Science,Common Sense and Sociological Analysis: A Critical Appreciation of the Epistemological Foundation of Field Theory

2.1. The Problem of Subjectivity in Rationalist and Historical Studies

The analytical philosophy of science appears to have always vacillated between the poles of inductive and deductive logic (cf. Hesse 1982; Yearley 2004). Inductive scholars believe that commonsensical observations lead to the development of scientific theory (cf. Carnap 1932; Comte 1975), while deductive scholars believe that scientists first develop theories and then test them against observations (cf. Popper 1959). However, neither camp can account for the role of the scientists’ subjectivity in the progress of science. Popper, the champion of deductive logic, has been criticized for developing “epistemology without a knowing subject” (cf. Haack 1979). Scholars of inductive logic suffer from the same shortcoming; they assume that scientists can observe the world without mediation of their subjective biases. Thus, both of these opposite poles of the philosophy of science ignore the scientist in their respective accounts. This weakness escapes historians of science, the most well-known critics of the analytical tradition in the philosophy of science.

Kuhn’s (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is considered to be the most influential account of the history of science produced so far. Kuhn boldly claimed that what we identify as normal science is never as perfectly provable as we usually imagine it to be. In any science, there are always puzzles and problems that appear to be unexplainable by the established paradigm. As such puzzles accumulate, it becomes increasingly difficult to believe in the established paradigm as the key to solving the puzzles at the frontier of scientific research, eventually leading to a moment of crisis at which scientists’ attention shifts toward alternative paradigms that offer better solutions. The paradigm that is able to explain both the puzzles that were explained by the previously established paradigm and those that were not emerges as the new paradigm of that science. Thereafter, the process of simultaneously solving puzzles at the frontier of science and testing the established paradigm as the key to solving those puzzles continues.

It is difficult to ignore the similarity between Kuhn’s notion of paradigms and sociologists’ notion of culture. Like culture in the social world, paradigms in the scientific world become the guiding force for interpreting the phenomena under investigation. Ethnomethodological accounts of how culture shapes our everyday life experiences appear to be uncannily similar to how scientists experience their everyday activities. Like those adhering to the same culture, those adhering to the same paradigm either systematically avoid evidence against their paradigm or condemn such evidence as a mistake or error on the part of the scientists. For example, when the platypus was first discovered by Australian scientists as an egg-laying mammal, European scientists claimed that it was an observational mistake on the part of Australian scientists and not a new scientific discovery (Dugan 1987). In other words, if culture can be viewed as a reflection of collective consciousness, then the notion of paradigms clearly brings to the fore the importance of the scientific community’s collective consciousness in comprehending progress in science. However, in the process, the question of scientists’ subjectivity remains unanswered.

Lakatos and Feyerabend led the response to Kuhn’s radical theory of progress in science. Lakatos ([1978] 1980) gave an analytical spin to Kuhn’s insight by developing the core and periphery model; the core is composed of well-accepted theories, while the periphery is at the frontier of science, where the core is pushed to its explanatory and predictive limits. His analytical re-construction of Kuhn’s historical model creates a neat schema of progress in science in contrast to the often chaotic history of such progress. It is thus unsurprising that Lakatos’s model faces the same problem as previous attempts at a rational construction of scientific epistemology: the problem of the absent scientist.

Feyerabend (1975), a close friend and intellectual rival of Lakatos, quickly reminded him of the futility of developing any rational model of science. Using historical evidence, he claimed that most scientific discoveries are a result of accidents, social conditions, and the personal whims of the scientist. Notably, in his studies, the individual scientist is reduced to his whims and moods and thus Feyerabend precludes any possibility of systematically investigating the scientist’s subjectivity. In his studies, the social world appears as an objective external force that exists without individual social actors’ practices. Thus, he cannot avoid facing the well-known criticism of sociological analysis—that it reduces individuals to their collective conditions.

In other words, in all accounts within the Anglo-American philosophy of science, the subjectivity of the investigating scientist is overlooked. In the analytical re-construction of science, the scientist’s subjectivity is simply absent, while in historical studies it is dissolved into the collective perception of the scientific community. A more accurate comprehension of progress in science would be possible if scholars focused on the relation between scientists’ subjectivity and the collective conditions of the world of science. Bachelard’s unique contribution to the philosophy of science is that he makes scientists’ subjectivity the starting point of his investigation of scientific epistemology.

2.2. Bachelard’s Solution

Bachelard starts with a clearly stated claim that scientists’ subjectivity mediates every aspect of their investigation (conceptualization, experimentation, observation, etc.). To develop his thesis on the relation between scientists’ subjectivity and the objects of their investigation, he borrows the Freudian insight that the consciousness projects its image onto the external world. Through selective observations of the external world, human subjectivity re-affirms the dynamics of its inner world. In the process, human beings use their familiarity with their internal world to erroneously establish a relation of familiarity with the external world. This relation of familiarity forms the foundation of two well-known erroneous assumptions of the pre-modern sciences: substantialism (objects are driven by their essence) and animism (objects have souls).

Bachelard (1938a) explored these features of the relation between consciousness and objects in the external world in his Psychoanalysis of Fire. In this book, he traces the history of the science of fire, beginning by asking how human beings first learned to make fire. The available answer, which is amply supported by anthropological accounts of how fire is still made in communities untouched by modern civilization, is that humans learned to make fire by vigorously rubbing dry sticks together. However, Bachelard criticized this account for assuming that the primitive mind understood the physics of fire (i.e., the relation between the kinetic energy produced by rubbing dry wood and its combustion temperature). He claims that the idea of rubbing sticks together could not have originated in instances of fire in nature that could have been easily observed by primitive people (e.g., lightning, forest fires, or volcanoes). Thus, for Bachelard, the true question is what initially prompted human beings to rub dry sticks together.

Bachelard claims the human experience of fire was far closer to their experiences of their internal worlds than to their experiences of fire in the external world. He argues that, for the primitive mind, the warmth of fire must have been experienced as similar to the warmth of sexual intimacy. Thus, since rubbing is an essential part of igniting the warmth of sexual intimacy, then rubbing must have been viewed as an integral part of the process of triggering fire. In the following quote, Bachelard describes how the subjective familiarity with sexual intimacy became the foundation of the primitive knowledge of fire:

The warm sense of well-being arising from physical love must have been transferred into many primitive experiences. To set fire to the stick by sliding it up and down in the groove in the piece of dry wood takes time and patience. But this work must have been very agreeable to an individual whose reverie was wholly sexual. (Bachelard 1938a, 28)

Thus, the projection of the internal world of sexual experience onto fire became the foundation of the pre-science of fire. In investigating alchemy books on fire, Bachelard found numerous descriptions of fire that seem to express a sublimated comprehension of sexual experiences rather than an objective comprehension of the physics of fire (Bachelard 1938a, 43-45). In fact, there was a widespread belief among pre-modern scientists that fire was started by little shiny worms. Some claimed that fire must be comprehended as the offspring of the objects that created it; therefore, just as different people produce different offspring, different objects were thought to create different types of fire. Thus, they believed there was a difference between common fires, electrical fires, and fires from phosphorus, volcanoes, and thunderbolts. Some claimed that fire, if left to live its natural life, would grow old and die like other living things even if it were continually fed. In other words, the primitive science of fire was mediated by a cultural comprehension of fire—a comprehension which, in a strict Freudian sense, was a sublimated form of sexual instinct.

The modern science of fire was not possible as long as one remained ensconced in the commonsensical comprehension of fire. Thus, Bachelard reached his bold conclusion that the main obstacle to the development of the modern sciences was scientists’ socially inherited commonsensical comprehension of the object of their investigation. Hence, the transition from prescience to modern science entailed a break from the erroneous familiarity with the world, as such a break allows the world to appear strange and unfamiliar. Bachelard demonstrated this point in his Formation of Scientific Mind by documenting the history of the physics of electricity.

In the pre-modern physics of electricity, the investigating scientists’ substantialist and animist assumptions often led to absurd experiments with equally absurd conclusions (Bachelard 1938b, 111). They believed that electricity was a kind of spirit that flowed through the substance of a material. Hence, when it passed through different objects, it intermingled with the essence of those objects. In order to prove their point, scientists passed electricity through various materials and observed their outcomes through their physical senses (taste, touch, smell, etc.).

The modern physics of electricity developed when investigating scientists viewed electricity as a completely unfamiliar object. In fact, they assumed that they could not have any sensual familiarity at all with electricity. Thus, in order to comprehend electricity, they had to first conceptualize electricity independently of their sensorial experiences of electricity. More importantly, they had to develop quantitative measures of electricity that were wholly abstract and hence independent of scientists’ commonsensical observations. In other words, the modern physics of electricity developed when scientists were no longer touching, feeling, or tasting electricity in order to comprehend it. As Bachelard describes in the following quote, a pivotal moment in this conceptualization of electricity took place when Ohm developed the concept of “resistance”:

The abstract concept Ohm brought into use . . . in order to designate the different conductors is that of resistance. This concept rids science of all reference to direct sensory qualities. The objection might perhaps be raised that the concept of the resistance still has too much of an image about it. Linked as it is to the concepts of intensity and electromotive force however, the concept of resistance gradually loses its etymological value and becomes metaphorical. This concept is henceforward the element of a complex law, a law that is fundamentally very abstract and wholly mathematical, and that forms a kind of conceptual node. (Bachelard 1938b, 111)

Here, it is important to note that Bachelard, by claiming that a break from common sense entails replacing commonsensically inherited concepts with scientific concepts, is not assuming the idealist position. These concepts are not simply developed as elements of a theoretical model; rather, they are developed to be tested empirically and corrected if needed. To distinguish himself from the idealistic philosophy of science while not falling into empiricist assumptions, Bachelard developed the notion of phenomenotechnique (Chimisso 2008; Rheinberger 2005). This term refers to the idea that concepts are akin to techniques in that they should be empirically tested and improved. Thus, instead of assuming that the direction of progress in science is from observations to concepts (as in inductive logic) or from concepts to observations (as in deductive logic), Bachelard claimed that there is a constant back and forth between scientifically developed concepts and observations made through scientific instruments (which are the materialized form of earlier concepts).

Thus, Bachelard directly tackles the issue of scientific subjectivity, which has been largely ignored or replaced by collective consciousness within the philosophy and history of science. His main claim is that by the time a scientist begins to speculate about the nature of reality, his subjectivity is already conditioned by socially inherited common sense. The main objective of a social actor’s common sense is not to objectively comprehend the nature of reality; rather, it is to accomplish the immediate practical aims of his everyday life. Claiming that common sense is an epistemic obstacle to an objective comprehension of the world, he argued that the development of a scientific mind entails unlearning all that one has socially learned about the objects of investigation.

3.1. Social Production of Common Sense

Bourdieu’s main point is that, unlike the natural sciences, which have developed a highly formal vocabulary, sociological investigation is primarily dependent on everyday language (Bourdieu and D Wacquant 1992, 241). However, everyday language is not merely a tool for communication; it is also the tool for the social construction, reproduction, and transformation of the very collective forces that shape social structure (Bourdieu 1999, 105-106). Thus, sociologists are handed pre-fabricated tools for conducting sociological analysis. If they do not know when, how, why, or by whom these pre-fabricated tools (i.e., terms of everyday language) were created, sociologists are highly likely to become objects of their tools instead of objectifying the world they are investigating using those tools.

Here it is important to note that Bourdieu is quite aware of the plasticity of everyday language terms, which can have multiple meanings depending on the context of their usage. However, the meaningfulness of everyday language terms when they are creatively used is possible because those terms do have a collectively recognized meaning (Bourdieu 1999, 137). As various social actors creatively use everyday language, they are implicitly or explicitly challenging or reproducing the collectively recognized meanings of the terms used in everyday language. Since immersion in the language is akin to immersion in the social world within which it is used, these contests over the creative usage of language are ultimately over the meaning of being a member of that social world.

Bourdieu identified the modern social world as a collection of relatively autonomous fields, which are sites of contests over the meaning of being a member of a field. The collectively accepted cultural framework, or common sense, for deciding the results of these contests over the meaning of everyday terms are shaped by contests within the field of power—a site of contest among the elite of all fields in a society to gain a monopoly over the power to grant legitimacy to actors’ point of view on the meaning of being a member of their respective fields (Bourdieu [1989] 1998, 260-265; Swartz 2013, 61-64). The dominant actors in the field of power use the power of the modern state—both symbolic and violent—to construct the meaning of everyday language terms. Since the modern state is viewed as the upholder of the objective point of view, the meaning of everyday language produced through it appears to be universal, legitimate, and hence acceptable by all sectors of a field.

The misrecognition of the particular point of view of symbolically dominant actors in the field on various classifications as the universal point of view shapes the vocabulary of everyday language (Bourdieu 1999, 107-117). Social actors’ initiation and immersion into this language create the categories of their common sense, through which their taken-for-granted reality of that social world is constructed (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, 172-179). Hence, what appears to be a social actor’s common sense is merely the misrecognized point of view of the social actors vying for dominance within the field of power.

Since a sociologist is first socialized in his social world before entering the academic world of sociology, he too is driven by socially inherited common sense. Hence, like premodern scientists, he too is liable to be overly familiar with his objects of investigation. Thus, in order to do the science of society, he must first make a break from his socially inherited common sense by objectifying the historically specific conditions of the field of power that led to its social construction. Bourdieu developed the concept of capital within the context of his research in France in order to initiate a break from his socially inherited knowledge about his objects of investigation in France.

3.2. Epistemological Strategy for Doing the Science of the Social World

Bourdieu noted that within the hierarchical configuration of the postwar French field of power, the dominant position was acquired by those known for their economic capital (Bourdieu [1989] 1998). Economic capital may be fundamental to the field of market economy; however, one cannot assume that it is equally powerful in all other spheres. Thus, Bourdieu’s break from his socially inherited common sense allowed him to see that social and cultural capitals were also important social forces structuring the everyday lives of French people. In fact, when he investigated different fields in France, he noted that the importance of each type of capital was very-context specific. Upon his investigation of the field of literature and arts in France, he noted that there were sectors within these fields where economic capital was a source of weakness and not power (Bourdieu 1983).

Thus, on the basis of his empirical study of various fields within France, Bourdieu claimed that the social world must be viewed as a collection of relatively autonomous fields whose internal social logic cannot be reduced to the logic of capitalism. Instead, one must investigate their social logic by assuming that there is a constant contest within each of them over what that social logic should be. These conflicts can be sociologically studied by treating them as conflicts over the symbolic value of various capitals in a field. Thus, Bourdieu claimed that a break from common sense inherited from a society at the high stage of capitalism shows that the social world is structured by the unequal distribution of symbolically charged social, economic, and cultural capitals.

If the history of the field of power shapes sociologists’ socially inherited common sense, then sociologists must recognize that it likewise shapes academically inherited common sense. The most unique feature of the social structure of the modern academic world is that it provides detachment from the everyday necessities of life (Bourdieu [1997] 2000). Thus, the sociologically developed model of social structure is frozen in that moment of time when data were collected to develop it. However, social actors’ structural conditions are temporally unfolding, and the actors have an expectation of how those conditions should unfold. To add to this complexity, the temporal unfolding of structure is mediated by interactions with others who may or may not be in synchrony with actors’ expectations. Thus, the daily pre-discursive experiences of life—anxiety, stress, boredom, frustration, satisfaction, excitement, and so on—to a large extent depend on whether or not such temporal unfolding takes place according to one’s expectations.

If we limit our analysis to the theoretical reconstruction of the objective social structure, we might confuse a sociologist’s relation with the a-temporal model of social structure with the social actor’s relation with the temporally unfolding experiential reality of social structure. Thus, if the ultimate aim of sociology is to explain how social structure shapes human practices, then the model of social structure destroys the very object of sociological analysis by freezing its temporal flow. In other words, in addition to making a break from their socially inherited common sense, sociologists must also break from their academically inherited common sense.

Bourdieu developed the concept of habitus in order to make such a break from the scientific point of view on the social world. Bourdieu defines habitus as follows:

The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them. (Bourdieu [1980] 1990, p. 53)

In the previous quotation, Bourdieu makes it clear that habitus only appears to act in terms of rational choice; he claims that, while social actors appear to direct their practices toward certain ends, they do so pre-reflexively. In other words, the notion of habitus allows us to take into account the fact that social actors do not take time out from the world to think before they act (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, p. 211). At the same time, it is important to note that, in spite of being in the pre-reflexive mode of existence, habitus does not randomly generate practices. In fact, as a wide array of qualitative and quantitative data in sociology reveals, habitus tends to generate practices that sociologists expect field actors to generate in specific structural circumstances of their field. Habitus “practically” comprehends the possibilities for itself that the structure of a field avails to it, as it is the field internalized (Bourdieu [1997] 2000, 150-159; Bourdieu and D Wacquant 1992, 115-140). Thus, in spite of being active at the pre-reflexive level, habitus tends to reproduce the structural circumstances of its formation.

However, a field is always in a state of contest among social actors interested in preserving the existing symbolic order of the field and those bent upon changing it. By challenging the symbolic value of other actors’ capitals in a field, social actors not only aim to improve their positions but also increase the potential for transformation of the very structure of the field. Thus, while habitus tends to reproduce its structural conditions of formation, the perpetual contests in the field over the definition of field structure make the reproductive tendencies of habitus and their outcomes quite uncertain. This uncertainty opens up the possibility for creative practices that can fundamentally transform the field structure.

In other words, Bourdieu’s response to the challenge posed by the adoption of Bachelard’s insight about progress in science for sociological analysis led him to develop his two-step epistemological strategy for sociological analysis. First, a sociologist must break from his commonsensical perception in order to develop a scientific point of view on the social world. Second, a sociologist must break from his scientific common sense in order to restore socially inherited common sense in sociological analysis. The concept of capital facilitates the first break, while that of habitus facilitates the second break. Hence, Bourdieu insisted that all field theory concepts must be used in relation to each other (Bourdieu and D Wacquant 1992, 94-98).

Bourdieu developed the concept of capitals, habitus, and field within the context of his investigation of the field of power and other fields in postwar France. Thus, he was adamant that one cannot use these concepts to investigate a historical context different from the one within which they have been developed. In fact, they cannot even be used for studying the French field in a different period, as the contest within the field of power and all other fields is ongoing. In terms of the universality of field theory concepts, the only point one could make is that they study the relation between human subjectivity and objective social structures within historically specific contexts. Thus, while there will always be capitals, habitus, and field relational structure in any section of a society, they acquire different substances in different historical contexts, depending on the history of the changing configuration of the field of power in that society. In other words, before field theory concepts can be applied, they must be reconstructed using the history of conflict among the field actors with respect to the history of conflict within the field of power as raw material.