Author: Ophelia Benson

Chris at Crooked Timber points out that it’s National Poetry day in the UK, and gives his favourite Shakespeare sonnet. I don’t have one favourite, because there are too many, though if I did have to pick one I decided it would be either 116 or 29. Either ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment’ or ‘When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes.’ But there are several other top favourites, which I shared with the lucky readers of CT, so I’ll share them with our readers too.

Like as the waves make toward the pebbled shore

and

When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defaced

and

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea

and

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

and

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

and

They that have power to hurt and will do none

and

Alas, ‘tis true, I have gone here and there

and

O for my sake do you with Fortune chide

and

Not marble nor the gilded monuments of princes

And if you like the Sonnets, and if you haven’t read Philip Sidney’s set, which preceded Shakespeare’s and influenced and inspired them, you oughta. Astrophil and Stella. Great stuff. Not the way the Sonnets are; on a different level; a different kind of level; but great stuff all the same.

Happy Poetry Day.

And sometimes I just waste my time. Inevitable, no doubt – but disconcerting when it happens. There I was this morning reading away at David Bloor, and making notes. Scribble scribble eh Mr Gibbon. I made a longish note about the way he uses the word ‘conventional’ and what a tricky word it can be. It implies a ‘mere’ but convention isn’t always mere. For instance, it’s true enough to say, as Bloor, and Barnes and the Strong Programme in general, do say, that the rules and criteria of science are conventional, but it doesn’t follow that they’re merely conventional. ‘One can have knowledge or findings,’ I pointed out sagely to myself, ‘that are conventional without being mere. In fact the “conventions” of science work (overall, over time, cumulatively etc) to make it more rather than less accurate – rather than to make it more acceptable.’ Fine. But then I turn the page and find –

To say that the methods and results of science are conventions does not make them ‘mere’ conventions.

I burst out laughing. Well fine! Just anticipate my objections! I don’t know why I bother!

Mind you. The objection is not entirely invalid anyway, because he does use the word that way in some places, even if he also does forestall the objection on page 44. That’s one way the whole Strong Programme works: by shifting around all the time, by using words one way in one place and another way in another. Fancy footwork, in short. Susan Haack talks about this in Chapter 7 of Defending Science. It’s rather exasperating. One minute they’re simply belaboring the obvious (people can believe true things but for irrational reasons), the next minute they’re deploying rhetoric to assert an absurdity, and the minute after that they’re saying something perfectly reasonable. And all this adds up to a Programme, and a mas macho one at that. ‘Strong’ may be not quite the right adjective.

Time for another of those exercises when I quote a few passages from interesting (if eccentric) thinkers. Today’s examinee is David Bloor, one of the founding whatsits of the ‘Strong Programme’ at Edinburgh University. A few sentences from the opening page of his influential book Knowledge and Social Imagery:

Can the sociology of knowledge investigate and explain the very content and nature of scientific knowledge? Many sociologists believe that it cannot….They voluntarily limit the scope of their own enquiries. I shall argue that this is a betrayal of their disciplinary standpoint…There are no limitations which lie in the absolute or transcendent character of scientific knowledge itself, or in the special nature of rationality, validity, truth or objectivity.

That’s from the first paragraph. One, it’s interesting that he resorts to rhetoric right at the beginning, with the word ‘betrayal’ for example. And the subtle implications or innuendo behind that sentence about voluntarily limiting the scope of their own enquiries. Is ‘voluntarily’ really the right word? Or is it there to suggest things like timidity, conformity, obedience, lack of imagination and daring and scope, and the like. Is the limitation really voluntary, or is it more or less forced by the nature of reality? Is it perhaps the case that sociologists of knowledge who limit the scope of their enquiries do so because they think they don’t know enough about a given scientific field to explain its ‘very content and nature’? That seems quite likely, and not unreasonable. And note how Bloor leaves that explanation out of his list in the last sentence. He seems to mention it, but in fact doesn’t. His list makes a show of exhausting the possibilities, but in fact it doesn’t. The ‘absolute or transcendent character of scientific knowledge itself, or in the special nature of rationality, validity, truth or objectivity’ are not the only inhibiting factors that might make nonintoxicated (to borrow a trope of Susan Haack’s) sociologists ‘limit’ the scope of their enquiries; others would be the nature and complexity of the subject; ignorance, humility, knowledge of one’s own limitations; and especially evidence. The uninebriated sociologists might simply realize that they don’t know enough about the subject at hand to evaluate the evidence, and therefore don’t know how to differentiate between knowledge that is based on evidence and knowledge that is not, or is not completely. It’s not a question of any ‘special’ nature of truth or rationality, it’s simply a question of limited competence.

What is the cause for this hesitation and pessimism?…The cause of the hesitation to bring science within the scope of a thorough-going sociological scrutiny is lack of nerve and will. It is believed to be a foredoomed enterprise.

Lack of nerve and will. Hmm. That’s very reminiscent of that remark of Jamie Whyte’s I quoted the other day – ‘Now mere wilfulness has triumphed. This is what I describe as the egocentric approach to truth.’ One just has to have the will and nerve to decide that one can discover anything, even about subjects that tend to require many years of training to understand. (Mind you, it doesn’t work the other way. Strong programme sociologists don’t often write books wondering why physicists and geologists don’t investigate the knowledge of sociologists.) All very Nietzschean, or at least Riefenstahlian. All it takes is will!

Which of course is why they call it the Strong Programme. I guess.

A small point. But I’m going to make it anyway, because I think it matters. Just the other day (well, September 21, actually, I find upon looking) I was talking about that translation problem – when sensible people say ‘There is evidence/there is no evidence that etc.’ and their hearers translate that (apparently without even realizing that they are translating) into ‘That is proved/proved not.’ I’ve just noticed another example, in a teaser at Arts & Letters Daily (where you would really expect them to know better, frankly, since Denis Dutton is a bit of a shark about Bad Thinking himself).

Capital punishment. Janet Reno says it doesn’t cut murder rates, Orrin Hatch says it does. Who’s right? Easy question? No!

And here is what Reno actually said:

I have inquired for most of my adult life about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent, and I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point.

It’s really not a small point. It’s on journalists’ thinking such re-wordings are small and trivial and don’t matter that so much confusion and misunderstanding gets around. There just is a huge difference between saying ‘I have not found any evidence that X’ and saying ‘X is not.’ And if people are so blind to the difference that they make the translation without even noticing – well they just have no idea how anyone knows or thinks anything about anything, do they, which is an alarming thought.

Well here’s a surprise – things are speeding up. The book is not coming out on October 28 after all, it’s coming out next week. It will be in all good bookshops (and, let us hope, in all bad ones as well, and mediocre ones besides, as well as adequate, so-so, okay, crapulous, and pathetic ones) for your viewing and buying pleasure. And I’ll be able to get off the plane and take my tiny red eyes into the first bookshop I see and there it will be (unless it isn’t). (Perhaps it won’t be because there will have been a rush and all copies will have sold out. Because people are finding it funny, you know. People at Smiths, for instance.)

And now here’s where you get to do your part. Not content with urging you to order it at Amazon, I have a further suggestion. This is what you do instead of subscribing or donating or looking at horrible adverts for low carb diets or sex toys. This is where you help keep the proprietors of B&W in bread and dripping for awhile longer. If you see the book at Smiths, you buy it. Here’s why: they’re starting small, at Smiths, and will only order more if the book actually sells. So if all our thousands upon thousands of regular readers grab every copy in Smiths, why, the nice people at Smiths will be running around the room squawking and slapping their foreheads in their urgency to order more copies. And that will be good.

This has been a public service announcement. Now back to your regular programming.