The Golem at Large: What You Should Know about Technology

  • Harry Collins &
  • Trevor Pinch
Cambridge University Press: 1998. 155pp. £12.95, $19.95
Crash test: technological devices should not be trusted unconditionally, say Collins and Pinch.

Of the many impressive texts that use case studies to convey ‘what you should know about technology’, The Golem at Large is the clearest and simplest. The authors rework existing materials with great care to produce a valuable introduction to their topic that is accessible to anyone. It is, however, necessary to clarify just what that topic is. The case studies presented here are all controversies, about the efficacy of technological artefacts, or the adequacy of technical knowledge or advice. Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch are concerned with the unreliability of what is generally regarded as, and indeed found to be, reliable. They do not focus that concern merely on technology: only three of the seven case studies relate to the working of artefacts; the others describe debates between scientists or technical experts.

The message of the book is that experts are fallible and liable to make mistakes. The claim may seem unremarkable, and is often stressed by experts themselves. But Collins and Pinch insist that a widespread image of scientific knowledge as certain, and technological devices as unconditionally trustworthy, needs to be opposed. Perhaps they are right: memories linger of how BSE, or ‘mad cow disease’, was said to pose “no conceivable risk” to humans, and many similarly ill-judged remarks are quoted here. On the other hand, perhaps they exaggerate the importance of this myth of the certainty of science as a foil for their own arguments. Either way, it is worth asking whether a book designed to attack claims of certainty and omniscience would not be better entitled ‘what you should know about propaganda’.

Collins and Pinch are relativist sociologists who now seem to be widely regarded as among the most radical critics of natural science and scientific expertise, or at least have been denounced as such in the context of the ‘science wars’. At first sight, this book confirms the diagnosis: it is ‘biased’ towards unedifying controversy and technical failure; it includes lengthy discussions of major disasters, such as Chernobyl and the explosion of the US space shuttle; it presents cases in which lay knowledge proves superior to that of experts. But once attention shifts to how the discussion actually proceeds, a very different story suggests itself.

To read these studies is to read what in the last analysis is a powerful defence of experts and expertise. Indeed, I know of no book more sympathetic to them outside the domain of hagiography. The authors stress the formidable difficulty of applying expertise, and the inordinate complexity of the real-world situations in which it is applied, and thereby seek to expose the hindsight-based critical attacks on experts, invariably occasioned when ‘things go wrong’, as facile, ill-informed and frequently self-serving. It is intriguing to find Collins and Pinch cheerfully using available ‘best knowledge’ as the basis of their own accounts of ‘what really happened’, and even lamenting the absence, in one of the situations they describe, of “compelling evidence” of the kind available in astronomy.

There is nothing significantly critical of science, technology or expertise in this book. Indeed, its approach is profoundly conservative. Expertise is going to go wrong, but that is the nature of the beast. A touch of additional reserve and scepticism may be in order, a certain reflectiveness perhaps in the face of expert pronouncements, but nothing else: “We offer no policies”. Even the criticism of the myth of scientific certainty is offered only for the greater good of science itself: if we expect too much of science and technology there is the danger of disillusion, of a “flight from reason”, a “fall back into a dark age”. In the light of all this, it is tempting to suggest that scientists do not always recognize who their friends are, although in the science wars, of course, it might have been that some scientists felt a need for enemies, and that the likes of Collins and Pinch were all they could manage to find.

It is likely that this book, like the authors' similarly designed collection of scientific controversies published five years ago, will be taken up for teaching purposes at an elementary level. The studies should stimulate valuable reflection in this kind of context, and may be used to illustrate far more themes than those discussed explicitly herein. None the less, the very narrow focus of their own discussion might be thought a disadvantage.

It is conceivable that the book will be ‘balanced’ in some contexts with materials stressing the positive achievements and exemplary reliability of science and technology, and ‘balanced’ in others with more forthright challenges to their authority and value; certainly, current trends in the mainstream of sociology are in the latter direction. Introductory textbooks, long notorious for making scarcely any mention of science and technology, are now beginning to refer to them, but mainly negatively, in relation to the rise of an alleged risk society and an increasingly threatened environment. But why are Collins and Pinch in practice so very much more positive about technical expertise than is now normal in their discipline? Perhaps part of the answer lies in the many years of close contact they have had with scientists and experts in the course of their substantive research.