Gift versus Trade: On the Culture of Science Communication

1. Whewell Case: Physics versus Chemistry

British science in the first part of the 19th century enters the stage of active professionalization along with the universities going through reforms, and William Whewell, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, philosopher, polymath, priest, and poet, played a significant role in the process. He was strongly critical of the common British “empiricist” attitude toward theorizing and tried his best to overcome it, especially in chemistry but also in other disciplines. The citation retains Whewell’s original words:

The greater part of English chemists appear[s] to have been hitherto averse from the practice of using a technical and mathematical notation to express the chemical composition of bodies; while in France, Germany, and Sweden, such a notation is and has been for some time commonly employed. The disinclination of our countrymen to adopt this invention seems to arise from a belief that such an instrument is unnecessary, and from a perception of several anomalies and inconveniences in the system followed by foreigners. English chemists must judge for themselves whether they feel the want of such a contrivance; but I have no hesitation in saying, that in mineralogy it is utterly impossible to express clearly, or to reason upon, the chemical constitution of our substances, without the employment of some notation or other. Everyone who makes the trial will find that, without a notation, his attempts to compare the composition of different minerals will be confused and fruitless, and that, by employing symbols, his reasonings may easily be made brief, clear, and systematic. (Whewell 1831, 437)

Whewell is strongly anxious about scientific terminology since its absence blocks communication and prevents the exchange of data and ideas which is essential for science as a profession. Pure observations without a conceptualization can be hardly viewed as knowledge (“Senses know nothing”—George Berkeley) or shared. They form no systematic unity capable of developing on its own basis, of being taught and applied in different contexts. The disunity of knowledge Whewell diagnoses accompanies the lack of a special language of science. Language originates in evolution as a form of communication and also helps to frame the communication, which gradually achieves a form of community. Whewell’s program in the process of science’s professionalization was apparently the creation of a disciplinary language. Yet he clearly understood that it should have some interdisciplinary capabilities. As a professor of mineralogy, Whewell showed interest, for example, in an adequate chemical notation system. The rising field of electrochemistry stood at a similar junction of physics and chemistry. So scientific communication not only represents fruitful exchange but is also problematic. It is based on a disciplinary language but in parallel requires developing interdisciplinary language. Besides, scientific communication is used to connect to its surroundings. Thus, it includes special mediative activities applied to the relationship between the science and society as well. What kind of role philosophy can play; what the nature of scholarly communication is; how to apply the market metaphor (MM) of exchange and trade to its understanding—these issues are worth considering in the context of the specific historical and sociological studies of science and technology.

Following this line, my Whewell case proposes a reconstruction of a fragment of the history of electrolysis, in which an unexpected role is played not only by the physicist and chemist (M. Faraday), but also by the philosopher of science (W. Whewell). Faraday’s letters to Whewell and Whewell’s to Faraday (1833, 1834) give a lot of material for understanding the character of their collaboration. In short, it was Whewell who coined the terms “anode,” “cathode,” “anion,” “cation,” “electrode” and proposed them to Faraday with a special justification for their utility. Many renowned scholars have extensively documented the evidence that Whewell played a crucial role in conceptualizing Faraday’s experimental results and the structure of his experimental technology (James 1989; Oesper and Speter 1937; Ross 1991).

It is the philosopher’s ability to create a terminological innovation that turns out to be a sign of the trading zone formation. However, the exchange here is to be understood not as a trade, but as a special gift; knowledge (especially within basic research) cannot be bought, it can be only shared. Faraday did not pay tribute in his articles to Whewell’s role as an interpreter of his experiments, but Whewell used this practice to demonstrate the philosopher’s ability to contribute to scientific research. The whole case acts as an argument for my hypothesis about a mediative role of the philosopher of science within a “gift zone” (Kasavin 2019).

Interestingly enough, Whewell’s effort to do the same good job for the chemists failed although the idea was highly promising: to use algebraic rules for the description of chemical reactions. My hypothesis as to why chemistry did not accept his novelty while physics did runs as follows. The latter case drew on Whewell’s vivid communication with the working physicists on the concrete experimental technology in the laboratory in contrast to the former, which was a purely speculative, theoretical stance. Besides, Faraday’s laboratory was a unique institution in the Royal Society, pretty well known in the scientific community, and Faraday enjoyed great authority for his research. In the case of chemistry, Whewell failed in finding any British authority to attract to his nomenclature proposal. Moreover, he opposed himself to Berzelius, one of the highest chemical authorities in his time. Thus, neither scientific-technological nor rhetorical means made sense for justifying the novel account, and the new chemical language got no chance to be accepted: here, Whewell constructed no trading zone.

2. Galison on Trading Zone

And here it is high time to turn to the very concept of “trading zones” (P. Galison, H. Collins) that appeared as a peculiar pattern of discussion on scientific communication during the past two decades. Galison coined this term in the ninth chapter of his book titled, “The Trading Zone: Coordinating Action and Belief” as follows:

I intend the term ‘trading zone’ to be taken seriously, as a social, material, and intellectual mortar binding together the disunified traditions of experimenting, theorizing, and instrument building [in subcultures of physics]. Anthropologists are familiar with different cultures encountering one another through trade, even when the significance of the objects traded—and of the trade itself—may be utterly different for the two sides. (Galison 1997, 803)

Here, I propose two small additions to Galison’s idea. First, Galison appeals to the necessity for teamwork in operating multimillion-dollar machines in creating his dynamic “trading zones.” However, the same point is applicable to local practice in “small science,” where instrument makers, theorists, and experimentalists also share knowledge and coordinate diverse pieces of scientific culture: experimental technology, evidence, and argument.

Second, for Galison, the impetus for coordinating actions and beliefs is mostly external. Scientists of different “cultures” (or, perhaps, civilizations, technical skills?) are forced to an interdisciplinary interaction; they have allegedly no common goals to achieve except the huge techno-scientific projects they participate in due to the necessity to earn their bread. However, there are also internal motives for interdisciplinary interaction within basic research, and microphysics, which Galison describes, fits exactly as an area of this kind. Three elements of scientific research—theory, experiment, and technology—occasionally face a risk of incommensurability in “times of change.”

And here it is worth recalling the roots of Galison’s idea. Three elements of science demonstrating a phase shift reproduce Feyerabend’s “uneven development” and thus bridge each other’s gap due to their lack of total correlation. According to Feyerabend, observations, instruments, and theory in Copernican astronomy lacked synchronic development and so needed rhetorical means, and this has been a regular scientific practice: “Such ‘irrational’ methods of support are needed because of the ‘uneven development’ (Marx, Lenin) of different parts of science” (Feyerabend 1993, 106).

A synchronism would be possible, had every theory created the experimental (and technological) basis of its own as proposed, that is, by Karl Popper in Conjectures and Refutations. The material culture of the laboratory is not the only medium for overcoming conceptual incommensurability. Theoretical continuity over a certain time also helps overlap experimental and technological gaps. So, the search for a universal theory does have its rationale within the trading zone: scientists coming from different disciplines, belonging to different technical cultures still face the necessity of combining them.

Interestingly enough, Feyerabend appeals to communication in the form of rhetoric as binding the asynchronic parts of science’s mechanism. Galison pays attention to this moment differently pointing out the role of “material” context and only after he coins the term “trading zone” to avoid considering relations between instrumental basis, experimental data, and theory as if they take place in the Popperian third world.

There is now a question why Galison applies the term “trade” for science communication; this is evidently due to the anthropological data he reviewed while coining his metaphor. Should one take this as a stylistic stance or content-essential belief that trade is characteristic for the intellectual and material endeavor of science? Does it represent a sign of economic determinism tacitly roosting in the metaphor? The question “Why trade?” has been immediately raised in that context (Baird and Cohen 1999). Moreover, Baird and Cohen argue that it is not trading per se, but trading in a gift (as opposed to a commodity) economy that guarantees stability. They also support the claim with an examination of contemporary work on magnetic resonance imaging instrumentation. Why this has not yet attracted much attention is a very interesting question about the role of authority in science and the impact of neoliberal ideas on science and technology studies.

Whether one who speaks about trading zones is consciously inclined to develop a MM for understanding science is a special issue. Really important is that “trading zone” can be easily misread as endorsing a blinkered approach that Galison himself eschews. “Trade” in terms of science communication does give a formal reason for a neoliberal view of science and technology. Philip Mirowski develops an extensive critical analysis of neoliberal consequences for STS (Mirowski 2011). Since neoliberals do not draw any difference between science and the free market, they take the image of the market to be an adequate reflection of science par excellence. The idea of “market metaphor for science” is alien to them for it implies inequality between the signified and the signifier to be bridged by an analogy, an informal logical means, a rhetorical tool. It is exactly the critique of the market analogy that uncovers its metaphorical status.

3. Boris Hessen’s Critique of the MM for Science Studies: Commodity Fetishism

The valuable role played by Boris Hessen (1893-1936), Russian historian and philosopher of science, in the science studies program in pre- and postrevolutionary years’ Russia has been already well documented (Graham 1985; Hessen 2009). It is clear that the program took inspiration from the industrial revolution and from the Marxist-technocratic trend of mastering and transforming nature. Ideology, industry, and science built a contradictory constellation in the minds of Soviet scientists and philosophers. Hessen being already criticized in those times for his positive assessment of special relativity and quantum mechanics theories was forced to find a clever escape from the Scylla of orthodox Marxism and the Charybdis of abstract and asocial views on science (Freudenthal 2005). He seems to follow Ivan Borichevsky’s program (Borichevsky 2013) of separating the study of the inner nature of science (philosophy of science) and its social functions (sociology of science). What he had probably in mind is the necessity to endorse the new physics and defeat its critics the dogmatic Marxists. Thus, he played sociologist at the Congress in London (1931) and spoke about science and its interpretation using what David Bloor would later dub the “symmetrical explanation” (Bloor 1976). Hessen explained classical mechanics in terms of the technological demand of the early bourgeois society and despite Newton’s theological enthusiasm. This served him as an argument for a positive assessment of the nonclassical physics despite its alleged “idealist” commitments (“matter disappears in energy,” Lenin).

At the beginning of the last century, these issues had been intensively and fruitfully discussed in the Russian intellectual community and not without the considerable influence of Marxist restructuring programs of science and society as a whole. Two main issues—theoretical and practical—defined the agenda. The first runs as follows: How to treat “bourgeois science and technology,” which entered the unconventional phase in its development? How to combine the excellence of natural sciences and the social and cultural context, while the latter hardly fits with Enlightenment ideas about the cumulative progress of humanity? The second question reads as follows: Whether one can and should administer science to guarantee social progress and what are the mechanisms of such management?

Paradoxically, the accusation of the vices of economic determinism, which had been first directed against his position by British historians of science, had been dogging Hessen since 1931 due to many different and even opposing reasons. Although Freudenthal and McLaughlin (Hessen 2009) did a good job exposing this fallacy, it is far from being rejected. That is why one additional argument in favor of a more refined interpretation of Hessen’s position will not be superfluous. In fact, Hessen was in no sense a proponent of vulgar economic determinism and even more: he was one of its critics using Marx’s famous argument against commodity fetishism for this purpose.

Hessen in his seminal “The social and economic roots of Newton’s mechanics” drew attention to a couple of articles by British vulgar Marxists dealing with the social role of technology and published 1930/1931 in Nature. One was titled, “Unemployment and Hope,” and another one, “Science and Society.” They presented a highly pessimistic assessment of technology under capitalism. Hessen quotes one piece:

There is, indeed, in the present situation much to excuse a passing reflection that perhaps, after all, the people of Erewhon were wiser than ourselves in destroying their machines, lest, as Marx predicted, the machines reversed the original relation and the workmen became the tool and appendage of a lifeless mechanism. (Hessen 2009, 84)

Hessen comments on the quotation as follows:

Thus, according to “Nature,” the remedy for healing the wounds of capitalist society, the means of eliminating all the contradictions of a system based on wage labor and individual ownership of the means of production, is a return to those forms of industry that directly preceded the age of industrial capitalism . . . At the present time the slogan “Back to small handicraft industry” is profoundly reactionary. (Hessen 2009, 84)

And here he explains the roots of this fallacy appealing to Marx:

The fetishism of the commodity system, which Marx so brilliantly exposed, lies in the fact that the relations of material things created by human society are isolated from human relations and are considered as inherent to the things themselves . . . This fetishism can be deciphered and exposed by understanding that it is not things as such that create relations, but that the relations between things created in the process of social production simply express a particular social relation between people, which they conceive in the fantastical form of relations between things. (Hessen 2009, 86)

So it was not technology itself that created social tension but the capitalist use of technology solely for the highest profits.

Marx conceptualized the “commodity fetishism” argument in Volume 1 of “Capital” having pointed out the “mysterious character of the commodity-form.” He defined it as follows: “the definite social relation between men themselves . . . assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things” (Marx [1867] 1990, 164-65). This concept arises due to Marx’s anthropological analogy between primitives and modern people and receives an additional sense of “alienation” in Georg Lucács’ (1923) History and class consciousness.

Technology in itself bears no responsibility for the social disasters of capitalism. Science cannot compensate for the failure of market mechanisms and should not be taken primarily as a source of added value. Both are incapable of serving “productive forces” of social development unless they are put under favorable conditions. The misunderstanding of the nature of technology in the context of capitalist society is similar to misinterpreting science as a part of the market economy. The MM for understanding science represents a kind of economic determinism. Boris Hessen was the first to understand the philosophical implications of the MM proceeding from Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism.

The proper understanding of the nature of economic determinism requires contextualizing it in terms of the current “ontological turn.” An appeal “Back to the things as they are” (Husserl), or more recently, “Things strike back” (Latour), guides a search for “fundamental ontology” into the wrong place. The deeper foundations of being can be found neither in “pure consciousness” nor in “material culture.” Both are representations of human sociality, of “relations between people.” The critics of Hessen were either devoted idealists or metaphysical realists who profoundly misinterpreted Hessen’s position. Thus, a rehabilitation of Hessen might reproduce Lakatos’ defense of Popper through the famous classification: Popper₀, Popper₁, Popper₂ (Lakatos 1968). As Lakatos pointed out,

Popper₀ is the dogmatic falsificationist who never published a word: he was invented—and ‘criticized’—first by Ayer and then by many . . . Popper₁ is the naïve falsificationist, Popper₂ the sophisticated falsificationist. The real Popper developed from dogmatic to a naive version of methodological falsificationism. (Lakatos 1978, 93)

Following this line, we shall dub Hessen₀ a metaphysical realist, who was invented by his critics during the Second Congress for History of Science (London 1931). They proceeded from the idealist view of science as representation of internal characteristics of the mind. On this basis, they ascribed to Hessen an ontological/materialist vision completely alien to them. Later, Joseph Needham, the British Marxist who is thought to have followed Hessen’s line, justified that picture of being a metaphysical realist. His famous question runs, “Why did modern science, the mathematization of hypotheses about Nature, with all its implications for advanced technology, take its meteoric rise only in the West at the time of Galileo [but] had not developed in Chinese civilization?” (Needham 1969, 16). This question shows that Needham took “modern science” and “advanced technology” purely ontologically, as “solid facts” not as results of historical reconstruction in a particular social context. Yet the social/historical view of science and technology cannot ignore that (a) China in the times of Galileo was technologically more advanced than Europe and had no need of science in its European meaning; (b) the technological implications of European science manifested mainly in the 18th century under conditions that differed from those in the time of Galileo; (c) European science though being an inseparable part of European culture was in fact a cultural synthesis of Greek and Arab (non-European) culture under certain social circumstances (religious Reformation and early bourgeois revolutions). Hence, Needham’s question is misleading for it identifies (at least takes as easily comparable) European and Chinese social/cultural context or proceeds from a tautology presenting a banal (circular) assertion about their incommensurability.

Hessen’s question reveals quite another approach. His question to be asked was not why science and technology existed so and so, but how the rise of Newton’s mechanics should be reconstructed. I will dub his epistemological (not ontological) vision “Hessen₁” “refined externalism.” The answer to his question is already evident from the title of his work, namely, through an exploration of social and economic roots: historical reconstruction. He developed a critique of “ontology” as “commodity fetishism” separated from epistemology and activity theory. That was the reason for Soviet Marxists to ignore his approach as “relativist” and “anti-realist.” Hessen₁ gives a response to those who adhere to the ontological concept of science as reflecting the reality as it is. Here, I refer to “Things strike back” (Latour 2000) or “Fact-objectivism” (Boghossian 2006; Kasavin 2015). This concept of science is misleading: the specific features of scientific knowledge originate neither from nature nor from things but rather from culture. Even scientific practice (observation, experiment) brilliantly exposed by Ian Hacking deserves understanding as a part of scientific culture that goes beyond the scientific realism based on “intervening” (Hacking 1983). The contribution of another member of the “Stanford group” is more valuable: Galison’s communicative picture of scientific knowledge (“trading zones”) replacing a purely ontological vision of history of science is instrumental to the critique of metaphysical realism. Yet his special emphasis on “material culture” and market connotations of his basic metaphor makes his critique less effective than it might be.

In order to pay tribute to Hessen, I claim that he also elaborated a certain type of ontology though drastically different from either a metaphysical materialist or an idealist one. Here, we come to his pragmatic vision of science and technology and discover Hessen₂, social constructivist. The starting point for historical reconstruction of science and technology is not theory but practice. Hessen appeals here to Marx: “The great historical significance of the method created by Marx lies in the fact that knowledge is not regarded as the passive, contemplative perception of reality, but as the means for actively reconstructing it” (Hessen [1931] 1971, 88). Accordingly, it is the practical reconstruction and management of science that serves as a foundation for the historical reconstruction of scientific knowledge. Hessen reproduces well-known Marxist assumptions dogmatized and misinterpreted by many Soviet philosophers: “Practice should not be explained by ideas, but on the contrary, ideological structures should be explained by material practice” . . . Hence, the scholar must overcome “a limited understanding of the historical process and produce a true, genuine history of nature and society” (Hessen [1931] 1971, 43). And thus, theoretical reconstruction provided by a historian transforms into a practical action changing the status quo. Only those who actively participate in the process of scientific and technological development can grasp their essence. Recall the 11th of Karl Marx’s thesis on Feuerbach: “Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” As Hessen put it, “. . . by reconstructing social relations we reconstruct science” (Hessen [1931] 1971, 88). Using current terminology, only those who master “interactive expertise” (H. Collins), practice “social assessment,” and serve as a mediator within interdisciplinary interaction can get an idea of science and technology. Putting it another way, the history of science is laden with a political philosophy of science. Steve Fuller rehabilitates exactly this line of thought (Fuller 1993), and this has been astutely recognized by Joseph Rouse who coined the term “political philosophy of science”:

The domain of his [Fuller’s] proposed philosophy of science is thus not ‘science’ as a narrowly demarcated domain, but the social world as a whole, examined from the standpoint of our interest in acquiring and improving knowledge. Ultimately, such a social epistemology would merge philosophy of science with political philosophy. (Rouse 1996, 92)

What follows aims at making explicit the political risks of accepting the MM presuppositions for STS and accordingly the thesaurus for translation of STS language into MM language. This might be useful for the goal-setting of applied science and technology or for barring strategies within the basic research.

Hessen’s critique deciphers MM and requires a new understanding of “trading zones” in science as a human endeavor. But in order to develop this idea in detail, we should turn to another source and undertake in-depth testing of Galison’s anthropological stance by addressing Marcel Mauss’ (1966) “Gift” in the archaic trade of gift.

4. Archaic Economy: Trade Disdained

Peter Galison refers to the anthropological case with Colombian peasants who use money but understand it in various ways combining normal exchange and magic:

in the southern Cauco valley in Colombia, the peasants, mostly descended from slaves, maintain a rich culture permeated with magical cycles, sorcery, and curing . . . For the landowners, money is “neutral” and has a variety of natural properties; for example, it can accumulate into capital—money begets money. For the peasants, funds obtained in certain ways have intention, purpose, and moral properties, though perhaps none more striking than the practice of the secret baptism of money. (Galison 1997, 803-04)

As Michael Gorman’s example runs,

a cowrie shell might be an ornament for one tribe, a unit of currency for another tribe, and your grandmother’s soul for another tribe. To think of the cowrie shell as the “same thing” in each of these cases is to privilege a certain kind of analyst’s viewpoint, something which is encouraged by the recent obsession in science and technology studies with the material. (Collins, Evans, and Gorman 2010, 7)

Gorman emphasizes the significant difference: “We define ‘trading zones’ as locations in which communities with a deep problem of communication manage to communicate. If there is no problem of communication, there is simply ‘trade,’ not a ‘trading zone’” (Collins, Evans, and Gorman 2010, 8). I will further accentuate this difference taking it as crucial for understanding the social, communicative, and, in particular, ethical dimensions of science.

Michel Callon asserts that economists deeply misunderstand the social nature of science. Being viewed as public good, science appears to be a phenomenon that requires rethinking the very foundations of economic theory:

From the standpoint of economics, science should be considered a public good, and for that reason it should be protected from market forces—if only to ensure a better operation of the market. However, I will try to show that this result can only be obtained at the price of abandoning arguments generally advanced by economists themselves. It entails a complete reversal of our habitual ways of thinking about public goods, and a new definition of them. (Callon 1994, 397)

While Callon addresses the anthropology and sociology of science and technology, it is worth returning to the roots and casting a glance at the genuinely anthropological work by Marcel Mauss (1966) “Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies.”

Mauss’ main argument tends to explain the Durkheimian idea of social solidarity as achieved via gift exchange that puts people under obligations. Taking scientific solidarity as a paradigmatic case of the social order, one can make use of a deeper comparison between trading zones in science and the archaic economy. Here, we follow Galison and Gorman though trying to improve their anthropological considerations. Meanwhile, the difference between modern and archaic economy must be seriously taken into account. In a free market economy, there is a strong distinction between objects and persons via the notion of private property. Objects are sold, the ownership rights are fully transferred to the new owner. The object has thereby become “alienated” from its original owner. MM alienates scientific knowledge from the creator, breaks the communication, and inspires strong competition between scientists. In contrast to this, in a gift economy, the objects that are given are inalienated from the givers; they are loaned rather than sold and ceded. Since gifts are inalienable, they must be returned; the act of giving creates a gift debt that has to be repaid. Gift exchange therefore leads to a mutual interdependence—reciprocity between giver and receiver. Using the concept of gift for science studies allows us to rethink Galison’s idea of communication in science. Trading zones in basic research unlike those in the applied area are rather gift zones, where science functions as a public good (Callon 1994).

Marcell Mauss demonstrated that archaic trade differs greatly from an equal exchange between independent individuals in the classical political economy. Archaic traders exchanged goods and services being deeply rooted in a particular mythical world picture. They acted not as much in the names of their personalities but rather as representatives of their kin in the face of nature and gods, the latter being the genuine owners of the world. Thus, gift exchange is to be understood as a secular form of sacrifice—an exchange with nature/gods within an archaic agreement (Abraham). A demystification of this relation, its disenchantment (Entzauberung der Welt, Max Weber), leads us to the concept of culture as a transcendental condition of humanity. Scientists perform interdisciplinary research outside formal disciplinary boundaries and exchange knowledge in the form of a gift due to their belonging to an extended scientific community, to the culture of science, ethos of science. Like primitive givers and receivers standing in the face of ancestors and gods, they practice informal communication in the face of a specific culture-transmitting cultural norms and values, their “historical a priori” (Husserl). Mauss uncovers a symbolic capital hidden in the exchange:

Much of our everyday morality is concerned with the question of obligation and spontaneity in the gift. It is our good fortune that all is not yet couched in terms of purchase and sale. Things have values which are emotional as well as material; indeed in some cases the values are entirely emotional. Our morality is not solely commercial. (Mauss 1966, 63)

In science, the cognitive values, intellectual and cultural goods represent a symbolic capital—a peculiar historical product of communication and collective efforts of many generations that help accumulate and develop the cognitive skills. Therefore, it allows no complete privatization being essentially a kind of public property, which cannot be sold or bought but only shared. As Mauss put it,

It took a long time for artistic, literary or scientific ownership to be recognized beyond the right to sell the manuscript, invention, or work of art. Societies have little interest in admitting that the heirs of an author or inventor—who are, after all, their benefactors—have more than a few paltry rights in the things created. These are readily acclaimed as products of the collective as well as the individual mind and hence to be public property. (Mauss 1966, 64-65)

The nature of collective intellectual labor resists its neoliberal interpretation as an independent selfish activity that produces commodities for market exchange. Science requires too long and difficult socialization to be guided primarily by the profit motive. Moral reputation in a scientist is fundamental for her cognitive credit. Hence, individualism contrasts with the very idea of professional ethics in science. Moreover, the lack of the moral dimension threatens the social wealth. Mauss, a sociologist, indicates the tendency of “the dawning and even realization of professional morality and corporate law” (Mauss 1966, 66). Appealing to the group activities of the state, municipalities, public assistance establishments, works managements, and wage-earners, which are associated in the social legislation of some European countries, he asserts that there is a gradual return to a group morality, an acknowledgment of the ideal of social good:

Society wants to discover the social “cell.” It seeks the individual in a curious frame of mind in which the sentiments of its own laws are mingled with other, purer sentiments: charity, social service /and solidarity. The theme of the gift, of freedom and obligation in the gift, of generosity and self-interest in giving, reappear in our own society like the resurrection of a dominant motif long forgotten. But a mere statement of what is taking place is not enough. We should deduce from it some course of action or moral precept. It is not sufficient to say that law is in the process of shedding an abstraction—the distinction between real and personal law—or that it is adding some fresh rules to the ill-made legislation on sale and payment for services. We want to show also that the transformation is a good one. We are returning, as indeed we must do, to the old theme of “noble expenditure.” (Mauss 1966, 66)

How exactly does gift exchange work in science? Gift exchange establishes the relations of authority and dependence, generosity and gratitude, charity and jealousy between the leader and the follower, the inventor and the user, the teacher and the pupil:

Between vassals and chiefs, between vassals and their henchmen, the hierarchy is established by means of these gifts. To give is to show one’s superiority, to show that one is something more and higher, that one is magister. To accept without returning or repaying more is to face subordination, to become a client and subservient, to become minister. (Mauss 1966, 72)

Scientific ethos is basically archaic and ambivalent since it requires humility and generosity in combination with pride and competition. Creativity cannot do without emotional sensitivity. Popper and Kuhn often talk about epistemic emotions such as “hope,” “doubt,” “trust,” “surprise,” “shock” in terms of scientific knowledge. There is an extensive literature on epistemic emotions (Morton 2010) that proves the “boundary,” existential character of scientific creativity and reveals its “Dionysian” (Nietzsche) archetype. Therefore, a comparison with the archaic mind and communication as described by Mauss can be illuminating:

. . . At these times men meet in a curious frame of mind with exaggerated fear and an equally exaggerated generosity which appear stupid in no one’s eyes but our own. In these primitive and archaic societies there is no middle path. There is either complete trust or mistrust. One lays down one’s arms, renounces magic and gives everything away, from casual hospitality to one’s daughter or one’s property. It is in such conditions that men, despite themselves, learnt to renounce what was theirs and made contracts to give and repay. (Mauss 1966, 79)

Language that develops in the area of giving contains not merely the scientific terms simplified and adapted to the different disciplines. It is the language of social roles and statuses that manifests in the citation graph; in a particular place of name and reference in a publication (in the abstract, introduction, main text, conclusion, keywords, acknowledgements); in a particular form of reference (just link, name, citation, quotation, quotation with comments); in the context of reference (analytical overview, theoretical argument, empirical justification, criticism). Discourse analysis might detect the value-ladenness of the publication through the assignment of elements to an act of giving, accepting, or rejecting the gift.

Thus, we apply Mauss’ exchange case to viewing science as a form of communication that serves as a fabric for producing social roles and statuses according to traditional patterns and personal abilities of the participants. The archaic trade gives an archetypical key for understanding scientific communication, which differs from the genuine gift exchange only in the types of social structures produced. I found my typologization of exchange zones in science in Mary Douglas’ (1975, 1982) view of social groups, namely her grid-group analysis.

According to Mary Douglas, we can single out four types of social communities using low-high “group” (external boundary) and “grid” (internal structure) dimensions. In our terminology, there will be four quasi-communities or exchange patterns: gift zones. They differ in sustainability, and the uncertainty increases from the first to the fourth one.

OPEN IN VIEWER

	High group	Low group
High grid	(1) Normal science zone	(2) Distributed research zone
Low grid	(3) Career zone	(4) Public zone

The most sustainable exchange type covers normal science (Kuhn) well defined by high grid and high group dimensions. Less stable is the distributed research exchange, where the broader groups of educated laymen can participate (crowdsourcing, public expertise) though under the control of professional experts. The career exchange zone, though being limited by high group boundary (professional qualification and affiliation), is open for professional growth and vertical mobility. And finally, the public exchange zone represents a free communication site for everyone interested in science popularization and recruiting, on the one hand, and in the unbounded involvement in science, on the other.

Accordingly, every gift zone contains at least three types of interaction. And namely, the research zone brings together discoverer and mediator, polymath and inventor, deliberator and aggregator. The distributed research zone demonstrates the exchange between group and spokesman, game manager and gamers, public hearing group and decision maker. The career-making zone exposes relations between teacher and pupil, director and performer, leader and follower. Finally, the public zone unites generator and popular writer, keynote and public, projector and distributor.

Naturally, these gift zones represent “ideal types” rather than descriptions of the empirically observed communication sites. Real are the mixed cases briefly exposed above. One of them is William Whewell’s devoted collaboration with Michael Faraday, giving and receiving concepts, data and insights. Another one represents Boris Hessen’s open and hidden confrontation with his idealist critics and Marxist followers via exploiting their conceptual weakness, sacrificing himself as a “vulgar externalist” and offering the refined constructive externalism by the “commodity fetishism” argument and “political philosophy of science.” Finally, there is Peter Galison’s concept of “trading zones” generously granted and then accepted by the scholarly community together with its “rejection” in terms of Davis Baird and Mark Cohen’s considerations and Philip Mirowski’s critique of neoliberalism in the privatization of American science.

If my analysis is plausible, then we can either “gain profit” or “accept a present gratis” from Marcel Mauss’ work. It allows us to discover gift—another cultural pattern for describing scientific communication as opposite to trade. The material things within the archaic trade are not merely things anymore: they express their deeper meanings, demonstrate background social relations. Similarly in science, knowledge and skills, theories, experimental data, and equipment are much less the representations of the objective reality but rather the patterns of cultural solidarity. Being reduced neither to goods nor to commodities, they appear as signs of reciprocity, symbols of social status of those who can present them to their colleagues, to the public, to the laymen without promise, and reward. In their turn, integrity and selflessness in science generate gratitude and generosity though different from those in the archaic exchange. Scientists play servants and creators of the universal culture accessible to everyone instead of serving tribal gods and spirits in a competition with rivals and enemies. Those who are capable of presenting a cognitive gift to society manifest ipso facto their cognitive superiority over the applied researchers working only for the commercially profitable projects. Scientists cultivating and transmitting the aristocratic ethos of gift into society implement the function of public good. Thereby, we can picture science as a distribution of social roles and statuses and uncover the normative and value dimension of the gift zone’s language. Coming out as an ethical project, science justifies the cognitive ambitions and creates a universal cultural value.