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Pickering's Mangle

Pickering's analysis of Scientific practice builds on the, allegedly under-represented, themes of Agency and Contingency.

Pickering notes that much of the standard history of Science (as told by Scientists and Historians) is missing some essential features found in other historical work. Without accusations of intent, the historical descriptions of Scientific developments have come to omit the agency of practitioners and contingency in outcomes. Perhaps for pedegological reasons within the field or a reliance on material written by partial sources (e.g. active or retired participants), commonly accepted histories of Science neglect human character and instead present an overly rational and deterministic prespective.

Three Themes

Contingency, Agency, Emergence are ubiquitous topics in Pickering's explication of the Mangle.

Contingency

Pickering argues that the path of Science in not decide a priori, i.e. has an essentially contingent character where outcomes may have been otherwise.

Contingency in Science can be variously understood:

  • soft: the development of Science requires time and effort of a workforce. Resources must be spent to progress Science and so the timing and extent of development depends on the wffort input to the enterprise of Science. Hence, the history of Science depends on the historical context in so far as the wider societal environment affects the resources available yo Science. For example, a war may propel Scientific advances in some area as economic provision is prioritised as part of the war effort.

  • hard: not only the timing and extent of Scientific development is affected by historical context but also the content of Science, i.e. the theoreties and practices. This stronger flavour of contingency proports the Scientific perspective can be affected in such a way that the description of objects and events depend on the wider society which couches the Scientific activity.

  • controversies are not decided a priori and need to be historically unpacked to understand the contigent actions and decisions.

Framing Scientific activity in terms of agency

  • agency shared between human and non-human agents
  • from humanist perspective this mix of free choices of humans and determining factors of behaviour of nature, machine responses and conceptual apparatus of a discipline - each of which cannot be controlled by human agents

Reaction of human agents to non-human resistance - i.e. events which confound goals of human agents - is defeat or accommodation

  • defeat is uninteresting
  • accommodation involves more free choices of human actors, resourcefulness and ingenuity

There is an interplay of agency between human and non-human actors. Eventual stability when accommodation found between goals, interests, experimental results, interpretations, conceptual resources, etc. settles.

  • This is a stability which emerges in practice and is not settled (or often foreseen) a priori
  • It is a tension of several heterogeneous realms - e.g. material, conceptual, practical

Stability is never final and maybe revisited at anytime.

Agency

Emergence

In Other Places

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