About Science

by Barry Barnes

Barnes, Barry

Hardcover

First published December 31, 1985

About the author

S. Barry Barnes was Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter. He is known for his pioneering work on the sociological study of knowledge generation and evaluation in science, and on the credibility of scientific expertise.

Reviews

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good 1985 introduction to how science can be understood through a sociological sensibility, meant for scientists and students of the sciences in particular, with the case made through the use of a broad range of historical and sociological material. Barnes, as usual, makes the case that science should not be understood as some vague method of open inquiry, but rather the work of a specific community predicated on leveraging authority and functioning as gate-keepers. But even while science in this manner seeks to make itself exclusive and authoritative, it paradoxically also imbricates itself within society even deeper. As he puts it:

Our recent history is at one and the same time the history of the growing gap between science and the rest of society, the growing interdependence between science and society, and the growing dominance of science within society. (26)

I particularly liked the 8-page appendix, where a Martian anthropologist condescendingly analyzes British views of paternity. Barnes' explicit point at the end is made through two thought experiments - first, he asks us to imagine how difficult it would be to convince this alien of the accuracy of contemporary Earth views if you were simply locked in a room together. Second, he asks us to imagine how it would be to try to convince the alien of the correctness of the Earth view if we could access to authorities, Public Records Offices, laboratories, etc. While he concedes that he cannot predict what the result of even the second would be, he hopes he has made his case that:

...after the first experiment, any idea that knowledge of individuals is directly sustained by their own experience may have been qualified to some extent. And after the second experiment the notion that knowledge is sustained collectively may perhaps prove just a little more plausible. (151-2)