Table Of ContentROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: HISTORY
AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
AND SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
BARRY BARNES
Volume 2
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LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published in 1974
This edition first published in 2009 by
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© 1974 Barry Barnes
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
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ISBN lO: 0-415-42029-6 (Set)
ISBN lO: 0-415-47437-X (Volume 2)
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-42029-7 (Set)
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Barry Barnes
SCientific knowledge and
sociological theory
Routledge & Kegan Paul
London and Boston
First published in 1974
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Broadway House, 68-74 Carter Lane,
London EC4V 5EL and
9 Park Street,
Boston, Mass. 02108, USA
Printed in Great Britain by
Clarke, Doble & Brendan Ltd, Plymouth
© Barry Barnes 1974
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism
ISBN 0 7100 7961 3 (c)
o 7100 7962 1 (p)
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 74-81994
Contents
Preface vii
1 The diversity of beliefs about nature and the problem of
explaining it 1
2 The sociologist and the concept of rationality 22
3 The culture of the natural sciences 45
4 Belief, action and determinism: the causal explanation of
scientific change 69
5 'Internal' and 'external' factors in the history of science 99
6 Science and ideology 125
Epilogue 153
Notes 159
Bibliography 181
Author Index 189
Subject Index 191
Priface
This is an essay in the sOciology of scientific knowledge written with
the sociology of knowledge and culture, generally, very much in
mind. As a sociological study it is unusual in that the form and
content of scientific knowledge is the main concern and not its
organization or distribution. There are, however, good reasons why
this neglected subject should be of particular interest at the present
time.
After a long period of neglect we have seen a marked revival of
interest in the sociology of knowledge. Moreover, in this revival,
cautious, positivistic approaches to the study of belief systems have
given way to more speculative and comparative work, which has
assumed that the study of knowledge is of central importance in the
development of sociological theory. This welcome change has been
stimulated by anthropologists such as Mary Douglas and R. Horton,
and by the growing influence of phenomenology and ethnomethod
ology. It has generated a fascinating and important literature, which
promises to lead to a fully general sociological understanding of
knowledge as a whole.
This literature does, however, tend to skirt around the question
of what the world has to do with what is believed, and this is a
question which must be answered, at least schematically, by a fully
developed sociological theory of knowledge. Occasionally, existing
work leaves the feeling that reality has nothing to do with what
is socially constructed or negotiated to count as natural knowledge,
but we may safely assume that this impression is an accidental
by-product of over-enthusiastic sociological analYSis, and that
sociologists as a whole would acknowledge that the world in some
way constrains what it is believed to be. The question however
remains: what is the nature of this constraint and how strong is
it?
viii Preface
It is impossible to avoid this question when scientific knowledge
is the subject of sociological study. Here. one is forced to examine
very seriously how far beliefs can be represented as rational responses
to reality, and how far this restricts the scope of the sociology of
knowledge. Scientific knowledge is, of course, frequently cited by
those who see the sociology of knowledge as, at best, a limited enter
prise, and would have it called the sociology of belief. These critics
remain largely unanswered: some sociologists tacitly accept their
claims and avoid the consideration of science, assuming it must be
different from other belief systems; others assume that science must
fit sociological theories, but they are unable to see how, and con
sequently avoid consideration of science also.
Here is where the present study may have something of general
significance to offer. Through actual consideration of scientific
beliefs, and through an examination of how reality may constrain
them, it will be shown that there is no need to restrict the scope
of the sociology of knowledge. The important tenets of recent work
in this area apply to the knowledge of natural science as well as
elsewhere; those tenets which do not apply to science are generally
inapplicable and deserve no place in the field in any case. Thus, the
argument protects the flank of the sociology of knowledge against
rationalistic criticism, and emphasizes its status as a fully general
approach. Hopefully, however, it will do more than this, for it
suggests that, instead of being avoided, scientific knowledge should
be actively studied and reflected upon in the quest for a general
sociological understanding of the nature of knowledge as a whole.
A body of knowledge with so many unique features cannot be
safely ignored in such an undertaking; after all. science is the most
elaborated and systematized of all forms of knowledge, and the least
anthropomorphic. Moreover, in many ways it is the easiest of all
forms of knowledge to study. It is accessible and, for the most part,
unconstrained by norms of secrecy and restricted access; it is
remarkably well defined and bounded by those who transmit it; and
its history is well documented and can be studied more reliably than
that of an oral tradition. Scientific knowledge should be one of the
most valuable resources in the sociologist's attempt to understand
natural knowledge and its variation, not one of the greatest obstacles.
It should be emphasized that the discussion is centred upon the
sociologist's concern to understand and explain beliefs about nature
and their variation. It does not seek to advocate or to criticize the
Preface ix
beliefs discussed, nor is it concerned with their justification. (The
reader is asked to overlook those harmless and readily identified
slips from this ideal which I have not troubled to eliminate.) This
point is stressed since, in the current intellectual milieu, simply to
talk of science in other than reverential terms may be seen as
criticism. Existing discussions of scientific beliefs tend either to
assume their validity or to be demonstrations of it. The investigation
of science as a phenomenon has been incompletely differentiated from
its justification. As a result, it is now being realized by everyone
concerned with the study of science that our present understanding
of the nature of its knowledge is hopelessly conflated with ideas of
what it ought to be, or 'must' be. Perhaps those outside sociology
concerned to change this situation will find this essay of some
interest, since, in a sense, it attempts to take science as it finds it.
If this proved to be the case it would merely slightly offset an
enormous debt. The material used here has been drawn from a
number of different academic fields; so many indeed that, given the
present organization of academic knowledge, the work stands in
danger of being condemned as specialized. I have, however, striven
to minimize the resulting problems, and to make the main text
readily intelligible to sociologists and reasonably accessible to others.
As a result, there will be those who find particular examples or
illustrations intolerably oversimplified, but the dilemma involved
here will be clear enough. With regard to terminology, only
sociological concepts are left unelaborated, and these are not used
so extensively as to present insuperable difficulties to readers from
outside the discipline. It should be noted, however, that the term
'knowledge' is used throughout with the sense of 'accepted belief',
not with the sense of 'correct belief'.
Turning to more particular debts, it is a pleasure to thank all the
colleagues and friends, in Edinburgh and elsewhere, who have com
mented upon and criticized various aspects of the argument. Par
ticular acknowledgment is due to Donald MacKenzie of the Science
Studies Unit here, who read the manuscript and made a number
of particular criticisms and suggestions which were incorporated
into the text. Indubitably, however, it is my colleague David Bloor
to whom my greatest thanks are due. I have been grateful for his
criticisms of the manuscript, but his influence upon it has been
much more profound, since my thinking upon this subject has taken
shape during innumerable informal discussions with him. Respon-
