Chapter 1
This first chapter forms a history, upon which I tell other histories as well as a start of my travel into trying transformations in my academic contexts. It is an early text, where I use my experiences as researcher in chemistry12.
Clean and Unclean Facts - Diffractions in Knowledge Production
I am a feminist and a researcher. I have received the traditional research training in faculties of natural science and technology . I have been trained never to write “I” in a scientific text, only to write we, if the use of third person is not possible. The cherished objectivity permeated my thoughts, words and my experimental research work until a professor of organic chemistry gave a lecture on the ideas of some, in his mind crazy, scientific thinkers. This was my first encounter with Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend. The concept of objectivity got a first blow.
Basic and / or applied research
The dichotomy basic research and applied research is still a popular concept within the field of natural science. The status of each has altered according to the shifts in the wind of research politics. However, despite these shifts basic research, read natural science, has not actually been moved from its position in the hierarchy of science. The notion of a pure science is deeply rooted in the positivist tradition of science, its roots going back to the renaissance and to the very birth of modern science (Merchant 1980). “Impure” research would thus be applied research, usually meaning technology or engineering (Keller 1992 p 78). Since “impure” research is considered to be carried out closer to people’s everyday lives and thereby closer to the decisions concerning people’s everyday lives, there is a tendency to shift the responsibility for the production of knowledge from basic research to applied research, and even to externalize the responsibility by moving it to the political and social arena. This is completely in line with the predominant tradition of knowledge production and with a mindset characterized by strict linearity.
Nina Lykke14 brings up a discussion about the potential of interdisciplinary research, in which she makes use of Bruno Latour’s description of modernism (Lykke 1994). Modernism is to Latour an act of purification serving to clearly mark off the academic faculties from hybrid forms, which even can consist of elements external to science. In a complex world dependent on scientific knowledge, this zeal for purity is becoming increasingly difficult to satisfy, especially in natural science and technology.
Scientific production of knowledge has, for a long time, moved towards an increasing dependency on advanced technology. Technology in the form of research equipment is supposed to exist for the purpose of making visible the things we cannot perceive directly with our senses. My own field for PhD studies, analytical chemistry, is like most other fields within natural science shaped by instrumental, technical methodology. Wet chemistry methods, which are possible to separate from advanced technical know-how within analytical chemistry, are more or less history or automatized parts of the construction of technical equipment. Applied research in the form of advanced technology is integrated in basic research. The borders between natural science and technology are being erased. The two have instead become the prerequisites of each other’s existence15 .
The development within molecular biology proves that basic research and technology can be totally coincident. As soon as you by means of your active substances achieve a successful experiment in the test-tubes, you have simultaneously created a concrete genetic method (and product). The applied research, technology, here is for obvious reasons shifted to further full scale production of the product. To sum up the dichotomy basic research and applied research has exceedingly hazy boarders.
Theory and method
The assertion that all methods are “impregnated with theory” has for long been notified within the social sciences (Lindholm 1989). The relevance of this understanding in natural science is not far fetched. Since most methods are instrumental, the consequence of the line of thought mentioned is that the theories we develop / create / produce have the same natural scientific foundation as the instruments we are using to form the basis of our theories. We can thus never locate ourselves, objectively and neutrally, on the side of our natural scientific research objects. Sandra Harding points out (Harding 1993, p. 16-17) that scientists never can observe trees, rocks, planetary orbits or electrons in a state, in which they are untouched by human activities or meanings. Instead, they are destined to observe something different but, hopefully, systematically related to nature apart from human perceptions: nature-as-an-object-of-knowledge. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is another illustration, which has profound implications for such fundamental notions as causality and the determination of the future behaviour of an atomic particle. Karen Barad continues this kind of discussion (see below). There is a “vicious circle” in the forming of theories, also in natural science. Our methods are with other words also “impregnated by theory”. This is a thought that scientists within “pure” natural science are very unaccustomed to16. The impacts of bringing Donna Haraway’s idea of “situated knowledge” straight into the world of chemistry and physics with its formula fixation are still a true challenge17. If natural science would live up to its absolutely neutral ideals - also when it comes to methods - we would be compelled to place ourselves outside of the prevailing paradigm of natural science. Just the thought is a preposterousness. What I call for in natural science is a degree of humbleness in our claims of absolute knowledge. If self reflection could be developed and practiced within the natural scientific and technological disciplines, many of the problems that feminist research pay attention to would be addressed in a more appropriate way.
Sharon Traweek has in her book Beamtimes and Lifetimes (Traweek 1988) given an initiated picture of production of knowledge within high-energy physics. Her work was based on a study of three national accelerator laboratories; SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator, USA); KEK (Ko-Enerugie butsurigaku Kenkyusho, Japan) and Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, USA). Experiments within high-energy physics are constantly dependent on instrumental innovations, especially when it comes to detectors. There was a special detector attached to every experimental research team within the laboratories mentioned. The different detectors represented different views of knowledge and different methods.
The differences among these detectors serve as a mnemonic device for thinking about the various groups’ models for scientific method: how to elicit traces from nature that are both significant and reproducible. Detectors themselves, then, supply a system for classifying modes of discovery. Each is the material embodiment of a research group’s version of how to produce and reproduce fine physics, how to gain a place for the group’s work in the taxonomy of established knowledge. (Traweek 1988 p 72)
The contrasting approaches of the stationary research teams and visiting user groups (for the detectors) at SLAC made the stationary teams’ view of knowledge production visible. The stationary team held the opinion that the knowledge of the head should have an equivalence in the practical skills of the hand. To know your detector inside out and thereby be able to use and manipulate it yourself, was / is a prerequisite of good physical research. At KEK in Japan, the situation with the detectors was completely different. The Japanese research teams were entirely dependent on commercial instrument developers. The process of production of knowledge was in this case an entirely different one. How this was reflected in the forming of theory is hard to tell, since KEK at the time Traweek’s study was carried out was in the process of being built up. Traweek was however able to see that KEK’s detector was designed to minimize noise, which is a fact that reduces the possibilities of finding new data. Research qualities of different kind occurred.
The instrumental development of methods has been enormous during the last decades, mostly due to the computerization of systems. I was a postgraduate research student in the field of analytic chemistry during the second half of the 1970s. My research was concentrated on development of instrumental techniques and I worked both within the faculty of technology and the faculty of natural science. The technical analytical chemistry at the technical institute and the analytical chemistry at the university in the same town were closely linked. This is a case where we can talk about hazy borders between “pure” and “impure” research.
The chromatograph instruments I worked with were usually not steered by a central processing unit in those days. For this reason, I gained a lot of practical skill. I learned how to adjust most of the parts of the instrument myself, from the place of injection to the detector part. The practical skills of my hands, reduced the distance to my research object (high-molecular materials). It was hard enough to be forced to have a “box” between myself and the research object. To have a “box” plus a technician between myself and the object I wanted to study, creates even more distance. The more computerized the instruments becomes, the less able is the individual researcher to her / himself influence the instrumental method. What we have gained in precision, time and possibilities, we have partly lost in dependence (to the instrument company). The effects of these factors are hard to judge, since it is problematic to generalize and because we here touch upon our epistemological preferences. Almost ten years after I formulated myself like this, Karen Barad excellently expressed what I have tried to do. She states They (apparatuses) are neither neutral probes of the natural world nor structures that deterministically impose some particular outcome….apparatuses are themselves phenomena…Apparatuses are constituted through particular practices that are perpetually open to rearrangements, rearticulations and other reworkings. This is part of the creativity and difficulty of doing science: getting the instrumentation to work in a particular way for a particular purpose….Apparatuses are material (re)configurings / discursive practices that produce material phenomena in their discursively differentiated becoming (Barad 2003 p 816, 817, 820).
To the experimental physics within high-energy physics, detectors were no pre-programmed black boxes (Traweek 1988 p 49). Traweek states that the physicists saw the development of these instruments as a part of discovering nature (in their vocabulary). The detailed description Traweek gives of the relationship between the constant building of detectors and the process of knowledge production provides a possibility to challenge the traditional belief in a mechanistic way of establishing facts i.e. the context of discovery.
Quantitative methods
After I had finished my undergraduate studies, I worked as a laboratory assistant in a research laboratory for a year. I performed nitrite analyses by using cadmium reductors and making potentiometric measurements. My job was to achieve nice looking, straight calibration lines. Every now and then the values jumped out of the wished-for line. My task then became a matter of carrying out as many experiments as was needed in order to drown the anomalies in the statistic material.
The philosopher Richard Rorty reflects in a frank way my experiences in the following thoughts on the question of method:
Within what Thomas Kuhn calls the “normal science”-puzzle-solving - they (the scientists) use the same banal and obvious methods all of us use in everyday human activity. They check off examples against criteria; they fudge the counterexamples enough to avoid the need for new methods; they try out various guesses, formulated within the current jargon in hope of coming up with something which will cover the unfudgeable cases… Scientific method means… obeying the normal conventions of your discipline, not fudging the data too much, not letting your hopes and fears influence your conclusions unless those hopes and fears are shared by those who are in the same line of work. (Rorty 1981)
There are great temptations in statistic analysis of results. Gregor Mendel, the monk and one of the greatest innovators in modern biology, formulated theories of heredity on basis of a statistic material from experiments with leguminous plants. His many years of laborious research-work earned him the recognition of being the founder of genetics. There have been a number of thorough investigations of Medel’s methods, as his results have proved to be difficult to reproduce. Already in the 1930s, the statistician Ronald A Fisher showed that Mendel had chosen data selectively in order to get the best numerals. In 1966, the geneticist Sewell Wright suggested another explanation in a short but often quoted analysis - that Mendel’s one and only error might have been an innocent tendency to count wrong in favour of the expected results, when he counted the hereditary qualities of his peas (Broad & Wade 1983). I assume a hesitant attitude to whether the ethics in scientific methods have improved since the end of the 1960s, when B L van der Waerden expressed the following opinion in a discussion about Mendel’s selection of data:
I have the feeling that many perfectly honest researchers would tend to follow a mode of procedure as such. As soon as you have got out a number of results that clearly confirms a new theory, you would publish these results and put the hesitant cases to the side. (Broad & Wade 1983 p. 40, translated from Swedish).
It is easy to feel upset about the manipulating tendencies and lack of honesty of researchers. These problems with quantitative methods bring about serious consequences, which we for instance can observe in theories about women’s bodily and mentally functions based on hormone and brain research18. It does not seem to be sufficient to improve the statistic method for dealing with the problems. The question is if we in this matter should not turn our attention in an alternative direction and problematize the statistic methods as such. One of the more obvious examples of this approach is Barbara McClintock’s understanding of epistemology and its consequences in experimental research work, an achievement for which she was awarded the Nobel price in medicine. Barbara McClintock, who was a geneticist, strongly questioned the statistic analysis of results. Her main source of knowledge was the anomalies in the material. She was of the opinion that the great challenge to researchers within most disciplines is to liberate themselves from the hypotheses / theories, which they have established all too soon. McClintock disapproved of the fact that many researchers already have a ready-made answer, before the experimental work is completed. This makes them uninterested in anomalies and in the knowledge inherent in anomalies (cited in Keller 1983).
If the case is to eliminate results in form of anomalies, which can not be explained by experimental errors such as errors in preparation, instruments, wrong reading etc. and which might carry vital knowledge - then we ought to make sure that the failed results are published to the same extent as the successful ones. This idea has been discussed within science, but it seems to be very difficult to carry it into effect, for the reason that legitimacy within the academy is created by the publishing of successful results and nice-looking, concentrated and clear formulas and theories (Trojer 1994). However, if failed results would be published to a greater extent, it would in reality contribute to the credibility and clarity of “successful” results, since these, as I have explained above, may be more or less censored or limited.
Extrapolation
The straight lines are desirable and practical. I have problematized the creation of these within natural science. I am now passing on to a discussion about the potential for extrapolation of the straight lines and the meaning assigned to this.
The example - however simple - I have chosen is about gases and how they work. Gases consist of molecules, which move in relatiovely free and irregular ways. It was probably with that feeling and that apprehension van Helmot, in the beginning of the 17th century, created the word “gas” as a formation of the word “chaos” (Hägg 1963 p. 39).
The general law of gas shows a linear relationship in the ideal gas equation
PV = nRT
where P=pressure, V=volume, n=moles of gas, R=gas constant, T=temperature in degrees Kelvin.
We can obtain a straight line in an honest way, if the temperature is not too low, the pressure not to high and the gases that are used are inert gases, hydrogen, nitrogen or oxygen. The general law of gas applies to, so called, ideal gases - imaginary gases, whose molecules behave in such a way that no forces interact between them except when they collide, and the total volume of the molecules can be neglected compared to the volume of the vessel in which the gas is enclosed. At a pressure of up to 10 atm and at zero degrees Celsius, the gases mentioned behave almost like ideal gases. At low temperatures, high pressure and with troublesome gases, it is not possible to get a straight line. Ideal gas calculations can for instance be used to determine the molecular weight of different substances. Where there can not be absolute, ideal conditions, you perform pressure measurements of pair of gases and extrapolate to the value for the pressure 10 atm, where the gases are said to behave as ideal gases.
By this example, I want to show that natural scientific theories can be a result of a more or less distressed adjustment of a complex reality to a simplified theory. In most cases the theories function well within the selected fields of application. But the awareness of the limitations of the theories is often not clearly expressed or discussed - which is one way to reproduce the myth of absolute truth. Carita Peltonen shows a conspicuous extrapolation in her reflections upon the Schrödinger equation for quantum mechanical interpretations of atomic physics. This advanced theory is based on the simplest element of all - hydrogen, which is the only gas for which the differential equations of theory can be solved19.
GUTs
We can observe that there is a striving within natural science to expand the validity of theories beyond areas and conditions that are empirically proved. One example in physics is the efforts of getting closer to a Grand Unified Theory (GUT), which was first coined in 1978 by researchers at CERN20. The goal seems to be as few comprehensive theories and formulas as possible. These are to be generalized to such an extent that most phenomena can be derived from them.
Traweek described the development of GUT in 1988 in the following way:
Eventually gauge of the strong force and the electroweak force were combined into a GUT. Theoretical efforts are now under way to incorporate gravity with a GUT, and these are called “superstrings theories”. Physicists are also trying to incorporate superstring theories and supersymmetry into a “Super GUT”. The proposed research device known as Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) is justified as necessary to investigate these new theories. (Traweek 1988 p 48)
This research laboratory for the desired GUT was estimated at a cost of 88 billion SEK21 and was to be built in Texas. The American Congress stopped this investment. Other fields of knowledge were given priority. The research political interest was turned towards the field of biotechnology, which was made plain, not least at UN’s conference on environment and development of that time, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Still the striving for unifying theories as GUTs seems to prevail. In 2012, all GUT models, which aim to be realistic, were quite complicated because they needed to introduce additional interactions, or even additional dimensions of space. Due to this difficulty, and due to the lack of any observed effect of grand unification so far, there is no generally accepted GUT model22.
To reduce reality to general laws and theories, as concentrated, compact and minimized as possible, is to draw close to the highest ideals within natural science. Physicists above all but also chemists and mathematicians sometimes grow lyrical, when they talk about theories and formulas, which, in their “elegant”, minimal form comprise wide knowledge. The fascination among researchers and the public for the theoretic physicist Stephen Hawking’s cosmological work and efforts towards advanced, reduced theories for the initial state of the Universe confirms the ideals mentioned above (e.g. Hawking 1980). The complex reality we can experience even in the smallest of ecosystems, easily leads to something very different from this ideal. A modified start with a holistic perspective of the complex system to be studied followed by complete focus on the different parts of the system, does neither seem to satisfy a relevant view of knowledge for complex systems.
Knowledge as vectors
What does the statement of close connections between theory, technique and consequences mean? I have argued the relationship between theory and technique to be a question of mutual dependency, of one being a prerequisite of the other. A dividing line between theory and technique is a construction that has been built for distinct reasons.
Keller confirms that different contexts “write themselves into” the theories (Keller 1992). The content of a context may of course be highly dependent on the consequences of production of knowledge. We thus get a feedback of consequences in the further development or innovation of theories. This can be illustrated by the way the Western World formed theories within agricultural research in the so called Green Revolution (Shiva 1991).
The great number of linked contexts makes it increasingly difficult to view the production of theories as an activity without inherent driving forces and potentials to guide itself in non-accidental directions. Keller describes the traditional view of the direction of knowledge in this way:
Scientists work to increase our fund of knowledge of the neutral world as they must, for sooner or later, knowledge will out. Knowledge… can be thought of as an expanding sphere of light in a background of darkness. Its only directionality is outward; it just grows, without direction, and without aim. (Keller 1992 p 81)
The understanding of the results of basic research in natural science involving a development in a particular, non-accidental direction and a particular technological development with specific consequences is increasing within feminist research. Why this understanding is growing within fields of feminist research has its explanations in the necessity of a complex theoretical understanding of the scientific projects of transformation, which are the goals of this scientific work23.
Corlann Gee Bush (1983) identifies the inherent potential in all technology of taking particular routes. She emphasizes the use of a particular technique to be not only determined by political decisions or by the individual user. There is an inherent “vector function” in the technique itself. An obvious example is the comparison between the use of a rifle and a screwdriver.
Evelyn Fox Keller is even clearer in her view of an inherent force and direction in knowledge. The following quotation formulates a couple of questions of importance for me:
To be sure, instrumental knowledge has force in the world, but force, as we learned in freshman physics, is a vector. It has not only magnitude, but directionality as well. And if we grant directionality to the force of scientific knowledge, then the obvious question arises: In what other direction might science work? Toward what other aims? (Keller 1992 pp 74, 75)
Research and implicit power
This chapter is an attempt to draw close to scientific forming of theory. This early aim of mine has been to problematize the notion of objectivity from feminist research perspectives in order to contribute to the understanding of the connections in my main point, that the bonds between (the forming of) theory, (the development of) technology and consequences are strong and interlaced without beginning or end. Feminist research as it evolves integrated in technoscientific contexts and located in transdisciplinary cooperation is a framework of understanding. This framework is now and then accused of being results of political pseudo research (Ehrenberg 1994). When these situations occur either in the research complex or in the research political system in Sweden, it is noteworthy to recognize how feminist research brings up to surface the political content of all research activities and triggers the sensibility of keeping that hidden. I have realized how difficult it is to gain a hearing for this understanding, since this field of research steps right into the discourse of technoscientific knowledge production and makes well hidden relations of power and privileges visible.