A Historical Atlas of Objectivity

Abstract

The mythical scientist in early twentieth-century America cut a lone figure, “impersonal as the chill northeast wind” and “oblivious of everything save his experiment.” He toiled through the night in his laboratory, “a place unimpressive and unmagical save for the constant-temperature bath with its tricky thermometer and electric bulbs,” as if working in the lab were a prayer that promised illumination—“alone, absorbed, [and] contemptuous of academic success and of popular classes,” he knew all about material forces, but he was blind to the vital force that created all others. Accustomed to the “beautiful dullness of long labors,” he remained “illimitably ignorant” of literature, art, and music. He believed that unerring techniques in experimentation, impartial observations, and exquisitely minute calculations would bring progress—a steady march toward the truth. He chose the highest calling in the world because he was “intensely religious—so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith.” He was “so devoted to Pure Science . . . that he would rather have people die by the right therapy than be cured by the wrong. Having built a shrine for humanity, he wanted to kick out of it all mere human beings.” This autocratic figure, brilliantly insane and tyrannically honest, embodied the cult of science and objectivity.

Wordplay, world‐play, and interdisciplinary imaginations

“…Linguistic shifts in chemical practice spurred and reflected morphing theories and practices (Kim, 2009, p. 581). Material or instrumental transformations generated related, though not necessarily simultaneous, theoretical and linguistic ones.…”

“…The “complicated but catholic study” of geography drew from “the ever fermenting knowledge of Human Progress” ( sic ) so as to “derive fresh energy, perhaps even a measure of wisdom, humility, and sympathy” from it (Heyes, 1886c, p. 4). The meaning and relative value of concepts of objectivity and subjectivity were wrestled with by idealists and empiricists in the 1880s (Kim, 2009, p. 582). If structural objectivity required “a unified and complete system of knowledge that would hold sway in the entire universe” and conceptual terms that were constant in their form and meaning, then Heyes’ increasingly subjective vision of geography became just such a system (Kim, 2009, p. 581).…”

“…The meaning and relative value of concepts of objectivity and subjectivity were wrestled with by idealists and empiricists in the 1880s (Kim, 2009, p. 582). If structural objectivity required “a unified and complete system of knowledge that would hold sway in the entire universe” and conceptual terms that were constant in their form and meaning, then Heyes’ increasingly subjective vision of geography became just such a system (Kim, 2009, p. 581). Chemists faced the geographical problem of producing “a coherent laboratory reality and to ‘hybridize/naturalize’ it” through communication practices.…”

“…Contingently, chemistry’s status as a science or an art and the question of whether or not chemical products are artificial or natural have been debated (Bensaude‐Vincent & Newman, 2007, pp. 1–19; Bensaude‐Vincent & Simon, 2008; Kim, 2009, p. 593). It therefore follows that if “well‐crafted words are like weapons” (Barton, 2003, p. 75) then, as with chemical decomposition and composition, they can engender new worlds (Goodman, 1978, pp.…”

From phlogiston to caloric: chemical ontologies

“…Chemists move ''habitually'' between the two worlds-that of the laboratory and that of the molecules-to generate ''highly reliable knowledge'' (Grosholz and Hoffmann 2000). Instead of talking about objectivity (Daston and Galison 2007;Kim 2009b), chemists have been making stable objects in their laboratories that built successively new worlds. Their progress is measured not by a better approximation of the true nature, but by their ability to make a more stable material world that can be sustained over geographical and temporal distance.…”