EASST REVIEW

Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung

Review of John Ziman, Prometheus Bound. Science in a dynamic steady state, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994

What should one expect from a book that takes up the metaphor of Prometheus, the human challenger to god whose unbinding has long stood for the unleashing of the technological forces? If Prometheus is to be regarded as bound again, what can have happened? There are two evident expectations which John Ziman's book will not fulfill. Readers should not await a science-critical treatise arguing that Prometheus needs to be bound to save humankind from science-inflicted disaster. Nor should they, inversely, count on any denunciation of the regulatory effects of science-critical movements of the past two or three decades, of Prometheus being bound by externally imposed restrictions. None of this at all is the focus here. John Ziman adopts the term 'scientific advance' straightforwardly and without otherwise abundantly present quotation marks. And he sees such advance not only as 'unabated' (p. 16) but also as continuing to offer opportunities, even 'on an unprecedented scale' (p. 26).

To a considerable part of the EASST audience, thus, Prometheus Bound may appear not to be exactly discursively correct. Late in the book, John Ziman addresses the 'metascientists' as a species to which he does not claim to belong himself. Although he grants those people that 'they have revealed many things about science and technology which have to be taken very seriously into account in the present study' (p. 275), the penultimate page of the book seems to be just a bit too late to follow up on this declaration of intent. Indeed, Ziman's real attitude throughout most of the book is quite different. He reasons on the assumption that scientific activities are generally valuable and could and should be healthily pursued. His problem is that in any real-world situation impediments may exist to such fruitful pursuit, binding Prometheus, so that a need arises for 'direct guidance to the person faced continually with practical decisions, small and large, on how to keep the system going' (p. 275). And we do know enough about research processes, he implicitly postulates, to reason and communicate about such issues of practical decisions. Science studies just cannot shy away from science-policy matters; such is the message to colleagues at the very end. To be interested in the book, you have to share the view that 'fundamental principles for the advancement of knowledge' (p. 274) are an issue not only of interest, but also amenable to intelligent and enlightened reasoning.

So, what is at stake then in science and science policies nowadays; why is Prometheus bound? We experience nothing less, Ziman argues, than a 'transition to a new regime' (p. 67), a secular change from long-lasting expansion to stability and stagnation in terms of resources. The appropriation of the term 'steady state', limited as the analogy may be, is exactly meant to indicate a situation in which there can be no further material growth, but at the same time high intellectual dynamics. Even if the exact description of the current state may be doubted (and Ziman's knowledge of academia worldwide is so comprehensive that he raises all the doubts himself), it is a very useful thought-experiment to imagine a situation in which no desire could be fulfilled, no problem solved in the world of research by recourse to additional resources, but only through internal shifts.

The 'steady state' situation demands a rethinking of all orientations and regulatory arrangements in science, from the allocation of resources to the understanding of a scientific career to the national basis of most science funding mechanisms. Ziman's reasoning pursues a difficult double strategy. On the one hand, the need for reorientation is readily acknowledged. Ziman even dramatizes the current changes (which is not an easy task given his assumption of a fairly long, thirty-year transitional period; more on this later), and thus opens the door for radical interventions into the rules of scientific institutions. On the other hand, he severely criticizes practically all currently fashionable tools for making science more responsive to a situation of limited resources and high social responsibility. 'Accountability', 'evaluation', 'selectivity', 'manpower', 'exploitation', 'priorities', 'competition', 'management', are the science-policy buzzwords the inflationary and careless use of which drove him to write this book. He recognizes that they point to actual problems, but he emphasizes that they are all just a bit, an important bit, besides the point. If they were seriously applied as they are used, they would get it all wrong.

John Ziman is angry. He fears that the forceful and inconsiderate introduction of misconceived steering mechanisms could destroy science. In the beginning, he warns the reader that his 'deep misgivings' had made him resort to 'intemperate and ungainly' (p. ix) use of language. But that is about all there is to come. It is very much a gentleman's anger that can be felt in the text. Reasons why science cannot just go on as it used to do are expounded at length, and reasons why some time-honoured principles should remain in place despite their seeming untimeliness are elaborated with great caution and modesty, with a kind of hidden firmness. Readers may just consult his timid defences of pure science (pp. 35-38) or of scholarly autonomy (pp. 189-95); the stronger statement comes only at the very end (p. 276).

What exactly is it that Ziman fears and detests, but of which he recognizes some necessity at the same time? In short, it is the introduction of formal rules of operation into an activity which is essentially creative, open-ended and unpredictable and, thus, not amenable to formalization without loss of some of its specificity and driving motive. Ziman himself speaks of the risk of industrialization or bureaucratization (e.g., p. 195) or of the 'change from a customary to a legalistic framework' (p. 99) in the governance of science. Now, this is not exactly a new phenomenon. Max Weber, for instance, gave a brief early account in his lecture on 'science as a vocation' in 1919. Still, there is evidence enough to assume that major changes in 'academic regimes'1 have occurred during the past three decades, the period to which Ziman repeatedly refers. This is the period in which there is an explicit science-policy debate, in which science-policy institutions are created in many countries, and in which talk about 'criteria' for scientific development spreads to become ubiquitous from the government agenda to the Ph.D. proposal. It is unfortunate that Ziman does not discuss in any detail changes within this period, namely changes to which a number of available criteria are to be applied. At least one major shift has occurred, from the grand state design for science planning during the 1960s and 1970s to the idea of the reign of the market with only mild state support during the 1980s and onwards. While both types may be interventions into science (of a bureaucratic or of an industrial -- I would prefer the term 'market-oriented' -- nature), their effects, which are conflated in the present analysis, may widely differ. Thus, for instance, policy-drivenness (p. 269) may no longer be the main problem for the social sciences, as it was during the 1970s, but rather market disinterest.

Problems from the lack of differentiation emerge also at other points in the analysis. To support the main background argument, namely that science is getting too costly, CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research near Geneva, is cited ten times (according to the index), often as the prime example for a general trend. But CERN probably should be treated as an extreme case, or maybe even as a very specific exception. Science is getting more sophisticated and more collectivist, Ziman argues (chapter 3), and thus more dependent on expensive infrastructural arrangements. But in many fields costs for experiments and field research do not at all increase outrageously. And new technologies, such as electronic networks, may well allow the development of a basic information infrastructure at some, but not too high cost, and which may enable easy universal access to the latest research as well as to data archives. If well deployed, such infrastructure could revitalize the role of the individual researcher, who would need a connection to the system but not really the physical presence of an institutional agglomeration. Ziman, it seems, is so impressed by the alleged exigencies of the 'cruel modern realities' (p. 276) that he does not always fully explore the possibilities for the openness, initiative and creativity that he so desires, for he constructs his trends too one-dimensionally.

Despite such limits, Ziman's analysis of the state of the scientific enterprise gets to an extremely important point. There may be a novelty in the current situation, which is rarely spelled out anywhere, but which his attempt to remould science to 'fit the needs of a post-modern world' (p. 275) touches upon. Historically, debate on science has always been about imposed limits and the need to overcome those limits -- limits due to constraints of permissible inquiry into god-given nature, limits due to available technical instrumentation, limits due to class bias. While there are obviously still limits, the current situation is instead marked by the possibility and necessity of choice (p. 29). We moderns have always run up against constraints and have considered overcoming them, naturally, as our mission and inclination. Over the long run, this has been a successful undertaking and many constraints have been removed, but now we could fail in a situation when there is no natural direction of our project any longer and when we have to reflectively choose how to deploy our efforts on paths not yet walked.2 And worse than selecting the wrong paths (we would anyhow never know which they were), our inability to choose wisely might impair our very ability to walk. It is such a threat, it seems, that underlies Ziman's extremely considerate, knowledgeable and pragmatic reflections.

To respond to his concerns, I might just try to put the issue in other terms. It is part of the modernist ideology to assume that some activities, such as science or also the production of goods, would just have to be left on their own to develop most fruitfully. They have their own rationales whose workings should not be disturbed. This has always been an ideology, and science has never existed in complete separation from other concerns. However, arrangements have been constructed historically, with variations between countries, that have temporarily arrested the mode of weighing different criteria. These arrangements are being reconsidered practically everywhere, and what is 'post-modern' about these reconsiderations is that it can no longer be taken for granted that one single criterion will have foundational character for future arrangements. Throughout most of this book, Ziman tries to assess the relative merits of industrial-bureaucratic, market-oriented and inspirational modes of justification for the governance of science under current conditions.3 His own leanings are towards the inspirational mode, focusing on autonomy and creativity (and I would strongly agree), but the other important point is that he does not dare to offer a foundational criterion any longer.

Science, like most other activities, is no longer enclosed in a modernist project. There is a plurality of modes of justification, and the only tool one can work with is the striving for reflexivity, for awareness about oneself and the situation - to develop an attitude of sober distance to a project to which one nevertheless remains committed. In this context, Ziman seems to write in and for the hope that both scholars and science-policy makers could develop such an attitude, that they are not stubborn promoters of, or resisters to, exigencies for change but knowledgeable agents having their own valuable and unique understanding of the situation and of their needs. We shall see in the future whether the hope is justified.

Notes

1 A term I borrow from Michael David-Fox and Gyšrgy PŽteri, Academia in upheaval: the origins and demise of the Communist academic regime in Russia and East-Central Europe, mimeo, 1994.

2 In sociology, it is currently fashionable to talk about "reflexive modernization" as the hitherto latest stage of modernity. Against such jargon, it needs to be emphasized that such reflexivity has always accompanied the so-called modern project, especially during periods in which major institutional arrangements are being reconsidered.

3 Cf. L. Boltanski & L. ThŽvenot, De la Justification, Les Žconomies de la grandeur, Paris, 1991.




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Technology Blues

by Trevor Pinch

Department of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University

A Review of Technology, Pessimism and Postmodernism edited by Yaron Ezrahi, Everett Mendelsohn and Howard Segal, Sociology of the Sciences, Yearbook, Volume XVII, Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer, 1993.

This volume of essays is mistitled. Apart from some wonderfully sharp comments by Leo Marx about how one form of postmodernism embraces a particular version of technological determinism, there is little else in this book about postmodernism. The essays are more about technology and pessimistic responses to it than anything else. Postmodernism presumably sells books.

Pessimism. That is the feeling I have as I glance at the "The Table of Contents". It looks as if it came straight off my childhood John Bull Printing Set. Surely Kluwer can produce better books these days than Pinch's daisy-wheeled effort on solar neutrinos back in 1986. Well it doesn't look like it. One of the author's names is unaccountably in bold print and then one word in the middle of one of the titles is in bold. How appropriate, that word is: Pessimism. Sorry. Got it. That was the postmodernism.

Turning now to the editorial introduction written by Howard P. Segal. Not much grounds for optimism here. Mind you, I have some sympathy. This is a difficult collection to edit as the papers are rather disparate and uneven in quality. What do you say, for instance, about the piece by Klaus Reichert on the Cambridge platonist, Joesph Glanvill, and his attempt to include witches within the purview of the Royal Society? Interesting stuff, but hardly germane to the book's theme. Segal, perhaps wisely, ignores it altogether. His introduction, like his own rambling contribution to the volume, seems off the point. He sets up the debate in terms of a clash between today's pessimists and the views of various techno-fixers and techno-optimists like Alvin Weinberg. It all sounds very dated and unilluminating.

There are, however, some moments of optimism to be found. One of the most thought-provoking contributions comes from Leo Marx who notes how the word "technology" came to replace the more traditional term "mechanic arts". Writers like Marx (the other one) and Toynbee, when writing about the industrial revolution, did not use the word "technology". Toynbee, for instance, in his 1880-81 lectures preferred uses like "machinery" and "factory system". Marx suggests that the word technology in today's inclusive sense was not widely accepted until after World War I or even as late as the Great Depression. Terminology is important because the modern usage is much wider in its scope of reference than the material or artifactual aspect usually associated with the mechanic arts usage. With the growth of large scale technological systems, people experience technology in a very different way. It is no longer specific artifacts they interact with, at least not artefacts on their own, but rather a whole mishmash of institutions, people, concepts and so on.

This combined with the wider scope given the word, Marx argues, has led people to invest "technology" with a range of metaphysical properties and potencies. It is these properties which, in Marx's marvellous phrase, lend technology "hospitality to mystification" and which has contributed most to today's pessimism. When reacting to technology, people cannot quite put their finger on what is to blame for their dissatisfaction; they tend to overreact or at least fail to pinpoint what the exact nature of their dissatisfaction is. As Heidegger noted long ago "the essence of technology is by no means anything technological". Perhaps as this is slowly realized there is a silver lining to be found in the current cloud of pessimism.

Everett Mendelsohn takes us down memory lane in his account of the late 60's reaction to technology - the making of the counter culture and all that. Mendelsohn's chapter is mainly descriptive. One thing he usefully addresses is the relationship between Lewis Mumford and the 60's movement. Mendelsohn notes that Mumford, despite the profoundness of his critique of technology, never became the "cult figure" for the counterculture that Marcuse became. One can see why. Apparently Mumford sent a message to a protest meeting at Berkeley praising his youthful audience for having "awakened your country" but admonishing them: "No angry shouts, no ugly threats, no childish obscenities ... no mutilation of your minds by drugs." Mendelsohn's account is rightly pessimistic - after all where is the counter culture now?

These authors are wrestling with the problem of how to come to grips with science and technology such that the political response is adequate to the phenomenon. In hindsight the counter culture's almost complete condemnation of science and technology, a condemnation which seemed so seductive and important at the time, appears ludicrously grandiose.

A much more measured response is that offered by Yaron Ezrahi who advances the interesting and important argument that recent reactions against science and technology say more about the failure of the political process to cope with science and technology than anything to do with recent changes in science and technology. This argument will surprise no one in Science and Technology Studies. Ezrahi makes some welcome recommendations for how the political process can better cope with science and technology. Unfortunately his exposition here is too brief to judge their likely effectiveness (but see his important book Science and the Descent of Icarus: Science and the Transformation of Contemporary Democracy, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990.)

Another route into the whole problem is to pursue it empirically. Which specific historical forms have pessimistic reactions to technology taken? This book has two marvellous empirical studies which explore this issue. One by Ido Yavetz, on the debate produced by Oliver Lodge's challenge to the predominant theory of lightning conduction, cautions us against drawing any grand conclusions about technological pessimism. It all depends on the technology and the particular group you are talking about. One person's optimism is another person's pessimism. The chapter by Menahem Blondheim on the diffusion and perception of American telegraphy adds to our rich knowledge of how users adopted and adapted the new technologies of the nineteenth century. His account should be read alongside David Nye's Electrifying America (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990), Claude Fischer's America Calling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) and, on the Canadian case, Michele Martin's Hello Central? (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 1991). As we understand more and more about the diverse responses of users to new technologies we start to get a better feel for the subtleties of technological responses. Pessimism on the grand scale starts to recede. The human face of technology starts to reappear - small grounds for optimism even emerge.

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Email the editor, Chunglin Kwa:

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