Beach Haven

Bibliography

• Jasanoff, Sheila. 2008. "Speaking Honestly to Power." Amercian Scientist 96 (3): 240-243.
• Pielke, Jr., Roger A. 2007. The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

 
Review by Michael Beach
 
Roger Pielke reviews some of the various roles in which scientific and technical advisers place themselves when involved in the policy process. It really doesn’t matter the policy or governing body involved (political, corporate, religious, etc.). For Pielke, there essentially four ‘idealized’ roles. The pure scientist has “no interest in… the decision-making process” (Pielke, Jr. 2007, 1). Pielke’s science arbiter is someone who “serves as a resource for the decision-maker, standing ready to answer factual questions” (Ibid., 2). An issue advocate looks to limit the scope of choice, perhaps even getting someone to believe there is really only one good choice. The books namesake, an honest broker, is generally not a single expert, but more likely a panel of them representing some larger group such as an association of experts. This broker group helps to fully vet a topic to give the best consensus on a given scientific or technology topic. For Pielke, individual experts choose how they will add to a policy discussion, and decision-makers seek out different sorts of experts in these various roles. Pielke admits there may be other descriptors, and a person may act in more than one of these categories on different topics, or even within the same policy research concern.

In several areas, Sheila Jasanoff asserts conclusions that are directly opposite those of Roger Pielke as he expresses in his book The Honest Broker. For example, Pielke makes the argument that too much dependency on the linear model may in fact have the effect of politicizing science which is the opposite of what proponents of the framework claim. In his definition, Pielke asserts politicization of science involves advocacy which he defines as seeking to constrict policy options. In fact, advocacy seeks to narrow options to essentially one alternative cloaked as the natural outcome of scientific knowledge. He says this is a false notion that scientific knowledge compels a specific outcome.

In her review of his book, Jasanoff conversely argues that Pielke depends too much on a simplistic quadrant diagram of his own making. She notes how STS scholars have argued that forms of political engagement are not fixed in advance. It continually shifts. Where Pielke argues that the best role of science is to widen the number of the scope of policy alternatives. Jasanoff points out how widening the scope of choice does not always serve public interest. “Negotiated, knowledge-based consensus that compels a particular policy may depoliticize value conflicts” (Jasanoff 2008, 242).
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Perhaps the two authors can find common ground. Jasaoff sees a problematic tendency in scientists to naturalize values and social preferences that are embedded in science itself. Speaking about the idea of honest brokers in the form of panels in his final chapter, Pielke notes how scientists are humans and citizens. They have personal and professional values and views. It seems to me, if scientists can acknowledge their personal and professional values and how their perspective may be affected by them, the idea of honest brokers in the form of professional groups may be possible. As a typical STS argument, Jasanoff points out that the scientific process itself is value-laden. One conclusion to this typical STS position is how noting personal and professional values not only effect knowledge on policy evaluation, but effect knowledge creation as well, can ultimately help decision-makers to qualify scientific perspective as one of many considerations in creating policy. Understanding these human limits on objectivity would influence policy-makers not to discredit scientific advice, but also not to overweight it.

Porter, Theodore M. 1995. Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Disinterested? Self-delusional? Both?

Theodore Porter describes two kinds of objectivity. The very approach of sorting kinds of objectivity would suggest objectivity is more than the positivist view, that it is the way to describe actual truth. Porter calls the positivist view mechanical objectivity, yet he questions if such objectivity really exists. He points out how theoretical (mathematical) reasoning is more easily shared, but has “no relation to any actual world” (p.14). Scientific knowledge for example depends on a correct approach in an effort to tame human subjectivity (p.21), yet the very act of taking the correct approach in itself requires definition as to available approaches and which would be correct. For Porter, truth is negotiated by a community of disciplinary specialists (p. 12), meaning it is really disciplinary objectivity.

Expanding on Porter, Funda Ustek-Spilda acknowledges his distinction of mechanical and disciplinary objectivity and how they seem to melt into a single negotiated objectivity. Ustek-Spilda gives specific examples in the form of how countries in Europe count asylum-seekers and refugees using a seemingly universal set of rules for counting people. The trouble is there is some ambiguity in the description of who to count and how, so local administrators have to decide on rules and processes to incorporate the definitions using the context of their specific country. The result is a mix-match of approaches and something less than universal data-sets.

The process of localized decisions makes the bureaucrats not just implementers, but effectively policy-makers in their aggregation of approaches. She notes several important STS-related concepts that support Porter’s argument about the predominance of disciplinary objectivity. Statisticians become performative in their approach in that they enact the social world in efforts to describe or represent it (p. 295). She describes how statistical methods are really like Latour’s idea of ‘sociotechnical’ in that the resulting data are neither completely technically nor socially produced, but rather are a product of both. Yet, there is power in the numbers that are eventually normalized and aggregated. She describes uncertainty absorption in that the discretion (socially influenced decisions) behind the numbers fade into the background as the numbers are accepted as truth. The numbers, though, are really a result of statistical rule-making based on interpretation, adaption, and application of abstract standards, guidelines and concepts (p. 295). Interesting how in his article, Warwick Anderson seems to advocate for that sort of approach in modeling using numbers seeking to "open up a space for greater ecological, sociological, and cultural complexity in the biopolitics of modelling" (p. 167).
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Given all this, can we even put any real trust in numbers? Perhaps with an understanding of all the caveats we can say some number represents some special set of circumstances, defined in a very specific way, under very specific conditions. Seems like so long as we consider numerical representation as a sort of ‘good-enough’ data to make a relatively informed decision there may be some reason to trust what numbers are telling us. At the same time, how likely is it for those who actually make decisions to understand and accept all that qualification language? It’s much easier to just ‘go with what the data is telling us’ and absolve oneself of personal responsibility. In this way there is at least an appearance (and maybe a self-delusion) of disinterested objective decisions.

 

Biagioli, Mario. 1993. Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press.
 
Mario Biagioli spends little time in this book on the specifics of the scientific arguments of Galileo Galilei, though he does touch on a few high-level positions. Instead, Biagioli depicts how Galileo uses his scientific discoveries and invention of the telescope as means to position himself within the court culture of the Medici in Florence, and later in his life in papal Rome.

One of Biagioli’s arguments has to do with how patronage was used to maintain the power of the Medici and the Pope related through to putting ideas to the test (though testing processes might have been themselves questionable at times). It makes me think about science in the theoretical vs the practical. For example, G.E.R. Lloyd in The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World of Ancient Greece and China compared Greek and Roman ideals as differences of value around knowledge. Biagioli likens a differing of ideas to duels. He argues that the disputation was more important than the outcome in that honor is maintained in the fight itself. This perspective he describes as embedded in courtier life.

Patronage might be thought of as a sort of mentorship arrangement. As I understand it, a mentor would help a scientist in terms of collaboration of ideas, like say a more experienced scientist. The patrons as Biagioli describes them I think are more like sponsors by helping to set an agenda financially, if only indirectly. The sponsor hints at ideas they are willing to pay for through a broker, and the scientist woos a sponsor by properly framing research efforts, again through a broker. The sponsor-scientist relationship is clearly symbiotic in that the stature of each is raised by the position or ideas of the other. The greater the sponsor or broker, the greater the reputation of the scientist. The more striking the ideas of the scientist, the more prestige is implied upon the broker and sponsor. Interesting, sponsors do not directly pay a scientist so as not to seem to be buying loyalty. Instead the brokers act as go-betweens, not unlike a modern agent.

It might be argued that court patrons were more interested in gaining and flexing their power (giving titles, positions, making others do "their desires", etc). Perhaps they were less interested in only helping a client financially. Maybe the mentor role of the patron was more about mentoring the client in how to navigate the life of a courtier more than mentoring how to be a scientist. At the same time, I realize that my personal perspective on mentoring is based on how we might view the idea today. Back in Galileo's time the relationship described might have been thought of more like a mentor relationship.

One interesting perspective of Biagoli was how patronage was more stable under Florentine rule by the Medici family. Once Galileo moved to Rome to seek influence in the papal court it didn’t go so well for him. In that era popes tended to be old entering office, so they didn’t tend to last long before death caused a change in dynasty. As such, courtier influence waxed and waned quickly. In Florence, Galileo only had rivals of scientific prowess. In Rome, religious rivals tended to be as steeped in dogma as they were in power and face-saving struggles. As a result, when Galileo disagreed with a powerful Jesuit, he found himself in serious jeopardy. The arguments were in part about helio-centrism, but only in part. In his old age he was forced to recant some of his findings and lost much of his scientific authority.

​Mario Biagoli depicts an interesting picture of one scientist’s attempt at personal advancement through discovery, and the system of court patronage as a tool to raise standing of both benefactor and beneficiary. He also shows how such political and personal concerns influenced scientific findings, and argues that perhaps some similar influence happens still today. I tend to agree on this latter assertion. Science in many ways is beholden to whoever holds the purse strings. Perhaps funders don’t directly decide how science happens, but they do often determine lines of research by deciding which questions to pursue. 

Marcon, Federico. 2015. The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach 

In this work, Marcon traces the study of nature (what we not refer to as science) beginning in shogunate Japan. The early part of the story parallels, and at times intersects, the scientific revolution in Europe. Initially Japan received most of its scientific knowledge from Chinese scholars. It came in the form of imported encyclopedias depicting fauna and flora. Japanese feudal lords decided it did not want to be dependent on China and commissioned its own scholars to created something uniquely Japanese. The effort eventually morphed into works collectively known as Honzogaku.

The Honzogaku is as much a system of classification as it is a specific book, though it is that too. Depending on who was in power, scholars evolved through various groups sometimes including monks, government officials, independent tutors, and eventually more modern university professors. Once Europe began interacting with Japan there were efforts to compare and contrast Japanese and European classification system along with naming conventions. One of the real struggles was the Japanese language itself was not homogenous. Often plants and animals had different names depending on which province the description was captured in.

The idea of the Neo-Confucianists who became scholars-for-hire hearkens to the early Greek system. In this case, they combined book publication, teaching, and appeals to power for patronage in order to secure their positions, often as lower Samurai, or Ronin, in the Shogunate court, Ekiken for example. This idea of a Samurai being something other than a warier broadens an understanding of how the Shogun court system was not that different from European courts.  In this case there were military, intellectual and priestly groups in competition with each other within the court system. The Neo-Confucianists juxtaposed themselves as direct opposition to the Buddhist monks of their day.

Marcon speaks to the turning away from the Honzogaku during the Meiji era, but also notes how some of the form of it continued. In some aspects the supporters of western-focused Japanese scientists have 'socially homogenized backgrounds' (p. 302) that focus studies on a form of service to the state. Marcon notes how some of this westernization has created a bit of backlash and regrowth of Honzogaku in opposition to western pharmacology in favor of 'traditional' medicine.

The Honzogaku and later works also incorporated ever-improving drawings of its documented subjects. One defining question was whether to depict a specimen with individual characteristics and ‘flaws’. Generally, drawings become more of an idealized form. Today, Honzogaku survives in at least two ways. Its drawings are in themselves great works of art as well as historical depictions. In addition, as mentioned earlier, some of its traditional medical information continues as an opposition to modern western pharmacology.
 

Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. 1979 & 1986. Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

​This work examines one of the large questions in the field of Science, Technology, and Society (STS). Are scientific facts discovered, or constructed? For the authors, facts are constructed.

Among the ideas of this work, Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar describe reducing disorder in data as lowering noise, or increasing the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) between data that support a specific hypothesis, and those that don’t. Data that don’t support a hypothesis are not necessarily counter-finding data, they are just not supporting data, hence noise. This is a concept I am very familiar with from my work in satellite and broadcast networking. It also directly relates to the authors’ concept of inscription. When data are created through process, the result is inscription. As theories become accepted they tend to change into tools to further test new theories. Tools can be physical machines or processes. When the machine or process become normalized they are said to be 'black boxed'. Such black boxes are no longer questioned, but are simply accepted. In labs, the machines (black boxes) referred to take information in and spit out printed material (data sheets or curves). It is the interpretation of data or curves that come to represent what matters in the argument for one idea over another. The more isolated one point of data is over others, the more distinct the information (higher S/N), and the more it supports a specific idea.
 
There are lots of steps along the way in the machine input, processing, printing, and transcribing of data into descriptive curves. Part of the work’s argument is that without all the manipulation a distinctive curve would not result. It is just as likely, the author’s say, that another set of complex manipulations could lead to a completely different looking curve, and a different conclusion. This is especially true if earlier curves had led to a different machine (black box) to process data in a different way.
 
My satellite and broadcast example includes the use of two tools. One is called a spectrum analyzer (SA), the other is called an integrated receiver decoder (IRD). Anyone who has ever worked with satellite or broadcast signals is familiar with these tools. In satellite, for example, after a transmit earth station (uplink) sends a signal to the satellite, and the satellite receives and sends the signal back to earth to a receive earth station (downlink), signal parameters can be both displayed by the SA, and made sense of by the IRD. Both machines have complex electronic systems within them. For example, the IRD has to first demodulate the radio frequency (RF) energy, then decrypt the data stream, then decode the information within the data stream, then transform the information into something a human can understand (audio, video, text). The SA similarly requires many parameter adjustments until the energy sent through the air can be displayed and measured in a standard format, typically comparing energy density levels at given frequencies (instantaneous or averaged over some period of time). Without all that effort the information does not really exist from the perspective of Latour and Woolgar. In fact, without the equipment, intelligence (audio, video, text) would simply be lost in space.
 
I’m reminded of basic communications theory. In order for communication to happen someone must have an idea, encode it (i.e. speech), and send it across a medium. The requirement does not stop there. Someone else must perceive the signal within the medium, and have the knowledge required to decode the information (shared language and context). Does the knowledge actually exist before all those communication steps are taken? Many in the field of STS would argue that knowledge not shared is not really knowledge. Chapter 5 of Laboratory Life emphasizes the need for a form credit in order to incentivize scientists to share or communicate findings, which in turn causes knowledge creation. This idea doesn't seem to sit well with Robert K. Merton's scientific norms, but are more akin to Ian I. Mitroff's counter-norms. Because of all the required inscription effort, the authors (Latour and Woolgar) argue that such knowledge is constructed rather than discovered.
 
Below is a typical SA plot. The square shape in the middle is the desired signal. The somewhat horizontally flat lines at either side are a representative measurement of the “noise floor”. There is never an absence of noise as radio frequency (RF) energy is always present everywhere. It is generated by the sun and many man-made devices. To obtain the S/N ratio is a simple comparison of the power measurement at a representative (average) frequency at the top of the desired signal as compared to power as measured at a representative (average) place in the noise floor. The two are then divided into a ratio. Depending on the sensitivity rating of the IRD in use, there is a minimum desired threshold. All measurements are in a decibel (dB) scale. Note the specificity of the measurement scales, as well as several 'settings' in the bottom right corner required to construct the graph. All of these scales and settings are adjustable within the black box of a spectrum analyzer. To Latour and Woolgar's point, changes in scales or settings (or principles and processes leading to creation of the SA) would yield data depicted differently on the plot.

Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa. 2018. The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Among many threads, Mavhunga makes a point around ‘thingamication’. He shares examples throughout the book on colonial (and later) white perspective on African people as objects of study, control, labor, and information.

One striking example was the use of fences in building corridors through tsetse infested areas. Local labor was used alongside a thing called a bulldozer to clear forest where the land was too steep for the machine. They were also used to put in fencing, then funneled through those fences and ‘de-flying’ stations while moving along the fenced paths (182). The roads themselves were also a product of African labor, mostly built to allow for traffic between white-owned farms as well as for Africans to get from their homes to work in mines or on farms. These same Africans were able to move through traditional paths in ways that avoided infested areas during infested times before the belief that roads and fences were necessary.

Another particularly difficult approach from the perspective of Mavhunga was government creation of villages as a prophylactic. This effort removed people from their ancestral homes to gather them in new communities in between white-owned farms. Clearing and building up these small towns forced elimination of tsetse habitat (as well as habitat for nature in general), lowering the threat to sparse white-owned farms. The towns became a form of human shield. This approach lead to overcrowding of people in the buffer zones, and over burdening of the soils around the new towns (153). Mavhunga gives examples of eventual movement patterns adopted by officials that were not all that different than those previously employed by locals, but instead of preventative movement efforts these were about damage control (161).
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I’ll share one more human-as-object example. When authorities added chemical efforts to ‘mechanized phytocides’ (141) Africans again became a tool for the effort. While pilots sprayed less effectually from the thing called an airplane, African workers called ‘spray boys’ were given backpack pneumatic sprayers to go directly into the infestation. This put them as risk both from the fly and from the chemical poisons. Mavhunga offers a great deal of insight over several chapters about which chemicals were used during various periods and the effect on the fly, the plants, the environment, wildlife, and humans who both applied the poison and lived on the affected land. Decision makers only backed off aggressive use of chemicals when whites in the area began to complain after the shift from organic to synthetic pesticides (152).

Tilley, Helen. 2011. Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870-1950. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Review by Michael Beach

Vernacular

Among the threads in Tilley’s work is the idea of a linkage of vernacular with goals. In many instances, officials at the Colonial Office and scientists in the various studies documented similar goals. For example, all were trying to understand how to make the best use of soils in agriculture. Depending on the era, they also often agreed on concepts of ecology.

Tilley shares examples of divergent goals as well. In areas of ecology, forestry, anthropology, etc., the scientists were interested in local farming approaches. Colonial officials were sometimes more interested in helping white settlers to succeed in creating cash crops. Native agriculture differed from area to area just as soils differed. Burning, then planting in particular ways, allowing portions of land to lay fallow, all looked like randomness to European farmers who approached farming essentially the same way regardless of environment. Indigenous farms in Rhodesia, for example, remained sustainable. White farms in the same area were initially fruitful, but by year three or four tended to fail as soils became depleted (p. 158). Practices of clearing and tilling by Europeans also led to damaging ground erosion. Homer Shanz referred to such farming approaches as “the tyranny of the plow” (p. 136). He sought to guard against “dogmas that hinder successful agricultural development”.

There was a definite tension within the various studies described with regard to considering local conditions as opposed to scaling up to regional or continental approaches. The larger scale proponents looked to standardization. Localization proponents looked to unique factors in a given area. As movement in the scientific community discussed merits of using ecology as a potential way to connect various fields of science, consideration of factor interrelationships seemed ever more complex, even locally.

Similar to the debate over local vs standard farming approaches, attempts to control trypanosomiasis, or sleeping disease, spread by the tsetse fly were cast in similar language. William Ormsby-Gore noted, “No one form of attack upon the tsetse fly is universally practicable” (p. 177). Note the language of war used around to the time of both world wars.

Just as dogmas noted by Shanz clouded European colonialism in farming, similar language around the people of Africa shaped perspectives toward native populations. Tilley tells us how the language of eugenics and demography “had important effects on conduct and legislation of colonial administrations” (p. 258). She shows a number of examples of scientists and administrators who believed Europeans could learn more from locals about farming techniques. She also gives examples of language in which indigenes are seen as ‘backward’ or somehow 'less'.

​Vernaculars differed throughout the work. Whether the language was political, administrative, scientific, that of the local farmer, or of workers in faraway laboratories, language, perspective, and actions are clearly intertwined.

​EMPERORS OF THE DEEP
By William McKeever
Harper One, 2019, 311 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
This work is subtitled Sharks – The ocean’s most mysterious, most misunderstood, and most important guardians. The author’s major claim is closely associated with that subtitle noting his intent as “an urgent call to protect them, a celebration of sharks as remarkable apex predators, supersensory navigators, and humankind’s greatest ally in nature” (p. 10).
 
Among many examples and justifications, McKeever notes how ecosystem culling by sharks makes marine life stronger and more abundant. For example, in the presence of an apex predator, prey behavior adjusts in ways that ensures the most healthy and adaptive survive to pass on genetic characteristics.
 
The author notes how he makes his arguments in order to “raise awareness about the massacre of sharks around the world” (p. 295). His hope is to appeal to policy makers, fisheries, and sea food consumers to take actions that would curtail bad behavior by people who exacerbate the human and environmental impact of bad practices related to sharks.
 
McKeever shares specific examples that clarify the points he makes. From sports fishing tournaments, to human enslavement on industrial fishing boats, impact by and to humans supplement the argument to the impact to sharks and the larger maritime ecosystem. At times he also seems to praise more radical groups. Such an approach may make it difficult for the policy makers he is hoping to sway. Along with his nod to Greenpeace or scientific organizations such as the South Africa Conservancy, he often points to ‘illegal’ fishing activities without reviewing what regulatory efforts have come about to define what fishing is legal or not. Sharing good efforts in this area as examples could persuade countries less involved to consider similar approaches.
 
For those like me who are interested in areas of science, technology and society there are plenty of examples of how science, technology, policy, economics, and cultural perspective ultimately influence each other around shark-related environmental concerns. McKeever gives both hopeful and discouraging examples from various parts of the world.

​SCIENCE IN ACTION
By Bruno Latour
Harvard University Press, 1987, 274 pages
Review by Michael Beach
 
Subtitled How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Latour claims that as scientific ideas become generally accepted they are ‘black boxed’ (taken for granted in future knowledge claims). In what later becomes known as actor-network theory (ANT) his thesis is that knowledge is not linear discovery, but rather the building of supportive relationships among actors (human or otherwise), creating a web of idea dependency among scientific communities. The author seeks to describe the need to follow the closure of scientific controversies in order to understand the nature of knowledge production.
 
Latour seeks to link himself with scientists, and those who study aspects of science, he himself using the scientific method to study practitioners of the scientific method. In the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this is a seminal work as it introduces a link between the philosophical perspective such as the social construction of knowledge, with the practical need for scientists to enlist others for consensus and adaptation. Unfortunately, the idea that knowledge is a function of the strength of actor relationships leaves out the potential of black boxing what at some future point turns out to be untrue.
 
As mentioned above this is foundational STS work as paradigmatically shifted away from the idea of linear knowledge advancement through discovery. ANT takes into account all forces at work in the knowledge creation process, including non-human participants.

LEVIATHAN AND THE AIR-PUMP
HOBBES, BOYLE, AND THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE
By Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer
Princeton University Press, 1985, 391 pages
Review by Michael Beach

This history covers an important time in the history of scientific thought. Many scholars consider the 17th century as the ‘scientific revolution’. Many famous discoveries took place around this time. The history under review here speaks to a major debate of the time. Represented by Robert Boyle were those who believed in experimentation as the basis of knowledge production. Thomas Hobbes, on the other hand, questioned experimentation, preferring philosophical debate as the basis for coming to understanding. Boyle argued that we should believe our eyes, yet so much of experimentation is ‘managed’ that even today debate over knowledge construction versus knowledge discovery continues.
 
The reading claims that “many aspects of the programme that he (Boyle) recommended continue to characterize modern scientific activity and philosophies of scientific method” (p. 341).  Yet the pump experiments varied in both makeup and outcome. Theories also varied from pump to pump and outcome to outcome. Did facts created by experiments explain the various theories, or did the various theories serve to explain the facts noted in the experiments? When one interprets facts, are they interpreting whether something is a fact, or are they interpreting the meaning of the fact itself?
 
There also seems to be an interesting power balance issue. Hobbes had a connection with the king. You’d think that would have caused his arguments to carry more weight. Yet Hobbes was not accepted into The Royal Society (a prominent British scientific association). The authors offered a long set of examples of speculation by others as to why that was.  Some of the arguments surrounded Hobbes’ personality, yet Shapin and Schaffer show how some accepted members were perhaps more surly than Hobbes.
 
It may have come down to the fact that Boyle had members of The Royal Society act as witnesses to his air-pump experiments and even sign affidavits to the effect. At the same time Hobbes questioned the need for repeated experiments, or at times any experiments. By questioning the intellectual approach of the use of ingenuity (p. 130), which for Hobbes and his detractors was understood to be a slant, he put himself at odds with what amounted to be much of the collective thought leadership at the time. Reliance on the mechanical ‘tricks’, as he put it, was to denote something less than true philosophy.
 
Hobbes wrote a treatise on knowledge and science published in 1651 which he titled Leviathan. Aside from Hobbes’ negative portrait of experimentalists, most members of the Society looked at Hobbes as too dogmatic, including this publishing.
 
Whatever one believes to be the ultimate issue, the authors clearly state, “The rationalistic production of knowledge threatened that involved in the Royal Society’s experimentalism” (p. 139). Hobbes made an interesting assertion that many would still argue today. He depicted Boyle’s experiments as being based on his own assumptions about the nature of air. Likewise, it’s clear that Hobbes also had preconceived ideas. In fact, both Boyle and Hobbes came to what today would be thought of as false conclusions about what was happening inside the vacuum created by the pump. One could argue Boyle pre-decided the outcome of the experiments, the matters of fact, based on his ideas around the nature of air. Likewise, Hobbes essentially argued to ignore the experiments since the interpretation of the outcome was not proven, only conjectured. Yet Hobbes put more stock in his own ideas without any consideration of any matters of fact. As I see it both were socially constructing their perceptions pre- and post-experimentation.