HPS Podcast: Samara Greenwood on Social Change and Science

Samara Greenwood is currently undertaking a PhD in the History and Philosophy of Science (HPS), in which she investigates the various ways in which changes in society can impact science. In this episode of The HPS Podcast, Samara discusses some of the controversies of drawing connections between social and political contexts and scientific change, including links between second wave feminism and primate field studies in the twentieth century. She also discusses how studying context-to-science relations can provide us with a richer and more inclusive understanding of science, one which does justice to the positive contributions social and political change can have on knowledge production. This episode of the podcast was hosted by Indigo Keel.

You can listen to this episode on the player below, on your favourite podcast app, or read an edited version of the transcript below. The original transcript can be found on the HPS Podcast website.

So, Samara, can you tell us a little bit about how you came into HPS?

Mine is a very unusual path, I would say, even though there are a lot of unusual paths to HPS! I could probably tell the story in several different ways, but let’s go with this one. I ran my own architecture practice for many years and at one point I became ill and couldn’t run it anymore. While I was recovering from that illness, I stumbled across what I thought was an interesting subject at my old university, The University of Melbourne. The subject was God and the Natural Sciences [HPSC20020], a second-year subject in HPS. So, I emailed the lecturer, Kristian Camilleri, asking if I could sit in on the first lecture. I came along expecting to just sit in on one or two lectures, but after that first experience, I was transfixed.

Why was I transfixed? Looking back, while there was obviously interesting content in that subject, it was really the way the topic was approached – in a very transdisciplinary kind of way. Even in that first lecture we talked about looking at the issue of religion and science from a range of viewpoints – historical, philosophical, sociological, anthropological. We even looked at neuroscience and cosmological perspectives on the issue. That just hooked me in. I think my mind loves looking at problems from lots of different directions, which I can relate to architecture, looking at plans, elevations, different perspectives. I think that’s just how my brain works.

From that initial subject, I did another subject, then I did a Grad. Dip. in HPS and here I am now as a PhD candidate.

Could you tell us about your PhD project? 

I’m looking at the relationship between science and its broader societal context. This is a longstanding problem in HPS, particularly for historians and sociologists of science. 

I typically put the main question this way: How do changes in large-scale societal conditions relate to changes in science? For instance, for the twentieth century, some obvious examples might be: how did the events of World War II come to shape the practices and products of physics in the post-war period? There are lots of connections that can be made between funding and the military, for example. 

Or another very straightforward case: how did the rise of environmental activism in the 1970s come to shape the rise of various environmental sciences after this period? Again, we can see a clear connection between a social and political movement and changes in science, even the emergence of new sciences, through this period. 

But we also have less obvious examples. For example, how did the rise of second wave feminism from the 1960s in the United States come to shape various sciences? It did so in much more subtle and indirect but, at the same time, powerful ways. 

We can even take this back to the early modern period, a classic area of interest for HPS. How did the rapidly changing societal conditions in Europe and interactions with the so-called ‘New World’ come to shape the emergence of various strands of modern science? These are really interesting and really involved kinds of questions. And, as I said, these kinds of questions have a long and often contentious history in HPS and so are of great interest within the field, but also outside the field as well.

What are some of the controversies that arise in context-driven studies of science?

Even within HPS, scholars have had various objections to these kinds of studies, going right back to the 1930s. It’s often been considered that studies of context are related to Marxist approaches to history of science, which has its own political overtones. At various times, particularly in the Cold War period, these approaches were strongly rejected in western traditions. 

Let me mention just two examples of controversies around the study of context in science.

First, as Rachael Brown mentioned in a previous episode, there has been a strong tradition of viewing science as, ideally, value-free. In other words, science should be largely divorced from the vagaries of typical human politics, interests, and culture. That’s the way science works best and should work, right? That’s how it gets its value. It’s supposed that science is at its best when it’s free from outside ‘impingements’ and therefore any influence from societal context is often considered to be intrinsically detrimental to good science.

However, just like we’ve realised that societal values are not only unavoidable in science, but can even be beneficial when used appropriately, so it seems to be the case that a range of contextual influences on science are also not only unavoidable but can be beneficial for science. For example, it could be argued that the environmental movement helped scientific attention be directed towards pressing problems for humanity, or that the feminist movement helped direct scientific attention towards false taken-for-granted assumptions around gender stereotypes in many sciences. So, you can see there’s a positive way that we can see how changes in social context can come to shape science.

This isn’t to say, of course, that they’re always beneficial or that they can’t also be highly detrimental. For example, overly strong beliefs or adherence to particular ideologies can certainly blind scientists to alternative viewpoints or to really committing to something beyond the point where it’s reasonable to be committed to a particular viewpoint. The point here is that contextual influence isn’t intrinsically a bad thing. What I suggest for scholars, scientists and the general public is to be more open-minded about considering the different ways societal conditions shape science — for good, for bad, for indifferent, for however.

A second controversy around considering contextual influence on science has to do with the nature and degree of the influence on individual scientists. So, for example, some scholars have claimed that if we suggest scientists are influenced by the societal contexts that they live in, then we are actually arguing that scientists are under the influence of an outside force, and this then robs individuals of agency and choice. This seems to be a detriment not only to science, but to individual scientists.

Now, I think this claim is fairly straightforward to refute. Of course, if the claim is that societal contexts are really driving scientists to make particular choices or make particular decisions or to take up particular subjects without their own choice playing a factor – then yes, absolutely, this seems an extreme view and one that very few scholars would adhere to. But that isn’t the typical claim. The typical claim is that contexts have a shaping effect – they do not determine outcomes, but rather influence them in this more subtle way. 

This shaping behaviour of contexts can take many forms. For example, scientists grow up in a particular environment before they train as a scientist.  So, if you are a scientist, you are coming into science with some ready formed beliefs – ideas shaped by your family environment, by the schools you went to, by the culture and politics that you engage with. And it would be false to say that your developmental environment has no bearing on the science that you do, on what discipline you choose to take up, what particular problems you choose to look at, even how you interpret data, when you get down to it.

At the same time, once you become a scientist, you don’t automatically divorce yourself from the society that you live in. So, you might read a new book or come across a new and interesting controversy in the society around you and that might have you revisit what you are studying and how you are studying it, such that you see it perhaps in a new light – it gives you a new perspective. All of these things are more subtle interactions related to the influence of society on scientists and I think we can fairly legitimately say: yes, look, that happens and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. It can be a good thing as well.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how this is put into practice?

I think a good way of doing this is to look at a case study. One of my central case studies is the way in which the rise of second wave feminism from the 1960s through to the 1970s came to impact primate field studies. This has been a controversial case study for quite a period of time. As early as the late 1970s through the 1980s, there was a lot of discussion about the impact of feminism on primate field studies.  So, it has a long history and it’s one that I revisit in my work, bringing in some of the interesting developments we have had in history of science to review this problem in more intricate and detailed ways. 

I’ve re-interviewed a number of the feminist primate scientists who were working in the 1960s and ’70s and looked at what kind of things they were reading, particularly in feminist literature, and what kinds of experiences they had, that informed their practice. In particular, I review experiences related to issues of sexism but, also, positive events – like whether they were involved in activist feminist groups. Many of them weren’t. For many feminist primatologists it was more of a subtle alignment between feminist ideas and what they were doing in their scientific work. 

What I have been asking then is: okay, having had that background engagement with feminism, how did that shape the work that they did, particularly in challenging the status quo? During that period, we had a lot of primatological theories developing in a rapidly growing field. What you find is, we now realise, a strong male bias in the most prominent theories. There was a real emphasis on looking at male non-human primates, so male gorillas, male baboons, and focusing on male primate behaviour as the key explanatory framework for what is happening in primate societies and primate evolution as a whole. 

At the same time, you have several prominent female primatologists practicing in the field. Jane Goodall is a clear early example who, through her groundbreaking work and by being so prominent, influences an influx of women into the field. There are also other reasons why a lot of women entered this field, including a strong connection between primatology and other fields with a high proportion of female scientists, including anthropology. 

Around 1970 you then begin to see a small group of primatologists emerge who are engaged with feminism at the same time as being close to centres of power in primate studies, including at the University of California Berkeley and University of Chicago. These feminist-scientists then started revisiting the work that had been done in the field so far, bringing an awareness from feminism that, potentially, there is a general male bias in society whereby male activities are considered more important and often the centre of attention. In science this meant males were typically the first things studied and females were the secondary set. Bringing this awareness to their work, feminist scientists started saying: Hey, we can see this pattern occurring in our field. What can we do about this? How can we challenge this? 

And they did challenge it. I focus in particular on the interventions of Jeanne Altmann, Jane Lancaster, and Sally Slocum. It was this dual interest they had, as both serious scientists and serious feminists, that helped them see their field in a new way and ended up having quite a transformative effect on the whole discipline. They were able to have this effect because it was not just one or two individuals, but an ongoing school of feminist-scientists, and because they were produced interventions that were taken up by others. Not just female scientists, but male scientists; not just feminists, but also those who might not partake of feminist philosophy but could see the value in revisiting taken-for-granted assumptions. 

I think that’s a nice example of how, when you dig down into the history of science and its connections to broader society, you find unexpected things. At first glance it might seem unusual – how on earth could feminism affect science in any substantial way? But once you dig down into these individual stories and then see the patterns that occur, you can see how they are connected and how they can have a great effect over time. It’s a knock-on effect. So that’s what I study, and I think it is really interesting and valuable.

I think so too. Can you tell me a little bit about why the consideration of context in science is so important? 

Absolutely. I think all of us – the public, scientists, general researchers like us – grew up with a strong image of science as working best when it is divorced from society, right? As a scientist, you’re meant to be this objective, neutral kind of a person who doesn’t get involved in the hurly burly of the rest of the world. 

But having now been a part of the HPS world, as Greg Radick put it, for some years, and from working particularly on the problem of context, I’ve really come to see the value in developing a more complex and sophisticated view of the ways in which science and society are interconnected. This is not to say that we don’t need to be objective, that we can just be subjective people and go along with whatever whim occurs to us. The idea is that it’s more complicated than that. Sometimes we need to step away and really distance ourselves and be as objective as possible. Other times, it may be useful to draw in some of those outside influences, not to coercively drive us in any particular direction, but so that we can make sure we’re being responsible researchers. That we are doing the best possible science we can. This can also help us to become more aware of the creative capacity that can arise when we have outside points of interest driving us to see things in a new light. 

I think it also gives us a better image of science. First, we can probably relate to it more because it is more human – it means bringing science down off its pedestal a bit and really seeing how it is part of human society just like anything else. But I also think this is just a more truthful approach. We, as members of the public looking at scientists and as scientists themselves reflecting on their own work, can see we have permission to bring in those parts of ourselves that aren’t necessarily strictly ‘scientific’ in old school terms – although of course we must be careful in how we do this.

I’m wondering who loses out if we omit context from our analysis?

I think that’s a really good question. One thing that I have found in studying context is that I’m drawn to those cases where you see groups of people who didn’t previously have a voice elevated. Their social status is elevated, and they suddenly have a platform from which they can make change. So, we talked about feminists and women. Second wave feminism really brought – in a very broad societal way – attention to this possibility that, hey, hang on: maybe we haven’t been taking female points of view seriously enough. That legitimising context then gave women a voice and a platform that they didn’t previously have.

If we go back to the early modern period, another case study that I look at is the changing societal status of what you might call ‘plebeian artisans’ – those people that work with their hands, engineering types, or what we might call mathematical practitioners. These are practical people who use maths to do, for example, surveying or geography in the sense of laying out maps and things like that. Prior to the early modern period, there was this sharp social division. Craftspeople were considered very lowly. ‘Rude mechanicals’ is one of the terms I think Shakespeare uses to talk about these lowly types. On the other hand, scholars and philosophers at the university were in this much higher realm, and there wasn’t much interaction between the two.

There is a thesis that some of the revolutionary change in the early modern period, particularly as it came to influence the development of many of the modern sciences, came about partly because there was a new interaction between craftspeople and scholars, or between ‘the hand’ and ‘the mind’. For instance, in Renaissance Italy, in places like Florence or Padua, you have the breakdown of this barrier. You have new civil and engineering works, supported by the nobility, as well as new developments in war technology. You have more powerful cannons that are now also mobile, so you can move them around the warfront, and this leads to new kinds of warcraft. For example, there is a need to develop new designs for fortifications, and engineering in general becomes highly valued. Suddenly the social status of engineers is raised and through various avenues you start to see scholars and ‘rude mechanicals’ interacting. 

Like with feminism and primatology, this new interaction between craft and scholarship results in a whole lot of interesting outcomes. Galileo, for example, not only refines the telescope, but also works with engineers. He teaches students how to build fortifications and he’s also an excellent teacher of perspective, which I think is fascinating. He’s very involved in the arts. This entanglement of practical and scholarly knowledge then has many fruitful outcomes, including shaping Galileo’s groundbreaking work on mechanics.

So to return to your question: when we leave out context, what are the disadvantages? One problem is that we might overlook the contributions of entire social groups when we don’t look at context. The same issue applies when we look at incursions into the New World during the early modern period and the amazing knowledge interactions that arise, which we now realise are fundamental to many of the knowledge developments that occur from there on in. Once we start to acknowledge and study the substantial impact of societal contexts on science throughout history, we’re able to develop a richer, more accurate picture of science and do justice to the range of people and places that have contributed to science over time.

If you’re interested in reading more about Samara’s work on context, her first journal article has recently been published in open access format:

For examples of interesting and accessible contextual histories of science, Samara suggests the following books:

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The podcast would not be possible without the support of the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.