Javier, Andrew A.

ETHICS – L
08/08/19

Society in Science :A Book Review on “Science, Technology and Society; A Sociological

Approach by Bauchspies, Croissant and Restive (2006)”

The book report is written for and presented to Fr. Michael Moga, SJ, the professor for
ETHICS – L. Moving on, the title of the book is Science, Technology and Society: A Sociological
Approach, which is written by Wenda K. Bauchspies, Jennifer Croissant and Sal Restivo.
Furthermore, the book is comprised of a 146-page content published, as first edition, by Blackwell
Publishing in 2006. The rationale behind the book of choice would be my interest in gaining newer
perspectives on the field of science. The book asserts science to be a culture in and of itself –
proliferating their own notion of a fact, adhering to their own worldviews, and subjecting
technology to standards such as truth and power.
Everyone is a social theorist. The authors began by positing social theory as the medium
which we use for connecting with the world. Such theory is ubiquitously found in our daily
endeavors, even in those that we label mundane and unimportant such as greeting a friend, buying
bread from the bakery, attending daily classes and reading this text. Furthermore, these encounters
are indicative of our being part of the social fabric that supplies us with the different perspectives
– harmonious or dissonant. Hence, the authors postulated that a social theorist is what we are when
we tread through our daily world figuring what others are doing around us, with us and to us.
Social construction is the mechanism driving all processes in the social fabric within which
we, social theorists, exist. The authors contend that social construction pervades our current world
today because knowledge and concepts are difficult to produce without close association with
another social human person. Moreover, science is a social construct. Science, then, is fully
cognizant of its inherent social nature. Conducting research experiments requires a scientist to
interact with his/her team and associate with other groups of people. The foregoing are social
human acts because they require a language, an exchange of ideas, and an interpretation of
information from which scientists are immersed on – pointing to the existence of a society within
the so-called absolute and objective science. Lastly, the authors concur with Karl Marx and Peter
Kropotkin that science, no matter how rigorous nor factual it is, is a society in and of itself.
Technology is controlled by social processes. The former relies on inventions and
innovations for it to flourish in which most are products of simultaneous discoveries and
collaborative activities. Moreover, technology, as the authors contend, seeks to make man’s life
easier and more productive. However, as social theorists, it is imperative to understand that there
exists no “pure” technical criteria that will tell us which invention is more superior, because such
criteria are dependent on the ubiquitous variety of contexts upon which the foregoing might be
applied. Furthermore, social processes such as determining performance characteristics, as well as
their relative importance, are based on social decisions and cultural grounds. Ultimately, since
science and technology are subjected to various human social processes, what is considered true?
Truth is objective relative to discourses and practices taken together by groups. In fact,
social construction, as the authors contend, is the only methodology we, social theorists, have of
manufacturing our cultures, our truths, and even our falsehoods. For example, mathematicians
convene and deliberate on the selection and construction of a unique language of symbols,
Mathematics, in order to unite them and exclude the uninitiated. The foregoing is indicative of the
existence of a society within Mathematics and among the mathematicians because they organize
people and ideas around certain goals. Consequently, what the mathematicians contend as true is
objective truth for them, but this may not be the case for non-mathematicians who belong to other
social groups. Hence, subjective criteria and standards are the frameworks upon which objective
truths are built.
Science and truth speak in the interest of and are spoken by the powerful. Proponents, along
with their concepts, of postmodernism subscribe to the foregoing. Moreover, the authors
introduced the transitions in defining truth: religion became the starting point for telling the truth;
“the specter of relativism has haunted those who have sought an objective path to truth”; over-
committing to truths will inevitably cause us to regress (i.e., as a counterargument for Nietzsche’s
nihilistic truth); and, “truth is a particular event constrained by the stylized ways of thinking
peculiar to a given network of thinkers (Fleck, 1979/1935 as cited in Bauchspies, Croissant, &
Restivo, 2006). Ultimately, the statement (i.e., first sentence of the paragraph) made by the authors
rings true because the postmodernist definitions of truth recognize that power is knowledge.
When we interact with institutions, we are presented with various spectra of information
and knowledge from which we are induced to be less cognizant of what is true. The foregoing
makes us part of the process of interpellation; which is a phenomenon that describes the “processes
through which institutions label us as subjects, putting us into various social positions”
(Bauchspies, Croissant, & Restivo, 2006) that elucidate what we can do, and what can be done to
us relative to the institution with which we interact. Furthermore, the difficulty in establishing
grounds for what constitutes as true is compounded by our interactions with each other (i.e., social
theorists to social theorists) in cultural and environmental arenas. The authors, ultimately, supports
the contention that science is a society in and of itself by stating, “Everything we believe,
everything we know, everything we do comes from our earthbound social and cultural
experiences”.
Moving on, the discord between having control over and being controlled by technology
is pervasive in our modern world as manifested in individual-institution and technology-individual
relationships. Humans, therefore, are endowed with an abundant unambiguous power, unlike those
of cyborgs’, because they can mimic nature by creating technology to fully understand who and
what they are. The author states that, “large-scale systems … are the most obvious places where
power and control are concentrated” and to relinquish “… our responsibility for the continuation
and maintenance” of useful infrastructures (e.g., dams and power grids), then we cede power to
the larger institutions. However, imaginative innovation can save us from such dilemma. Lastly,
the authors asserted that “the invention of science is already the reinvention of science … as these
processes unfold … we humans flow into new identities, new roles, and new places in the world”.
In summary, technoscience positions the existence of things in relation to our manner of
acting on and using the latter. The social webs of meaning-in-use are located in and draw their
significance from cultural and historical settings. Moreover, social theory provides credence to the
idea that machines can think, become conscious, and display emotions. Consequently, the idea of
“the social” becomes ambiguous which induces scientists to become the banes of their own
discoveries. Nevertheless, this serves as a motivation to propel us to be more critical about the
social by defending our vitality as thinkers and the vitality of our ideas. Ultimately, our ideas,
notions, perceptions, interpretations and reactions regarding the vast array of science and
technology studies are both a reflection of hybridization and an effort to construct a new rationality.
Reference:
Bauchspies, W. K., Croissant, J., & Restivo, S. (2006). Science, Technology and Society: A
Sociological Approach. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing.