. Sociology is dominated by those who practice the history and philosophy of sociology and neglect the science of sociology.

 

 

 

Page 107

What was common to these two opposing groups of economists, how­ever, was that they both believed that the education of the larger public through popular journals, lectures, and summer schools could contribute to the reorientation of national economic policy. Unfortunately, however, public economics did not survive for long because Laughlin, Ely, and other public economists did not realize that a discipline that engages in a conver­sation with the lay public on the latter’s terms had to fail eventually. When Laughlin agreed to engage in a debate with the layperson such as William [Coin] Harvey about the ‘free coinage of silver’, it was implicitly assumed that he would abandon whatever expertise he had as a professional econo­mist. For, otherwise, he could not keep the debate moving.

 

This brought about an unanticipated consequence, however: How could Laughlin, while agreeing to abandon whatever authority he has as a profes­sional economist with special training and knowledge, still claim the superi­ority of his arguments to those of Harvey? The problem was also aggravated when public economists like Laughlin and Ely oversimplified economic the­ories and the issues of debates in order to make their positions more under­standable and attractive to a larger audience (Church 1974: 589; Fourcade 2009; Furner 1975).

 

When was this debate? Did it happen in 1890’s? Are the lay public of those days comparable to today’s lay public? I take this as a symptomatic feature of philosophical discussions. Do you think that if something has failed 130 yeas ago, it will be failing today?

 

 

 

Page 109

As has been pointed out by many sociologists of science including Bourdieu, the remarkable success of the natural sciences as compared to the social sciences can be attributed to the insulation of the former from the various demands of the larger society (Ben-David 1984; Bourdieu 2004; Campbell 1986; Kuhn 1962; Turner and Kim 1999).

 

I categorically deny this. It is the methods that have made the difference (and not the insulation from the general public).

 

 

 

 

Page 110

Insulation from the heterodox groups and the focus on a narrow range of research topics generated within an autonomous field in turn gave neo­classical economists a clear conception of what the economists should do as researchers (Bernstein 2001; Tarascio 1973; Winch 1973).

 

I beg to differ. See the above comment.

 

 

Page 110

In contrast to the French and English psychologists who still adhered to the old conception of the role of philosophers and pursued the study of psychology only as part of a larger intellectual project that covers physi­ology, botany, anatomy, and other adjacent research fields, Wundt and the German psychologists identified themselves as a new group of researchers cultivating an autonomous research area in which only a narrow range of topics was studied with the help of new experimental methods.

 

This is just one interpretation. If one tries to answer those questions that can be addressed experimentally, then fewer questions can be asked! However, more questions can gradually be included in the studies and answered.

 

 

 

Page 110

In contrast to the sociologists who lacked a clear disciplinary identity and vacillated between the role of social activists and that of pure researchers (Turner and Turner 1990), neoclassical economists could concentrate on a set of theoretical problems and achieve theoretical consensus faster than any other social science disciplines.

 

I am partial to this. However, has there been a comparison of “grant ability” between different types of sociologists?

 

 

 

Page 110

Such ‘imposition of forms’ (Bourdieu 2004) on the members of the economics research field makes clear what kind of research will be accepted as a genuine research in economics.

 

I am not sure! See also the above comment.

 

 

 

Page 110

In neoclas­sical economics, an actor is supposed to have only a selfish acquisitiveness and maximize his/her utility regardless of the society to which he or she belongs. And such maximizing behavior is always assumed to be subject to mathematical/deductive analysis.

 

Well, what Kim is describing here is a case of univariate analysis, which is simple and simplistic enough to guarantee success. This also reminds me of Adam Smith, whose ideas are not so different from what Kim is describing here.

 

 

 

Page 111

As we have seen in our discussion of James Duesenberry, the inclusion of social, cultural, political, and psychological factors that are not amenable to mathematical modeling is condemned by economists as going beyond the proper area of economic research.

 

Is it really like this? Or is this the limit of mathematical/statistical knowledge of Duesenberry, Kim (and many others) that is the limiting factor?

 

 

 

Page 111

As Colander et al. have argued, ‘no matter how insightful’ new ideas are, ‘the current elite [economists]’ do not accept them as contributing to economic science ‘if they aren’t [mathe­matically] modeled’ (Colander et al. 2004: 492).

 

I have no objection to such economists.

 

 

 

Page 111

Like Laughlin, Ely, and other public economists, the founders of American sociology, Lester Ward, William Graham Sumner, Franklin Giddings, and Albion Small all iden­tified sociology as a social science discipline that should contribute to the amelioration of society and culture. Sociology, according to these found­ers, should be a ‘practical discipline’ rather than a ‘theoretical science’ that could solve a wide range of social problems including race, urban, and pov­erty problems.

 

I believe their goals were noble. However, they should have tried to separate the two seats. They should have used one mindset to do ‘theoretical science’ and another mindset to create a ‘practical discipline.’

 

 

 

Page 113

Although American sociology finally got insulated from the general public and is no longer catering to the demands of the larger, heterodox audience, that insulation was not the result of the strategic choice of the sociologists.

 

This can be explained by Hull’s idea that research groups behave like biological populations, i.e., they respond to external selective forces. So, basically, you need to find what external selective force has caused American sociology to change its behavior!

 

 

 

Page 113

The argument that the relevance of sociological research should be sought in the ‘public utility’ of the sociological knowledge is still echoed in the writings of many distinguished sociologists (Burawoy 2005; Giddens 1998; O’Neill 1995; Seidman 1989; Smelser 1992).

 

Research about radioactive material and the production of electricity from it has ‘public utility.’ There is no need for the same people who do research to work in nuclear power plants.

 

 

 

Page 114

First of all, we must point out the ‘ironic fact’ that it was the economists of the early 20th century rather than the sociologists who were truly faithful to Bourdieu’s teaching that the establishment of intellectual autonomy is a prerequisite for the establishment and exercise of intellectual authority.

 

I agree.

 

A general comment: the subject of the book has changed from the sociology of science to the comparison of sociology of sociology and economics. This is not what I expected

 

 

 

Page 114

Critics of Bourdieu not only disagree as to the significance of Bourdieu’s contribution to the under­standing and improvement of social inequalities but they criticized him for advancing a theory that lacks empirical evidence.

 

In other words, he was primarily a philosopher of sociology and not a sociologist.

 

 

 

Page 115

Can the authority gained in the intellectual space of sociology still retain its effectiveness when transferred to the different social space that operates according to a set of rules that are quite distinct from those that govern the world of intellectuals?

 

Yes. In our times, it is possible. Nowadays, practitioners, intellectuals, and politicians are aware of the views expressed by academic social scientists and can transfer academic knowledge to different social spaces.

 

 

 

Page 116

It is perhaps the curse of the human sciences that they deal with a speaking object.

 

Bourdieu is wrong about speaking subjects! Do children or speaking-challenged individuals speak? If someone is using sign language, is that person speaking? Or rather, the sociologist needs to interpret the signs.  Even on those occasions when the subject speaks, there is the probability that the subject is not fluent,  not articulate,  or even misusing or abusing the words. So, sociologists should consider the words as symbols and signs. I refrain from commenting that veterinarians deal with non-speaking subjects!

 

 

 

Page 118

Bourdieu could not keep intact the rigor of science and, at the same time, edify the workers. He cannot have it both ways. Bourdieu’s mistake here can be attributed to his vacillation between the role of social activists and that of pure researchers.

 

Your words, not mine!

 

Page 123

During the past 40 years, Jürgen Habermas has been at the forefront of the criticism against all those social theorists and philosophers who, like Bourdieu, believe that social scientists can take a third person point of view from which he/she can criticize and correct the deluded view of the social agents.

 

I would not categorically agree or disagree with Habermas.

 

 

 

Page 123

To explain how ‘the structure of objective relations’ as perceived through their habi­tus (Bourdieu 1990a: 97) makes people do what they do, Bourdieu argues, he uses a particular set of theoretical vocabularies such as symbolic vio­lence, illusio, habitus, misrecognition, and symbolic capital. And the relation among these theoretical vocabularies constitutes the objective reality that is beyond the recognition of the actors.

 

I have commented on ‘objective reality’ before. Here, my main comment is that all the things that Bourdieu has said may seem “common sense” to many people. However, “common sense” is a deceiving concept.

 

 

 

Page 124

‘Naturally, the agent could respond to this critique only if we [i.e., theorists] equip him with competencies other than those permitted by the teleological model of action’ (Habermas 1984: 117).

 

A researcher [i.e., a theorist] may have teleological models in mind, but nature does not! Further, teleological language is a sign of laziness.

 

 

 

Page 125

Actors could not, Bourdieu argues, go beyond the cognitive hori­zon set by their habitus which is necessitated by the objective structure of their society.

 

Neither can Bourdieu!

 

 

 

 

Page 125

But, for Bourdieu, such reflexivity of the social actors that is especially well demonstrated in the ethnomethodological research has very limited power and can operate only within the habitus which is perfectly adjusted to the material and social conditions that initially formed it (Bourdieu 1990a: 26).

 

This is where Bourdieu confuses the science and the sociology of science.

 

 

 

Page 126

For Habermas and Rorty, human science is blessed precisely because the subjects of the human sciences including the human scientists themselves, unlike those of the natural sciences, can engage in a conversation in which they respond critically to each other’s claims and counter-claims.

 

Of course, nature also engages in discussions. But, you must listen carefully.

 

 

 

Page 127

For Habermas, rational beliefs are those beliefs for which, if necessary, actors can adduce reasons, whereas irrational beliefs are those to which actors blindly adhere because of ‘threat of sanctions, rhetorical onslaught, calculation, desperation or resignation’ (1984: 128). According to Habermas, it is the latter type of irrational consen­sus that should be subject to a theoretical critique.

 

I think Habermas forgets that one cannot take up all subjects at once.

 

 

 

Page 127

Critical theorists like Habermas would find it impossible to prove that their reasons are better than those adduced by the lay public precisely because reasons, unlike empirical regularities usually dealt with in the nat­ural sciences, cannot be falsified.

 

Here lies the fault.

 

 

 

Page 127

The debate over whose reason is more rational would lead only to haggling over the concept of being rational

 

Exactly.

 

 

 

Page 127

According to Rorty, the only way out of such a circularity involved in the Habermasian argumentation for the context-transcending truth is to invent ‘an alterna­tive horizon of meaning that was unimaginable under the given justificatory context’.

 

This is equal to abandoning one paradigm in favor of another one.

 

 

 

Page 127

What counts as important in such a narrative is not whether the end of the story is deducible from the events that occurred but whether the story narrated has what Gallie (1964) calls the ‘followability’ of a story that establishes a sense of intersubjectivity or what Alexander (2006) calls a ‘fusion’ between the narrator and the audience.

 

This is exactly what one should avoid in “science.”

 

 

 

List of papers

Here is the list of papers in my digital library in which the word “truth” had appeared.

 

List of papers whose author is not a natural scientist:

Barker_2015.pdf

Berland_Reiser_2009.pdf

Bradley_1995.pdf

Brown_Hullender_2022.pdf

Campos_2011.pdf

Claus_1985.pdf

Cohen_1985.pdf

DeHaro_2020.pdf

Elgin_Sober_2017.pdf

Galavotti_2019.pdf

Harrison_2007.pdf

Harrison_2011.pdf

Hathcoat_Meixner_2017.pdf

Hood_2013.pdf

Hull_1999.pdf

Johnson_2017.pdf

Lo_et_al_2015.pdf

Melucci_1985.pdf

MohanDas_2015.pdf

Nagel_1974.pdf

Niiniluoto_2018.pdf

Norris_1996.pdf

Olson_1968.pdf

Popper_1961.pdf

Rockman_2011_full.pdf

Rosenblum_1994.pdf

Struening_1996.pdf

Walzer_1984.pdf

Wilson_Sober_1994.pdf

Ågren_2021.pdf

 

List of papers whose author is a natural scientist, but the paper is older than 75 years:

Bateson_1901.pdf

Blasco_2001.pdf (quote from 1936)

East_1910.pdf

Galton_1886.pdf

Johannsen_1911.pdf

Pearson_1903.pdf

Pearson_1904.pdf

Rockman_2011_full.pdf (quote from 1909)

vanDijk_et_al_2022.pdf (quote from 1861)

Wright_1923.pdf

Yule_1902.pdf

 

List of papers whose author is a natural scientist and used “truth” in a statistical context:

Aalen_2004.pdf

Auton_Abecasis_The_1000_Genomes_Project_Consortium_2015_s1.pdf

Axelsson_et_al_2011.pdf

Bakhshalizadeh_et_al_2021.pdf

Burnham_Anderson_Manuscript_2004.pdf

Byrska-Bishop_et_al_2021.pdf

Carvajal_Rodriguez_2010.pdf

Ding_et_al_2021.pdf

Dudbridge_2013.pdf

Frank_2012.pdf

Gianola_2013.pdf

Holland_1986.pdf

Humphreys_et_al_2019.pdf

Kerr_et_al_2005.pdf

Lawson_et_al_2012.pdf

Li_1956.pdf

Meuwissen_Goddard_2007.pdf

Monnahan_Kelly_2015.pdf

Mu_et_al_2021.pdf

Patxot_et_al_2021_SI.pdf

Peng_et_al_2015.pdf

Pook_et_al_2020.pdf

Rubin_Arjas_2004.pdf

Twomey_et_al_2021_Supp.pdf

Wilson_et_al_2011.pdf

 

 

List of papers whose author is a natural scientist and used “truth” as a figure of speech:

Aguilar_et_al_2020.pdf

Davis_1998.pdf

Fairbairn_1997.pdf

Georges_2007.pdf

Iles_2008.pdf

Jacquard_1975.pdf

Rushton_1989.pdf

Vicens_Kieft_2022.pdf

Wright_1983.pdf

 

 

List of papers whose author is a natural scientist and used “truth” in a philosophical way:

((* I have included in this group all cases where the separation of “philosophical way,” “mathematical/statistical truth of a model or simulation,” and “figure of speech” was not easy. ))

Boe_et_al_2019.pdf

Buss_1995.pdf

Chiappini_2001.pdf

Chiappini_2014.pdf

Crow_2002.pdf

Dobzhansky_1973.pdf

Epperson_1999.pdf

Errington_et_al_2021.pdf

Ewens_2016.pdf

Goddard_2001.pdf

Gould_Eldrege_1977.pdf

Haldane_1964.pdf

Hamilton_1964_I.pdf

Kacser_Burns_1979.pdf

Kamin_Goldberger_2002.pdf

Kaplan_et_al_2016.pdf

Kempthorne_1978.pdf

Koltes_et_al_2019.pdf

Lange_et_al_2014.pdf

Leigh_2007.pdf

Lemen_Freeman_1989.pdf

Lewontin_1974.pdf

Marjoram_et_al_2014.pdf

Mayr_1977.pdf

Morgan_Huttenhower_2012_Chapter_12.pdf

Paaby_Rockman_2014.pdf

Patterson_et_al_2006.pdf

Payne_2012_Chapter_01.pdf

Ripley_2004.pdf

Rubin_2004.pdf

Schadt_et_al_2009.pdf

Searle_1991.pdf

So_Sham_2010.pdf

Stearns_2002.pdf

Wei_Zhang_2019.pdf

Wohns_et_al_2022_Supp.pdf

 

The End!