Professor Sal Restivo - Red, Black, and Objective: Science, Sociology, and Anarchism

RED, BLACK, AND OBJECTIVE

Science, Sociology, and Anarchism

SAL RESTIVO
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA

ASHGATE

Sal Restivo 2011

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Sal Restivo has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Restivo, Sal P.

Red, black, and objective : science, sociology, and anarchism.

1. Science--Social aspects. 2. Objectivity. 3. Anarchism.

I. Title

306.45-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Restivo, Sal P.

Red, black, and objective : science, sociology, and anarchism / by Sal Restivo.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-1039-3 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-1040-9 (ebook) 1. Social sciences--Philosophy. 2. Science--Social aspects. I. Title.

H61.R4667 2011
330.1--dc22

2011011357

ISBN 978 1 4094 1039 3 (hbk)
ISBN 978 1 4094 1040 9 (ebk)
ISBN 9781409494560 (ebk-ePUB)

Printed and bound in Great Britain by the MPG Books Group, UK.

I acknowledge and appreciate that the I is as Nietzsche was among the first to teach us a grammatical illusion. The social, by contrast, is not an illusion. I have drawn on my collaborative writings with Drs. Wenda Bauchspies, Jennifer Croissant, Deborah Sloan, Daryl Chubin, Randall Collins, and Julia Loughlin. They have been among my most enduring educators and collaborators but have no responsibility for the ways in which I have re-woven and integrated into this book our collaborative interrogative narratives on science, mathematics, and sociology. I have been fortunate to have counted among my friends and virtual teachers such saints of science as Joseph Needham, Mary Douglas, Dirk Struik, and David Bohm (all of whom have passed on), along with my colleagues in the sociology of science and other disciplines notably, on a more personal level, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Randall Collins, Daryl Chubin, Peter Denton, Hilary and Steven Rose, the late Bernard Barber, Jerry Ravetz, Les Levidow, Leslie Brothers, Brian Martin, the late David Edge, the late Derek Price, the late Joseph Ben David, Steve Woolgar, Susan Cozzens, the late Leigh Star, Sharon Traweek, Aant Elzinga, Jean Paul Van Bendegem, Clifford Hooker, the late Donald T. Campbell, Ole Skovsmose, Ubi DAmbrosio, and Jens Hoyrup. I have gained much intellectually and emotionally from knowing and working with the Michigan State University sociologists Herbert Karp and Christopher Vanderpool, long departed. I have also learned from and been provoked by knowing and reading Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Don Mackenzie, Sandra Harding, Elizabeth Fee, Evelyn Fox Keller, and Donna Haraway, the late Bob Merton, and Bruno Latour. Among my colleagues at RPI I have been closest to and most influenced by Michael Zenzen, Ellen Esrock, Audrey Bennett, Shirley Gorenstein, and Linnda Caporael. And I have been fortunate in working with graduate students whose values and intellect have helped them stand above the waves of commodification and commercialization that have been transforming what I once knew (without Platonic delusions) as the university; I mentioned Wenda and Jennifer (RPI STS Phds) above; the others are Gil Peach (Phd, NYU, sociology), Monica Mesquita (PhD, Lisbon, ethnomathematics), Colin Beech and Rachel Dowty (PhDs, RPI, STS), and Peter Bellomo (MS, RPI, STS). And just as I am completing this book, a brilliant young PhD student has come along to draw me into the roles of advisor, mentor, friend, and colleague: Sabrina Weiss. I had the pleasure of having an office at RPI next to one occupied at different times by the late David Weick and the late John Schumacher, friends, colleagues, and inspired anarchists. And the anarchist George Bennello, also long departed, was an occasional visitor to my home in southern Vermont and with me among the founding members of the humanist sociology movement.

I want to thank my undergraduate teaching fellows for assisting me in various ways in the classroom and with my research and writing over the last couple of years: Terry Cheng, Christine Eromenok, Ashley Lowe, Laura Henry, Leah Jakaitis, Eleanor Dunn, and Lorena Nicotra. I am especially grateful to Lorena for helping me with formatting problems during the final preparation of the manuscript.

As a young professor, I drifted away from organized Marxist, socialist, and anarchist organizations which I found generally uninviting for a variety of reasons. On the other hand, I was warmly but not uncritically embraced by and became one of the founding members of the science studies movement. I am grateful for the many ways in which the science studies community took me in when I was looking for a home as a young researcher. In the end, the truth is I have always felt homeless and marginalized, encouraged by many of lifes contingencies to do it my way. Paint me red, black, and objective.

I have drawn on several previously published articles and list them below. Readers interested in filling in the citation gaps in my narrative are referred to these sources. I have limited citations within the text and have not used footnotes or endnotes in the interest of narrative continuity. I have also included birth and death dates only in cases where I thought the person might not be widely known to readers or where it seemed important to locate the person in his or her historical context.

Science, Social Problems, and Progressive Thought: Essays on the Tyranny of Science (including Technoscience or Tyrannoscience Rex, a review of Jurassic Park), pp. 3987 in S.L. Star (ed.), Ecologies of Science (SUNY Press, Albany, 1995). With Jennifer Croissant.

How to Criticize Science and Maintain Your Sanity, Science as Culture, 6, Part 3, 28 (Spring 1996), pp. 396413. With Wenda K. Bauchspies.

Science, Social Theory, and Science Criticism, Communication and Cognition (special issue on Popularization of Science: The Democratization of Knowledge in Perspective), 29, 2 (1996), pp. 249272. With Wenda K. Bauchspies.

The Invention of Science, Cultural Dynamics, 12, 2 (July, 2000), pp. 5773. With Julia Loughlin.

Building Labs and Building Lives, in Degrees of Compromise: Industrial Interests and Academic Values (SUNY Press, Albany, 2001). With Jennifer Croissant.

The Will to Mathematics: Minds, Morals, and Numbers, Foundations of Science, 11, 1 and 2, special issue on Mathematics: What Does It All Mean? Edited by Jean Paul Van Bendegem, Bart Kerkhove, and Sal Restivo, March 2006, 197215. With Wenda Bauchspies. Portuguese translation, Bauchspies, W. and Restivo, S. (2001) O arbtrio da matemtica: mentes, moral e numerous, in BOLEMA, 16, pp. 102124.

Mechanical Mathematicians: The End of Proof as We Know It, review essay, The Information Society, 20, 1 (January, 2004), pp. 678.

Theories of Mind, Social Science, And Mathematical Practice, pp. 6179 in J.P. Van Bendegem and Bart Van Kerkhove (eds),