Notes on Ideas about Science: Simon Schaffer (Transcript Summary)
Two dominant images of science (as critique context)
Simon Schaffer identifies two prevailing public images of science in culture:
Image 1: Scientists are absolutely special, more moral, virtuous, and clever than others; they do things nothing like ordinary people.
Image 2: Science is organized common sense; cookery raised to a sophisticated art.
He argues neither image is right; both are misleading for understanding how science actually works.
About the series and interview setup
Series: Ideas about science, titled “How To Think About Science,” conceived by David Cayley and featuring conversations with scientists, philosophers, historians, sociologists, and a poet.
Today’s focus: David Cayley interviews Simon Schaffer at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science in Cambridge.
Core aim: To unravel received ideas about science and examine how science is made, justified, and trusted.
The shift in history of science (1960s–1980s) and Leviathan and the Air Pump
In 1985, Leviathan and the Air Pump (co-authored by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer) helped inaugurate a more critical approach to the history of science.
Main goal of the book: Break down the aura of self-evidence surrounding the experimental way of producing knowledge; treat facts and experimental claims as social processes that are made, shared, and agreed upon, not simply discovered.
The book contrasts with earlier histories that focused on biographies or social contexts while taking scientific procedures for granted.
Core methodological shift: science as social practice
Schaffer and colleagues argued that science should be analyzed as a social institution—knowledge is produced within social groups, with tacit know-how, skilled craftsmanship, and collaboratively built devices and procedures.
Scientists are likened to skilled carpenters or engineers rather than oracles or priests; brains aren’t “bigger” but knowledge is produced through designed and maintained workspaces, tools, and collaboration.
The new approach treats knowledge claims as outcomes of social processes: who witnesses, who agrees, who repeats, and how narratives are published and circulated.
The sociological method: observing science in action
They argued for following contemporary controversies in real-time and also reconstructing past controversies to see how knowledge claims were built and institutionalized.
The ship-in-a-bottle metaphor (Harry Collins’ idea) is used to illustrate how the appearance is that a ship has always been there, while the historians want to show how ships get put into bottles and how messy and contingent that process is.
Key goal: Observe controversies to understand how rival groups try to convert knowledge claims into widely accepted institutions.
The past and present controversies: Boyle vs Hobbes (Leviathan and the Air Pump)
Boyle: A wealthy 17th-century English experimentalist who built sophisticated machines (notably an air pump) to study the properties of air and the circulation of blood (influenced by Harvey).
Hobbes: A rationalist who challenged experimental claims, arguing that experiment cannot guarantee universal knowledge or universal agreement; he preferred geometry and axioms as the path to knowledge.
The central debate: Whether experimental demonstrations can compel agreement and whether a singular observed phenomenon can be generalized to universal truth.
Boyle’s experimental philosophy: what was new?
Boyle’s approach: To know about nature, it helps to isolate and analyze singular, mechanically produced effects rather than observe nature in its ordinary state.
He sought to unite two previously opposed categories: nature (the way things normally behave) and art/engineering (designed experiments).
This shift was a methodological revolution: produce effects, observe them under controlled conditions, and generalize from carefully witnessed instances.
Three innovations in Boyle’s experimental program
Witnessing: Boyle assembled witnesses who would observe and later corroborate the experiment, making knowledge social and communal rather than solitary.
Virtual witnessing: Boyle’s written accounts aimed to bring readers into the observational scene as if they were present, multiplying the number of potential witnesses through narrative.
Publicizing and reproducibility: Boyle invited others to replicate the pump’s experiments, creating a social process of verification and deposition of a matter of fact.
Why produce a matter of fact? The political and social context
The mid-17th century: An era of war, religious and political discord, and competing ideologies; there was a perceived need for a method that could produce undeniable truths to reduce violent conflict and enable peaceful negotiation.
The experimental philosophy was framed as a political project: a recipe for social order that could replace conflict with rational consensus.
Trust, not skepticism, became seen as the critical achievement of science: able networks distribute trust across instruments, makers, witnesses, and communicators.
Trust and the public face of science
The motto of the Royal Society, Nullius in verba, emphasizes acting on testimony rather than taking anyone’s word alone.
John Locke’s view (and others of his era) cautioned that individuals know only what they have been told or shown; most knowledge is testimony, not direct experience.
The modern science system is praised not for extreme skepticism but for its ability to organize trust efficiently through distributed networks of devices, observers, calibrations, manufacturers, and publications.
A laboratory is a node in a vast network of instruments and expertise; its credibility depends on the reliability of its networked connections.
Hobbes’ objections and the rationalist critique
Hobbes argued: a) Experiment cannot compel assent; people with competing interests may resist a supposed consensus, and b) you cannot infer universal laws from isolated instances—show me the phenomenon everywhere and at all times.
He saw experimental demonstrations as potentially biased by self-interest and non-generalizable from a single location.
Consequently, he argued for rational deduction and proof (geometry) as the secure path to knowledge.
Boyle and allies had to respond by clarifying how experiments rely on documented social processes (trust networks, witnessing, reproducibility) and how universal claims could be warranted through collective agreement and repeatable demonstrations.
The science wars (late 1980s–1990s) and public perception
The science wars complex: some scholars were accused of constructivism, arguing that scientific knowledge is a social construction and not a truthful mirror of nature.
Schaffer and colleagues were labeled anti-science by some critics; they argued they were anthropologists of science, not anti-science.
The debates paralleled older historical conflicts (e.g., Bible interpretation in 18th–19th century German states) about how to treat texts as human productions rather than divine or inerrant reveals.
Demystification, in this framing, sometimes felt like an attack on science; Schaffer emphasizes that the point is to understand how robust knowledge is built, not to destroy its value.
Shifts in the image of science: from theory to field science
The consensus image of science as theoretical physics as the paradigmatic pattern science has shifted.
Today, pattern science looks more like agronomy, ecology, field biology, and field experiments: travel, field stations, and cross-site trials are central.
This shift reframes questions from who came first (chronology) to how a practice travels through space and is deployed in different contexts (space order):
How do practices get to new sites? How do plant trials or clinical trials spread? How do drugs get tested across locales?
Why do scientists in different places converge on certain methods and claims?
The new questions emphasize why people agree, not merely why they disagree.
The public understanding of science (PUS) in contemporary discourse
The term PUS is ambivalent: it can mean
understanding the content and view of the world produced by science, or
understanding how scientists produce that view (the methods, uncertainties, social processes).
Schaffer argues that both aspects are necessary for literate, engaged citizens capable of informed participation in public debates on issues like nuclear disarmament or climate change.
The contemporary world is saturated with expertise; understanding how expertise is distributed helps in designing better political and social responses to scientific and technological issues.
Networks of trust in science and technology
A laboratory is embedded in a vast network of devices, manufacturers, calibrators, and software engineers; trust in results depends on trust in this network.
When the network functions well, it enables reliable knowledge; when it breaks, it invites skepticism.
The ability to produce widely accepted knowledge depends on controlling the social and technical conditions under which evidence is gathered and presented.
Key ideas and phrases to remember
“Knowledge is an institution, and it should be analyzed as such.”
“The ship gets in the bottle” (and the related metaphor of making ships visible in bottles while they are being packaged).
“Matter of fact” as an authoritative, credible claim that invites replication.
“Virtual witnessing” as writing that brings readers into the observational scene.
“Nullius in verba”: critical motto of the Royal Society—trust, but verify through testimony, observation, and replication.
“Public understanding of science” is not a static state but an ongoing negotiation about how science is produced and trusted.
Quotes and memorable lines (selected)
“Knowledge is an institution.”
“We wanted to think as hard as we possibly could about how people come together to build the institutions by which they live.”
“Trust—establishing his credibility as we would say—was a very important matter.”
“The Western natural sciences work very well, partly because they organize trust extremely efficiently, not because they organize skepticism and doubt extremely efficiently.”
“We live in a world dominated by a crisis of trust.”
“Public understanding of science” needs to cover both understanding the world produced by science and understanding how scientists produce that understanding.
Mathematical and conceptual references (LaTeX)
Inverse-square relationship (conceptual reference to gravitational/force laws):
F \,\propto\, \frac{1}{r^2}
Newton’s law of gravitation (illustrative example):
F = G \,\frac{m1 m2}{r^2}
Note on methodological emphasis: experiments test singular cases to infer general behaviors; generalization requires repeatable, witnessed, and publicly verifiable processes.
People, works, and places to remember
Robert Boyle: 17th-century English experimentalist, key figure in the foundation of experimental philosophy, built the air pump, and promoted witnessing and matter-of-fact publication.
Thomas Hobbes: 17th-century philosopher who argued for rational deduction and warned against overreliance on single experimental observations; emphasized universal demonstration and the possibility of bias in demonstrations.
William Harvey: Influenced Boyle’s interest in respiration and blood circulation.
Steven Shapin: Co-author of Leviathan and the Air Pump; key figure in science studies.
Simon Schaffer: Interview subject; co-developer of the approach; commentator on the science wars and the social life of laboratories.
Harry Collins: Sociologist associated with the ship-in-a-bottle metaphor.
John Locke: Contemporary of Boyle; emphasized that much knowledge comes from testimony.
Connections to broader themes and real-world relevance
The interviews frame science as an institutionalized practice with built-in mechanisms for trust, collaboration, and dissemination; this has implications for science communication, policy, and education.
Understanding how expertise is distributed helps inform debates on policy choices, risk management, and democratic participation in science-related decisions.
The shift from “big theory” to field-based, practice-oriented science aligns with contemporary work in ecology, agronomy, clinical trials, and technology deployment; this affects how scientists design studies, report results, and engage with the public.
How to think about science (takeaways for studying)
Don’t rely on a single image of science; understand science as a social institution with technical practices and trust networks.
Study both past and present controversies to see how knowledge claims become stabilized into widely accepted truths.
Recognize the political uses of science: methods are not only epistemic; they are also tools for social order and conflict resolution.
When evaluating scientific claims, consider how testimony, witnessing, reproducibility, and publication work together to establish a fact.
Suggested follow-up topics
Read Leviathan and the Air Pump for a deeper grasp of the Boyle–Hobbes debate and the social organization of experimental knowledge.
Explore Harry Collins’ concept of the ship-in-a-bottle to understand how scientific instruments and observations become difficult to trace back to their origins.
Investigate the contemporary public understanding of science debates and how they intersect with policy and education.