Taller del Trayecto centrado en las Prácticas Docentes

If we accept that non-epistemic factors can play a role in the production of scientific knowledge, then it is also necessary to examine what the implications of this role are. Doing so we will see how knowledge and knowledge authority act as political functions and create political affects. The political function of knowledge is more specifically highlighted within the STS subdomains of feminist epistemologies and postcolonial studies. Weiler highlights that much of the contemporary discourses around knowledge fail to address these concerns where he notes that, ‘[knowledge discourse] does not take a sufficiently critical view of what “knowledge” means, and of the fundamental changes that the concept of knowledge has undergone in the course of the 20th century’, and, ‘it fails to address the political conditions and consequences of the production and use of knowledge – in other words, it is largely oblivious to the politics of knowledge’ (2009, 1). This failure to address the politics of knowledge it can be suggested is grounded in the perceived neutral, or disinterested, stance ascribed to scientific objectivity. However, what feminist and post-colonial science studies have attempted to show is that this neutrality often exists only with respect to those groups with whom knowledge authority rests rather than with such marginalised groups mentioned by Harding above.

One particularly useful framework, or series of accounts, that deal with the interrelation of knowledge and power is the work of Michel Foucault. Foucault deals particularly with the human sciences, which he notes as having an epistemic profile that is significantly less embedded in deeply granted constructions and thus allows for an easier critique (1980, 109). One such area of this focus falls upon the psychiatric and penal structures in Western Europe and more particularly in France. Throughout his accounts he discusses how scientific knowledge is “applied” as a form of power for the control or repression of an individual. It is, however, his discussion of monitoring as a role in control

that is of most interest to this thesis. In particular, in his discussion of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, an institution designed for the control or surveillance equally of students, children, prisoners or patients Foucault notes that, ‘there was a central observation-point which served as the focus of the exercise of power and, simultaneously, for the registration of knowledge’ (1980, 148). What is of interest here is how Foucault inextricably links the bearer of vision to the seat of power. What Foucault suggests is that the power of knowledge is inherently vested in those who produce it. This power inherent in the vision that Foucault identifies within the human sciences Haraway also identifies in the natural sciences. Haraway notes that the “unmarked” vision’s objectivity that is implied in scientific objectivity is the vision of the white male through which western science was developed. This vision that marks out the bearer from the viewed sets up a dichotomous binary where the unmarked objective view is the embedded natural and the viewpoint of the viewed is that of other. This dichotomy of viewer and viewed is reflected in the act of measurement, the measured subject being ontologically separated from the socio-technical apparatus by which it is measured. It may be suggested the effect here is increased as the technical apparatus acts to obstruct its social construction, increasing claims towards the neutrality of unmarked machine vision.

The relationship to otherness that is marked out for the non-holder of objective vision is also a central concept in postcolonial studies of science. Said describes this power relation in Orientalism where he proposes the construction of “The East” as being an example of an othering marked in opposition to the neutral position that is implied in The West (1978). As in the production of scientific knowledge discussed above, the apportioning of non-western sciences and knowledges as “other” finds it basis not in epistemic concerns, but in the material and cultural divisions of colonialism, as described by Polanco.

and its “international character.” The “universality of science” does not appear to be the cause but the effect of a process that we cannot explain or understand merely by concentrating our attention on epistemological claims.’ (1992)

Polanco claims that “world-sciences”, that is local knowledges or knowledge systems, generally come about as solutions to a set of local problems and functions so as to provide solutions to these problems and from this develop a form of epistemological unity. It is easy then in this way to see how through the colonialist expansion and global militarism through which European powers expanded their “local” area of concern to encompass the entire world so too European scientific knowledge became the solution to that of the expanded European “local” of the entire world.

The interplay between the existence of partial perspectives, situated or local knowledges and power is best categorised as a struggle over knowledge authority. Where authority denotes the power to decide what statements and practices are allowed to be categorised as science, legitimation denotes to whom, and by what means, this power to decide is granted.18 _{This battle for authority is played out in a number of different ways}

throughout the formal institutions of scientific production, and in the wider social context. The dominant model for the way in which authority is produced in societies is that theorised by Max Weber. Weber defined legitimate authority as a tripartite structure divided as rational-legal authority, charismatic authority and traditional authority. These

18 _{Here we can see the difficulties proposed by and for liberal ideals of Enlightenment thinkers}

such as Mill, at the beginning of this chapter. The verification of scientific knowledge through the apparatus and structures of academic institutions which were generally available only to an affluent, white, European, male subsection of society meant that not only was the production of scientific knowledge constrained to this particular subset but the ability to validate or legitimate the production of such knowledge was also constrained to this subset and limited to any subaltern communities. That this subset was also overlapping with the subset of individuals who possessed legal and moral authority highlights the interrelation between the production of knowledge and other forms of authority.

can roughly be described as authority stemming from legal and bureaucratic structures, authority stemming from the charisma of a particular leading entity and authority stemming from tradition or custom (1978).

Scientific authority can also be suggested as being generated in a similar way as political authority. Whereas a traditional positivist approach to scientific work placed scientific authority within nature, or within the perceived neutral eye of the scientific instrument, the various studies and theories that have demonstrated science’s socially constructed nature have shown that scientific authority is also generated as a function of the social environment in which science is produced. As such, scientific authority mirrors social and political authority. It is worthwhile noting that whilst constructivist arguments undermine the absolute objectivities of positivist scientific facts, “facts” are still very much operative within the production of authority. Facts play a role in the authority granted to a particular set of scientific statements, or within the legitimation of other statements. The way in which a scientific fact is given authority is through a process of legitimation. The process of legitimation for a scientific statement is perhaps best described by Lyotard who describes legitimation with reference to a legal definition as, ‘the process by which a legislator is authorised to promulgate such a law as a norm’ (1984, 8). In the case of a scientific statement this is expanded such that, ‘a statement must fulfil a given set of conditions in order to be accepted as scientific. In this case, legitimation is the process by which a "legislator" dealing with scientific discourse is authorized to prescribe the stated conditions (in general, conditions of internal consistency and experimental verification) determining whether a statement is to be included in that discourse for consideration by the scientific community’ (ibid.). Thus, we can suggest that knowledge is legitimated based on a combination of the authority granted to those making utterances (low epistemic profile) and on the basis of empirical facts (high epistemic profile).

The way in which scientific legitimation takes place then is with specific reference to the acceptance of experimental validity by a community (institution) that is deemed equal and competent with respect to the language of the statement such that approval and validation through argumentation (or inversely disproval through falsification) are accessible to the maker of the statement. In this way, it can be suggested scientific legitimation, or the legitimation of scientific authority, is expressly linked to Weber’s description of political authority. Lyotard makes this point explicitly where he notes, ‘The point is that there is a strict interlinkage between the kind of language called science and the kind called ethics and politics: they both stem from the same perspective, the same "choice" if you will – the choice called the Occident’ (ibid.)19_{. We can then propose a}

model of knowledge legitimation in the same frame as described by Weber, in which rational-legal legitimation can be seen as parallel to the conventions of experimental practice, the accepted body of existing theory, and the theoretical frameworks on which these are built (again as described by Duhem-Quine), and the procedures and practices of the institutions from which legitimation is being sought. This portion of the legitimating process can be seen as having, as Foucault would describe, the strongest epistemic profile, whereas the charismatic and traditional authority, the referents of custom, institutional procedure and personality, can be seen as having little or no epistemic basis and are therefore primarily political functions.

It can be suggested that the political function that is not present in the epistemic portion of the production of scientific knowledge (regardless of whether the epistemic portion

19 _{Although it is beyond the scope of this thesis to discuss fully the socio-political and contextual}

underpinnings of the generation of authority with respect to gender or race, the interlinkages between the male voice and the concept of rationality is discussed in Beard’s Women and Power: A Manifesto (2017). Meanwhile as seen in Mill’s On Liberty and countless other examples the concept and idea of rational legitimate authority was generally seen as not applying to non-white oriental, African or other ‘barbarian’ communities. (Mill 2001)

claims the “strong objectivity” of partial knowledge or whether it claims the “pure” objectivity of positivism) is, however, tied to the non-epistemic portion through a process of reciprocal legitimation. This reciprocal legitimation takes place in the form of acceptance into, or within, institutional structures. Usually this takes place with reference to knowledge of the specific languages and codes of the institution but also through the ability to produce new knowledge (epistemic profile) within these codes (Lyotard 1984; Marcuse 1991, 162; Berger and Luckmann 1966, 110-1). In addition, the institution and its directions of research are linked to the decisions of funding that are themselves within a circular process of legitimation with economic, political and military functions that rely on the institution for their rational-legal authority. As such the type of knowledge produced which has a high epistemic profile, such as experimental research, is directly resultant from the struggles for power that are represented in the non-epistemic factors of knowledge production.

The possibility of an objective model with which to completely describe the world is thus a project that is imbued with a number of political and epistemological problems that become apparent when the claims of scientific and measuring objectivity or neutrality are examined more closely. In particular, claims toward single and authoritative objective viewpoints can be seen as denotative of political claims towards power over the heterogeneous viewpoints of other actors. As such it is possible to suggest that the Enlightenment ideal for a way of describing the world free from human subjectivity and politics is made no more possible through the expansion of global computation.