Argumentation, Epistemology and the Sociology of Language

Argumentation, Epistemology and the Sociologyof Language

STEVEN YEARLEY

Department of Social StudiesQueen's UniversityBelfast BT7 INNNorthern Ireland

ABSTRACT: Both the sociology of knowledge and the philosophy of science are centrallyconcerned with the succession of scientific beliefs. In case studies of scientific debates,however, the emphasis tends to be placed on the outcome of disputes. This paper proposesthat attention should instead be focused on the process of debate: that is, on scientificargumentation. It is shown how such a focus circumvents many traditional epistemologicalproblems concerning the truth-status of scientific knowledge. By reference to the consensusconception of truth, it is claimed that scientific arguments can be studied naturalisticallywhilst still honouring the orientation towards truth exhibited by scientists. Finally, thepaper offers a brief rsume of recent studies indicating how this naturalistic study ofscientific argumentation can be developed through the sociology of language.

KEY WORDS: Scientific debate, rationality, truth, argumentation.

INTRODUCTION: KNOWLEDGE AND ARGUMENTS

In the last decade, debates over the rationality of science and scientificchange have emerged as one of the principal points of focus for the studyof epistemology. In the course of these debates the idea that science growsaccording to an internal logic has been heavily criticised and numerousattempts have been made to show the impact of political, social andeconomic influences upon the path taken by science. In the course of thischallenge to conventional historiography analysts have looked for graphicevidence of the connection between social changes and cognitive altera-tions. Law, for example, in a study of sedimentology called for aninvestigation of homologies between social arrangements and conceptualorders (1980). Such procedures are, however, generally speaking toblarge-scale to be able to account for the minutiae of scientific argumenta-tion and debate. Other analysts have sought to show that social forces areinfluential not just in 'sponsoring', so to speak, patterns of ideas but arealso active at every stage in the evolution of scientific thought. If there arecompeting interpretations of scientific evidence, it is suggested, thesupporters of either side will re-interpret the claims of their opponents inaccordance with their own objectives. The term which has been most

Argumentation 2 (1988) 351-367.© 1988 by KluwerAcademic Publishers.

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widely used for this process is 'negotiation'. Bloor in his study Knowledgeand Social Imagery early on gave a basis for the study of negotiation inscience (1976, 117):

The claim [of an earlier chapter in his book] was that the compelling character of ourreasoning is a form of social compulsion. This is too simple as it stands because socialconventions, norms, or institutions do not, and cannot, always compel by the directinternalisation of a sense of right and wrong. Just as men haggle over questions of dutyand legality so they haggle over question of logical compulsion ... When these factorshave been taken into account a richer picture will emerge of the creative or generativepowers of thought.

One way in which such negotiation or haggling can be understood is inrelation to the logical point that all theories can be adjusted in an ad hocway to accommodate new findings. For every new finding some adjust-ment can be made to the original theory so as to rationalise it under thenew circumstances. An interest in negotiation can alternatively be inter-preted as implying an empirical focus on the ways in which particulararguments are put forward, formulated and contested. Such an approachexplores the ways in which arguments - written or spoken, formal orinformal - function. It will be the purpose of this paper to explore thissecond sense of argumentation in relation to science.

A valuable way of thinking about scientific knowledge in this contextcan be attributed to Perelman (1963) and Toulmin (1958). Perelman'sclaim is that the sociologist of knowledge must be concerned with 'thediscursive techniques which make it possible to evoke or further people'sassent to the theses presented for their acceptance' (1963, 155). Hesuggests a distinction between argumentation and demonstration (thelatter being incontrovertible, but formal arguments) which, he claims,promises to re-vitalise the study of rhetoric. He maintains that onlyargument can settle the majority of substantive disputes. Accordingly, thesociologist of knowledge should be concerned with the conditioning ofargumentative success; that is, when pursuing empirical investigationshe/she should focus on the process of coming to agreement rather than onthe knowledge finally arrived at. Perelman, whose concern is ultimatelywith the philosophy of law, fairly predictably regards the process of law asthe best model for the sociology of knowledge. As such, one can see thatthere is room in his suggested approach for an investigation of thosecontingent factors which affect the process of coming to belief. Theattraction of this emphasis is that the sociology of knowledge is notrestricted to dealing with completed knowledge systems but can attend tofeatures of scientific debate.

This fits precisely the objectives outlined above. None the less, hisclaims have specific shortcomings and these can be brought out bycomparing his work with that of Toulmin. In his study of informalprocesses of argument Toulmin claims that, at one level, all arguments

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possess the same structure; a conclusion is derived from specified dataaccording to a warrant. There is no distinction between demonstration andargumentation at this level; demonstrations are arguments where thewarrant is uncontested. Arguments involve the putting of a case for aconclusion (in the legal sense); and the appropriate image for all argu-ments is the jurisprudential one, not the geometrical one of the syllogism.There are, of course, differences between specific kinds of argument interms of practical certainty and of the form of the data and so on. Suchvariable features Toulmin describes as tied to the 'field' in which theargument is situated. Other features are, however, 'field invariant', such asthe notion of propriety of argument and that of truth. He suggests thatthese invariant features have a general force which is not reducible to theirparticular versions. Thus a true logical conclusion has to do with non-contradictoriness whereas a true verdict has to do with a proper inter-pretation of legal canons. One sense of truth cannot be reduced to theother. His suggestion here mirrors his claim (1970, 67-85) that, in ethicaltheory, 'good' is irreducible to its particular meanings (a powerful suck ofa 'good' vacuum cleaner, the tension of a 'good' thriller, the utilitarianbenefit of a 'good' public act). Goodness is the force of a claim that suchand such a thing is to be highly valued in terms of the criteria employed toassess its quality. Similarly decisions about truth in any particular case aretied to the institutions of argument assessment in those cases. Truth resultsfrom just process. In an empirical investigation features of the process forarriving at decisions about truthfulness or adequacy, as both Perelman andToulmin suggest, come to the fore.

TRUTH AND DUE PROCESS

If we look to case studies of scientific debates (such as that by Burchfieldwhich concerns the Victorian controversy about the age of the earth(Burchfield 1975)) we find that participants offer a great variety of claimsand counter-claims. An over-riding concern with the outcome of thedebate which characterises so many philosophical analyses of sciencewould tend to direct attention away from the multiplicity of these scientificclaims and the innovative nature of argument (Rudwick 1985, chapter 16).The negotiated outcome arises from the argument but may not pre-exist it.None the less, there is one difficulty with attending to the process alone. Itappears to minimise the importance of the truthfulness of, for example,the radio-dating of the earth's age because it emphasises the significance ofproper conduct, rather than the epistemological status of the cognitiveoutcome. Customarily, the truth of a theory has been viewed as explainingwhy it emerges from a controversy triumphant. To focus only on dueprocess might lead one to favour a false conclusion, properly arrived at, to

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a true one; this would resemble the case of a well-run trial which frees aguilty person for technical, legal reasons. Later on, I wish to argue that inthe case of analysing science due process must be considered before truth,but prior to that I shall illustrate some of the problems associated with thefamiliar practice of granting precedence to questions of truthfulness.

Because it aims to bring all forms of knowledge-claim to the same,explicable level the sociology of knowledge has long had to face up to thedifficulties associated with the notion of truth. The only option for arigorous sociology of knowledge seems to be some form of cognitiverelativism, and sociologists studying science have become uneasy aboutusing the notion of truth. A number of ways of circumventing its use havebeen devised. I shall consider three of these as a prelude to re-consideringthe question of truth and due process later in this section.

The first method of circumventing questions of truth concentrates uponareas of knowledge where criteria of truthfulness would be expected toapply, but where, as a matter of particular fact, they do not. For anexample one can take Wright's recent study of the development ofscientific medicine (1979). He is able to argue that, whatever the truth ofscientific medicine, its truth could not account for the knowledge's initialsuccess. The sampling techniques and measures which would be requiredaccurately to see the knowledge as superior were not available, and therewas no way of demonstrating the pragmatic superiority of medicine inparticular localities. Indeed with the faith in old practices, the quackery ofnew medicine and the social alienness of scientific medicine, one wouldanticipate in the light of modern knowledge about psychosomatic effectsthat scientific medicine may have been less beneficial. One can, accord-ingly, only ascribe the rapid rise of scientific medicine to a belief in itsefficacy unrelated to its demonstrable truth and applicability. However,only demonstrable truth may be called upon where truth is invoked toexplain past actors' acceptance of certain beliefs. The subscription ofsociety's elite to fashionable medicine seems to have been as important asits scientific validity in establishing modern medicine.

A second strategy requires the analyst to study only those instanceswhere the outcome has yet to be decided, and where the true opinioncannot be invoked to explain the occurrences. Thirdly, one can take thisview a little further and subscribe to a determinedly sociological version ofwhat it is for something to be true. McHugh (1974, 329; see also Collins1975) has claimed that:

We must accept that there are no adequate grounds for establishing criteria of truthexcept the grounds that are employed to grant or concede it - truth is conceivable onlyas a socially organized upshot of contingent courses of linguistic, conceptual, and socialcourses of behavior.

According to this opinion, knowledge is regarded as the outcome of the

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social acts comprising its production. The acceptance of knowledge as trueis always a defacto occurrence and can only be studied as such.

Whilst each of these options presents a way of proceeding, none is ableto confound the commonsensical commitments of scientists or to shakethe beliefs of realists. Thus, the first demonstrates, perhaps, that science isnot uniquely able to get at the truth because scientific claims are notscrutinised for truth on every occasion. But this by no means demonstratesthat medicine proceeded by the subversion of a truer alternative; and onemight anyway suggest that its methodic and cognitive premisses were thesame as those of other, manifestly true sciences. The second approachstops short at questions of truth and cannot shake the belief that truthwill out in the end. Finally, the third approach merits more detailedconsideration.

This radical stance involves the adoption of a thoroughly anthro-pological approach to scientific business, treating fact- and account-production as practical accomplishments. Supporters of this view arguethat scientific facts are best seen as the result of all the social operationsconstituting them. For example, the postulation of an element whichspontaneously undergoes radioactive decay upon creation could veryintelligibly be viewed as a construct of the social situation in which it ispresented as coming into existence. The restriction of its existence to veryspecific social contexts means that the element and certain social opera-tions co-exist. The radical sociologist's rendering of this insight is to seethe element, and the fact of its existence, as artifacts of the situation. Thefact (at least sociologically speaking) is identical with the social operationsconstituting it. In a recent study of endocrinology, Latour and Woolgar(1979, 105-150) have elaborated this position with respect to a singlesubstance TRF, which was available only in minute quantities. Claims todiscovery of similar substances are often made which on further prosecu-tion of the standard techniques are pronounced as artifacts of themachinery, electrical supply, or other extraneous factor. Their point is thatit is not the existence of TRF which explains its passing of the tests, butthe social fact of its having passed the test (and being no longer debated)that confers existence on it. Thus they conclude (1979, 182):

Once the controversy has settled, reality is taken to be the cause of this settlement; butwhile controversy is still raging, reality is the consequence of debate, following eachtwist and turn in the controversy as if it were the shadow of scientific endeavour.

It could be objected that there are other grounds for accepting the reality of a factapart from the cessation of controversy. For example, it could be argued that theefficacy of a scientific statement outside the laboratory is a sufficient basis for acceptingits correspondence with reality.... This objection can be answered in the same way asthe objection about the equivalence of a statement with the thing out there: observationof laboratory activity shows that the "outside" character of a fact is itself the con-sequence of the laboratory work. In no instance did we observe the independentverification of a statement produced in the laboratory. Instead, we observed the

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extension of some laboratory practices to other arenas of social reality, such ashospitals and industry. (Original emphases).

This is clearly a persuasive formulation of an extremely radical stancebut it is not without difficulties. The claim made here is very similar to theone made by operationalist philosophers of science: operationalismmaintains that the meaning of a scientific term is just the operations thatconstitute its domain of meaning. The sociological claim is that thephenomenon arises from a set of social operations and is nothing otherthan those operations. This latter stance is thus a form of social opera-tionalism. As with philosophical operationalism, a strong case for thisstance can be made with phenomena which are extremely machinedependent. Thus, mesons and TRF are available as facts, only in carefullyarranged situations, involving esoteric equipment and techniques. How-ever, this straightforward operationalism breaks down when a phenome-non or putative substance, identified in one operation, is found to beinterchangeable with, or identical to, a phenomenon isolated in a differentmanner. When TRF is synthesised in one process, and isolated from brainextracts in another, the coincidence of 'TRF-ness' stands in need ofexplanation. No doubt one could entertain an operational reduction ofthese two techniques to show them to be the same kind of socialconstruction. But then this argument enters a reductive spiral and the onlyconclusion is that science is just one kind of social construction.

A second weakness is that if all application of scientific knowledge wereto be an extension of particular practices then one would not needchemical engineering and the other sciences of application. The straight-forward utility of science in the world has recently been attacked as adistorting simplification of the business of making science pay off prac-tically (Mulkay 1979; Potter 1982). Social operationalists cannot justoverlook this type of claim. Anyway, how is one to understand the implicitclaim that the outside application of scientific knowledge is always (oreven generally) an extension of laboratory practices? If it is an empiricalclaim, then the author's social operation could be opposed by counterinstance from engineering science. If it is a definitional claim, thatknowledge outside is only ever an extension of specific practice, then therange of practices which are to be regarded as the same looks bewilderingdiverse.

Considering the three sociological strategies for circumventing the issueof truthfulness, it becomes apparent that none of them can conclusivelyoust a realist view of truth. By highlighting the singularity of the occasionsupon which the first two approaches may be employed, one might evenconsider that they act to re-affirm the importance of question of truth. Thethird approach could be said to establish that science is ineffably social,and that 'the truth' is constructed by scientists as they go about their work.

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However, either this is a levelling process which is aimed to show that, insome sense, scientific action is like other action or it is a dogmaticredescription of scientific practice which leaves the truth orientation of thescientific Lebenswelt untouched.

Curiously, sociologists who seek to avoid questions of truth hold onebelief similar to a conviction associated with the realist theory of truth.Both regard truth, if it is to be anything, as a property of isolable chunksof knowledge rather than as coupled to due process. This similarity is bestrevealed in the writings of one of the few sociologists to make a generalstatement about the role of truth in the explanation of belief. Bloor (1973;1976; 1982) has maintained that truth cannot be a cause of belief andsince, according to him, sociology must seek to explain belief causally,questions of truth are out of place. He notes that, were truth a cause ofbelief, then there would be neither ignorance nor error (1973, 178).Despite its tongue-in-cheek appearance this argument can be takenseriously. Clearly if truth were the necessary and sufficient cause of belief,then the period before the acceptance of a belief which was later held tobe true would appear mysterious.

Truth alone can be no causal explanation; but this does not rule out thepossibility that there may be operations, of finite length and complexity,which are the conditions for attaining true belief. One might then say thatadherence to correct procedure is the cause of true belief. For example, ina rule-governed game with clues where one sought to identify a hiddencard by a process of elimination, one might be able to arrive at the correctanswer rapidly by adopting a systematic ploy. Here, the procedure plusthe truth (correctness) of one's ultimate guess is the condition for truebelief. Assuming that the systematic ploy was known to one's opponent,one could then say to him/her that the truth of the answer was responsiblefor your believing it. In a sense this is precisely the claim made for thescientific method. Given an infallible, automatic scientific method, onecould say that one believes helium to be less dense that oxygen (under thesame temperature and pressure) because it is. Truth, mediated by amethod, is the cause of belief.

However, in the case of science, as opposed to a game, the solution isnot afforded by the rules themselves. The reference to what 'really is' thecase about helium and oxygen is not corroborated independently of themeans of its discovery. The physical world is inscrutable, unlike thehidden answer to a guessing game or the malefactor in a detective story.This might seem to favour Bloor's case: since truth is dependent on themethod, one cannot claim that truth is an independent cause of belief. Butthis would only favour Bloor if he had an alternative access to the physicalworld, for he must be able to demonstrate that scientists could take a realuntruth for true; but one presumes he does not. Thus, despite hisassertions to the contrary, Bloor has not proven that truth isn't a cause of

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belief - he has merely shown that, in any particular case, it cannot beknown to be a cause. In fact, given the link between method and truth,one can conclude that scientific truth is nothing but that which is properlydiscovered by science. Truth as a cause of belief must remain, at best, thesustaining fiction of science. However, this is not to say that one can scornscience, that its truths are mere 'contingent upshots', for they could benothing else. Indeed, even to suggest that as an 'upshot' it is not the realtruth, is to fall back into realism. Truth is located firmly in the process, notin the answers to science. Its answers are inscrutable; only in its method isthere anything, as Quine (1969, 5) says, to scrute.

THE FLIGHT FROM TRUTH

Consequently one is squarely back in Perelman's court room. One cannotinsist on handling questions of truth before those of process, because thereis no independent arbitration on matters of truth. However, beforeproceeding, it will be instructive to see how philosophers have entered andstriven to organise this perplexing situation. Philosophical writers too havebeen struck with the inscrutability of the physical world. Many have,nonetheless, sought to adhere to a correspondence theory of truth. Such atheory has an intuitive appeal, but like the apparent analogy betweenscience and a guessing game, is limited by its need to escape language. Allbut language-fabricated truths, such as games, involve an implicit relianceon language to make the correspondence, and thus remain firmly rootedon this side of the real world.

More precisely, there are two forms of the correspondence theory withspecific weaknesses. The first form relies upon what Pitcher (1964, 10)has dubbed 'correspondence as congruity'. According to this theory, aclaim like 'the dog is in the corner' would be true if something corre-sponding to the dog were somewhere corresponding to the corner. Butthis notion of truth runs into difficulty with claims like 'all dogs have fourlegs', and 'the dog is not in the corner'. It is, to say the least, extremelyproblematic to imagine what corresponds to 'all dogs' and impossible todecide what corresponds to 'no dog': a cat, an empty space, a dogelsewhere? The second view Pitcher (1964, 10-14) terms 'correspond-ence as correlation', and involves a purely formal correspondence betweenlanguage and the real world. This fails to do justice to re-interpretations ofthe same data, such as debates about the nature of the atom. Clearly, everydescription must correspond in some way, so that the issue becomes oneabout the correct kind of correspondence. Such a question is perforcebeyond the terms of this theory of truth.

A long-standing philosophical alternative to the correspondence theory,which stresses the procedural nature of truth, is the consensus theory. This

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urges, in Peirce's famous phrase (1966, 133), that: 'The opinion which isfated to be agreed upon by all who investigate is what we mean by truth.'This clearly stays securely within language and conforms nicely toToulmin's idea that 'truth' is a field invariant notion. It might even assist inclarifying the relationship between truth and argumentation. However, itdoes not help to determine what is true in particular instances. In fact, onecould plausibly claim that its directive would be to suspend judgement ontruth until the conditions for attaining a final consensus were reached(Ayer 1974, 17-40). This is a debilitating philosophy of no consolationto the practising scientist.

A recent re-working of Peirce's theory of truth by Habermas has castthe emphasis on argumentation and consensus in a specifically linguisticframework to produce a more flexible truth conception. For Habermas(1973, 212), 'Wahrheit ist ein Geltungsanspruch, den wir mit Aussagenverbinden, indem wir sie behaupten'. Thus, he suggests that when oneasserts something, one's speech act includes a validity claim. However, thisclaim can only be tested through argument. In principle therefore, becausevalidity claims are always open to challenge, true utterances are to berecognised when all relevant parties have been able to offer their contribu-tion and consensus has been reached. Accordingly, no ultimate consensuscan practicably be realised. None the less, each utterance inevitablycontains a truth claim, and is thus normatively oriented towards achievingconsensus. Indeed, the concern with truth is guaranteed by the structure ofcommunication itself, so that it is not as remote as in Peirce's theory.Habermas claims that communicative competence, the imputed ability ofevery speaker to use language in communication, depends on the truthorientation of utterances. Communicative competence therefore providesthe groundwork for a consensus and, since consensus is the condition oftruth, truth is anticipated in the ability to converse. The notion ofcommunicative competence links empirical statements about pragmaticlinguistic capacities to the normative orientation Habermas detects in alldiscourse. His conception of truth is not specific to science or to particulardisciplines. It is intended to be the background to every utterance, even ifthere is no explicit truth claim for it relates to the constituents of speechacts. On the face of it, Habermas offers a version of truth against whichbehaviour can be assessed; can it in fact be applied?

Since Habermas' truth theory is incorporated in his theory of communi-cative competence, or latterly universal pragmatics, it is clear that truth isto be only one of the claims made in utterances (Hesse 1979). Hemaintains that in all there are four validity claims associated with everyspeech act: those of truth, sincerity, understandability, and appropriate-ness. In what Habermas terms an 'Ideal Speech Situation', each of theseclaims would be open to query and to defence. Sincerity and understand-ability are repaired in the flow of discourse, whilst an extension of the

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bounds of discourse may be necessary to the redemption of the otherclaims, for it may be necessary to go beyond the question in hand to moregeneral issues. A 'true' consensus would result from an Ideal SpeechSituation, where the discourse was terminated only by agreement andparticipants were equally endowed with the ability and opportunity toparticipate. Since truth is a facet of the final agreement, the consensus isnot, as for Peirce, the condition of truth but its attainment (but seeMcCarthy 1973, 148-150).

Even if Habermas is correct in thinking that it escapes the flaws of thecommon consensus theory, his remains a peculiar theory in many ways. Itis normative and formal so that there is no guarantee that the criterion ofconsensus could ever be unequivocally employed by empirical analysts.Moreover, the notion of symmetrical chances relies on empirical prag-matic considerations about ability to participate and so on, and thesewould never be unquestionable. As McCarthy (1973, 146-48) stresses, itelides symmetry of formal and actual power. It is also unclear where thetheory derives its authority: it is neither self-evidently true nor ableto prove itself since it depends on identifying the real features of a univer-sal pragmatics. These presumably are not yet consensually recognised.Finally, one wonders how much can be questioned in an Ideal SpeechSituation anyway? Much of the force of the recent philosophy of sciencesuggests that ultimate questions cannot practicably be asked.

Habermas' theory does, however, represent the most elaborate notionof truth prepared to date which focuses on process. Yet even it offers littlemore than an ideal for truth and no sure way of interrogating empiricalinstances of agreement. The very diversity of scientific beliefs and thetenacity with which they are held suggests that science is far fromapproaching a true consensus. Habermas' theory successfully emphasisesthat the idea of truthfulness is primarily a normative conception and thattruth cannot be separated from questions of procedure. This suggests thattruth is ineliminable from the concerns of scientists. But since truth is nolonger seen as a property of particular beliefs this view lessens thedifficulties confronting the sociology of knowledge. It indicates thatsociological attention should be directed to the process of scientificdisputation.

THE TRUTH AND THE WHOLE TRUTH AS A PROBLEM FOR THE

THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

One common difficulty experienced in attempting to arrive at a judicialconsensus, of which one is put in mind on returning to the legalisticmodel, arises from the problem of getting people to tell the whole truth.Yet in most discussions of the theory of knowledge the truth is taken as a

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straightforward notion. Very simple items are considered concerning redballs, ink bottles and cats on mats. One wonders if the whole truth about ascientific theory is the same as the whole truth about a moggy, and one ispuzzled by what the whole truth could consist in.

It is to Habermas' credit that in his theory of truth (1973, 232-33) hemakes it clear that his exemplar of knowledge is theoretical science:

Paradigmata der Erkenntnis ... sind nicht die Wahrnehmungen oder singulirenAussagen, ... sondern generelle, negative und modale Aussagen; diese bringen dasSpezifische von Erkenntnis zum Ausdruck: nnimlich die begriffliche Organisation desErfahrungsmaterials.

He is justified in claiming that theories are commonly taken to be thebearers of truth, but at one level his view is still too narrow, since herepeats a common tendency to take knowledge of a theory to be a singularentity. The common theory of knowledge thus makes two simplificationsby considering knowledge of bottles of ink as examples: firstly, usingaffirmative statements about simple objects, and secondly, by regardingthe knowledge as exhausted by the one statement. Against such a view onecan ask with Wittgenstein (1976, 58 e-59 e):

But what does this knowledge consist in? Let me ask: When do you know that [piece ofknowledge]? Always? day and night? ... Suppose it were asked: "When do you knowhow to play chess? All the time? or just while you are making a move? And the wholeof chess during each move? - How queer that knowing how to play chess should takesuch a short time, and a game so much longer!

What then is the whole truth about a scientific theory, or put more simply,what is it, for the empirical investigator, that someone knows a theory?This is not a question for psychology, nor is it to doubt that people doknow theories. Rather, it is to suggest that many ways of regardingscientific knowledge operate on a restrictive, perhaps distorting, view ofwhat knowing is.

What 'knowing Newton's second law of motion' amounts to, has beeninvestigated by the philosopher Hanson (1969, 99-118). He suggeststhat there are many meanings of the law (commonly expressed F =m(d 2s/dt2 )), related to the ways the law is used, and that what it is toknow the law varies with the meaning. It can legitimately be regarded asan empirical result; a description of Newton's historical discovery; a wayof defining force; a statement of notation; a technique for measuring forceor acceleration; a principle to be observed in instrument construction anda great many other things. As an example he cites Atwood's machine,which consists of two weights connected by a light thread running over alow-friction pulley. This instrument is used variously to prove Newton'slaw; to afford experimental demonstrations of it; and to measure gravita-tional acceleration on the basis of the law.

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Furthermore, these alternatives have no necessary order of historicalsuccession, for they can be employed by the same scientist perhaps as astatement of terms and as a guide to instrument construction. Morestrikingly, in 1798, Cavendish sought to confirm the law experimentallyover short distances whilst accepting it as a law of nature for otherphenomena. In the face of this meaning instability, Hanson suggests (1969,103), 'Philosophers may think these physicists are confused; but theconfusion is a difficult one to resist'.

Clearly, the meaning variance is no practical problem. The philosopheris only inclined to detect a problem and to suppose the scientist confusedif he/she believes that scientific knowledge deep down is really laws orreally definitions. Hanson suggests that scientific knowledge is actuallymultiplex. But there is a further point for the analyst, the use is part of themeaning and the meaning informs the use. Philosophers may regard thisvariation as a problem. Scientists have no such difficulty; they need nosemantic experts to put their meanings into order. Indeed, Hanson claims(1969, 118) that the appropriate invocation of the different meanings isconstitutive of being a good scientist, and at the forefront of knowledgethe options on interpretation may account for the divergent opinions ofdifferent scientists. For the sociology of science the point to be taken hereis that what it is to know a theory, or what that theory means, is dependenton the use or context of that theory; and that use and context are closelyconnected. This may seem an obvious claim but, at a methodological level,it is not at all straightforward. It means that as the sociologist tries todescribe what a scientist is doing, he/she is faced with a variety ofpotentially correct technical descriptions. This variation has led Gilbertand Mulkay to use the imagery of scientists talking with many voices(1984).

Recent development in interpretative sociology, especially parts ofethnomethodology have been concerned with a similar series of problems.Ethnomethodology, of course, arose largely as a methodological critiqueof conventional American sociology, and concentrated on two problemsakin to those cited above. The first problem was that sociologists rely oneveryday knowledge in order to elicit the data which subsequently getreified. The second difficulty lay in the need to divorce descriptions ofactions from those actions themselves. Ethnomethodologists claim that,since all social action is understood in context, the interpretation of whatsomeone is saying - in an interview for example - is no more contextfree than other, non-sociological understanding (Cicourel 1964). There-fore, sociology is predicated upon untrained everyday interpretations ofcontexted meanings. Furthermore, the practical, artless repair of thishopeless contextuality is itself a phenomenon. As Garfinkel (1967, 1)explains:

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[ethnomethodology's] central recommendation is that the activities whereby membersproduce and manage settings of organized everyday affairs are identical with members'procedures for making those settings "account-able".

Strong claims have been made against ethnomethodology as a generalperspective, (Attewell (1974), Giddens (1976, 38-42) and Goldthorpe(1973)) particularly attacking its assertion that making accountable isdoing. Surely murdering a person is more than presenting their death atone's hands as accountable (at least for the deceased). However, forscience with its inscrutable object of study, it may be that the makingaccountable can justly be viewed as a great deal of the doing. Perhaps theethno-methodological approach to the study of meanings can be morethan a critique of method here, and direct one more positively.

Ethnomethodology emphasises that actors proceed by making lifeaccountable, despite the contexted nature of all situations. This contextdependence is dubbed 'indexicality' by Garfinkel. Some ethnomethod-ologists have suggested that the significance of indexicality for analyses ofeveryday life can be revealed by contrasting everyday talk with scientificlanguage, where, they imply, indexicality is avoided (for example, Wilson1974, 71-74). But is this really so when scientific speech acts areconsidered? This question has been examined in a recent article in whichBarnes and Law (1976) have sought to extend the concept of indexicalityto include natural scientific statements. They demonstrate convincinglythat scientific language is subject to meaning variance in a number ofways, and should not be seen as essentially different to the 'indexical'everyday world. For instance, the claim that 'this is copper sulphate' canonly contextually be resolved into what constitutes CuSO4 since what, onone occasion, is said to be a crystal of copper sulphate may appropriatelybe described as a mixture in a different situation. Similarly, the weights ofsubstances or the rate of gravitational acceleration are given values oncontextual bases. Surely one can say that the utterance 'this is coppersulphate' depends for its meaning or truth value on its occasion ofutterance. Further, the meaning of certain terms like 'mass' depends onwhich theory-system one is working with, and this is practically decidedon particular occasions of scientific use. Finally, the development ofproofs of geometrical or other axioms (as studied by Lakatos, 1976) canbe seen just as the repair of indexicality.

With the inclusion of mathematics (Barnes and Law 1976, 229-30),one could even argue that analytic statements might have an indexicalcharacter. Giddens (1976, 42-44) remarks that of course the statement'2 + 2 = 4' is indexical in the sense that the rules of arithmetic mightchange, but he maintains that that this possibility of meaning change is sogeneral that the property involved cannot usefully be called indexicality.

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Certainly, neither Garfinkel nor Barnes and Law attempt to define theconcept of indexicality rigorously. Yet Giddens' objection omits theconsideration that rule-changing is an everyday concern and accomplish-ment of mathematicians working at the forefront of mathematical science.His claim fails to distinguish the security of sedimented rule systems fromthe openness at the forefront of knowledge. One might as well say that theinjunction 'no smoking' is non-indexical just because it appears unprob-lematic. The ethnomethodologist's claim is that apparently non-indexicalstatements are simply ones where a context for interpretation is easilyimagined. Ethnomethodology asserts that no statement is non-indexical,and that sociologists who claim to interpret statements with no referenceto contextual features, are actually employing a covert contextual 'gloss'.

On this view, therefore, the source of the answer to what it is to know atheory can only be located in what is done with that theory. This is not toadvocate an ethnomethodology of science, because ethnomethodologistsstudy only the indexicality of action. They are not concerned with howargumentation proceeds in science. Their interest is in documenting howscientists handle indexicality (Garfinkel, Lynch and Livingston 1981).Consequently scientific action has no special characteristics for them. Onthe other hand, I am not in agreement with Gidden's claim that studies ofindexicality should await resolution in terms of the true meaning ofsentences. This suggestion bypasses the valid methodological issues raisedby the question of indexicality and transfers them to the level of philoso-phers' problems. It misses the fact that scientists' 'artful' recognition of,say, the true meaning of 'this is copper sulphate' is a complex phenome-non. The way forward in studying argumentation must be related topragmatics in a broad sense, but a pragmatics more intricate thanHabermas' allegedly universal system yet encompasses. One must startwith natural data, looking at the construction of scientific arguments andcounter-arguments. That is, one should turn to a sociology of scientificlanguage.

CONCLUSION: THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENTIFIC LANGUAGE

This paper has reviewed a variety of the connections which can bedetected between argumentation and epistemology in science. Althoughscientific knowledge is commonly held up as having exemplary status itsobject cannot be known directly and in this sense is fated to remaininscrutable. Accordingly, attempts to base science's validity on the ideal ofcorrespondence will inevitably be ironically undermined as knowledgedevelops. None the less, in studying science it is important to focus on anorientation towards truth as an aspect of scientist's social action. This

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paper has shown that an emphasis on processes of argumentation fits wellwith the intuitive demands which scientists appear to place on the notionof truth. It has further been suggested that a focus on argumentationsuccessfully accompanies a consensus conception of truth.

It must however be realised that the idea that truth can be understoodas a form of validity claim made in assertions does not allow one tospecify rules or procedures narrowly governing the conclusions which willemerge from debates and argumentation. Rather one is invited to focus onthe practical importance of rhetoric and persuasion. Furthermore, evenwhen knowledge is seen as resulting from processes of argument andpersuasion, a major restriction on the customary conception of knowledgetends to persist: analysts have failed to recognise that what it is to knowsomething, or what it is that a theory amounts to (for example, variousstatements of the 'meaning' of Newton's law), are only available informulations. Arguments only exist in the form of their particular expres-sions. Rather than treating these formulations as insipid relations of thereal steps in the process of argumentation they merit examination in theirown right. The natural development of the emphasis on consensus andargumentation is not towards normative theories but towards the study ofnaturally-occurring argumentation. There is only space in this conclusionbriefly to mention studies which fit this requirement: Myers (1985) hasexamined successive stages in the composition of scientific papers showinghow the status of the knowledge is negotiated in the course of refereeingand evidenced in the adaptations of the article for publication; Yearley(1981) has examined the manner in which scientists deconstruct thepublished argument of their scientific opponents through textual devices ofsequencing and arrangement; and Mulkay (1985) has shown the ways inwhich scientists negotiate the value of each other's arguments in theinformal context of exchanges of letters. Other formulations of argumentswhich must ultimately be considered include scientists' diagrams, illustra-tions and graphical plots but it is not yet fully clear how the principles ofsocio-linguistic analysis should be applied to such materials (but seeGilbert and Mulkay 1984, 141-71). What is clear, however, is thatargumentation provides a focus for empirical study of issues such aspersuasion and truth-orientation which have either been denied empiricalscrutiny or been sheltered behind normative, epistemological barriers.

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Argumentation, Epistemology and the Sociology of Language