What is the role of experimentation and the experimenter-as-scientist in society? What counts as knowledge and who gets to judge? In this seminal work, Shapin and Schaffer look back to experiment in its infancy. Before experimentation was the given mode of creating scientific matters of fact, the role of experiment was the source of great controversy. Robert Boyle and the Royal Society of London sought to create a safe space of expertise where experiments could take place and be carefully examined as to the knowledge of the natural world which they conveyed. Pitted against these gentlemen-experimentalists (the term scientist would not be coined until much later) was Thomas Hobbes, dean of 17th century political philosophy and an accomplished natural philosopher in his own right. While Boyle and his associates claimed to be working towards a true account of nature, Hobbes saw a closed society of patricians seeking to rival his hoped-for undivided and all-powerful sovereign. For Hobbes, who held the right to speak on behalf of nature was always a fraught proposition. Any arena in which the state took a back seat to alternate moods of power and truth - whether it be an experimental society or the Church - was potentially an arena in which rebellion and social unrest could foment. Boyle believed his experiments could speak to truths which existed in addition to the given social order. Hobbes knew that speaking for nature would always be potentially transformative for the state.
Shapin and Schaffer agree with Hobbes: "We argue that the problem of generating knowledge is a problem of politics, and, conversely that the problem of political order always involves solutions to the problems of knowledge." There's is a political sociology of knowledge production. Yet, this is not to fall into a social constructivist trap. Recognizing that who is authorized to speak for the world will impact what is spoken of the natural world need not suggest that reality is entirely fabricated by the human component. How do we recognize when something has attained the status of fact? What methods are employed to render experiment intelligible, both to those present and also those absent? What is the measure of sufficient proof? What conventions of practice would be accepted? These are all questions pertaining to, but not defined-by, experimental epistemology. Boyle inverted the necessity of such question by claiming that only things which could be tested via experiment could attain the lofty status of facts. In relation to the above questions this is a form of putting the cart before the horse. For Boyle, knowledge was a matter of shared belief. True belief was only able to be examined collectively via demonstration - this would always overrule an individual's singular position. For Hobbes, the problem was the disparity existing in the distance between causes and effects. Boyle looked to effects first and sought to explain them; Hobbes found this an irreducible difficulty (similar to the problem of infinite hypotheses) and thought only that which was made by people, could be understood. For Hobbes, knowledge comes from the common assent of first principles, which then lead to a knowledge which is clearly manifest within the human purview. Authority, not wisdom, makes all laws.
It would seem that Boyle wins the battle. Scientific experiment appears as the premier mode of constructing knowledge within the world. Yet, Shapin and Schaffer argue, both Hobbes and Boyle saw a causal connection between the structure of knowledge communities and the acceptance of the knowledge produced. What Boyle did not recognize was that his ability to create knowledge, within the experimental or any other space, was contingent upon a variety of political and social factors. What is known by people is always by the hand of people. It is not the story of triumphalism over nature, but of great work, both seen and unseen, to create spaces and techniques where knowledge is possible. Experiment is a social and political activity which is both dependent and bears upon the world and the society we inhabit.
