1/2 idea No. 4: Working Worlds revisited

(I am sharing my possible research ideas, see my tweet here. Most of them remain only 1/2 or 1/4 ideas, so if any of them seem particularly promising or interesting let me know @jon_agar or jonathan.agar@ucl.ac.uk!)

‘Working worlds’ was an analytical insight and framework from my book Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Polity Books, 2012). Before their science can even start, scientists find themselves immersed in worlds characterised by the incessant presence of problems. ‘Working worlds’ were what I called the arenas of human projects that generate such problems. Working worlds are both a boon for scientists – solving problems gives purpose, and by extension patronage and status – but also a bane: without some institutional or normative insulation scientists cannot have the space, time and quiet to work. Indeed a whole set of social inventions – such as the ‘autonomy’ and ‘independence’ of science, not least of ‘pure’ research – were called forth to make this insulation.

The argument of Science in the Twentieth Century and Beyond was that much of modern science made historical sense when seen in relation to working worlds.

I identified four major ones at the time of the book’s publication: the projects to build and maintain technological systems (there are working worlds of transport, electrical power and light, communication, agriculture, computer systems of various scales and types); the preparation, mobilisation and maintenance of fighting forces;  civil administration; and the maintenance of human (and other) bodies, in sickness and in health. Later I added a fifth: the monitoring and maintenance of global order, especially global environmental stability and economic dynamism.

Working world problems cannot be solved directly (or, if they are, they don’t involve science). There are therefore stages that can be distinguished: how problems are articulated (or aren’t) in ways that invite (or don’t) the attention of scientists; the distinctive way that the sheer complexity of working worlds are reduced in the making of representatives (think of models, data-sets, ‘microworlds’, and so on) which are amenable to science; the science itself, and the processes by which solutions are articulated.

I was surprised about the extent working worlds were necessary for a historical understanding of basic science – think of Max Planck being asked to study the data provided by the German electric light industries prompting his formulation of his quantum equations in 1900, for example – as it was, more expectedly, for science we might class as applied.

So what’s the new idea?

Well, ‘working worlds’ came quite late in the writing of the book. Once emerged it made sense of what I had. But the concept was unrefined, and received some critical (if constructive) probing after publication. So there’s a job to do here: to clarify, extend, and test.

Probably I will proceed by a Socratic dialogue. Or in less fancy terms, I will ask and answer questions. Such as:

1. How many working worlds are there? They can be big and small, and overlapping is fine. But what have I missed?
2. Erasing the traces. One reason why we don’t know this history already as much as we should is because a lot of work is expended erasing the connections. If we have a picture of science as a stock of knowledge awaiting application (rather than a stock of knowledge and practices that are called forth by working worlds) it’s because this linear model insulates science well. I call this erasure ‘anti-working worlds’. It was the accomplishment of scientists and, as Anna-K Mayer reminded us, of historians of science too. I have begun some of the work of identifying how different scientists saw different, or preferred, relationships between their science and problem-solving here, in a paper that looked at the history of the controversy caused by James Lighthill’s critical report on the artificial intelligence research.
3. History of Science’s Entscheidungsproblem. Or the issue of when we stop our accounts. When we offer a historical account we often trace a sequence of causal connections, and the kind of cause we stop at tells us what kind of historian we are. Hessen stopped at problem articulation within capitalism. Hessen only shows us half a picture. The internalists likewise provided a historical account of only part of the picture. With the Cold War over there is no reason why the breach cannot be healed.
4. What about problems but no solutions? Not all working world problems are articulated in ways that attract science. Why?
5. Are there sciences with no connection to working worlds? (Graeme Gooday has suggested to me black hole science as a challenging case)
6. Are there cases of working worlds, perhaps even the building of representatives, but with no science?
7. How far back do working worlds work? Does it make any sense, for example, to talk of a working world of alchemy? Are they a distinctively modern phenomenon?
8. What are the cognate concepts, and how can working worlds be distinguished, usefully?
9. What are the science policy implications? For example do working worlds justify artificially choosing to pursue challenging projects that pose many problems? Or is it far better to find ways of better articulating existing problems in ways that science can engage? The former leads to the currently dominant ‘grand challenges’ approach to policy and industrial strategy, the latter might lead to a better strategy all round. Likewise, having targets of proportion of GDP spent on R&D addresses the wrong end of the issue. A science policy that worked would focus on: (i) better, clearer articulation of problems, (ii) wider participation in problem articulation, (iii) help with representative building (iv) better, clearer, more participative solutionisation.
10. How does science made in response to one working world pass to another? And what happens when it does?

I have notes in response to all these questions. The notes tend to get longer without, it seems, approaching closure. Tame the chaos or move on?