History Of Objectivity Research Paper

Much recent literature in the social studies of scientific knowledge effectively denies that either of these is possible, and argues that if we are to understand how scientific projects come to be accepted, we need to examine not their purported objectivity or truth but the rhetorical strategies employed by their proponents (see the discussions in Fuller 1993, Golinski 1998, and the essays in Megill 1994). Concern with the nature and possibility of objectivity is not new, however, and by looking at some traditional questions that have been raised about objectivity, we can attempt to identify what is genuinely problematic about objectivity and what is not.

The nature of objectivity can best be brought out by considering challenges to it. There are three traditional kinds of challenge that bring out some of the principal issues: the claim that objectivity is impossible; the claim that objectivity is always relative; and the idea that the form objectivity takes in the natural sciences might not be generalizable.

1. Is Everything Subjective?

The ancient Pyrrhonists denied that objectivity was possible (see Annas and Barnes 1985). Everything, they argued, is relative to the observer, to the conditions under which the observation is made, and to the state the object is in when it is perceived. For example, what color we observe something to be will depend upon us—it will look different depending on whether we have jaundice or not—upon the medium in which it is observed—it will depend upon whether we observe the object through air or red-tinted glass—and it will depend upon the state of the object—such as whether the object is in a solid form or a powder (gold is yellow when solid and white when powdered, for example). Observation is always inescapably relative to a host of factors and not only can we not avoid this relativity, but, the Pyrrhonists argued, we cannot single out any factor as being objective. There is no objective fact of the matter as to what color something is, or even whether it is moving or stationary, large or small: it depends on the circumstances of viewing and we have no grounds for preferring observations made by a stationary observer to those of a moving one, those of a close observer to those of a distant one, or even those of an intoxicated observer to those of a sober one.

Now even if we were to accept that there are never any optimal viewing conditions (remembering that these kinds of argument often work by choosing examples where there are no optimal viewing conditions, and then moving illegitimately to the claim that there are never optimal viewing conditions), we would not thereby be forced to dispense with objectivity. An objective theory can predict how a powder will look when viewing through different colored glasses, how something will look if we have jaundice, and it may predict color changes when a solid is ground into a powder; and we can certainly correlate changes in perceived speed with our state of motion, even our state of motion relative to one another. In other words, an objective theory is not one that simply chooses one set of viewing conditions over others and then stipulates that these will be the objective ones: it is one that holds for all viewing conditions, and any choice of one set over others does not affect the objectivity of the claims of the theory.

2. Is Everything Relative?

Any perceptual judgement involves, as well as input from the object perceived, various inputs from our perceptual and cognitive faculties, and we might reasonably expect this latter type of input to take on an increasingly significant role as we move away from straightforward observation. What we see and what we judge is, therefore, dependent on various perceptual-cum-cognitive interpretations that we place on our observations: there is no such thing as a ‘view from nowhere’ (see Nagel 1986). This does not rob these observations of objectivity. To think this is to assume that objectivity can be secured only in the absence of interpretation and judgment, but the question of objectivity does not even arise in the absence of these. Objectivity becomes an issue when we raise the question of the standing of our judgments and interpretations. We are not seeking a view from nowhere: we are seeking interpretations and judgments that hold up against all alternatives when judged by the same criteria. The fact that judgments involve conceptual structuring and interpretation (conceptual structuring and interpretation which might have been different) in itself has no bearing at all on the objectivity of those judgments.

The trouble is that when we move beyond this, to the question of theoretically motivated or theoretically guided interpretations of phenomena, differences in these interpretations may result in differences in what counts as evidence, differences in what counts as demonstration, and in what counts as a satisfactory explanation (see Kuhn 1970 and Gaukroger 1978). Here we do face problems of objectivity. In such cases, questions may well arise of whether, in not treating a particular kind of evidence as revealing, for example, one is being objective. Now failure of objectivity may be very difficult to decide in such cases, but we must not confuse failure of objectivity with differing standards of objectivity. Kuhn’s work, in particular, has sometimes been read in such a way that the move from one paradigm to another is akin to a religious conversion rather than something objective (Kuhn himself used this analogy, but arguably as a way of capturing the phenomenology of the experience of moving from one paradigm to another, not as something that was intended to throw light on how changes to the content of science are made). There may indeed be paradigm shifts that reflect no objectivity and are like religious conversions, but the ones that Kuhn described, which are very much the success stories of the physical sciences, are clearly not of this type: the move from Aristotelian to Newtonian to Einsteinian cosmologies is a progression with a clear rationale in terms of objectivity, which a move in the opposite direction, for example, would not be.

Genuine cases of different standards of objectivity are difficult, if not impossible, to find, but those who have tried to establish a relativity of objectivity to the investigators’ beliefs or theories or values have sometimes invoked two cases in twentieth-century physics—relativity theory and quantum mechanics—which seem to provide examples of the relativity of observational results with respect to the observer. In fact, they do not. In the relativity case, what Einstein showed in his Special Theory was that we have to alter our assessment of what is relative and what is fixed, but no increase in relativity, as it were, results from this. In classical physics, it had been assumed that how quickly a body is moving will appear differently to different observers: if one is traveling in the same direction as the body, for example, it will appear to be moving more slowly than if one passes it traveling in the opposite direction. In other words, velocity is relative to the observer. But the speed of light in a vacuum turned out to be constant no matter in what direction, or at what speed, the measuring apparatus was moving. Einstein argued that the only explanation for this was that the speed of light was constant, but that space and time contracted or dilated depending on the direction and speed of the observer. Space and time, which were previously absolute, are now made relative to the observer (but not merely relative: they really do—objectively—dilate and contract!), but the speed of light, which was previously relative to the observer, is now made absolute.

The case of quantum mechanics is rather more complex, but again we cannot draw any general conclusions about the relativity of observations from it. The quantum mechanics case arises because we cannot measure both the position and momentum of a particle: measurement of one affects the other. One early interpretation of this phenomenon, the Copenhagen Interpretation, maintained that particles were not in a physical state when not being measured: it was the act of measurement, which involved an interaction between a measuring apparatus and a measured system, that put them in a physical state. Moreover, in the Copenhagen Interpretation, this interaction is very problematic and peculiar because the measuring system obeys classical laws, whereas the measured system obeys quantum laws. The lesson that some have drawn from this is that measurement or observation affects the system observed, so we can never know what the system would be like without the observation or measurement, which is what we seek to know.

The peculiarities of the quantum mechanics case make it difficult to understand even in its own right, but this has not prevented some from trying to take it as a general model. Making a very contentious interpretation of something which is poorly understood into a source of guidance is clearly foolish. Nevertheless, does there not seem to be an analogy between this case and one that may arise in the observation of human behavior, for example, where the fact of being observed might inevitably and perhaps unconsciously lead one to modify one’s behavior? The analogy breaks down, however, because the case of modification of behavior is something which we can develop techniques for dealing with, whereas this is explicitly not possible in the Copenhagen Interpretation. Such techniques have been around since antiquity, and were developed in the sixteenth century in the context of legal and historical testimony in a particularly interesting way (see Franklin 1963). Francesco Patrizzi, in his Dialogues on History of 1560, had attempted to show that the historian can either be impartial, or informed, but not both. He begins by rejecting secondary sources as virtual hearsay, and he divides primary sources into the partisan and the objective. Then, replying on a number of Machiavellian assumptions about the nature of rulers, he sets up a dichotomy between the partisan observer and the objective observer. Partisan observers—in this case, those sympathetic to the ruler—in virtue of being partisan, have access to the relevant information, because the ruler can rely upon them; but because they are partisan they will not provide an objective rendering of this information. Objective observers, namely those who are prepared to be critical of the ruler if this is merited, on the other hand, will not, because they are objective, have the ruler’s confidence, and so will not have access to the source of the relevant information. (If this seems farfetched, just think of the widespread practice of government briefings to selected journalists.) Patrizzi’s conclusion is that it is ‘utterly and totally impossible for human actions to be known as they were actually done.’ The response from his contemporaries was that there are a number of ways in which we can establish credibility and plausibility, along the lines applied in law where, for example, we have doubts about a witness’ credibility. In such cases we take into account such factors as the probative value of reinforcing testimonies: the problem is not one of a skeptical challenge to the objectivity of history per se but rather problems about evidence and reliability which practitioners of the discipline will usually be best placed to deal with. The same range of solutions is available to the anthropologist or psychologist, for example, who is concerned that the observation of his or her subjects causes them to modify their behavior or statements in some way.

3. Does Every Type Of Explanation Call For Objectivity?

Objectivity seems to require us to stand back from the phenomena we are examining, as it were, so that we can investigate and assess them from a wholly impartial standpoint, which could be used for any phenomena of this kind. It is not always clear, however, that this approach is either the only one, or the most informative one. Consider the case of an anthropologist studying a rain dance. Assume that rain dances do not actually cause it to rain, and have never done so, yet are always performed at times of drought, and assume that there is evidence that, in times of drought, social strife and uncertainty about the nature of authority increases. In this case, it seems reasonable to answer the question why the natives perform the rain dance in functionalist terms, namely that the rain dance secures social cohesion. But there is also a sense in which this is a wholly inappropriate explanation: the natives perform the rain dance only when they want it to rain, and their reason for performing it is clearly because they believe that this will increase the chances of rain.

There are three kinds of response one can make to this issue. The first is to insist that only the first explanation is objective and impartial. It requires us to stand back from the phenomena and treat them as we would any other: after all, functional explanations can be given for phenomena in our own societies—one can imagine a functionalist explanation of regular presidential or parliamentary elections as securing social cohesion, for example—as well as in others. The theory it works with is something that has been developed in such a way as to eradicate partiality and the imposition of the values of its advocates. Generally speaking, one crucial thing that we seek in scientific explanations is algorithmic compression; that is, particularly economical statements of the principles underlying data that enable us to generate that data and predict outcomes. The functionalist criterion meets this requirement in a way that the account which sticks to what the participants themselves believe does not.

The second response is to argue that the issue hinges on the fact that the functionalist account fails to— indeed cannot but fail to—capture the thought that motivates the participants in the dance. One way in which this contrast is sometimes expressed is in terms of the distinction between reasons and causes: giving the reasons someone has for doing something (or interpreting the behavior) and giving the causes of their behavior are two different things. Some philosophers—most notably Vico and Dilthey—have argued that the natural sciences and the human sciences are quite distinct (see Berlin 1976, Dilthey 1976 and Ermarth 1978) in this respect. In particular, while it might be appropriate to ‘stand back’ from phenomena in the natural sciences to achieve objectivity, this is inappropriate in the case of the human sciences, where we are dealing not with an objectified realm, but with human beings who have intentional states, emotions, exercise judgment, etc., things they share with the investigator and which the investigator is therefore in a position to interpret and make sense of: something quite different from what we do in the natural sciences. In this view, to take the functionalist road would be to treat the rain dance as if it were on a par with a natural, nonintentional phenomenon and it would thus fail to appreciate the nature of the phenomenon under investigation. Proponents of such a view are not denying that objectivity in the sense of impartiality is appropriate in the human sciences, but rather that criteria of objectivity, or guides as to how objectivity might be achieved, can simply be imported from the natural sciences, because what is at stake is not the discovery of causes but the interpretation of behavior. Similarly with a third response, which denies that there is just one way of explaining the rain dance: different accounts bring to light different aspects of the phenomenon. The success of an explanation on this account is relative to what one wants explained, and there is no reason why the choices should be restricted to two mutually exclusive accounts.

These disputes raise a deep question about just how significantly the means by which objectivity is to be secured can vary. But they do not raise a question about the nature of objectivity as the dispute is over how objectivity in the human sciences is best achieved, not over whether objectivity consists of something different in the natural and human sciences. What it consists of can be spelled out in operational terms: whether one is seeking to discover the causes of behavior or to interpret it, what we seek is an impartial account, one which could ideally be accepted by any subject on the basis of evidence and/or arguments.

4. The Limits Of Objectivity

It is a hallmark of objectivity that one compares one’s theory with the evidence, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between the evidence for one’s theory and one’s expectations about what a plausible theory should or will reveal. One always judges a theory against what one already knows or believes to be the case, and while in some cases the theory may change one’s beliefs and expectations, in others it may lead one to challenge the theory by trying to develop a viable alternative, for example. There may simply be no objective matter of fact, in particular cases, about which direction to go in: one direction may be no more objective than another. In other words, there is nothing objective about accepting evidence at face value: sometimes it is the right thing to do, sometimes not. In the face of potentially falsifying evidence, for example, it is often better to revise one’s theory, to accommodate the theory to the evidence, than to abandon it. Some philosophers have tried to capture the conditions under which it is no longer productive to continue to revise a theory (e.g., Lakatos 1972), while others have denied that this is possible (e.g., Feyerabend 1974).

What these disputes suggest is that guidelines marking out how we are to secure objectivity are much more difficult to formulate than in the heyday of theories of scientific method, when it was assumed that comparison of theories with the evidence was all there was to the matter. But this is, of course, quite different from the claim that the securing of scientific results is not a matter of objectivity.

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