MUSING: EPISTEMOLOGICAL: On why scientists need a course in the history of science

One thing that Karl Marx got right was his concept of the sociology of knowledge. Our thinking is largely affected, for better or for worse, by our social environment. If that is so, then even the theories of science are products of their time, that is, they are not as objective as scientists suppose.

Examples abound. Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of the Species during the heyday of the Industrial Revolution. Consequently, his evolution theory, the process by which one species evolve into another according to the Darwinian mechanism of variation and selection, is highly mechanical. That is exactly what one might expect from a 19^th century scientist working in the country wherein the Industrial Revolution began.

This is not to say that Darwin was wrong. Perhaps his theory was correct, but was dependent on the advent of industrial thinking. If so, that serves to explain why no one in the feudal age thought of it.

There are related examples of the effect of the Industrial Revolution in other academic disciplines. In psychology, think of how mechanistic is Behaviorism, emerging as it did from the time when America joined the industrial age. Behaviorism's simplistic stimulus--->response explanation for human behavior, is altogether mechanistic. Also, to a degree that even most psychologists seem unaware, Freudian psychology, developed also during the period of heavy industry, is also mechanistic.

I repeat, the fact that the environment affects the development of scientific theories does not necessarily mean that those theories are wrong. However, and this is the important point, scientists should be aware of the concept of the sociology of knowledge and therefore, when evaluating any major thesis, they must consider the effect of the social environment in which it was developed.

Not to mention, of course, that if they are evaluating a theory of their own time period, both the theory and their evaluation may be strongly affected by the same social environment.

Furthermore, when evaluating a theory postulated in the distant past, they must take into account the social environment that influenced the theorist, and they must be aware of the social environment that is influencing their own evaluation.

Science is not immune from external forces. Knowing the history of science would help scientists to think objectively and/or to at least be cognizant of biases of which they are often no more than dimly aware, at best.