The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts: Or How the Sociology of Science and the Sociology of Technology might Benefit Each Other

Social Studies of Science

Volumn 14, Issue 3, 1984, Pages 399-441

  Pinch, Trevor J ^a   Bijker, Wiebe E ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF YORK   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF TWENTE   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84972633924     PISSN: 03063127     EISSN: 14603659     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/030631284014003004     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. The science-technology divorce seems to have resulted not so much from the lack of overall analytical goals within ‘science studies’, but more from the contingent demands of carrying out empirical work in these areas. To give an example: the new sociology of scientific knowledge, which attempts to take account of the actual content of scientific knowledge, can best be carried out by researchers who have some training in the science they study, or at least who are familiar with an extensive body of technical literature (indeed, many researchers are ex-natural scientists). Once having gained such expertise, there is a tendency to stay within the domain where that expertise can best be deployed. Similarly, R & D studies and innovation studies, in which the analysis centres on the ‘firm’ and ‘market place’, have tended to demand the specialist competences of economists. Such disparate bodies of work do not easily lead towards a more integrated conception of science and technology. One notable exception is J. R. Ravetz, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). This is one of the few works of recent science studies in which both science and technology and their differences are explored within a common framework.
2. The studies of science have been carried out by Pinch. The examples we draw upon in this paper come from his recent comparative study of four episodes of scientific controversy. For some of the provisional findings of this study, see T. J. Pinch, ‘Towards an Analysis of Scientific Observation: The Externality and Evidential Significance of Observation Reports in Physics’, Social Studies of Science, forthcoming. In this paper we will use examples connected with the work of one scientist - Henry Hill.
3. The studies of technology have been carried out by Bijker. In all, six technological innovations were studied. See W. E. Bijker, J. Bönig and E. C. J. van Oost, ‘The Social Construction of Technological Artefacts’, paper presented to the EASST Conference (Deutschlandsberg, Austria: 24-26 September 1982). In this paper we mostly use examples drawn from the case-study of the bicycle.
4. H. M. Collins, ‘Stages in the Empirical Programme of Relativism’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11 (1981), 3-10.
5. A comprehensive review can be found in M. J. Mulkay and V. Milic, ‘The Sociology of Science in East and West’, Current Sociology, Vol. 28 (Winter 1980), 1-342.
6. For a recent review of the sociology of scientific knowledge, see H. M. Collins ‘The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge: Studies of Contemporary Science’, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 9 (1983), 265-85.
7. For discussion of the earlier work (largely associated with Robert Merton and his students), see R. D. Whitley, ‘Black Boxism and the Sociology of Science: A Discussion of the Major Developments in the Field’, in P. Halmos (ed.), The Sociology of Science, Sociological Review Monograph No. 18 (Keele: University of Keele, 1972), 61-92.
8. D. Bloor, ‘Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 4 (1973), 173-91.
9. See, for example, B. Latour and S. Woolgar, Laboratory Life (London and Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1979); K. D. Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science (Oxford: Pergamon, 1981); M. Lynch, Art and Artefact in Laboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Research Laboratory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, forthcoming, 1984); and S. Woolgar, ‘Laboratory Studies: A Comment on the State of the Art’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 12 (1982), 481-98.
10. See, for example, H. M. Collins, ‘The Seven Sexes: A Study in the Sociology of a Phenomenon, Or the Replication of Experiments in Physics’, Sociology, Vol. 9 (1975), 205-24; B. Wynne, ‘C. G. Barkla and the J Phenomenon: A Case Study of the Treatment of Deviance in Physics’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 307-47; T. J. Pinch, ‘What Does a Proof Do if it Does not Prove? A Study of the Social Conditions and Metaphysical Divisions leading to David Bohm and John von Neumann Failing to Communicate in Quantum Physics’, in E. Mendelsohn, P. Weingart and R. Whitley (eds), The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge (Dordrecht and Boston, Mass.: Reidel, 1977), 171-215; and the studies by A. Pickering, B. Harvey, H. M. Collins, G. D. L. Travis and T. J. Pinch collected together in Collins (ed.), Knowledge and Controversy, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11 (1981), 3-158.
11. H. M. Collins and T. J. Pinch, ‘The Construction of the Paranormal: Nothing Unscientific is Happening’, in R. Wallis (ed.), On the Margins of Science: The Social Construction of Rejected Knowledge, Sociological Review Monograph No. 27 (Keele: University of Keele, 1979), 237-70; and Collins and Pinch, Frames of Meaning: The Social Construction of Extraordinary Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982).
12. D. Robbins and R. Johnston, ‘The Role of Cognitive and Occupational Differentiation in Scientific Controversies’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 349-68. For a similar analysis of public science controversies, see B. Gillespie, D. Eva and R. Johnston, ‘Carcinogenic Risk Assessment in The United States and Great Britain: The Case of Aldrin/Dieldrin’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 9 (1979), 265-301; and F. B. McCrea and G. E. Markle, ‘The Estrogen Replacement Controversy in the USA and UK: Different Answers to the Same Question?’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 14 (1984), 1-26.
13. Some of the most recent debates can be found in K. D. Knorr-Cetina and M. J. Mulkay (eds), Science Observed - Perspectives on the Social Study of Science (London and Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1983).
14. S. Shapin, ‘History of Science and its Sociological Reconstructions’, History of Science, Vol. 20 (1982), 157-211.
15. T. Nickles, ‘ERISS and International Sociology of Science’, presented to the Sixth Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (Atlanta: 5-7 November 1981), and Nickles, ‘How Discovery is Important to Cognitive Studies of Science’, paper presented to the Philosophy of Science Association Meeting (Philadelphia: 30 October 1982).
16. F. Healey, ‘The Research Funding Organization As a Focus for Science Studies’, paper presented to the Science Studies Conference (Oxford: 27-28 September 1982), and H. M. Collins, ‘Scientific Knowledge and Science Policy: Some Foreseeable Implications’, EASST Newsletter, Vol. 2 (November 1983), 5-8.
17. For a recent review of some of this literature, see Ron Johnston, ‘Controlling Technology: An Issue for the Social Studies of Science’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 14 (1984), 97-112.
18. The locus classicus is the study by B. Hessen, ‘The Social and Economic Roots of Newton's Principia’, in N. I. Bukharin, A. F. Joffe, M. Rubinstein, B. Zavadovsky, E. Colman, N. I. Vavilov, W. Th. Mitkewich and B. Hessen, Science at the Crossroads (London: Frank Cass, 1931), 147-212.
19. C. W. Sherwin and R. S. Isenson, First Interim Report on Project Hindsight: Summary (Washington, DC: Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, 1966); Sherwin and Isenson, ‘Project Hindsight: A Defense Department Study of the Utility of Research’, Science, Vol. 156 (23 June 1967), 1571-77.
20. J. Langrish, M. Gibbons, W. G. Evans and F. R. Jevons, Wealth from Knowledge (London: Macmillan, 1972).
21. Illinois Institute of Technology, Technology in Retrospect and Critical Events in Science (TRACES) (Chicago: IIT Research Institute, 1968).
22. See K. Kreilkamp, ‘Hindsight and the Real World of Science Policy’, Science Studies, Vol. 1 (1971), 43-66, and D. C. Mowery and N. Rosenberg, ‘The Influence of Market Demand upon Innovation: A Critical Review of Some Recent Empirical Studies’, Research Policy, Vol. 8 (1979), 103-53.
23. See, for example, Derek J. deSolla Price, ‘The Structure of Publication in Science and Technology’, in W. H. Gruber and D. G. Marquis (eds), Factors in the Transfer of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969), 91-104; F. R. Jevons, ‘The Interaction of Science and Technology Today, or, is Science the Mother of Invention?’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 17 (1976), 729-42; and O. Mayr, ‘The Science-Technology Relationship as a Historiographic Problem’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 17 (1976), 663-73.
24. B. Barnes, ‘The Science-Technology Relationship: A Model and a Query’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 12 (1982), 166-72.
25. E. Layton, ‘Conditions of Technological Development’, in I. Spiegel-Rösing and D. J. deSolla Price (eds), Science, Technology, and Society (London and Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977), 210.
26. See, for example, N. Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
27. Adapted from L. Uhlmann, Der Innovationsprozess in westeuropäischen Industrieländern. Band 2: Den Ablauf industriellen Innovationsprozesse (Berlin and München: Duncker and Humblot, 1978), 45.
28. John M. Staudenmaier, SJ, ‘What SHOT Hath Wrought and what SHOT Hath Not: Reflections on 25 Years of the History of Technology’, paper presented to the 25th Annual Meeting of SHOT, 1983. See, for a more extensive account, Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers: Recovering the Human Fabric (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, forthcoming), based on his Design and Ambience: Historians and Technology, 1958-1977 (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1980).
29. Shapin writes that ‘A proper perspective of the uses of science might reveal that sociology of knowledge and the history of technology have more in common than is usually thought’: S. Shapin, ‘Social Uses of Science’, in G. S. Rousseau and R. Porter (eds), The Ferment of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 93-139, at 132. Whilst we are sympathetic to Shapin's argument we think the time is now ripe for asking more searching questions of historical studies.
30. Eugene Ferguson, ‘Toward a Discipline of the History of Technology’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 15 (1974), 13-30, 19.
31. M. Kaufman, The First Century of Plastics; Celluloid and its Sequel (London: Plastics Institute, 1963), 61.
32. L. H. Baekeland, ‘The Synthesis, Constitution, and Uses of Bakelite’, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Vol. 1 (1909), 149-61; and Baekeland, ‘On Soluble, Fusible, Resinous Condensation Products of Phenols and Formaldehyde’, Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Vol. 1 (1909), 545-49.
33. Max Bottler, for example, devotes only one page to Bakelite in his 228-page book on resins and the resin industry: Bottler, Harze und Harzindustrie (Leipzig: Max Jänecke, 1924). Even when Bottler concentrates, in another book, on the synthetic resinous materials, Bakelite does not receive an indisputable ‘first place’. Only half of the book is devoted to phenol/formaldehyde condensation products, and roughly half of the latter is devoted to Bakelite: Bottler, Uber Herstellung und Eigenschaften von Kunstharzen und deren Verwendung in der Lack- und Firnisindustrie und zu elektrotechnischen und industriellen Zwecken (München: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1919). See also A. R. Matthis, Insulating Varnishes in Electrotechnics (London: John Heywood, approximately 1920).
34. W. Haynes, American Chemical Industry, Vol. 2 (New York: Van Nostrand, 1954), esp. 137-38.
35. See, for example, Edward W. Constant, 11, The Origins of the Turbojet Revolution (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society: 1880-1930 (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); and John F. Hanieski, ‘The Airplane as an Economic Variable: Aspects of Technological Change in Aeronautics, 1903-1955’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 14 (1973), 535-52.
36. See, for example, David F. Noble, ‘Social Choice in Machine Design: The Case of Automatically Controlled Machine Tools’, in A. Zimbalist (ed.), Case Studies on the Labor Process (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979), 18-50; Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1977); and W. Lazonick, ‘Industrial Relations and Technical Change: the Case of the Self-Acting Mule’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 3 (1979), 231-62.
37. There is an American tradition in the sociology of technology. See, for example, S. G. Gilfillan, The Sociology of Invention (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1935); W. F. Ogburn, The Social Effects of Aviation (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1945); Ogburn and F. Meyers Nimkoff, Technology and the Changing Family (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1955). See also R. Westrum, ‘What Happened to the Old Sociology of Technology?’, paper presented to the Eighth Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (Blacksburg, Virginia: 3-6 November 1983). A fairly comprehensive view of the present state of the art in German sociology of technology can be obtained from R. Jokisch (ed.), Techniksoziologie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982). Several studies in the sociology of technology which attempt to break with the traditional approach can be found in W. Krohn, E. T. Layton and P. Weingart (eds), The Dynamics of Science and Technology, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, Vol. 2 (Dordrecht and Boston, Mass.: Reidel, 1978).
38. G. Dosi, ‘Technological Paradigms and Technological Trajectories: A Suggested Interpretation of the Determinants and Directions of Technical Change’, Research Policy, Vol. 11 (1982), 147-62. Dosi uses the concept of ‘technological trajectory’, developed by R. R. Nelson and S. G. Winter, ‘In Search of a Useful Theory of Innovation’, Research Policy, Vol. 6 (1977), 36-76.
39. One is reminded of the first blush of Kuhnian studies in the sociology of science. It was hoped that Kuhn's paradigm concept might be straightforwardly employed by sociologists in their studies of science. Indeed there were a number of studies in which attempts were made to identify phases of science, such as preparadigmatic, normal and revolutionary. It soon became apparent, however, that Kuhn's terms were loosely formulated, could be subject to a variety of interpretations and did not lend themselves to operationalization in any straightforward manner. It has also been argued that this description of science, especially when paradigms are interpreted as a form of sociometric network or ‘invisible college’, is not particularly radical. See, especially, T. J. Pinch, ‘Kuhn - The Conservative and Radical Interpretations: Are some Mertonians “Kuhnians” and some Kuhnians “Mertonians”?’, 4S Newsletter, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1982), 10-25.
40. See, for example, the inconclusive discussion over whether a Kuhnian analysis applies to psychology in D. S. Palermo, ‘Is a Scientific Revolution Taking Place in Psychology?’, Science Studies, Vol. 3 (1973), 211-44. A notable exception is Barnes's recent contribution to the discussion of Kuhn's work: B. Barnes, T. S. Kuhn and Social Science (London: Macmillan, 1982).
41. M. J. Mulkay, ‘Knowledge and Utility: Implications for the Sociology of Knowledge’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 9 (1979), 63-80.
42. M. Bunge, ‘Technology as Applied Science’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 7 (1966), 329-47.
43. M. Callon, ‘The State and Technical Innovation: A Case Study of the Electrical Vehicle in France’, Research Policy, Vol. 9 (1980), 358-76. The bulk of the empirical material on the development of the electric vehicle has not yet been published. In a series of articles Callon uses examples from his study to illustrate his approach towards technology: see Callon, ‘Struggles and Negotiations to Define what is Problematic and what is Not - the Socio-Logic of Translation’, in K. D. Knorr, R. Krohn and R. Whitley (eds), The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, Sociology of the Sciences Yearbook, Vol. 4 (Dordrecht and Boston, Mass.: Reidel, 1980), 197-219; and Callon, ‘Pour une sociologie des controverses technologiques’, Fundamenta Scientiae, Vol. 2 (1981), 381-99.
44. For a useful review of Marxist work in this area, see D. Mackenzie, ‘Marx and the Machine’, Technology and Culture, in press.
45. H. M. Collins, ‘The Place of the Core-Set in Modern Science: Social Contingency with Methodological Propriety in Science’, History of Science, Vol. 19 (1981), 6-19.
46. It may be useful to state explicitly that we consider bicycles to be as fullyfledged a technology as, for example, automobiles or aircraft. It may be helpful for readers from outside notorious cycle countries such as The Netherlands, France and Britain, to point out that both the automobile and the aircraft industries are, in a way, descendants from the bicycle industry. Many names occur both in the histories of the bicycle and in the histories of the autocar: Triumph, Rover, Humber, Raleigh, to mention but a few. The Wright brothers both sold and manufactured bicycles before they started to build their flying machines - mostly made out of bicycle parts. See C. F. Caunter, The History and Development of Light Cars (London: HMSO, 1957); Caunter, The History and Development of Cycles (as illustrated by the collection of cycles in the Science Museum); Part I: Historical Survey (London: HMSO, 1955); C. H. Gibbs-Smith, The Aeroplane: An Historical Survey of its Origins and Development (London: HMSO, 1960).
47. J. Woodforde, The Story of the Bicycle (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970).
48. There is no cookbook recipe for how to identify a social group. Quantitative instruments using citation data may be of some help in certain cases. More research is needed to develop operationalizations of the notion of ‘relevant social group’ for a variety of historical and sociological research sites.
49. ‘The Stanley Exhibition of Cycles’, The Engineer, Vol. 69 (7 February 1890), 107-08.
50. J. B. Dunlop, ‘An Improvement in Tyres of Wheels for Bicycles, Tricycles, or other Road Cars’, British Patent No. 10607 (date of application: 23 July 1888).
51. ‘The Stanley Exhibition of Cycles’, The Engineer, Vol. 67 (22 February 1889), 157-58.
52. W. Grew, The Cycle Industry, its Origin, History and Latest Developments (London: Sir I. Pitman & Sons, 1921), 8.
53. H. M. Collins, ‘Son of Seven Sexes: The Social Destruction of a Physical Phenomenon’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 11 (1981), 33-62.
54. Pickering has confirmed this point to us in personal communication. See also A. Pickering, ‘Discovery Claims, Ad Hominem Arguments and Research Programmes: Case Studies in Elementary Particle Physics’ (Edinburgh: Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, September 1978, unpublished mimeo).
55. Advertisements seem to constitute a large and potentially fruitful source for empirical social studies of technology. The considerations which professional advertising designers give to differences between various ‘consumer groups’ obviously fit our use of different relevant groups. For a fascinating account of the role of advertising in the development of household technology, see Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from The Open Hearth to the Microwave (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
56. See L. Croon, Das Fahrrad und seine Entwicklung (Berlin: VDI-Verlag, 1939).
57. E. W. Constant, ‘Scientific Theory and Technological Testability: Science, Dynamometers, and Water Turbines in the 19th Century’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 24 (1983), 183-98.
58. For a more detailed discussion of some methodological and strategical conclusions, drawn from our comparative study of science and technology, see W. E. Bijker and T. J. Pinch, ‘La construction sociale de faits et d'artefacts: Impératifs stratégiques et méthodologiques pour une approche unifiée de l'étude des sciences et de la technique’, paper presented to ‘L'atelier de recherche (III) sur les problèmes stratégiques et méthodologiques des sciences sociales en milieu scientifique et technique’ (Paris: 2-3 March 1983).
59. Trevor Pinch is a lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. He has carried out research in the sociology of scientific knowledge, especially several case studies of physics. His current interests are in the notion of observation in science and how recent work in the sociology of scientific knowledge can be extended to technology. As well as several articles in the sociology of science Pinch is co-author (with H. M. Collins) of Frames of Meaning (London: Routledge