Rethinking The Postmodern Perspective Excavating The Kantian System To Rebuild Social Theory. Roberts PDF

Rethinking the Postmodern Perspective: Excavating the Kantian System to Rebuild Social
Theory
Author(s): Michael Roberts
Source: The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Autumn, 2000), pp. 681-698
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RETHINKING THE POSTMODERN PERSPECTIVE:
Excavating the Kantian System
to Rebuild Social Theory
Michael Roberts
CUNY Graduate Center
The postmodernism debate in the social sciences has been misunderstood as primarily
an epistemological problem concerning method. The evolution of the postmodernism
debate into the science wars has raised the same issues. Critics blame postmodernism
and science studies for epistemological relativism and hostility toward science, while
supporters attempt to use postmodernism as a part of a project to replace positivism
with interpretive methods. Both critics and supporters of postmodernism miss the most
important aspect of the postmodern perspective: the attempt to break out of episte-
mology and the Kantian conceptual framework. Critics of postmodernism and science
studies also mistakenly argue that postmodernism is the sole creation of the humani-
ties. Many of the key concepts of the postmodern perspective, however, were devel-
oped through reflections on novel developments in the natural sciences. Because critics
and supporters of postmodernism in the social sciences remain within a Kantian con-
ceptual framework, the postmodern break from epistemology has been overlooked. A
close reading of reflexive texts on the natural sciences rules out any claim that the post-
modern perspective is simply a relativistic methodology that dislikes science. The pages
below focus on key texts by Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault
and Bruno Latour as an attempt to re-orient the postmodernism debate in the social
sciences. A reexamination of these texts reveals how the postmodernism debate in the
social sciences has mistakenly understood postmodernism as a problem of method and
epistemology. Science studies represents the maturation of the postmodern perspective
by building a non-epistemologically oriented social theory. The possibility of rebuilding
social theory after the dismantling of epistemology is the unique hallmark of science
studies, the most recent development of the postmodern perspective.
Life no argument.-We have fixed up a world for ourselves in which we can live-
assuming bodies, lines, planes, causes and effects, motion and rest, form and content:
without these articles of faith, nobody now would endure life. But that does not mean
that they have been proved. Life is no argument; the conditions of life could include
error.... Truth is the kind of error without which a certain species of life could not
live. The value for life is ultimately decisive.
-Nietzsche, The Will to Power
Direct all correspondence to Michael Roberts, Department of Sociology, Graduate School and University Center, City Uni
sity of New York, New York, NY 10016; e-mail: mikerl26@hotmail.com
The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 41, Number 4, pages 681-698.

Copyright ? 2000 by The Midwest Sociological Society.
All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Pres
Journals Division, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223.
ISSN: 0038-0253
682 THE SOCIOLOGICAL QUARTERLY Vol. 41/No. 4/2000
THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF A PERSPECTIVE
The postmodernism debate reached new ground in the summer of 1996, when the
York Times published a front-page story on a scandal that was brewing in certain
demic circles regarding the popular cultural studies journal Social Text. The r
began when an New York University physicist submitted a mock article to be publ
by Social Text as part of a special issue on the "science wars."' His intention was to
that postmodernism is a foolish intellectual fad without substance, by publishing a
cle that pretended to be friendly to postmodernism and science studies, while in f
was filled with nonsensical ballyhoo. The editors, unaware of foul play, publish
article in good faith, as an attempt to create a public forum where scholars in the hu
ties could have conversations with both natural and social scientists about the future of
science studies, the multi-disciplinary approach that examines both the content of and
the conditions under which scientific knowledge is produced. While the sophomor
antics of deceiving the editors of a popular journal prove suspect, the incident has
helped to encourage more discussions and debate about postmodernism and its late
manifestation, science studies. These debates now have the public as an audience thanks
to the New York Times.
"Postmodern" is a slippery term that has had a complicated conceptual development.

The "post" can refer to either modernism (cultural aspects of the modern world) or
Modernity (the socio-economic formation of the modern world). Modernism refers to
the movement that attempted to "strip representations of their life-world referents, the
immediate narratives forming the core of our everyday, taken-for-granted worlds of life
experience" (Aronowitz 1992, p. 253). Modernity, on the other hand, is an economic and
political concept that refers to "growth oriented planning and production, with a plural-
ist political system in which class politics is replaced by interest group struggles, and with
a strong bureaucracy which can regulate relations among, and between, money and
human capital" (ibid.). After World War II, the British historian Arnold Toynbee (1963)
used the term postmodern in his voluminous Study of History to describe the collapse of
the Enlightenment ethos of progress, rationalism and social stability. For him, the term
marks an historical period, the postmodern period of social turmoil, which was sup-
posed to have begun at the end of the nineteenth century. In the late 1950s the term
popped up in the "end of ideology" debates. Some sociologists used postmodern to
describe the positive impact of new technologies on society. Peter Drucker's ([1957]
1996) The Landmarks of Tomorrow foresaw an end to poverty, ignorance, and ideology,
a kind of postmodern utopia. On the other hand, C. Wright Mills' Sociological Imagina-
tion (1959) outlined a more critical perspective on the postmodern era. For him, it is
imperative that we question our belief in the immanent link between reason and free-
dom. Mills, like Max Weber before him, warned us of the potential for "cheerful robots,"
human automatons eagerly submitting to the servitude unleashed by rationalization.
The same theme-questioning the link between reason and freedom-had been taken
up a decade before by the Frankfurt School and a decade later by French poststructural-
ists. On this side of the Atlantic, poststructuralism made its way into the humanities
departments in the late 70's where it remained for over a decade. It wasn't until the
end of the 80's that post-structuralism-this time as postmodernism-shook up the natural
and social sciences in the United States. To criticize the link between reason, progress, and
freedom, has been a very controversial project, and it remains a central issue in the
Rethinking the Postmodern Perspective 683
debate surrounding science studies today. For some, the

tably into the prison house of skeptical-relativist episte
ism and science studies in the natural and social scien
epistemological relativism that makes it virtually impos
gone unnoticed in the appropriation of French theory is
tian epistemology. As I will show in this essay, an engag
has serious implications for the social sciences and for s
is at stake in the critical engagement of the Kantian sys
a new social theory that articulates the humanities
Immanuel Kant creates a new space for social theory. W
odor Adorno (1983) and Paul Feyerabend (1988) insis
"against method."
In this essay I focus on a narrow and somewhat ob
France that I will call the "post-Kantian philosophy of s
in the postmodernism debate in American sociology. My
select texts by Gaston Bachelard and Georges Cangui
pupil is Michel Foucault. The works of Canguilhem a
nately, unknown on this side of the Atlantic. It is my co
of their influences on the postmodern perspective helps
modernism debate. I see my intervention as a supplem
and important works in Queer theory (Seidman 199
(Butler 1990; Clough 1994), feminist theory of scienc
(Latour 1999), and postpositivist, poststructuralist q
Lincoln 1994). The debate about postmodernism in A
developed into an epistemological quagmire, pitting p
tionists. Positivist and social constructionist epistemolog
ism, and any attempt to get beyond such a stalemate
Kantian framework that has become unconscious of t
part from earlier contributions to The Sociological Qu
(1996), I hope to reveal the Kantian unconscious that s
modernism debate through critical readings of select
social science, the postmodern perspective has been mist
problem of method and epistemology, or to put in other
by the Kantian epistemological system. The postmodern m
temology into the foreground for critical engagement. Fr
method totally misses the point. This was not the case o
especially in France and Germany (Frankfurt School),
concerned with method and less hesitant to engage in m
it bluntly, the postmodern perspective is not a pessi
should be seen as a movement to displace the modernist
ontology. Part of the problem is that in the United Stat
on the humanities as the source of the postmodern pers
led critics of the postmodern perspective to claim that
For critics in the natural sciences such as Paul R. Gross
lectuals trained in the humanities and social sciences hav
content of scientific knowledge. Rather, the social scien
nal factors that get in the way of the production of sci
should, according to them, study how culture can sometimes cont

ideology but leave the actual content of scientific knowledge to t
and Levitt, natural scientists rely on method in an attempt to filte
of culture, and social scientists should focus their attention on th
effort to help natural scientists purify their representations.
The debate about postmodernism in the social sciences began
early 1990s with publications in important journals like The Socio
Sociological Theory. Today these debates have evolved into t
1996), a series of arguments concerning the content and future o
social sciences, the postmodernism debate has been mistakenly
by the critics of the postmodern perspective-as primarily a p
epistemology. For example, David A. Snow and Calvin Morrill
Denzin's and Lincoln's landmark book, Handbook of Qualitati
designed to rebuild qualitative research methods through the addi
component, by claiming that Denzin's work ends up in "radic
decentering impulse, [that] dismisses all remnants of empirical an
straint, thus embracing all voices and representations as equally v
miss Denzin's point because they reify method. When Denzin
the postmodern perspective calls for an attention to discourse as
they are asking for reflection upon method and ultimately reflecti
split between epistemology and ontology.
Critics of the postmodern perspective in the social sciences,
Rosenau (1992) argue that the postmodern perspective, which a
oped in literary criticism, dismisses the very possibility of doing
modernists question methodological conventions, the practic
impossible. "Postmodernists," she says, "go to the very core of so
cally dismiss it" (p. 4). For Rosenau, the supposed dismissal of scie
ern perspective is explained by her emphasis on humanities as the
inspiration for postmodernists. The emphlasis on the humanit
postmodern perspective is typical of how postmodernism is under
circles. What has gone unnoticed is that many of the key conc
perspective have their source in reflections on novel developm
ences, not the humanities. My intention is not to argue that Rose
U.S. academics who may refer to themselves as postmodernists. It
modern perspective has become something else on this side of the
ever it may have been in the French intellectual scene of the sixt
known as poststructucturalism. Rather, I have chosen to highli
because it is representative of a more general attack upon wh
skeptical/relativistic epistemology of the postmodern perspective
the purposes of this essay is Rosenau's claim that "skeptical postm
reality is pure illusion" (p. 23). This seems to be the major positivis
modern perspective. This grossly over-simplified criticism quite fr
It may be that Rosenau's criticism, which I see as representative o
against postmodernism, is a response to a kind of social construct
argues reality is socially constructed (Bloor 1991). As Bruno L
some postmodernists have indeed celebrated the inability of word
Latour has been working on what he calls a non-modernist perspe
ence studies from those postmodernists-Baudrillard perh

cal fashion, the slippage between signifier and signified
present reality. My essay makes many points similar to
about the term post as a label for the critique of th
inception of Rene Descartes's epistemology has been
modern philosophy, I have no problem naming the attem
as "postmodern." Like Latour, I understand the project o
attempt to break out of the modernist epistemological p
the non-modern perspective is similar to my attempt to
tive through a return to key texts in the post-Kantian ph
In addition to the over emphasis on the humanities as
perspective, another aspect that has added to the confus
annexation of poststructuralist theories into what we ca
struction of knowledge" (Kuhn 1962; Berger and Luck
heim 1985; Bloor 1991). This may be what Rosenau is
that postmodernists view reality as an "illusion." Social c
word, since it has been used synonymously with relativ
referred to as such, Foucault was not a constructivist
(1996, p. 77) label Foucault's work as part of postmode
cal relativism." As a consequence, comparisons have b
Thomas Kuhn's constructivist concept of paradigm
episteme.4 In short, supporters of the postmodern persp
the framework of social constructionism misappropriate
oped as a way to break with Kantian epistemology, b
1991) is unable to make such a move insofar as its b
namely, that the "Mind" actively shapes phenomena. An
tionism, that claims that a priori categories and forms o
experience possible, is strictly Kantian. David Bloor (
his intellectual mentor, but the basic proposition that th
is at work behind the production of scientific knowledg
categories are removed from the transcendental Min
argue that reality is socially constructed is an orthodox
one of the least criticized and least reflected upon persp
ogy of knowledge needs to re-examine its basic Kantian
modern turn is expressed through the distorting lens of
thrust will continue to be misunderstood.
The claim that postmodernism and its sibling, science studies, are anti-science, or
abuse science and simply dismiss the knowing subject as a fiction (Gross and Levitt
1994; Sokal and Bricmont 1998) is particularly misplaced after an examination of the
influence of the post-Kantian philosophy of science tradition on postmodernism and sci-
ence studies. Such a claim is a caricature at best. Bachelard and Canguilhem, both of
whom were trained in the natural sciences, developed criticisms of the positivist meth-
odology. Their work questions the separation of fact (in Kant's terms, the realm of pure
reason) and value (in Kant's terms, the realm of practical and aesthetic reason) and the
separation of subject and object. For this reason, their reflections on novel develop-
ments in the natural sciences signal a break with Kantian analyses of science (Kuhn
1970; Merton 1973; Mannheim 1985; Popper 1992). The break from Kant goes back to
G. W. F. Hegel's attempt to bridge Kant's division of reason into t

aesthetic realms by developing Kant's third critique, the critique
the third critique Kant argues that under certain conditions (art)
ence the noumenon.5 In the first critique, Kant brackets off the
possibility of experience, and it is precisely this move that create
fetishization of method and the reification of scientific know
me, is a crucial point to make, because a close reading of the natu
the postmodern perspective (readings on Bachelard and Canguilhem
sibility of reducing the postmodern perspective to a kind of skep
mology, or social constructionism that "dislikes science." The
developed by Bachelard, Canguilhem, and Foucault results ne
empirical reality on which science works nor in pessimism about
son. Rather, their work seeks to show how novel developments in
transcend the positivist (Kantian) methodology, which direct
"possible experiences." Any attempt to reach the noumenon violat
ology. Indeed, this is the main criticism made by those involved i
the postmodern perspective and science studies, namely, that any
ence studies endeavor must fall prey to a kind of irrationalism
(1994) call it, "muddleheadedness."
On the other side, the social constructionist side, there is no pr
non, since the separation of pure and practical reason is simply co
constructionists, who advocate a turn away from positivism and t
Everything is value laden because the world we work on is our
short, both the critics and some advocates of the postmodern per
sciences misplace what is at stake, because each side, in its own wa
within a Kantian framework: one side stubbornly holding onto
between fact and value and phenomenon and noumenon, the other
solipsism of the "social construction of reality." In the 1970s, the
hermeneutics as an alternative method more appropriate for
sociological object, but this move was also circumscribed by
(Rabinow and Sullivan 1987).
Another way to think of the unique position of the kind of pos
am arguing for is the way in which the question of truth and met
guilhem, the point was to break out of the Kantian tradition,
terms of relations among the subject, meaning, and the experienc
part of this tradition of framing questions of truth in this fashi
method presupposes the split between subject and object. Bach
frame the question of truth in terms of error, the concept and th
tradition is situated near the works of Spinoza, Hegel, Marx an
nant philosophical tradition during Bachelard's and Canguilhem
phenomenology, which posed the problem of truth in a Kantian f
problem of the relation between the external, experienced thing
ject, endowed with categories of thought that exist in a realm sep
enced object. Canguilhem recasts the problem as a relation betw
the conditions that make life possible. I argue below that, because
questions of truth in the conditions that make life possible,
labeled "relativistic." Rather than seek truth in method or the
this would include Kuhn's socio-psychological theor

guilhem hold the Spinozian position that "truth is its ow
Spinoza-as well as for Canguilhem and Foucault-the
stood as a "fold" in the univocity of being, rather than a
and insulated in a different realm from the known objec
frameworks. In other words, while Bachelard and Ca
separation of fact and value and phenomenon and no
ered relativists because they ground the connection betwe
that make life possible. This is what makes their work i
ism. Life is not indifferent to the conditions that make
enter in the work of science. Such is Canguilhem's (1991
Normal and Pathological, he states that "it is life itself
makes the biological normal a concept of value and not a
Could we not say the same about sociological judgment?
because only under specific conditions is life possible. Sk
can be a tenable position only if the issue of truth
between a knowing subject separate from a known objec
the relative merits, or pros and cons, of some kind of n
epistemology. What is at stake is the possibility of br
revealing the Kantian unconscious of the social sciences,
the "mind in a vat."
I turn now to the bulk of my intervention, to show how much of the postmodern per-
spective was developed through reflections on novel changes in scientific practice. In
other words, I want to down play the emphasis on humanities as the source of the post-
modern perspective in order to allow us to rethink the future development of this per-
spective. Again, the point is not to claim that humanities is not a legitimate influence on
postmodernism. Rather, I want to demonstrate that much of the postmodern perspec-
tive has its roots in reflections on novel developments in the natural science, and that,
therefore, it is wrong to claim that postmodernists and "students" of science in science
studies "dislike science." The next section focuses on close readings of Bachelard and
Canguilhem and their influences on Foucault. In the last section, I identify some con-
temporary social theorists who are moving us in new directions beyond epistemology
and method and discuss the implications of their work for sociology. It is my opinion
that much of the current posturing in the postmodernism debates is based on very
sloppy thinking. As such, I believe we need careful explications of some fundamental
issues in the philosophy and sociology of science. The next section is my attempt to pro-
vide such an analysis as a way to put to rest messy caricatures about the postmodern
perspective. I have chosen to provide a close reading of Bachelard's philosophy/sociol-
ogy of mathematics and a close reading of Canguilhem's sociology/philosophy of the life
sciences to illustrate what is at stake in the postmodern perspective that seeks to break
away from the Kantian system. In the last section, I explain why these fundamental
issues have a critical bearing on the future of social theory.
BREAKING OUT OF THE KANTIAN SYSTEM
The post-Kantian philosophy of science tradition is marked (chronologically) by the

writings of Jean Cavailles the logician; Gaston Bachelard, the chemist turned philoso-
pher; and Georges Canguilhem, trained as a doctor in medicin

tradition is unique for its peculiar engagement with Kant, and
from the still dominant Kantian philosophy of science "school" th
inent philosophers of science as Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, I
Carnap and Saul Kripke. The Kantian framework also domin
knowledge, which includes such figures as Karl Mannheim, T
Schutz, Berger and Luckmann, and more recently, works by
post-Kantian French tradition that developed the term "epistemol
Kantian philosophy of science tradition had an enormous in
poststructuralists, especially Foucault, who was Canguilhem's m
But the most important accomplishments of this tradition, the b
metacritique of epistemology, have been lost in discussions about
spective on this side of the Atlantic. The postepistemological impl
ences were first outlined by Bachelard, a chemist and philosop
concept "epistemological break," a phrase then coined by the
and made famous by Louis Althusser's magnificent studies on Mar
tific Spirit and The Philosophy of No, Bachelard argues that revol
forced philosophy to rethink traditional epistemological and
elard discusses what he calls "non-Euclidean geometry, non-Lav
non-Aristotelian logic" (the new sciences) as three epistemic br
ences that called into question Cartesian and Kantian epistemol
Bachelard claims that the new sciences forced the mind to chan
off of its metaphysical foundation. Recall that, in his essay "Rule
Mind," Descartes ([1988] 1994) argues that what is most certain
real is the simple. He argued for a method of building upon simpl
composite. In other words, begin with the simple and ascend to th
Descartes "Rules" is to be able to direct the mind in forming w
sound judgments about whatever comes before it" (rule 1). Rules 2
Descartes. In Rule 2 Descartes ([1988] 1994, p. 1) says: "We shou
objects of which our minds seem capable of having certain and in
A little over a century later, Kant ([1969] 1994, p. 94) re-codified
that the understanding must direct itself to what is a possible ex
non) in order to avoid error, or in order to prevent the mind from
what he called "dialectical illusions."6 Descartes's ([1988] 1994, p. 6)
whole method
consists entirely in the ordering and arranging of the objects on which we must con-
centrate our mind's eye if we are to discover some truth. We shall be following this
method exactly if we first reduce complicated and obscure propositions step by step
to simpler ones, and then, starting with the intuition of the simplest ones of all, try to
ascend through the same steps to knowledge of the rest.
Descartes used geometry to ground his method because he believed that "of all the sci-
ences so far discovered, arithmetic and geometry alone are, as we said above, free from
any taint of falsity or uncertainty" (p. 2). The axioms of Euclid and, much later, the prin-
ciples of Isaac Newton became, with Kant, virtually identical with reason itself. In other
words, Descartes and Kant took what were merely axioms in geometry and physics and
made them into first principles in metaphysics, a fram

dation for the accumulation of apodictic knowledge a
Mind outside of culture and history. Positivism inherite
Descartes and especially Kant. The epistemological fr
cartes and Kant, frameworks based upon Euclidean ge
for the fetishization of method that we face today in th
Bachelard showed how the new sciences inverted the C
for Bachelard, is no longer what is more clear, certai
thought was most fundamental and first is for Bach
else, that is to say derivative, not original. Bachelard say
the complex and that the Cartesian method of focusing
mological obstacle to the new sciences. In short, the com
erties that give the appearance of the simple. One e
length in The New Scientific Spirit is Euclid's parallel po
late was for centuries an accepted postulate without pro
As Bachelard comments "it was a theorem in need of
mathematicians believed that parallels exist. "What w
no known way of coordinating this simple theorem
geometry. The existence of parallels was never questione
The problem of never questioning the existence of par
best left to mathematicians, but the manifestations carr
because the rules that govern mathematical procedure ar
social sciences. Rather, the Kantian system, which separ
is grounded in the Euclidean system. But again, this h
manifestation of this unconscious, is the sociological fet
matical procedure. To assume that a postulate or axiom i
is what Bachelard calls the "new scientific spirit" or the
oms into dialectics or generalizing them by asking what
their essence or nature.
Bachelard's work is an explicit critique of logical positivism because he develops a

post-Kantian theory of mathematics that argues that, even in the "purest" of sciences
(mathematics), knowledge never exists apart from application.7 Bachelard shows how
Euclid's postulate was worked out by placing the idea of parallel lines and the plane in
relation to "spherical analogues." Geometers considered the possibility that if Euclid's
parallel postulate is not true, it may be because in special circumstances of curved sur-
faces, curved lines exhibit the properties of straight lines. In other words, they applied
the postulate to another context, and thus the "object"-parallel lines-took on a func-
tional "role": what happens if we assume the axiom is false? The result is that the com-
posite produces the simple or rather, beneath the simple appearance of things, modern
science finds complexity. This is of course the inverse of the Cartesian method. Because
the work of mathematicians always involves imaginary applications, Bachelard can
claim that technology permeates even the most abstract and pure of the sciences. We
have with Bachelard the first sustained attempt to excavate the unconscious of the sci-
ences, to bring to the forefront the Cartesian and Kantian systems for critical engage-
ment. It is just this kind of move that has gone unnoticed in much of the social sciences.
To argue that knowledge never exists outside of or independent of application is a
major break from epistemology and positivist methodology, which presupposes such a
separation between knowledge and application. Now we come t

Bachelard claims that "pure" thought always exists "in appli
technology is not simply an application of science, but that te
related to science and that, in some cases, technology is the agent
the knowing subject or knowledge/science: hence, the saliency of
"techno-science," a phrase that has become established in the socia
knowledge is not separate from application then culture cannot b
tainty and culture cannot be filtered out via method. This counters
the priority of knowledge over action, or application of knowledg
instance, argued that knowing must be prior to acting. Bachel
shows how knowing and acting are dialectically fused. If technolo
knowing subject is partially positioned (affected) by the mediatio
In order to reflect on how the "real" is always already mediated
cation)-and by implication, culture-Bachelard develops a conce
technology. Extending and altering Edmund Husserl's reflection o
ception, Bachelard shows how the new science receives phen
shaped by instruments. The instruments, claims Bachelard (19
phenomena in the first place." This is especially the case at the
where the instrument used to view or measure the phenomena in
phenomena. Heisenberg (1958) was first to reflect on this when
device is itself part of the observation, that is, method and object
arate. According to Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, w
relation to the object. Descartes' quest for certainty and the dream
messiness inherent in the world out there seemed further away t
berg. But again, this is not a kind of social constructionism, for, w
the phenomena, there are still "things" out there, but they are at t
ics. More importantly, the subject is not separated from the object
mately, is the position of the knowing subject. Bachelard's em
technology is the beginning of the displacement of the subject fro
of, and independence from, the application of knowledge bec
partially positioned (i.e., mediated) by technology. Now, Bache
break from Kant because if mathematical procedure always exi
reality extends itself into the mind. Mind and matter do not belo
cal realms as Descartes and Kant had insisted. Indeed, the refusal t
matter in mathematical demonstration is the first move to break
this intellectual tradition.
In his essay "The Concept of Life," Canguilhem (1994) examines the relationship
between the conditions that make life possible and knowledge and it is in this essay that
Canguilhem offers an ontology of error, the concept, and the living being as an alterna-
tive to the epistemology of meaning, subject, and experienced thing. The central prob-
lem for modern philosophy became the framework of truth that set up a relationship
between the known object and the knowing subject as distinct from it. Kant attempted
to solve the problem of the relation between knowing subject and known object by giv-
ing the subject the possibility of knowledge through concepts. But did Kant really solve
the problems first raised by Aristotle, the apparent dichotomy between knowing subject
and known object? The problem that Kant inherited from Aristotle was how to explain
the "causality of the concept," how to deal with the curious situation that humans, as
beings that are made possible by the causality of conc

edge and organisms that know. How can knowledge be b
reflects objects? Kant tried to ground the causality of t
Mind, but the consequence of such a move was the fa
theatre of living organisms. When Kant banished the th
of scientific experience, he created the conditions for t
him, we don't know things in themselves. What we kno
by our mind. The positivist obsession with method has b
division of the object into phenomenon and noumeno
that we get a better understanding of research without
nature's ways, he is outlining what is at stake in the taki
structed by Descartes and Kant. Ironically, what we com
the object, or the theater of living organisms is lost. In
method and makes a fetish of it at the expense of a pro
edge and the conditions that make life possible. Positivis
stituting nature as the theatre of living organisms." Cou
positivism in sociology? Thus positivism blinds itself to
being to the physics of the movement of its elements. T
p. 310) means when he says "transcendental logic [I w
and positivism in sociology] ... does not in fact succeed in
of living organisms." There is no life there, in transcende
physics-the abstract categories of movement established
facts have been separated from values. We understand m
ing organisms including human beings. But life is a n
become normalized in the process of life's history. The h
such mistake. If life has any meaning, then we must
(1994, p. 318) "the possibility of a loss of that meaning, o
Life overcomes error through further trials." "Life over
losophy that posits error, not truth, as what is fundam
knowing subject in life. This is how Canguilhem (1994, p
the knowing subject:
What then, is knowledge? If life is concept and meanin

the activity of knowing? ... If man [sic] is formed by here
the history of knowledge, which is the history of error and
we conclude that man became what he is by mutation, by
that case, life would by error have produced a living thing
In fact, human error is probably one with human erra
because he does not know where to settle. He makes mistakes because he chooses
the wrong spot for receiving the kind of information he is after. But he also gathers
information by moving around, and by moving objects around, with the aid of vari-
ous kinds of technology. Most scientific techniques, it can be argued, are in fact noth-
ing more than methods for moving things around and changing the relations among
objects. Knowledge, then, is an anxious quest for the greatest possible quantity and
variety of information. If the a priori is in things, if the concept is in life, then to be a
subject of knowledge is simply to be dissatisfied with the meaning one finds ready at
hand. Subjectivity is therefore nothing other than dissatisfaction. Perhaps that is
what life is. Interpreted in a certain way, contemporary biology is, so

ophy of life.
In this way, Canguilhem opposes the Kantian philosophy of meani

rienced thing with a Spinozist philosophy of error, concept and l
tory of life as the history of transmissions of information has nec
because there always remains room for chance in coding and r
it is the case that concepts are what life gives itself as answers to t
own measure) then error, not truth, constitutes the history of h
(1991, p. 22) says that
the opposition of true and false, the values we attribute to both, the e
that different institutions link to this division-even all this is perhap
response to this possibility of error, which is intrinsic to life. If the hi
discontinuous, that is, if it can be analyzed only as a series of "corr
distribution of true and false which never, finally, once and for all, lib
it is because there too, "error" constitutes not the overlooking or de
but the dimension proper to the life of men [sic] and the time of the
The discontinuity of scientific discourse that Foucault learned t

from his teachers Bachelard and Canguilhem is explained not by r
structionism, or paradigm construction as in Kuhn's model, but by
The definition of scientific discourses as self-correcting is a way to
in life, or to quote Spinoza again, "truth is its own measure." Thu
ogy, not epistemology. Kuhn's philosophy of science emphasizes d
unlike Canguilhem, Kuhn's social constructionist theory of tru
struction remains bound within Kantianism. Here, then, we have
standing of the roots of Foucault's (1972) work on the "discou
subject as "situated by discourse." Foucault's notion of the discurs
is an extended development of Bachelard's "phenomeno-techno
not exist independently of application. Ideas cannot be unders
absolutely, but only relatively, that is to say that ideas must be p
relation deriving from a particular application. It is not accurate f
ernism to say, simply, that Foucault dismisses the subject as a fic
ernism" "dismisses all versions of truth ... and knowledge claims."
roots of "postmodern" criticisms of foundational epistemolog
engagements with Cartesian method and positivist dogma. There i
tic" about Bachelard's, Canguilhem's, or Foucault's critique of the
the role of technology in scientific practice. Bachelard shows, qui
edge never exists independently of application. Again, this is wha
means when he claims that the knowing subject occupies a pos
course and the subject who speaks are folded into each other. To a
occupies a position in discourse is also a way of demonstrating
matter, not outside it in a transcendental, a priori realm. It is a r
social constructionism, or skeptical/relativists epistemology. Here
tions that Foucault was a postmodernist non-believer in realit
Rosenau and Gross and Levitt-miss the point because there ha
of the influence of Bachelard and Canguilhem on Foucault.
In sum, what Foucault learned from Bachelard was tha

from application and that by implication culture can
From Canguilhem he learned how the Kantian system fa
theater of living beings and how in the Kantian system
understanding the scientists' method of research at the
postmodern perspective is the corrective to the errors w
modern move folds subjectivity into objectivity and, as
ian system.
CONCLUSION: WHAT'S AT STAKE FOR SOCIOLOGY

IF IT TAKES THE POSTMODERN TURN?
The consequence of the Kantian epistemology becoming the unconscious of the

sciences, is the inability to constitute society as the theatre of living humans. Whe
attempted to solve Hume's problem of how to attain apodictic knowledge with i
fect sensory organs, the unintended consequence was the fetishism of method.
solution to Hume's problems was to subordinate sensory knowledge the categor
mind. Such a move sealed off the noumenon (the object in itself) because, for Kant,
can only know the world with certainty because Reason confers form and substanc
the data of experience. The irony, which has gone unnoticed in the social sciences, i
Kant's schema leads to what Hegel (1989, p. 46) calls obtaining a "correct perce
with the rider that nevertheless [we are] incapable of perceiving what is true but o
what is false." We have then, the absurd ability to know the false with certainty. T
achievement of certainty requires a procedure (method) in which reason plays the c
cial role. So, what we know then, is a lot about method and almost nothing abo
object. So what happens to sociology if we abandon the Kantian epistemological syst
and the Platonic perspective on mathematical procedure?
It should be clear by now that critics of postmodernism have missed many of th
issues raised by the postmodern perspective. It seems to me that the postmodern m
in sociology creates the possibility of going beyond the epistemological stale
between positivism and social constructionism that has plagued sociology for over t
decades. The engagement with and move beyond Kantian epistemology allows u
make this move and create a new space for social theory. Excavating the Kantian un
scious of the social sciences allows sociology to once again take the lead in maki
social sciences an exciting discipline. What is at stake ultimately in the postm
project of science studies is not whether or not the criticism of the epistemologica
between subject and object and the fetishism of method rules out the possibil
objective knowledge. What is at stake is the possibility of re-building social th
beyond epistemology. The issue is how sociologists will be able to develop a new
theory that corrects the modernist mistake of creating the binary world of subjec
sus objects. It seems to me that the postmodern project of questioning and disp
the modern split between epistemology and ontology creates a unique opportunity f
sociologists to rebuild social theory and to re-engage the public in new and ex
ways. The engagement with Kant breaks down the belief in separating culture from
ence and breaks down the separation between subject and object. Thus, the sepa
of the humanities and the natural sciences must also be overcome. This is where sociol-
ogy comes in: it is our task to articulate the intersection between the humanities and the
natural sciences. It is our task because we are in the prime positio

articulation happen. Social theory has always straddled the fence
ties and the sciences. In short we can move in both worlds.
Sociologists are in a prime position to take the lead in developing the cutting edge of
a new social theory based upon the postmodern framework the recasts the relations
between subjects and objects or between what Latour (1999) calls "humans and non-
humans." The postmodern move corrects the modernist mistake of splitting up the
world into the human realm of subjects that make meaning and the non-human realm of
inanimate objects. Science studies seeks to develop a new understanding of reality,
where reality is not understood as an "illusion," as Rosenau has claimed. Rather, reality
is recast in terms of a "swapping" of properties between humans and non-humans.8 In
this way, Latour is recasting Canguilhem's project of framing the world in a way that
doesn't separate the concept from life, a way to argue that there is signal traffic between
the noumenal and phenomenal realms. To say that humans and non-humans swap prop-
erties is not only to break down the modernist epistemological split between subject and
object, it is also a new way to articulate how humans have a "thinginess" to their history,
with the way non-humans have a social history. In other words, the numerous case
studies of the practice of science in the science studies repertoire have shown how facts
are socialized in the laboratory setting.
In part 2 of this essay I showed how knowledge never exists apart from application
(technology/culture) and that through phenomeno-technology, the laboratory produces
facts, which suggests that because humans create facts in the social setting called a labo-
ratory, the history of the laboratory is a social historicity of facts or a social historicity of
things. But we know also that people have an objective history, a history of being treated
as objects-what Horkheimer and Adorno (1991) refer to as the dialectic of Enlighten-
ment. In the past social theorists inspired by the humanities warned us of the danger
latent in a kind of positivism, where people were reduced to abstract statistical entities.
On the other side, positivists have obsessed over method as a way to keep values apart
from facts. This methodological divide has contributed to the division of the world into
human and nonhuman and has crippled our discipline. For Latour (1999) what is unique
about science studies is that the people involved in it "keep defecting and counter-
defecting from both sides, and we insist and insist again that there is a social history of
things and a 'thingy' history of humans." To argue that there is a thingy history to humans
is to restate that the concept is in the conditions that make life possible. Science studies
is the maturation of Spinoza's ontology that sees the world as a single univocal realm, a
single collective of humans folded into nonhumans where dynamism and stasis exist
together not separately as in the modernist epistemological split between humans with
agency and objects without. This perspective allows for a truly exciting and unique
project. Sociology, it seems to me, occupies a unique space in the science studies
endeavor because we are oriented toward the study of relationships. Shouldn't we take
the opportunity to develop a richer understanding of reality, to reconstitute society and
nature as the theatre of living beings? Why not study the kinds of relationships that
Bachelard, Canguilhem, Foucault and Latour have described, the study of knowledge
derived from particular relations depending on particular applications? That is to say,
the study of relations between humans and non-humans, how they swap properties.
Could we re-fashion social theory and in particular the sociology of science and technol-
ogy in such a way that we could synthesize the social history of things with the thingy
history of humans? Perhaps, but first we must resist th

who view the mixing up of objectivity and subjectivity a
Taking the Spinozian path that folds subjectivity an
allows for an exciting multi-disciplinary project that brin
the social and natural sciences. What used to be the sepa
ethics and ontology must now be folded into a single pr
has the task of making this articulation happen through
late the humanities with the sciences is to develop sc
irony here too, for the critics of the postmodern persp
postmodernism is a kind of relativism that makes it im
important issues.9 But the postmodern move allows f
cism. To develop science as critical theory through an ar
the sciences provides space for moral criticism, a space t
It is when science attempts to banish culture that m
point is not to allow science to separate itself from the
through the criticism of the Kantian system. Otherwise
and Adorno (1991) have warned, Enlightenment beco
cage. Reason and freedom can only remain immanent to
science to insulate itself from culture.
In some ways, sociology has always been in between the humanities and the sciences,
and sociology has always had as its object of study, relationships. The challenge now is to
re-theorize the relations between humans to that of relations between humans and non-
humans. Such a project proves exciting indeed.
NOTES
1. The New York Times article was published May 18, 1996. The mock article in Social Text i
titled "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermenuetics of Quantum Grav
ity." The title alone should have alerted the journal's editors that it was a hoax. The article itself
laden with jargon-filled balderdash, with twelve pages of footnotes and ten pages of bibliograph
certainly unusual for a generalist journal like Social Text. The author of the mock piece lat
revealed his treachery in Lingua Franca. Shortly thereafter, the Times published their story on the
scandal.
2. See Clough's (1996) essay that builds on a post-structuralist/psychoanalytic approach to the

analysis of social science discourse. According to Clough, one of the most important contributions
made by poststructuralism is how it is "at once a treatment of writing in the human sciences and a
teasing out of its disavowed unconscious. The unconscious of narrative allows a forgetting or a not-
knowing within subjectivity, not only of the displacement of irrationality onto 'others,' but also of the
very constitution of subjectivity other than within itself-a disavowal of the constitution of forms
of subjectivity in the discourses of information/communication media technologies and the human
sciences alike" (p. 724). For an example of how psychoanalytic methods have been used to analyze
discourse in the natural sciences, see Hacking (1993). According to Hacking, "the picture is, for-
mally, the same as the one used by psychoanalysts and by the English philosophers of language.
'Events preserved in memory only below the level of consciousness,' rules of language that lie
deep below the surface,' and 'a conceptual space determined by forgotten preconditions:' all three
have, of course, a common ancestor in Hegel" (16).
3. In Rosenau's (1992, pp. 3, 4) words, the postmodern perspective "rejects assumptions,
refutes methodological conventions, resists knowledge claims, obscures all versions of truth" [and]
"in its most extreme formulations, postmodernism ... goes to the very core
science and radically dismisses it (3, 4)." Elsewhere she claims that "t
question any "commitment to science, rationality, reason and logic" (p. 1
4. Briefly, the difference between Kuhn's concept of "paradigm" a
"episteme" is rooted in Kuhn's implicit Kantian/Cartesian epistemol
Foucault's ontological perspective based on Spinoza's (1994) critique of
epistemological project and Hegel's ([1969] 1995) critique Kant's separati
appearance and what it is "in-itself."
5. Recall that for Kant, the object of (scientific) experience is broken
appearance of the object (phenomenon) and the object in itself (noumen
in-itself, is beyond any possible experience, at least for pure (scientific
tique is a crucial benchmark in the development of the postmodern per
that he makes a case for the possible experience of the noumenon. I will re
next section.
6. Recall the famous section on the "Antinomy of Reason," in Kant's ([1929] 1965, pp. 386-484)
first Critique. In that section, Kant attempts to demonstrate that "pure" or scientific reason must ori-
ent itself towards what are possible experiences otherwise it becomes entangled in contradictions it
cannot resolve. Above all else, Kant seeks to avoid the conditions that put reason in conflict with
itself. Kant's famous example from this section is the two equally plausible but contradictory propo-
sitions: the universe has limits; the universe does not have limits. According to Kant, we cannot
experience an absolute limit because a limit presupposes nothing on the other side, and since we
cannot have a perception of nothing, the experience of an absolute limit is not possible. The sec-
ond proposition requires less explanation for Kant: simply put, "Any such magnitude, as being that
of a given infinitude, is empirically impossible, and therefore, in reference to the world as an object
of the senses, also absolutely impossible" (p. 457). Kant's restriction of pure reason to what are
possible experiences is the central tenet of logical positivism. In the current debates surrounding
science studies and postmodernism, Kant's position has resurfaced; critics of science studies and
postmodernism-critics such as Rosenau and Gross and Levitt-repeat Kant's postulates, although
without any reference to Kant's work. Needless to say, the critics of science studies and postmod-
ernism give no serious attention to post-Kantian philosophy of science.
7. Again, Bachelard works this out in his reflections on non-Euclidean geometry. In short, one
cannot fully grasp Euclid's parallel postulate in terms of the "absolute" or "essential" nature of the
lines in themselves. Rather the postulate becomes grasped only when the parallel lines are
extended or generalized by moving them into a specific context or application, and where the lines
are understood in functional terms, that is by the role they play in constructing arguments. This,
then, becomes a relational ontology, where "things" cannot be understood "in-themselves" but
only in relations. Again the term relative is used to explain how the real is relational, rather than
as a way to refer to equally valid, but differing epistemological perspectives. Things are relations,
as Marx was found of saying. The term relative has nothing to do with relativistic epistemology.
Again simplicity is not an intrinsic quality of the idea and it cannot be understood in itself or abso-
lutely, but only relatively, which is to say the idea of simplicity can only be understood extrinsi-
cally, perceived in particular relations deriving from particular applications.
8. Latour (1999) provides numerous examples of property swapping in his text. One of the
least complicated examples is a speed bump. The speed bump-which is called a sleeping policeman
in France-is an example of what Latour calls technical delegation, where the speed bump acts as
a policeman. Although made out of a barrel of concrete, the speed bump creates the effects of a
sleeping policeman. It forces you to reduce the speed of your car. The bump is doing the police
work delegated to it. Latour says he is trying to "approach the zone where some, though not all, of
the characteristics of pavement become policeman, and some, though not all, of the characteristics
of policeman become speed bumps" (p. 190).
9. Critics of postmodernism like Rom Harre have said that the

ernism ends up as an "anything goes" kind of perspective and tha
to speak out against Hitler, or other morally reprehensible figures
ern perspective says more about the critic than the perspective. It i
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Rethinking the Postmodern Perspective: Excavating the Kantian System to Rebuild Social

-Nietzsche, The Will to Power

The Sociological Quarterly, Volume 41, Number 4, pages 681-698.

THE MISUNDERSTANDING OF A PERSPECTIVE

"Postmodern" is a slippery term that has had a complicated conceptual development.

debate surrounding science studies today. For some, the

should, according to them, study how culture can sometimes cont

ence studies from those postmodernists-Baudrillard perh

G. W. F. Hegel's attempt to bridge Kant's division of reason into t

this would include Kuhn's socio-psychological theor

BREAKING OUT OF THE KANTIAN SYSTEM

The post-Kantian philosophy of science tradition is marked (chronologically) by the

pher; and Georges Canguilhem, trained as a doctor in medicin

made them into first principles in metaphysics, a fram

Bachelard's work is an explicit critique of logical positivism because he develops a

separation between knowledge and application. Now we come t

beings that are made possible by the causality of conc

What then, is knowledge? If life is concept and meanin

what life is. Interpreted in a certain way, contemporary biology is, so

In this way, Canguilhem opposes the Kantian philosophy of meani

The discontinuity of scientific discourse that Foucault learned t

In sum, what Foucault learned from Bachelard was tha

CONCLUSION: WHAT'S AT STAKE FOR SOCIOLOGY

The consequence of the Kantian epistemology becoming the unconscious of the

natural sciences. It is our task because we are in the prime positio

history of humans? Perhaps, but first we must resist th

2. See Clough's (1996) essay that builds on a post-structuralist/psychoanalytic approach to the

9. Critics of postmodernism like Rom Harre have said that the

Adorno, Theodor. 1983. Against Epistemology. London: Basil Blackwell.

Aronowitz, Stanley. 1992. The Politics of Identity. New York: Routledge.

? 1994. A Vital Rationalist. New York: Zone Press.

Druckner, Peter. ([1957] 1996). Landmarks of Tomorrow. New York: Transaction.

Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora's Hope. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universi

Seidman, Steven. 1997. Difference Troubles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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