Missing the target? A comment on Edward Constant's "reliable knowledge and unreliable stuff"

Technology and Culture

Volumn 41, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 752-764

  Scranton, Philip ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0034345819     PISSN: 0040165X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tech.2000.0179     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. Edward W. Constant II, "Reliable Knowledge and Unreliable Stuff: On the Practical Role of Rational Beliefs," Technology and Culture 40 (1999): 324-57, quote on 326 (emphasis in original).
2. Elsewhere (e.g., 348) termed "spatiotemporally universal foundational knowledge."
3. Consider these domains: nineteenth-century American engineering, nineteenth-century American mechanical engineering, nineteenth-century American locomotive engineering, nineteenth-century Philadelphia locomotive engineering, Philadelphia locomotive engineering from 1840 to 1900, Baldwin Company locomotive engineering from 1865 to 1900, Baldwin Company drawing room practice from 1865 to 1900. Where in this set of successively narrower domains do we shift from encountering spatiotemporally universal knowledge to finding spatiotemporally particular knowledge?
4. Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language (Cleveland, 1957) defines intension, a word long used but little appreciated, as "in logic, all the qualities or properties which a term or concept signifies."
5. There is also a related difficulty with this terminology. Though in footnote 7 of his article Constant notes that "The concepts of spatiotemporal universals and spatiotemporal particulars are from David L. Hull, Science as A Process: An Eolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science (Chicago, 1988)," it does not seem that Hull employs them. Rather, in framing a complex argument about hierarchies of knowledge, Hull writes of spatiotemporally restricted and unrestricted "terms" (80-81, 506). Constant's reformulation of this language needs justification, as it appears that he has adapted, not adopted, Hull's motifs.
6. H-Business, "History of Accounting" thread, 13 April-1 May 1999. Available at the H-Business archive, www.eh.net/Archives/H-business.
7. For an effective summary and rich bibliography, see John Heritage, "Etlinomethodology," in Social Theory Today, ed. Anthony Giddens and Jonathan Turner (Stanford, Calif., 1987), 224-72.
8. In this light, it is entirely peculiar that Constant scores the SCOT movement for its "disdain for classical Parsonian structural-functionalist sociology" (325). Despite Jeffrey Alexander's efforts to revive this tradition, structural-functionalism is broadly regarded as a prescriptive and theoretically exhausted product of the postwar system-maintenance vogue in sociology. For a skillful dissection relating to technology, see Jon Elster, Explaining Technical Change (Cambridge, 1983), 49-68.
9. On the early modern origins of "facts," see Lorraine Daston, "Baconian Facts, Academic Civility, and the Prehistory of Objectivity," in Rethinking Objectivity, ed. Allan Megill (Durham, N.C., 1994), 37-63, and Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact (Chicago, 1998).
10. On the early modern origins of "facts," see Lorraine Daston, "Baconian Facts, Academic Civility, and the Prehistory of Objectivity," in Rethinking Objectivity, ed. Allan Megill (Durham, N.C., 1994), 37-63, and Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact (Chicago, 1998).
11. Wiebe Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Wiebe Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); Robert Fox, ed., Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology (Amsterdam, 1996).
12. Wiebe Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Wiebe Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); Robert Fox, ed., Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology (Amsterdam, 1996).
13. Wiebe Bijker and John Law, eds., Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Wiebe Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1995); Robert Fox, ed., Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology (Amsterdam, 1996).
14. In closing his response to SCOT critics, Pinch argues "that the combination of detailed empirical research with growing theoretical sophistication about science and technology offers genuine new insights into technical change," which seems to me a thoroughly plausible judgment; Trevor Pinch, "The Social Construction of Technology: A Review," in Fox, 35.
15. In an article abstracted from his larger work Constructing Quarks, Andrew Pickering argues forcefully for conceptualizing the "historicity of knowledge" as a path that leads beyond frustrating debates over objectivity versus relativism. His emphasis on examining the process of "fact production" is provocative and worth close attention. See Pickering, "Objectivity and the Mangle of Practice," in Megill, 109-25.
16. See Craig Colten, "Texas v. The Petrochemical Industry: Contesting Pollution in an Era of Industrial Growth," in The Second Wave: Southern Industrialization, 1940-1970s, ed. Philip Scranton (forthcoming).
17. This is sometimes phrased as knowledge that derives from objective conduct yielding objectively true results. See Wolfgang Natter, Theodore Schatzki, and John Paul Jones, eds., Objectivity and Its Other (New York, 1995), 2.
18. For a rich discussion of levels at which notions of objectivity may be articulated, see Allan Megill, "Four Senses of Objectivity," in Rethinking Objectivity (n. 9 above), 1-20.
19. For a careful exposition of this matter, see James Anderson, Communications Theory: Epistemological Foundations (New York, 1997). For a variety of disciplinary perspectives, see Natter, Schatzki, and Jones, esp. chap. 9, "Beyond Objectivism and Relativism," by Andrew Grimes and Deborah Rood.
20. For a careful exposition of this matter, see James Anderson, Communications Theory: Epistemological Foundations (New York, 1997). For a variety of disciplinary perspectives, see Natter, Schatzki, and Jones, esp. chap. 9, "Beyond Objectivism and Relativism," by Andrew Grimes and Deborah Rood.
21. Pickering (n. 12 above), 118.
22. It may be that a close analysis of Constant's three oil-field analytics would show similar characteristics of noncongruence and the absence of superpositioning. Likewise, in medical practice, comparable contests between protocols based on surgical versus internist modes of intervention do not have an obvious superior referent for decisive resolution.
23. Douglas Harper, Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop (Chicago, 1987).
24. See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley, Calif., 1984); Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Cambridge, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacqant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago, 1992); Walter Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (Baltimore, 1990); Eric Schatzberg, Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal: Culture and Technical Choice in American Airplane Materials, 1914-1945 (Princeton, N.J., 1999).
25. See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley, Calif., 1984); Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Cambridge, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacqant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago, 1992); Walter Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (Baltimore, 1990); Eric Schatzberg, Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal: Culture and Technical Choice in American Airplane Materials, 1914-1945 (Princeton, N.J., 1999).
26. See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley, Calif., 1984); Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Cambridge, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacqant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago, 1992); Walter Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (Baltimore, 1990); Eric Schatzberg, Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal: Culture and Technical Choice in American Airplane Materials, 1914-1945 (Princeton, N.J., 1999).
27. See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley, Calif., 1984); Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Cambridge, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacqant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago, 1992); Walter Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (Baltimore, 1990); Eric Schatzberg, Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal: Culture and Technical Choice in American Airplane Materials, 1914-1945 (Princeton, N.J., 1999).
28. See Anthony Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Berkeley, Calif., 1984); Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Cambridge, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacqant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago, 1992); Walter Vincenti, What Engineers Know and How They Know It: Analytical Studies from Aeronautical History (Baltimore, 1990); Eric Schatzberg, Wings of Wood, Wings of Metal: Culture and Technical Choice in American Airplane Materials, 1914-1945 (Princeton, N.J., 1999).
29. Henry Petroski, To Engineer is Human (New York, 1992), 98 (emphasis in original).
30. For a compelling rendering of this anxiety as the Saturn booster and the Apollo capsules were being fabricated in the 1960s, see Mike Gray, Angle of Attack: Harrison Storms and the Race to the Moon (New York, 1992).
31. Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents (Princeton, N.J., 1999), reprint with new introduction.
32. Congress, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and North American Aviation concurred in scapegoating NAA's Saturn engineering project leader for the 1967 deaths of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, even though the capsule system's complexity and that of the multiple organizations responsible for managing artifacts and information generated the two crucial factors by overriding the engineering team's recommendation for a low-pressure, pure-oxygen capsule environment at take-off in favor of a high-pressure one, and by permitting astronauts to attach convenient Velcro strips and nylon nets on the interior to hold small items that would float about (later) in weightless conditions. An electrical spark, from what was never nailed down, blossomed into a blaze in the 16 psi pure-oxygen atmosphere, igniting the Velcro and nylon, which generated killing toxic fumes within seconds. Many other procedures intended to anticipate and forestall trouble also failed, but the need on all sides (this was not just about congressional politics) for a responsible agent to take the fall overwhelmed the possibility for a "rational" or contextualized analysis that would have indicted multiple institutional parties, technical and managerial complexity, and the heroizing of astronauts (which facilitated their insertions of non-mission-critical objects into the capsule). Everyone's knowledge was reliable, before the disaster. So what? (Gray, 207-56.) Comparable points could be made about the Exxon Valdez spill, I would imagine, or perhaps Bhopal.
33. Later, however, celebrating the "substantial creativity at play" in several of his cases, he critiques S. C. Gilfillan's "misbegotten phrase" describing inventiveness as a "new combination of old ideas" (350). Reflection on the formulation just quoted may suggest that the two are not far apart.
34. Petroski, 98.
35. Though it is not explicated in the text, "true knowledge" appears to refer to "certainty," for soon after, in writing of "degrees of rational belief in . . . foundational knowledge," Constant observes immediately: "What we do not have, and cannot have, is certainty" (355). Elsewhere, quoting Reistle discussing the effectiveness of a measurement technique in advance of mathematical theorization, Constant adds: "In short, reliability counts for more than truth, although reliable truth, of course, is preferable" (344). I had thought that reliability was our working substitute for inaccessible "true knowledge," but there seems to be some refinement here so that a peak concept of "reliable truth" can be fashioned, which stands above reliability, which in turn is more valuable ("counts for more") than truth. This may just be a slip in phrasing, but it clashes with the text's closing passage on p. 355, and points toward theoretical inconsistency.