Knowledge, Science and Society : still moaning about this nonsense

Both Weingart and Muller,  argue that the shift to accepting parts of the finalization theory by using the buzz words, Post Normal Science and Mode 2 constitute not a paradigmatic shift but a shift towards understanding that science  does work  within a socio-political society. In Mode 2 and Post Normal science knowledge production, science and society are not separate domains. ⁴⁵  Some scientific research has moved out of the laboratory and can be seen as a process of negotiation between science and the public.   ⁴⁶   However they  also  argue that  lay knowledge itself cannot be seen as a higher rationale just by including it in to  the discourse either.  It seems from these arguments that  Mode 2 and Post Normal Methods are no paradigmatic shift  just a shift in “discursive context” ^{. 47}   Mode 2 and Post Normal Science only finding  their way into  the presumed shift through rhetoric  alone.  When taking into account linguistics, value loaded assumptions,  a history of technology, science and government policy working together, the needs of political correctness and much more, what can actually be abstracted as useful knowledge?

        In the 1970s Weinberg, ^{(1972 )}  stated  that normal science is limited in its production of useful applicable knowledge because of the :  “questions which can be asked of science and yet which cannot be answered by science ⁴⁸   He proposed the term Trans Science, arguing that   “the role of the scientist, and indeed of science itself, is, of course, oversimplified, in particular because even where there are clear scientific answers to the scientific questions involved in a public issue, ends and means are hardly separable” ⁴⁹ So where is this shift today or more importantly why do many think there is a shift ?  Nowotny et al ^{(2001 )} argues that:   “democratising science’ seems to be the quintessence of it”.⁵⁰  Gross, ⁽²⁰⁰²⁾  also argues: “if we understand Mode 2 as a moral program for a new science  and not an analysis of actual changes – there is one point where the advocates of a new knowledge production could prove to be right:  In the long run academic and disciplinary research cannot make progress without including the boundary negotiations with wider society and this means that the decision on the ‘right’ science is conditioned by the context of application and evolves with it.”^.51 However Gross, does maintain that Mode 2 assumptions have: “proven premature.” ⁵². Gross, argues that Mode 1 and Mode 2 are a recursive loop and generally interdependent on each other at differing periods that there has always been an: “on-going boundary work between two Modes of knowledge production, and not a general displacement of Mode 1” ⁵³

.

Indeed Ziman ⁽²⁰⁰⁴⁾  wrote in the 1960s that:  “science is social” and that:  “research is a profession” and that there is more to science than an individual pursuit guided by a general ethos such as Merton’s, “Cudos”.  He argues that even the “loneliest seeker after the truth must eventually interact with other people” ⁵⁴ and that  there  were and are  not thousands of individual scientists out there  working alone but groups of scientists that have specialisms and these are broken  down further into disciplines which : “cut right across institutionalised boundaries”. ⁵⁵  These are real even though arbitrarily associated and that boundary work is and has been common even without a clear definition on which discipline covers which aspect of the work.  If we take Zimans, Weingarts and Mullers argument then boundary work as undertaken through Mode 2 is not a remarkable feature but a continuation  or recursive loop of the cross disciplinary work that already existed within academic universities .

However there is an important point to make when remarking on the  un remarkability of Mode 2 and Post Normal Science and it  is that  both  Post Normal Science and Mode 2 shifts maybe tied into  the availability of money to finance such research.  Indeed: “International collaboration is frequently motivated by the need to cut costs, tap into competence and gain intelligence across borders.” ⁵⁶   Ziman ^{(2004 )}  also argues that importantly the production of knowledge through academic science has for the most part relied on ‘patronage’ and even now private investors and the state still fund academic scientific research.  Funding predominantly comes with  prior commitments and  the funding game is  still very much in evidence and this game still lays down the rules and  informs which science, which knowledge  and for whom and why. ⁵⁷

Funding is both social and political and rarely is money handed out for Polanyi’s creative enterprise of science: “Very little creativity can be expected from scientists living in an atmosphere where you cannot ‘waste’ time on thinking about the science you are doing, but must rather spend time thinking where to get the next grant money from.” ⁵⁸  

Therefore most  scientific knowledge production is dominated by finances, social concerns and politics: “As social organizations, disciplines participate in and contribute to conflicts over political, economic, legal, and ethical decisions, over the distribution of resources and life chances. In all these functions, scientific disciplines constitute the modern social order of knowledge, and the order of knowledge is in this sense a political order as well.”. ⁵⁹  Indeed Weingart & Stehr ⁽²⁰⁰⁰⁾  argue that:  “disciplines are not only intellectual but also social structures, organizations made up of human beings with vested interests based on time investments, acquired reputations, and established social networks that shape and bias their views on the relative importance of their knowledge”.⁶⁰   Nowotny et al^{(2001 )}  also  argue that research  projects are structured through financial funding and often even re structure their research to fit the funding aims. ⁶¹   These arguments make the implicit statement that scientific knowledge production is an economic and social commodity , regardless of their applicability and usefulness for the advancement of society. ⁶²  However : “When scientific information itself is the commodity, there is uncertainty as to its value, both immediately and in the long term” ⁶³ 

The long term robustness of these new ways of undertaking science is a debate that due to the limitations here can not be fully analysed . However  Elizinga,  argues that: “In the wake of a continuous stream of workshops and conferences with policy-makers and research

administrators they have become a social fact (self-fulfilling prophecies) in some policy

circles.” ⁶⁴  Nowotny et al ^{(2001 )}  argue that there are weak middle and strong contextualisation’s in these methods but that the range of  research developments we can now use is “unimaginably large”.  ⁶⁵  The idea that research and the production of knowledge is unimaginably large seems like a Pandoras  box has been opened to Weingart, who quotes Strathern ^{( 2005 )} when he asks  :“What will count as ‘society’?”  and  what is knowledge now that it is left untamed?  his answer is : “Either a diffuse, unspecified public is invoked (strikingly similar to that of the campaigns for “public understanding of science”), or lobby interests that are not legitimated by popular vote will prevail in this unstructured public because their backers have the capital and the manpower”.⁶⁵ He envisions further controls over this knowledge via  varying committees, round tables and consensus conferences as only the beginning  ⁶⁶ and lobbying groups that will continuously debate the merit of one production of knowledge over another. In this scenario  the end of science as  the producer of knowledge is already finalised and we are now placed in a situation where any knowledge is valid as long as its case is argued well enough, it has enough money to finance the report and the findings are acceptable to certain groups.

In this paradigm of knowledge production  Sterh and Weiler ⁽²⁰⁰⁸⁾  ask : “what are the criteria for its validity, truth, usefulness and applicability?  With such large vested interests now involved in the research process  the usefulness practicality and applicability of science becomes only the value placed on its  metaphors, labels and certain social contexts worth. These  are  also value loaded via vested interest, moral panics and politics. Therefore Mode 2 would be subject to the privatisation of science ⁶⁷ as private technology buys in some scientific expertise.  Post Normal Science  therefore can not be called ‘science’ in its traditional sense but must work under the guise of  a new metaphor of social-medical-environmental- research and so on with Notownys ⁽²⁰⁰¹⁾  claim of methods being unimaginably large coming to fruition albeit; within certain power bases and  budgets.

This essay outlined the debate around the new forms of  scientific knowledge production. Traditional science has been challenged and  argued as being replaced by Mode 2, Post Normal Science amongst others . These new collaborations are shown to be trans disciplinary  and context and application dependant .  However , Weinberg and Ziman were arguing  that as early as the 1960s  trans disciplinary work was being undertaken  and that science was not and does not hold a special epistemological status in knowledge production.  Weingart  argued that there is nothing new in the new science and any claim to Mode 2 and Post Normal  is just a re writing of old systems and that these forms of  trans disciplinary work have been in evidence long before.  Therefore any claim of this emerging from the 1970s due to technological advances,  is questionable. Certainly funding for science is a significant factor in pushing the sciences towards collaborating more with other disciplines. The universities losing their monopoly,  restricted  global funding and the rise of the private sector buying in research  seems a more plausible explanation for the rise in applicable science in certain contexts.  Whether a socially and scientific robustness  through these assumed new methods will prevail  remains to be seen. However  the new change of mind set, that argues the traditional methodology of scientific knowledge production  are  not applicable in certain complex situations,  does require a revaluation of the utility and practicality of science in context for the future.

Bibliography

Adam, B. et al. (2000) The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory. Sage Publications. London

 Aarstad, J (2010) Expert credibility and truth .Published online before print November 8, 2010, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1012156107 PNAS November 23, 2010 vol. 107 no. 47 E176

Auranen,  Otto  (2005  Social Capital In Mode 1 and Mode 2 Knowledge Production: A Finnish Case Study.  Conference paper for the The Fifth Triple Helix Conference, Turin, Italy, 18-21 May 2005

Clark, W, et al. (2010)  Toward a General Theory of Boundary Work: Insights from the CGIAR's Natural Resource Management Programs. Harvard Kennedy School:  online at http://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/rwp10-035.html

Cressman, D  April 2009 A Brief Overview of Actor-Network Theory: Punctualization, Heterogeneous Engineering & Translation ACT Lab/Centre for Policy Research on Science & Technology (CPROST)

Carrier, M & Nordmann, (2011)  A  Science in the Context of Application ,  Vol247,  Springer publications.

Elkay, M ( 1991), The Sociology of Science,  Open University Press, Buckinghamshire

Elzinga, Aant:  The New Production of Particularism in Models relating to Research

Policy. A critique of Mode 2 and Triple Helix, Inst f. History of Ideas and Theory of Science University of Göteborg, Sweden

 Fraser, I. (2011) Does over-reliance on wind energy risk the lights going out across Europe? Online at http://www.qfinance.com/blogs/ian-fraser/2011/08/26/does-over-reliance-on-wind-energy-risk-the-lights-going-out-across-europe

Functowitz, S  &  Ravetz,  J  ( 1992 ) The Worth of  a Songbird: Ecological economics as a Post Normal science, in Ecological economics 10 ( 1994) p 197-207^{. Online at  http://classwebs.spea.indiana.edu/kenricha/Oxford/Archives/Courses%202010/Decision%20Making%202010/Articles/Funtowicz.pdf}

Funtowicz, S . POST-NORMAL SCIENCE - Environmental Policy under Conditions of Complexity. EC-JRC/ISIS, Ispra (Va), Italy; RMC Ltd., London (England)

Gibbons, M et al,  (1994)  The New Production of Knowledge,

Gross, M (2002) New Natures and Old Science: Hands-on Practice and Academic

Research in Ecological Restoration. Science Studies 2/2002 online at http://www.sciencestudies.fi/system/files/Gross.pdf

Hessels, L & Lente, H 2008 Rethinking New Knowledge production: Litrature review and research agenda, research policy 37 (2008) 740-760.

Kirsch, S.  (2008 )  Social Relations and the Green Critique of Capitalism in Melanesia. American Anthropologist • Vol. 110, No. 3 • September 2008

Krohn W. & van den Daele, W. Science as an Agent of Change: Finalization and Experimental Implementation ^{online@http://www.unibielefeld.de/ZIF/FG/2006Application/PDF/Krohn%20and%20van%20den%20Daele_essay.pdf}

Marchi, B & Ravetz, J (1999) Risk management and Governance, A Post Normal Science Approach. Futures p 743-757. ^{Online @ http://governance.jrc.it/jrc-docs/jerrybruna.pdf}

Mulkay, M 1991, Sociology of Science , A Sociological Pilgrimage. Open University Press, Buckingham

Muller, J (2000) Reclaiming Knowledge, Social Theory Curriculum and Education Policy. Routledge and Farmer.  London

Muller , A. 2003 A flower in full blossom? Ecological economics at the crossroads between normal and post-normal science. Ecological Economics  45 (2003) 19_/27

Nowotny, et al  (2001) Re-Thinking Science, Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Polity Press, Cambridge.

Nowotny and P. Leroy: Natures Sciences Sociétés 17, 57-64 (2009): An itinerary between sociology of knowledge and public debate online at http://helga-nowotny.eu/downloads/helga_nowotny_b12.pdf

Shailer, K, April 17, 2005 INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN A DISCIPLINARY UNIVERSE: A REVIEW OF KEY ISSUES , Academic Colleague Faculty of Liberal Studies, Ontario College of Art & Design

Sterh, N & Meja, Volkar,  (2005) Society & Knowledge, contemporary perspectives in the sociology of knowledge and science, (2^nd edition) Transaction Publishers, New Jersey

Sterh, N & Weiler, B ^{( eds)} ( 2008 )  Who Owns Knowledge? Knowledge and the law. Transaction Publishers . New Jersey

Suárez, M, et al editors (2010) EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science: Launch of the European . Springer. New York

Weingart, P; ( 1997) From Finalization to Mode 2 ; New Wine in Old Bottles.

Weingart, P; (   ) How Robust Is “Socially Robust Knowledge”? ^{online at http://upress.pitt.edu/htmlSourceFiles/pdfs/9780822943174exr.pdf}

Weingart, Peter and Nico Stehr, eds. Practising Interdisciplinarity. University of Toronto Press, 2000. Cited in  April 17, 2005 INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN A DISCIPLINARY UNIVERSE:  A REVIEW OF KEY ISSUES  Kathryn Shailer, Academic Colleague Faculty of Liberal Studies, Ontario College of Art & Design 

Weinberg, A, 1972, Science and Transcience, Minerva vol 10

Young NS, Ioannidis JPA, Al-Ubaydli O (2008) Why Current Publication Practices May Distort Science. PLoS Med 5(10): e201. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050201

Ziman, J. (2004)  Real science: what it is, and what it means. Cambridge University press. Cambridge

References

·         Gibbons et al ( 1994  )

·         Muller, J.  (2000)

·         Mulkay, M. ( 1991) p:90

·         Cressman, D (2009)

·         Nowtony et al  ( 2001 ) p:4 

·         Hessels, L & Lente, H,  (2008)

·         Carrier, M & Nordmann, (2011)  p:433

·         Kirsch, S.  (2008 )  

·         Auranen,  Otto  2005 

·         Gibbons et al ( 1994   )  p:280  

·         Stehr and Meja ( 2005  )  p:310

·         Krohn W. & van den Daele, W. (  )

·         Krohn W. & van den Daele, W. (  )

·         Gross. M, ( 2002)

·         15

·         Sterh and Meja (2005)

·         Mulkay (1991), 

·         Clark, W, et al. (2010) 

·         Gross, M (2002)

·         Gross, M,   (2002) p: 21

·         Auranen Otto  (2005) 

·         Gibbons et al ( 1994  )  p:274

·         Gibbons et al( 1994  ) . p: 276

·         Gibbons et al (   )   p:286

·         Suárez, M, et al editors (2010)

·         Gibbons et al( 1994  )  P:2

·         Functowitz & Ravetz (1992)

^·          Functowitz & Ravetz   (1992)  p:1

·         Mayor, R , (2000)  p: 27

·         Mayor, R , (2000)  p: 27

·         Gross, M (2002)

·         Krohn W. & Van den Daele,

·         Pfadenhauer,  (2001)  pp 225, 228

·         Nowtony (2001 ) p:6

·         Nowtony  ( 2001  ) p:1 

·         Weingart, P  ( 1997 ) p:2

·         Wiengart, P (1997)

·         Weingart, P.  ( 1997  ) p:2             

·         Weingart, P,  (1997) p:7

·         Weingart, P,  (1997)p:7

·         Muller, J (2000)

·         Muller, A . (2003) p:23

·          Muller, A. (2003)  p:24

·         Functowitz,R  (    )   p: 21

·         Kirsch, S.  (2008 ) p: 288

_·          Gross, M (2002)

·         Functowitz,R  (    )   p:21

·         Weinberg (1972) p:209

·         Weinberg and Miverva 

·         Nowotny, H and Leroy, P (2009) pp: 57-6

·         Gross, M, ( 2002)

·         Gross, M  (2002) p:29

·         Gross, M (2002)

·         Ziman, J (2004) p:

·         Ziman, J (2004) p:46

·         Elizinga

^·          Ziman, J. (2004)  

^·           Aarstad, J (2010)Expert credibility and truth Published online before print November 8, 2010, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1012156107 PNAS November 23, 2010 vol. 107 no. 47 E176

·         Shailer, K  April 17, 2005

^·          Weingart, P and Stehr N, (2005)

^·          Weingart, P and Stehr N (2005)

·         Young NS, Ioannidis JPA, Al-Ubaydli O (2008)

·          Fraser, I (2011)

·         Elizinga, A

·         Weingart, P in socially robust knowledge

·         Weingart, P in socially robust knowledge

·         Sterh, N & Weiler, B ^{( eds)} ( 2008 )