“如何认识科学”(一):大卫·凯里对西蒙·沙弗尔的访谈

How to Think about Science?(A)—David Cayley Interviews on Simon Schaffer

科学家关于世界所说的、关于世界所达成的一致、发现事物是怎样的——这些事情都有一种社会建制的特征,因而应该用其他社会建制被分析的方法来加以分析。《利维坦和空气泵》一书,就是对那些被实验所确证的、被视之为当然和明显的事实进行这种分析,以探询它们事实上是被如何确立的以及人们如何就此达成共识。科学既不是烹调术,也不是天使的精湛技巧;科学的成就不在于它的怀疑主义,而是它创造和维持信任的能力;科学家更像是有技术的工匠而不是圣人。科学知识并不是自然界真实的反映,而是人类的产品;一些事情被制造出来并得以维护。于是,这一洞见使得原来所持有的科学与社会之间关系的观点被大大削弱。科学开始趋向于作为内在于社会的现象而被理解。

Scientists say about the world, how they come to agree on it, and how they find out how thing are these things all have an institutions quality and should be analyzed the way other institutions are analyzed. Leviathan and the Air Pump was a work that wanted to treat something obvious and taken for granted that matters of fact are ascertained by experiment; that wanted to ask how it is actually done and how people come to agree that it has truly been done. Science is neither cookery nor angelic virtuosity;The achievement of science lies not in its skepticism, but in its ability to create and maintain trust; scientists look less like oracles and more like skilled carpenters. Scientific knowledge was not the very voice of nature, but a human product, something that had to be made and then maintained. So this insight turned the received view of the relationship between science and society upside down. The science began to be understood as inherently social.