Book review: Gita Chadha and Renny Thomas,ed. 2023. Mapping Scientific Method: Disciplinary Narrations

This book is an important work, providing a stout critique of what has been universalised and sanctified as ‘the scientific method’ (henceforth ‘the Method’ in this review). The volume stands as a milestone in the larger project of the decolonisation of academic thought, analysis and writing to the extent that the book, to borrow from one of its contributors, Aditya Nigam, questions the idea of objective truth itself, even of method—the question [being] not just about alternative approaches but to question the very notion of a single point of origin or source of knowledge (p. 193).

The range of the volume is sweeping—with 15 chapters spanning the humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences in the dominant disciplines, and encompassing linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, mathematics, life science, chemistry, physics, political studies, sociology, anthropology, economics, women’s studies, history of science, psychology, geography and postcolonial studies. The editors and contributors have exploited well the opportunity via this volume for deep methodological and theoretical reflection, enlightening readers within those disciplines as well as around or outside those. What adds to the breadth of this book is the assessment of the suppleness in the praxis of each discipline in accommodating methodological pluralism and in rethinking the discipline’s spiritual core. Therefore, an intended by-product of the volume is a demonstration of the methodological debates and paradigms within each domain, including engagement with alternative and non-Western methodological approaches in some of its essays. There also appears to be an unstated appreciation of the social sciences for arguably having demonstrated more plasticity in this regard than the natural sciences.

Very importantly, some chapters in the book illuminate the undercurrent hierarchies in interdisciplinary institutions (mirroring the hierarchies among disciplines too) stemming out of the degree to which disciplines subscribe to the Method. This is reflected in especially the field of economics (which, like geography, has manufactured a needless debate of whether it is a science or a social science). Departing from the Method is often met with mockery, as Neetha N, a contributor to this volume, has evidenced. In economics, such a departure is met with the condescension of being ‘not economics enough’ (p. 232), which this reviewer has also personally encountered too often in his study and career in that domain. Overall, validation—especially of the social sciences—has often rested on whether they are scientific enough. At the core of this judgement is the Method, percolating even to popular opinion on the social sciences as somewhat less rigorous and career choices among students and scholars. Some essays in the book reflect also on the impact that the Method has had on the construction of imaginations around human well-being, in turn provoking the reader to mull over the potential of methodology as a path to social justice. Also, as the editors of the volume remark at the outset, most classroom debates focus more on how to apply a method rather than how to think of the Method itself—this lopsidedness arising partly because, as the editors argue, the very term ‘method’ gets pigeonholed into merely ‘research tools’ in general academia. This volume analyses these and several more such issues with impressive granularity.

An investigation into the prevalence of subjectivity within the Method is not novel, but it is substantially captured in this book. As Sundar Sarukkai, one of its contributors, starkly points out, ‘methods in science’ are irresponsibly confused with ‘science as method’ (p. 102, emphasis mine). The editors have also asserted that the loyalty to science, carelessly equated with modernity too often, has become more a matter of strategic preference rather than one of moral superiority (p. 7). Therefore, we need to ask questions about the structures of power and domination in each discipline (p. 13). For that matter, we need to understand the profundity of such assumptions by reminding ourselves that the Method actually matured in a crucible whose locale was the European Enlightenment, a movement which wished to severe links with the magical, the theological and the metaphysical and, instead, yoke itself to human betterment, progressive values and rationality—towards a better society and a better world (p. 10).

The robust argumentation on these lines by the contributors of the book prods us to ask a plethora of questions. Is the Method actually just another narrative, and entrenched in subjectivities within its own subconscious and, hence, perhaps not as theology-free and objective as claimed? Can the Method be taught as truly distant and detached from individual subjectivities and histories? Ought we not to recognise the subjective as part of an understanding since, such as in the towering field of cosmology, not everything can be falsified or enjoys complete information? How do we understand layered and complex social realities through the purely objective means that the Method places as sacrosanct? Should we not allow subjectivities to supplement (claimed) objectivity? ¹ Is scientific knowledge—and, by extension, the Method—universal reason or actually only a result of continuously formulated agreements within sociologically constructed paradigms that reflect the interests, political positions and cultural or ideological convictions of those within it (Gower 1997)? Does not the Method, too, revel recurrently in speculation while being endowed with the garb of impartiality, rationality and steadiness—and, hence, while there is no justification to entirely discard it there is little reason to treat it as sacrosanct (Bauer 1992)?

The book does justice to the torrent of such critical questions which potentially define the future of humanity and our biosphere. It strongly pushes ahead the valid reservations around the Method that the scholarship thus far has placed before us and it is hence a landmark in the de-naturalisation of the Method. While the routine (almost ritualistic) accusation that more could have been included can be levelled, the current composition of the book has achieved both breadth and depth in its engagement with the scientific method, and the book can easily be listed as obligatory reading for practically everyone in the scholarly academic field regardless of discipline and specialisation.