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Science and Cultural Theory
The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science
This ambitious book by one of the most original and provocative thinkers in science studies offers a sophisticated new understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical, and engineering practice and the production of scientific knowledge.
Andrew Pickering offers a new approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the extraordinary number of factors—social, technological, conceptual, and natural—that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined practices, and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another—"mangled" together in unforeseeable ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time, and place.
Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a richer understanding of scientific work both past and present. Pickering examines in detail the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics, and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice—the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory, and the interrelation of machines and social organization.
Andrew Pickering offers a new approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the extraordinary number of factors—social, technological, conceptual, and natural—that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined practices, and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another—"mangled" together in unforeseeable ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time, and place.
Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a richer understanding of scientific work both past and present. Pickering examines in detail the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics, and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice—the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory, and the interrelation of machines and social organization.
296 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 7, 2013
Pickering’s groundbreaking book seems to me to have cleared up many theoretical issues left behind by both SSK (Sociology of Scientific Knowledge) and ANT (Actor-Network Theory). Pickering, like Hacking, starts by rejecting the “representational idiom” in which science is thought to be the activity of representing or creating a map of nature. Instead Pickering wants to concern himself with the “performative image of science” in which “science is regarded as a field of powers, capacities, and performances (7).” For Pickering ignoring the doing of science is to completely miss the point of understanding the construction of scientific knowledge in the first place.
First, Pickering goes after SSK’s obsession with human agency (see my review of Bloor for more on this model). Many SSK accounts posit that human “interests” drive the construction of scientific knowledge, and argue that any seeming material or technological agency can be reduced to some sort of human agency. This allows them to avoid Bloor’s original concerns about the history of science getting reduced to a history of error (if we can tell the story via natural agency alone historians aren’t needed or relevant; it’s just a matter of figuring out the ways that nature is speaking). Pickering, borrowing Bloor’s terminology for something entirely different (rather confusing the issue I might say), called this approach asymmetrical with respect to agency. In this model (rather, his caricature of the model) there is no room for nature.
On the other hand, ANT advocates symmetry between human and nonhuman agents. Both, according to writers like Latour, work in concert to enroll other agents into agreement with experiments and models. However, Pickering points out what should really have been obvious to all of us: human and nonhuman agents just aren’t the same, unless you reduce both of them to semiotic constructs. In practice, humans have intentions and goals, while nonhuman agents do not. For Pickering, “The world of intentionality is, then, constitutively engaged with the world of material agency (20).”
It is of particular importance to Pickering that modeling happens dynamically through and in time, which means that the intentions and goals of scientists are conditioned by scientific cultures as the same time that scientists respond to “captured material agency.” Pickering develops some flowery metaphors about the “dance of agency” in which a scientists encounters resistances from the material world, then seeks to accommodate models based on those findings. So, what is the mangle? It is the “goal-oriented and goal-revising dialectic of resistance and accommodation” that reflects the “emergently intertwined delineation and reconfiguration of machinic captures and human intentions, practices, and so on (23).”
This very helpful model leads Pickering to his position, called “pragmatic realism.” This type of realism would support “an indefinitely diverse set of ontologies” and suggests that scientific knowledge is both objective and relative (32). This last part is bound to raise hackles and cause debate, as it should, especially from the more straight-up realists (really, who even cares about positivism as a serious position these days). I’m actually a fan of this result, as it honors the supremely contingent nature of the construction of scientific knowledge. Pickering is careful to reject any synchronic or static definition of “constraints” which is how people usually try to argue that the possible ontologies simply can’t be infinite!! Pickering rejects this way of thinking about constraints as pre-judging the issue and once again taking scientific analysis out of time. Pickering wants everything in time. And in time, constraints are practical, not theoretical (he invents the term machinic incommensurability here, Kuhn reference).
This book cleared up a lot for me and in general I have to say that I agree with it. It’s been pointed out to me by many that the usefulness of Pickering’s theoretical positions for the actual practice of history are far less clear, as is exemplified by his application sections and subsequent books, but as a contribution to theory in science studies this book is one of the contemporary greats.
First, Pickering goes after SSK’s obsession with human agency (see my review of Bloor for more on this model). Many SSK accounts posit that human “interests” drive the construction of scientific knowledge, and argue that any seeming material or technological agency can be reduced to some sort of human agency. This allows them to avoid Bloor’s original concerns about the history of science getting reduced to a history of error (if we can tell the story via natural agency alone historians aren’t needed or relevant; it’s just a matter of figuring out the ways that nature is speaking). Pickering, borrowing Bloor’s terminology for something entirely different (rather confusing the issue I might say), called this approach asymmetrical with respect to agency. In this model (rather, his caricature of the model) there is no room for nature.
On the other hand, ANT advocates symmetry between human and nonhuman agents. Both, according to writers like Latour, work in concert to enroll other agents into agreement with experiments and models. However, Pickering points out what should really have been obvious to all of us: human and nonhuman agents just aren’t the same, unless you reduce both of them to semiotic constructs. In practice, humans have intentions and goals, while nonhuman agents do not. For Pickering, “The world of intentionality is, then, constitutively engaged with the world of material agency (20).”
It is of particular importance to Pickering that modeling happens dynamically through and in time, which means that the intentions and goals of scientists are conditioned by scientific cultures as the same time that scientists respond to “captured material agency.” Pickering develops some flowery metaphors about the “dance of agency” in which a scientists encounters resistances from the material world, then seeks to accommodate models based on those findings. So, what is the mangle? It is the “goal-oriented and goal-revising dialectic of resistance and accommodation” that reflects the “emergently intertwined delineation and reconfiguration of machinic captures and human intentions, practices, and so on (23).”
This very helpful model leads Pickering to his position, called “pragmatic realism.” This type of realism would support “an indefinitely diverse set of ontologies” and suggests that scientific knowledge is both objective and relative (32). This last part is bound to raise hackles and cause debate, as it should, especially from the more straight-up realists (really, who even cares about positivism as a serious position these days). I’m actually a fan of this result, as it honors the supremely contingent nature of the construction of scientific knowledge. Pickering is careful to reject any synchronic or static definition of “constraints” which is how people usually try to argue that the possible ontologies simply can’t be infinite!! Pickering rejects this way of thinking about constraints as pre-judging the issue and once again taking scientific analysis out of time. Pickering wants everything in time. And in time, constraints are practical, not theoretical (he invents the term machinic incommensurability here, Kuhn reference).
This book cleared up a lot for me and in general I have to say that I agree with it. It’s been pointed out to me by many that the usefulness of Pickering’s theoretical positions for the actual practice of history are far less clear, as is exemplified by his application sections and subsequent books, but as a contribution to theory in science studies this book is one of the contemporary greats.
September 20, 2021
Pickering offers a view of scientific practice as always involving a mangle of the social and material. This is probably the right metaphysical view, but the book has two glaring flaws. First, Pickering fails to understand the epistemological approach of the earlier Sociology of Scientific Knowledge tradition he thinks he's crticizing - eg: he wrongly claims they were insensitive to the material and that they construed the social as unchanging. Second, he fails to appreciate that any fruitful explanatory scheme requires abstraction: while the mangle may very well be the most comprehensive description, we generate new bodies of knowledge by strategically ignoring certain features to focus on certain consequently emergent patterns. This abstraction is what allows accounts of reality from natural and social scientists to have explanatory power, while rendering Pickering's own non-abstracted mangle an explanatory dead end.
October 21, 2021
As he concisely summarizes late in the book, Pickering's purpose here is to establish a perspective on science he calls the "cultural studies of science." This work attempts to reconcile outlooks on science as a quest for objective truth via rigorous methodological practice or as a more subjectivist practice that is influenced (in success and failure) by social factors.
The key to Pickering's argument is "the mangle," which simultaneously invokes two seemingly contradictory senses of the word: the process of multilating or damaging and the process of smoothing (as with clothing via a mechanical "mangle"). The mangle is a process by which scientific ideas come into contact with the realities of technologies, equipment, media, people, institutions, and other concepts systems that don't work as expected or are incommensurable with that scientific idea. The underlying idea may not be testable due to shortcomings in technology or the biases of prevailing paradigms/institutions of thinking, or because of incompatibility with adjacent concepts. Where everything meets, the science is "mangled," becoming what it can become in a way that is commensurate with the data, with observations, with prevailing paradigms, with the cultures the shape it. Science is neither the product of a methodologically pure investigation of reality nor is it a completely relativistic outcome of social construction -- it is a workable outcome influenced by both. In this sense, Pickering's "mangle" is a modern pragmatist outlook on science.
Overall, the book was an interesting read, especially the early chapters offering case studies of scientific practice. The latter chapters on integrating a cultural studies of science back into the broader area of science and technology studies (STS) will appeal to far fewer readers.
The key to Pickering's argument is "the mangle," which simultaneously invokes two seemingly contradictory senses of the word: the process of multilating or damaging and the process of smoothing (as with clothing via a mechanical "mangle"). The mangle is a process by which scientific ideas come into contact with the realities of technologies, equipment, media, people, institutions, and other concepts systems that don't work as expected or are incommensurable with that scientific idea. The underlying idea may not be testable due to shortcomings in technology or the biases of prevailing paradigms/institutions of thinking, or because of incompatibility with adjacent concepts. Where everything meets, the science is "mangled," becoming what it can become in a way that is commensurate with the data, with observations, with prevailing paradigms, with the cultures the shape it. Science is neither the product of a methodologically pure investigation of reality nor is it a completely relativistic outcome of social construction -- it is a workable outcome influenced by both. In this sense, Pickering's "mangle" is a modern pragmatist outlook on science.
Overall, the book was an interesting read, especially the early chapters offering case studies of scientific practice. The latter chapters on integrating a cultural studies of science back into the broader area of science and technology studies (STS) will appeal to far fewer readers.
May 18, 2014
Provides an interesting theoretical bridge between physics and social science.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews