Reality+(Banks)

Conceptual frameworks that describe reality are crucial for STS discussions of epistemic claims to truth; the social construction of technical systems and artifacts; and studies of scientific practice. Considering such a broad concept may appear to be a philosophical issue that has little bearing on method or analytic argument, but authors such as Pickering (1995), Fortun & Bernstein (1998), Hacking (1999), and Cetina (2001) have written accessible texts on “reality” and draw very specific conclusions. By discussing what constitutes “the real” authors can make powerful and straightforward critiques of complicated arguments.

=Reality and the Practice of Science= The realism that most scientists adhere to, assumes that a verifiable external reality can be observed and objectively reported. Scientific Truth is predicated on this kind of access to reality. This realism is usually described more as pragmatic than naïve. Scientists must take for granted, that certain observations are an accurate representation of the natural world, or they would not be able to do their work. Things that are indescribable in terms commonly described, as “objective” cannot be determined as “real” by science. But when scientists write about the scientific process, words like “faith” and “imagination” quickly come up. Fortune and Bernstein (1998) describes this in terms of contradicting dualisms:

//“This conventional view of the sciences hinges on a series of contradictions, or juxtaposed oppositions: physics/metaphysics, reason/imagination, science/faith, and even laboratory/temple. While the public, common-sense view of the sciences almost exclusively privileges the term in front of the slash- putting its best face foreword- in fact, the opposing term is always present. It has to be there, even if it generally has to be swept under the rug for public occasions.” (P. 29)//

The practice of science, is generally seen as a set of routines and best practices that are capable of producing certain results. But as Karin Knorr Cetina sees it, science as practice –and the reality it attempts to describe- is much more complicated.

//“The notion of a knowledge society suggests that knowledge-centered practice focused on epistemic objects becomes a prominent part of all areas of social life…I propose to conceive of the backbone of practice in terms of a relational dynamics that extends itself into the future in creative and also in disruptive ways. This relational dynamics does not simply mean the existence of positive emotional ties between individuals and nonhuman objects.” (P.196)//

For Cetina, the reality that is observed is shaped by epistemic cultures specific to a given field. Routines, habits, protocols, and tools become transparent means to the end. In the Heideggerian sense, they are “ready-to-hand” and are not explicitly recognized as effecting scientific work. The accounts of reality made by researchers are enframed by these technologies. The ontology of objects and their relation to knowledge production are emergent, which is to say, we must regard them “as things that continually ’explode’ and ‘mutate’ into something else, and that are as much defined by what they are not (but will, at some point have become) than by what they are.” (P.191)

=Emergent Properties and Real-Time Analysis= A researcher has the benefit of hindsight when drawing conclusions about their research subject. The difficulty, however, is in accurately representing the process of discovery without imposing that hindsight. E.g. writing a history of particle physics that describes the discovery of quarks as an inevitable conclusion of scientific research. Pickering, in his //Mangle of Practice// describes an emergent and real time theory of practice in which scientist and nature are constantly resisting and accommodating each other’s actions. The devices and theories that science creates are the result of a trial and error process that is contingent upon specific decisions of accommodation made at the moment. It is a sort of social constructionism that cares less about the entire process, but rather the moment of action. For Pickering, reality is a substrate that we must push through and

Fortun and Bernstein are also interested in how scientists, in the moment, are producing knowledge about the world. Their book //Muddling Through// offers a new signifier to describe the “complex assemblage, of material, social, cultural, linguistic, technical and other forces-although those things are just our provisional names, too- that constitute what is most frequent called ‘reality.’” Fortun and Bernstein acknowledge: “That phrase in quotation marks, as you can see, is a clumsy and long construction that you would soon tire of seeing in print.” Their word is “realit//t//y” which is meant to introduce an “injection of time” into the signified, while also highlighting the differences that come with every new second (realit//t//y is an anagram for alterity). Fortune and Bernstein go on to say,

//“The sciences today are better seen as a matter of re-producing realitty is an injection of time, always represented in scientific equations by the lowercase italic t. Realitty is what you get but we believe that we approach it ever more closely, reality always changes, and it’s no longer a question of nearness and approach, but of successive experimental practices and their successive (and successful) thought-styles.”//

Fortun and Bernstein remind us that when we speak of reality (or realit//t//y) we are really talking about a signifier for all objects. Evoking concepts of reality are world-building exercises meant to not just describe assemblages of nature and society, but to also influence those same assemblages. To describe reality and call it truth (or Truth) is an act of power. When scientists work to produce new knowledge they are creating new realities.