From Fiction to Fact: the Journey of a Scientific Idea

Ron Broglio

LCC 2100

February 7, 2005

From Fiction to Fact: The Journey of a Scientific Idea

Science is commonly viewed as the process of extracting absolute fact from the natural world. Francis Bacon would have one believe that Mother Nature is a woman who has to be tortured and abused in order to reveal the truth hidden within. However, Bruno Latour and Ludwik Fleck pursue the epistemological aspects of science and the process of discovery. Facts can only be viewed in the context of the society and process that created them, not as absolutes in the world.

Latour describes how entities in science move from being new objects to things, and the status associated with each. New objects exist only in the context that created them. For example, proteins were first just the result of a certain steps taken in a laboratory to separate one substance from another in a centrifuge. Later discovery extended that understanding and made proteins a thing in their own right. The critical difference is that a thing is recognized as being more than simply the process that created it.

The passage of an entity from a new object to a thing and one man’s theory to a widely-held fact is a three-fold process. The first is the generation of inscriptions. Inscriptions are created by instruments, which Latour defines as “any set-up, no matter what its size, nature, and cost, that provides a visual display of any sort in a scientific text” (68). Such a device can be as simple as a ruler or as complex as an electron microscope. Unfortunately, it is unlikely an inscription will stand up and speak on its own behalf, so it is necessary for an inscription (and therefore, a theory) to have a spokesman. The spokesman interprets the inscriptions and defends his or her theories during the third phase, the trials of strength. During the trials of strength dissenters arise and work to debunk a theory. They do this by questioning the research, the set-up, and the ideas and assumptions that underlie a theory. Furthermore, they can even set up the experiment in their own laboratory with their own instruments and attempt to reproduce the results of the original experimenter. Once this three-fold process is complete then the theory may become accepted as fact.

Rather than focus on the actual process that creates science and fact, Fleck chooses to center his study on the societal influences that create the capacity for science. Latour examines this and sums is up in his fifth rule of method, stating that technoscience is created not just by scientists but also by the managers, grant-writers, corporations, and politicians that make technoscience possible (176). Fleck elaborates on how society shapes science. One underlying principle is that society does not shape what is fact, but it guides us to unearthing the facts that are acceptable within the thought style of the day. For example, when syphilis was identified in the fifteenth century, it was identified only as a disease caused by sin, with no understanding of the underlying biology behind it. Later, the disease was associated with the various treatments available for it (such as mercury) and known to be caused by “bad blood”. While correct, this is a shallow analysis by today’s standards. Finally, the Wasserman reaction allowed syphilis to be understood in modern pathological and biological terms.

Science and facts have to be interpreted with an appreciation for the thought collective in which they were created. Fleck defines a thought collective as “a community of persons mutually exchanging ideas or maintaining intellectual interaction” (39). For example, “a nation, a race, a political party, or a social class” (Fleck 158) are all examples of thought collectives.

By bringing together Fleck and Latour’s ideas, it is clear that science is not created by indiscriminately prodding nature until her secrets are revealed, but by a complex interaction of nature, society, and time. The thought style and thought collective determine which science is ready to be studied, and Latour’s three stages sort out legitimate facts from misguided theories. Science is not the work of the lone scientist, and facts are not created through the spontaneous revelations of a few great men, rather, society creates a mold and a need for knowledge which science then fills as it is ready.

References

Fleck, Ludwik. Ed. Robert K. Merton, and Thaddeus J. Trenn. Trans. Fred Bradley.
Chicago and London: The University of Chicago P, 1981.

Latour, Bruno. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1987.