Scientific Communication and Cognitive Codification 1 ( Lecture 2 )

The intellectual organization of the sciences cannot be appreciated sufficiently unless the cognitive dimension is considered as an independent source of variance. Cognitive structures (latent variables) interact and co-construct the organization of scholars and discourses into research programs, specialties, and disciplines. In the sociology of scientific knowledge and the sociology of translation, these heterogeneous sources of variance have been homogenized a priori in the concepts of practices and actor-networks. Practices and actor-networks, however, can be explained in terms of the self-organization of the cognitive code in scientific communication. The code selects knowledge claims by organizing them operationally in the various discourses; the claims can thus be stabilized and potentially globalized. Both the selecting codes and the variation in the knowledge claims remain constructed, but the different sub-dynamics can be expected to operate asymmetrically and to update with other frequencies. The Science as Practices and the Pansemiosis in “Actor-Networks” In his seminal study of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK), David Bloor noted that ‘knowledge for the sociologist is whatever men take to be knowledge’ (1976, at p. 2). Consequently, this ‘strong program’ in the sociology of science introduced a principle of symmetry into explanation: a sociological explanation in terms of human beliefs should be able to explain both true and false knowledge. From this perspective, scientific knowledge can no longer to be defined as ‘true’ belief, and therefore different from other knowledge (Barnes, 1974). In the case of mathematics, Bloor (1982) argued that even rules of logical inference derive their truth from social negotiation and human belief. This strong program extended on an interpretation of Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) notion of a paradigm as a language game (Winch, 1958; Barnes, 1969): in practices the cognitive is always social, and vice versa. The dimensions of the cognitive and the social are integrated and cannot be distinguished; sociocognitive (inter-)actions shape the social and the cognitive at the same time (Collins, 1983). Therefore, analysis should not be pursued in terms of dimensions like ‘cognitive’ versus ‘social’ or ‘internal’ versus ‘external’ (Callon et al., 1983). 1 The text is adapted from: Loet Leydesdorff, Scientific Communication and Cognitive Codification: Social Systems Theory and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge, European Journal of Social Theory 10(3), 375-388, 2007. 2 Semiotic Institute Online SSK has not accepted any ex ante disciplinary division of labor among the history, philosophy, or sociology of science in terms of their subject matter. In comparison with older traditions in the sociology of science (Merton, 1942; 1973), this focus led to descriptions of the world of science that were empirically richer than those provided by more traditional approaches in sociology and philosophy. For example, it was no longer possible to describe a specialty only in terms of the organizational variables of a scientific community (Crane 1969 and 1972; Whitley 1984). Nor could a specialty be operationalized in purely epistemological terms as a set of theoretical questions linked to relations among observations, arguments, and inferences (Hesse 1980); nor could it be adequately described as a body of literature or a communication structure (Price, 1961). As with all major concepts in science studies, it was henceforth necessary to develop the definition of ‘specialty’ from the perspectives of social structure, cognitive structure, and scientific literature. The potential tensions among these different evaluations were ‘heterogeneously engineered’ in practices which operate as ‘mangles’ (Pickering, 1995); the analyst remains no option other than ‘following the actors’ as an ethnographer (Latour, 1987). Scholars working in the tradition of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) radicalized this position by including non-human elements in the description (Callon et al., 1986; Callon and Latour, 1981). For example, in a study of the introduction of scientific principles of breeding into fishery, Callon (1985) argued that the actor-network consists of the oceanologists who try to transform fishing into ‘aquaculture,’ the science of oceanology which imposes a problem-formulation, the fishermen who defend their interests, and the scallops who breed and enter the networks. When all these elements interact, the system can be ‘translated’ because an ‘obligatory passage point’ is generated. Note that in this ‘sociology of translation’ the cognitive or natural constraints on the situation are not analyzed as if they acted upon the situation—that is, as an heuristic device; every unit should instead be analyzed in substantively similar terms, that is, as semiotic ‘actants’ in a network. The actor-network is constructed as a next-order unit of performance (containing ‘relational strength’), into which the heterogeneous dimensions are homogenized. In other words, the substantive heterogeneity in the explanandum is not addressed in terms of analytically different dimensions, but in terms of an assumed coincidence and congruity between explanandum and explanans within the subject matter. The actor-networks cannot be explained other than by describing them as empirical phenomena. Since one knows a priori that the relations in the actor-network are mutual and symmetrical, nothing can ultimately be explained, and the sole purpose of the analysis is to tell a story