Beach Haven

Bibliography
​O'Brian, P. (1972). Post Captain. New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Review by Michael Beach
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This is the second in a series of stories that depict the military career of a fictitious sailing captain in the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Captain Jack Aubrey, his friend and ship surgeon Stephen Maturin were made famous in the movie adaptation of a later volume. That movie Master and Commander starred Russell Crowe as Aubrey and Paul Bettany as Maturin.

As a following work to the first in the series, I was somewhat disappointed. The fist was called Master and Commander, but was not the book the movie was set on. The first focused mostly on the military action with battles and courts martial in the aftermath. There was some romance, but it was tangential. Post Captain is pretty much the opposite. The beginning of the book tells of the romantic exploits that continue well through the first half of the book. Aubrey is also plagued by creditors. He is forced to use all sorts of intrigue to avoid capture by them.

Eventually, he is given an usual ship to lead. It was captured by the British navy, but based on its construction its handling is difficult. The ship is not really suited to military action. At the same time, the crew are nothing like those of his first ship, the Sophie. At issue are the senior enlisted men and junior officers who are not the best at leading. In particular, the main mate of the ship has a harsh style and morale and performance run low. Eventually, Aubrey takes matters into his own hands by purposefully engaging his ship separate from his main orders. The result is the capture of several enemy vessels, but the loss of his own. In the aftermath, Aubrey is found to not be responsible for the loss.

The next section of the book puts the main characters back in the realm of romance and financial intrigue. Thankfully, this part of the story doesn’t take up so much space because Aubrey is tagged to become the temporary captain of HMS Lively. The actual captain is called to be a member of Parliament so Aubrey gets custodianship. Most of the assignments he has on Lively are as an escort for merchant shipping. He has a few engagements with enemy vessels, but things finally go well when they encounter some Spanish ships taking gold to Cadiz. In the engagement one Spanish ship is lost to an explosion. The other two are captured along with their cargo.

During this last engagement, Aubrey’s love interest is aboard as Maturin previously convinced his friend to transport her and some of her friends to a city in the south. Aubrey and his girlfriend, Sophie, agree they cannot marry while he is still poor, and that they will not marry anyone else.

Bibliography
​Scott, J. (1990). A Matter of Record: Documentary Sources in Social Research. Cambridge: Polity Press.
 
In this work, John Scott explores all sorts of public and private records with the intent of helping researchers understand how best to extract usable information from them. This is a how-to book, but also examines social and ethical issues connected with documents.

One ethical examination comes in a series of chapters examining private documents, the intent of their creation, and in what ways a researcher should approach private documents. Some examples include wills, private journals, or letters written for consumption only by the addressee. Does the passage of time make these documents less privileged? What if any of these are pulled into the public sphere in a court dispute or if the author becomes a public figure by running for political office?

Much of the book is a sort of nuts-and-bolts approach to finding data that matter to the particular focus of the research. For example, health records might be pertinent when looking for concentrations of a particular illness. Health records are private, in particular recent information that is subject to modern HIPAA rules. Access may be limited and the specific way such data can be used through anonymizing is also controlled through various research rules.

For those who seek information that relate to sociological trends or influences, digging through public and private records is inevitable. One example of such research is in the field of family history. Many people are engaged in that research for personal reasons, but once it is published in an academic work or on publicly accessible websites, there are laws and ethical concerns that take effect. John Scott has examined the ins-and-outs in this work about academic use of records.
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Bibliography
​Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes (2nd ed.). Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach
 
This book is a how-to with background information of how the authors have decided to approach fieldnotes. For those who are unfamiliar, ethnographies are documents that a researcher might create while they observe some human activity. For example, a researcher might attend a public meeting. Fieldnotes are not about the content discussed so much as describing actions and interactions of people participating in the event. The researcher might note a few specific things said, but may be more interested in how a person’s body language or appearance could say something about their messages.

Often, collecting ethnographies might include a more public event such as a meeting or overheard conversation, then supplemented by side conversations the ethnographer might have with one or more of the participants. One of the more difficult parts of making sense of the information collected is referred to as ‘coding’. Depending on what the research is focused on (for example the ethnographer may be interested in financial information, or people relationships, or the impact of policy change) the potential is limitless. Two things happen with coding. At the end of each day, a researcher would go through their fieldnotes and highlight sections based on some ‘code’ or subject area of focus. In this way they can analyze any trends or related topics. The other effect can be that the researcher begins to see unexpected patterns that could redirect the focus of the research project.

One can experience how different this effort is by simply going to a restaurant with a notebook. Then just watch the comings and goings of people (employees, patrons, passers-by, supply vendors, etc.). Literally write what you see describing the people, the environment or ambiance, any conversations you hear, how people treat each other, and what sort of body language you notice. Don’t take anything for granted. Write it as if you had never gone into a restaurant before. Sort of like if a space alien just landed and went into the place. How would they describe what they see? You might also consider yourself as a book author attempting to describe the setting of a story.

The book is full of tips of alternate ways to take notes, code the notes, and then interpret what the researcher writes from a quantitative and qualitative approach. Finally, the authors speak to the balancing act between observing and participating. One can argue that just by being there a researcher causes some difference in the public setting. For example, if an outsider joins a local leadership group the members may be less likely to say things they would if all participants were insiders. For those researchers that spend a long time with a specific community they will inevitably become part of the community if only in a superficial way. The less one joins the community under study the less one might hear that insiders learn over a lifetime. The more one joins the community the more difficult it may be to stay neutral. 
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Bibliography
​Golinski, J. (2005). Making Natural Knowledge: Constructivism and the History of Science. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
 
Jan Golinski looks to shed some light on historical views of constructivism in science. Constructivists argue that scientific facts are not discovered but are created based on social factors affecting individual scientists and the greater scientific community. After essays on issues raised by constructionism and some of the general related ideas, he clarifies typical arguments concerning social identity for scientists. For example, how they view themselves, how their self-view is disciplined among members of larger scientific community, and who is even a part of that community.

Golinski continues along the line of examining the workplaces of scientists, how they are organized and funded. He refers to scientific laboratories as ‘places of production’ of knowledge. Clearly that is different than how many scientists view labs as places of discovery. He spends a whole chapter viewing ideas of Ian Hacking, a scientific philosopher whose works I’ve read a few of. Hacking devoted a great deal of study on the ideas of intervening with nature and representing the outcomes of those interventions. For example, is the atomic model of electrons spinning around a neutron a representation of what an atom actually looks like, or just a way to explain the measured phenomena? Do chemical substances in nature actually interact with each other the way they do in a lab where specific components are isolated from each other before being mixed in unnatural rations? Constructivists argue that without human intervention such behavior is not natural. They also argue that human representation (such as using mathematics) only partially describes the intervening version and not natural processes.

“The issue of narrative, with its connection to the moral meaning of historical discourse, is an important one to consider in the light of constructivist approaches to the history of science” (Golinski, 2005, p. 187). Golinski is looking at the history of constructivism in science as well as the history of the history of constructivism in science. 
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Bibliography
​Frickel, S., & Moore, K. (Eds.). (2006). The New Political Sociology of Science: Institutions, Networks, and Power. London: The University of Wisconsin Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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Like many academic books, this work is a compilation of chapters written by various authors who share focus points of the title topic. Each chapter is grouped with others under three main topics: the commercialization of science; science and social movements; and science and the regulatory state. The editors note how many such books come from a compilation of papers presented at a given conference, and that this book does not follow that pattern. “We invited contributors to tender individual or comparative case study analyses that explain why events and processes in science happen the way they do” (Frickel & Moore, 2006, p. vii).

Referenced case studies include an examination of how social and political ideas shape how science is approached, and which scientific questions are examined. Likewise, there are examples showing how scientific work can influence political and social thought. Case studies include agricultural, biomedical research, alternative approaches to science, scientific consensus, ethics and training, political movements on specific diseases, and the list continues.

The ’creation’ or ‘discovery’ of scientific ‘facts’ is fraught with myriad decisions made by individuals and groups of people. Despite the assumed objectivity of the scientific approach, in reality the larger human world in which all scientists live plays an important role in what gets examined and how reliable the findings might be. Facts tend to be established through consensus, but consensus does not guarantee information is completely factual. The tensions among funding, policy, process, and priority are real as evidenced in the ideas and case studies offered in this book. What makes the ideas presented is simply that this is a later version of an earlier work by sociologist Stuart Blume. The earlier version from 1974 is titled Toward a Political Sociology of Science. As quoted by Frickel and Moore, the intent of that book was to offer an analysis “founded upon the assumption that the social institution of modern science is essentially political” (Frickel & Moore, 2006, p. 3). The motivation to update the ideas of the Blume book is that “the interconnections among the institutions he examined in deriving that claim have since undergone extensive transformation” (Frickel & Moore, 2006, p. 4).

Bibliography
Galison, P., & Hevly, B. (Eds.). (1992). Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach
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Like many of the books I read for my post-graduate studies, this is a compilation of papers. In this case, the chapters relate to scientific research projects that are considered big enough in scope to meet the editors’ speculative attempt at a definition of big. As one might suspect, the introduction is by one of the editors, Peter Galison, and contains the thought around how to draw the boundary between big and not big. Galison also spends time discussing why the topic matters. Like in most things, one’s perspective on what ‘big’ means depends a great deal on where one is. For example, Galison notes, “Seen from the inside – from scientists’ perspective – big science entails a change in the very nature of a life in science” (Galison & Hevly, 1992, p. 1). Is it the size of the team working on a given project? Is it the size of the budget? Is it a function of the hoped-for outcomes? Are big science projects only those funded by the government? Are they those that will do the most ‘good’? You can see the nature of the discussion covered in this book.

The questions above are tackled by a number of authors through the depiction of historical events in the scientific research community. There are five chapters about the growth of particle physics. Four more chapters discuss the tension between researcher priorities and those of funders such as governments and large corporations. The last four authors examine the relationship between research and national security. These are followed by an afterword by the other editor, Bruce Hevly.

When science is big enough to capture public attention because of the potential impact, some of the tensions mentioned above also grow. In the afterword, Hevly admits a clear definition of big science “remains an elusive term” (Galison & Hevly, 1992, p. 355). He further calls the term “conveniently murky” (Ibid.) in that something can be termed ‘big’ or ‘not big’ based on what’s to one’s advantage. For example, when seeking funding for grants perhaps big means having an important mission for humanity. When appealing to a private funder, maybe economic value has more appeal to be big. Yet, if one is looking for less attention perhaps the moniker is more troublesome. For example, if a work gains less attention by others then perhaps patents can be more easily obtained through reduced competition. Maybe the scientists involved can garner notability through being the first to publish on a given topic that others are not thinking about because it wasn’t big enough to get their attention. Whatever one calls ‘big’ in science, there are certainly many scientific efforts that have created impact on civilization in part or in whole. In the end the question remains. How big is big?
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Bibliography
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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This book speaks to a long-standing problem in both science and technology. When is a thing a thing, and not something else? Despite belief in clear categories, there is often ambiguity and continuum when it comes to pretty much anything we choose to measure. Even in something as ‘obvious’ as on or off. For example, in any electrical system (computers included) there is a voltage increase or decrease just after a switch is thrown. As immediate as the process may seem in human time, we have instruments that can measure the charging and discharging that goes on. What about when the power has a ‘brown out’. Is it on or off?

This dilemma is where the authors go in this book. They emphasize the effect that human choice has on establishing categories, and in deciding when something is in one category or another. In the world of the sociology of science, this idea is sometimes dubbed ‘boundary work’. Scientists are influenced by the professional and general societies they find themselves in. Different scientific organizations may approach the same ‘problem’ in different ways creating competing categories. For example, there a lots of different ways scientific disciplines name or describe anything from substances, to flora and fauna, to human traits. Pick pretty much any like-grouped things and you have created your own version of a category. The issue in terms of science is the addition of an authority that comes along with the supposed objectivity of scientists.
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Bowker and Star share examples as wide ranging as tuberculosis, apartheid, and nursing work. They conclude with a chapter on why classifications matter. “Classifications are powerful technologies. Embedded in working infrastructures they become relatively invisible without losing any of that power” (Bowker & Star, 1999, p. 320). Decided by convention over time, categories, by definition, create a form of hierarchy. Such hierarchy might be among humans in an organization (who’s a doctor and who’s a nurse?), or among which form of category will be accepted within a given society as ‘higher’ or ‘lower’. For example, in evolutionary science specimens are often dubbed higher or lower forms of life based on the complexity of their cellular make up or their DNA structure. Bowker and Star point out that things are generally on some sort of continuum or other, and drawing lines within the continuum is arbitrary and tends to mislead. One classic example is the box on a form describing race. Which does a multi-racial person check when describing themselves?

Bibliography
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (2022). Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days: Boldly, Nobly, and Independent: 1893-1955 (Vol. 3). (S. A. Hales, A. Hallstrom, L. O. Tait, J. Woodworth, K. T. Burnside, L. S. Edgington, . . . N. N. Waite, Eds.) Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Review by Michael Beach
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As the title indicates, this is the third volume of church history bearing the title ‘Saints’. There have been many works of history published by and about the church. This particular set of works has focused on the lives of real people and their experiences. The personal experiences shared include prominent church leaders and ordinary church members. Given the years noted in the title, much of this history includes the period of the two world wars and the beginnings of the cold war. Church members’ lives are highlighted that were on all sides of these conflicts.

The temple in Salt Lake City is dedicated at the outset of this volume. Members of the church find themselves on opposite sides of war and political conflict. They also experience the aftermath of conflict. It is a time of rapid development of transportation and communication. Temples spring up in other countries and continents beside North America.
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The back cover quotes Doctrine and Covenants 69:8 as the reason for approaching these sorts of historical retrospectives. It is “for the good of the church, and for the rising generations.” Reading about the challenges faced by leaders and congregates alike helps me, at least, to be able to face today’s chaos and remain firm in the faith. At least, I hope to stay so.

 

Bibliography
​Merton, R. K. (1973). The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Robert Merton is a foundational academic in sociology as it relates to science and technology. In particular he is known for defining idealized scientific norms. The book here reviewed describes and addresses his norms. It also includes a number of case studies to demonstrate the application of norms or when scientists or organizations of scientists have not displayed these sorts of idealized behaviors in the formation of scientific ‘facts’ or ‘findings’.

For Merton, scientific norms are formed through what he calls the ‘ethos of science’ (Merton, 1973, p. 268). His norms include ‘universalism’ which means truth-claims “are subjected to preestablished impersonal criteria” (Merton, 1973, p. 270). The next is called ‘communism’, which not a reference to Marxist political theories. Rather, it refers to a willingness of scientists to share their findings with other scientists so knowledge can advance for the common good. Another norm is called ‘disinterestedness’. For Merton, this is not about individual motivation, rather it is “a distinctive pattern of institutional control of a wide range of motives which characterizes the behavior of scientists” (Merton, 1973, p. 276). Merton refers to his final norm as ‘organized skepticism’. In this he is speaking about scientific self-review as an industry. This is functionally displayed in the idea of peer review of published findings.

These all sound well and good, but Merton himself refers in this book to ways that individual scientists and the scientific industry as a whole fail to live up to these norms. Others make the argument that rather than accept Mertonian norms as the standard, they are just his specific take on the topic. In fact the exceptions that Merton shares can be argues as the real norms, or at least alternatives to Merton’s normative descriptors. In this book for example, Robert Merton examines the scientific reward system. Who gets their papers published and in which industry publications is one way that incentive can cause norms to shift. Some universities or research organizations tend to be published more because of past publication. If that is so, then a researcher is more likely to get recognized by virtue of becoming a part of that organization as opposed to another. Getting credit becomes more motivation perhaps than advancing knowledge. Since Merton does a good job in my opinion at laying out these counter-norm examples, in a way he makes a case against his framework. In short, he argues for his version or norms, and notes deviations from those norms. As I said above, it could be that there are any number of ‘norms’ from organization to organization and person to person. If science as an industry accepts Mertonian norms as a standard, just with the examples he shares in this book it’s clear the norm is likely not actually the norm.

One other way to think about this would be the tension between sharing and hoarding knowledge. Many countries are slow to allow publication of facts with likely military application that might benefit a geopolitical rival. Likewise, private research organizations exist for the benefit of the corporation that funds it. Pharmaceutical companies will be slow to share information that has not already been patented. The counter norm in the first instance is about protecting a specific citizenry, in the second it’s about protecting the financial sustainability of a specific for-profit company.
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In the study of sociological influences between the scientific community and the community at large, this work by Robert K. Merton is part of the canon that is still often referred to in journal publications

 

Bibliography
​Lindberg, D. C. (2007). The Beginnings of Western Science (2nd ed.). The University of Chicago Press: Chicago and London.

David Lindberg walks the reader through a specific historical narrative of western science. The subtitle reads, “The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D.1450”. That subtitle is a mouthful, but essentially describes the effort of the book. It does potentially mislead. For example, there is a significant look at scientific knowledge and processes that enter Europe from Muslim middle east and African nations such as those learned in Spain as a result of the ‘reconquista’.

In particular, Lindberg makes s good case about assumptions and misconceptions about science, particularly medical science, in medieval Europe. Many think that time was clouded to thought as it is sometimes called ‘the dark ages’. In fact, there was medical advancement in the period both within the medical community, and through gleanings from the world of Islam. Lindberg makes it clear some advances were tampered in part by Catholic church authorities, but just as often what knowledge growth does occur is because church officials encourage exploration. In fact, many middle-age scholars were also clergy as they had time, access to libraries and resources, and instruction to read and interpret the information. Much of the experimentation of the time was instigated by this same clergy.
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If past is prolog, Lindberg’s efforts to help the reader understand scientific support and obstacles could help today. He shows not only when religious dogma may have been at odds with so called advancement, but also where scientific dogma may have been more detrimental to itself. In fact, he shows how in many cases the church was more supportive of a relationship with science than practitioners were when it came to a relationship with the church. Just as we all need to be open to the ideas of science, so too scientific practitioners need to understand when their theories seem supported by evidence, such ideas are not automatically true. When scientific ideas become themselves dogmatic the risk is a ceasing of inquiry and knowledge growth.