快猫短视频

The Golem and The Golem at Large by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch,
Cambridge, 拢12.95, ISBN 0521551412

YOU probably don鈥檛 need to be reminded about the border skirmishes between
scientists and sociologists over what science can and cannot do. The most recent
highlights were the spoof paper by physicist Alan Sokal that appeared in an
American sociological journal Social Text (1996) and the glorious rows
that followed鈥攅ven to this day.

Protagonists in these quarrels have been somewhat at a loss when it comes to
placing Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch: are they friend or foe? Most reviews by
scientists of The Golem (1993) were hostile, or at least suspicious.
But there were sociologists who didn鈥檛 like it either. The confusion should not
have been surprising. Both Collins and Pinch trained as physicists before they
turned sociologists. Their book stressed that they were neither for science nor
against it, rather that they wanted to examine how it actually worked. En route
this necessitated debunking various myths, notably the claim that science
guarantees truth because it is built upon a unique method鈥攁 claim
reiterated by E. O. Wilson in his new book, Consilience (New
快猫短视频, 22 August, p 42).

By contrast, Collins and Pinch chose to liken science to the golem, that
creature from Jewish mythology which, while not evil, is marked by a clumsy
vigour. They held that science is neither all good nor all bad, neither a
shining knight dispelling ignorance and superstition nor a sinister force, doing
capitalism鈥檚 dirty work. Old notions that science is the automatic product of
observation and experimentation should give way to a view of it as a set of
valuable but fallible skills. At its cutting edge, controversy will always rage,
because there is no neutral place, no Archimedean point; in the search for
authority, a kind of infinite regression is unavoidable.

In The Golem at Large, our authors take the opportunity to answer
critics of the first book. Their tone is reassuring, calling for dialogues not
duels between science and the humanities.

They then push their programme on into the domain of technology, posing tough
question. Did Patriot missiles really shoot down Iraq鈥檚 Scuds in the Gulf War?
Who was to blame for the Challenger explosion in 1986? Who actually made the
decisions, and who should have decided?

Rejecting 20/20 hindsight, Collins and Pinch once again avoid the easy
heroes-and-villains option: the Challenger disaster did not occur because 鈥渂ad鈥�
managers overrode 鈥済ood鈥� engineers. Instead, they insist it is a fallacy to
suppose that there can be a correct 鈥渟cientific鈥� way of settling such issues.
Expertise, rather, is a localised and personal matter, and the true expert is
the person with the most relevant skills. Expertise is thus as good as the
experts, not the scientific procedures.

Collins and Pinch score through lively prose and apt selection of supporting
evidence. Take this priceless exchange between a congressman and a brigadier as
to the success of Patriot missiles in the Desert Storm operation:

鈥淐onvers: Well was he [President Bush] in error?

Drolet: No, sir.

Convers: So he was correct when he said 41 out of 42 Scuds were intercepted?

Drolet: Yes, sir.

Convers: You have records to back that up?

Drolet: Intercepted?

Convers: Yes, sir

Drolet: Yes, sir. He did not say killed or destroyed. He said
intercepted. That means that a Scud came in and a Patriot was fired. But he did
not say and we did not say, nor did we every say, that it meant all of the Scuds
were killed.

Convers: He didn鈥檛 mean that they were killed? He meant intercepted,
meaning what in military jargon?

Drolet: He just means that a Patriot and a Scud crossed paths, their
paths in the sky. It was engaged.

Convers: They passed each other in the sky?

Drolet: Yes, sir.鈥�

Targeted at today鈥檚 myths, Collins and Pinch鈥檚 missile, will, I hope, do more
than merely pass them in the sky.