Ending Up On the Wrong Side: Must the Two Forms of Radicalism Always Be at War?

Abstract

In this paper, I look at the reflexive political implications for the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) of two incipient or actual public disputes about when certain items of scientific knowledge should have been known, and consequently if and when certain actions should have been taken on the basis of this knowledge: (1) The case of a `dying smoker' suing a tobacco company for not printing health warnings on cigarette packets in the 1960s, when the company should have known the facts about the effects of smoking on health; and (2) The case of a technological disaster inquiry where the technology's proponents are accused of culpable negligence on the grounds that they should have known the facts about the effect of low temperature on the resilience of space-shuttle O-rings. When SSK's contingent and symmetrical understanding of knowledge is applied to these cases, it would appear that the analytic conclusion — that it is naïve and unrealistic to retroject states of knowledge, as the accusers do — sides with the account of the situation given by the defence (who here are reactionary societal actors like tobacco companies and NASA). Thus the epistemological radicalism of SSK would appear to place it not merely as a neutral bystander, but (much worse) as an active supporter of the `wrong' side, politically-morally speaking. Should SSK therefore abandon its epistemological radicalism in favour of politico-moral radicalism? Which form of commitment should we choose? Or can we, somehow, choose both?