ONE of the authors of this collection of essays, Andrew Warwick, talks of
鈥渢heoretical technology鈥� to characterise 鈥渢he set of taken-for-granted
physical principles and mathematical methods routinely employed by physicists
in constructing their arguments鈥�. As a field grows older, he says, it develops
a certain taken-for-grantedness about it: the passionate need to justify new
ways of doing things is replaced by a calm demeanour, the new theoretical
garment is simply worn, not displayed. Using this test, social studies of
science, as exemplified in this book, is both an emerging and a mature
discipline.
Scientific Practice: Theories and Stories of Doing Physics is the outcome
of a Canadian conference on 鈥渢able-top experiments鈥�. It contains papers
exhibiting and discussing disagreements and papers consisting of confident
studies of science. Of the former, Peter Galison and Andrew Pickering disagree
about the nature of the constraints on experimental findings, a disagreement
discussed by Baigrie who also disagrees with Hans Radder about replication.
Yves Gingras disagrees with Bruno Latour and Michel CalIon (neither
represented here) over their claims to have developed a new metaphysics, while
Hacking balances things up by disagreeing with Gingras鈥檚 criticism.
Nearly all the authors make sure that they say they disagree with
relativism and declare that they hold to some sort of modified realism, Jed
Buchwald and Schweber鈥檚 conclusion being judicious enough to satisfy even the
connoisseur. For the professional sociologist, historian, or philosopher of
science there is plenty here for your graduate students to get their teeth
into.
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The other papers in the book exhibit the strength of what we might call a
taken-for-granted 鈥渕ethodological technology鈥�. During the past twenty years,
the realisation has grown in science studies that science must be described by
those who are doing it, not those who represent it, remember it, or recount
how it must have been. Useful descriptions must be good enough to show that
the birth pangs of what is now obvious were long and painful, and that the
midwife was not, from a scientific point of view, entirely respectable.
Experimentation and theorisation are assemblages of skilful but fallible craft
practices and there is always room for a flexible interpretation of data as
well as theory. This means that the interactions of theorists and
experimenters are passages of fascinating living history.
Stories of the birth of our understanding or misunderstanding of free
quarks, cathode rays, the nature of electrons, the nature of the Sun, and the
effect of the ether are set out here 鈥� all are professionally turned out and
some are beautifully crafted. Pickering examines Morpurgo鈥檚 search in the
1970s for the free quark in an attempt to understand the traditions of
practice in which experimentation is embedded. Buchwald re-examines Heinrich
Hertz鈥檚 analyses of cathode rays to show that they must be understood in
context. Simon Schaffer explores what we mean by an experiment, as opposed to
an observation, by looking at the way Victorian observers of the Sun turned
astronomy into an 鈥渆xperimental鈥� science by bringing its light into the
laboratory and working with it.
Giora Hon and Andrew Warwick, who exemplifies the richness of this type of
history, both examine early 20th-century experiments on electromagnetic
phenomena that were part of the argument which we now see as having to do with
the foundation of special relativity. Hon describes Kaufmann鈥檚 observation of
the deflection of alpha and beta rays in electrical and magnetic fields.
Kaufmann concluded that the electron had no intrinsic mass. Thus all matter
was to be seen as an appearance of electromagnetic phenomena and apparent mass
would be related to velocity.
But Kaufmann鈥檚 measurement of these relationships produced a result which
was inconsistent with both Einstein鈥檚 and Hendrik Lorentz鈥檚 theories. Hon
looks at the extraordinarily complex reactions of Jules Poincare麓,
Lorentz, and Einstein to Kaufmann鈥檚 result. To us, and to the modern
physicist, Kaufmann鈥檚 measurement was an error that is not worth a mention.
Poincare麓 Lorentz, and Einstein, however, believed that the result was
correct and, with the exception of Einstein, agonised about how to reconcile
this finding with various candidate theories of the constitution of
nature.
Einstein took the prize for being enigmatic; he wrote that Kaufmann鈥檚
findings were correct but did not see fit to resolve the contradiction with
relativity. Lorentz wanted all matter to be a symptom of electromagnetic
forces but would have preferred that Kaufmann鈥檚 measurements were compatible
with his theory. Poincare茅 accepted that the experiment showed that the
electron had no real mass, but also believed in Lorentz鈥檚 compressible
electron. Though Hon brings all this to life, the story would have been still
more fascinating if he had set it in the context of current studies of
experiments and their interpretation. The extraordinary thing is the
willingness of the theorists of the time to accept the experimental result;
have scientific mores changed in 90 years?
Warwick describes Trouton鈥檚 attempts to extract energy from the Earth鈥檚
movement through the ether via its effect on differently oriented condensers
(capacitors) and other devices. This is set in the context of the theories of
a group which has been labelled 鈥渢he Maxwellians鈥�. Warwick traces theoretical
developments which led gradually to the acceptance that any changes in the
form of matter due to our passage through the ether, such as contraction of
length in the direction of movement, would have no energetic consequences.
Trouton, the experimentalist, lost touch with the theorists and continued
his experimental programme. For example, Trouton hoped that he could see the
effect of the contraction of a wire in a minute reduction of its electrical
resistance which would be absent in the other orientation. Warwick remarks:
鈥淭routon was now working in a theoretical vacuum. His faith in the existence
of the sought effect was based upon a theoretical technology that had been
abandoned by every leading theoretician in Europe鈥�, and he goes on 鈥渄o not
mean to suggest that Trouton could not have obtained a positive result. But
from the theoretical point of view, he might equally have expected a positive
result from any other arbitrarily designed experiment鈥� 鈥� nice.
It is a characteristic of the social sciences that the practitioners
disagree. There is nothing wrong with this unless the arguments become the
substance rather than the style. Admittedly, there is quite a lot of mere
鈥減roduct differentiation鈥� in this book but its very visibility reveals an
absence of control that may be no bad thing.
Perhaps young people are turning their backs on natural science because a
modern scientific education relies too much on authority, leaving too little
room for disagreement. As these studies show, there is plenty of room for
disagreement in the science itself. What remains clear is that it is now
almost impossible to imagine a serious historian, sociologist, or philosopher
of science writing the old-fashioned, backward-looking, celebratory history
that used to be the staple diet. Professionals must now analyse as though they
do not know the scientific truth of the matter and this means that relativism
is part of the methodological technology of science studies whether or not its
name is spoken. The other kind of history is now largely the preserve of those
engaged in Quixote-like battles with the imagined enemies of science.