The importance of being at cambridge

Nahid Aslanbeigui

Guy Oakes

pp. 277-302

in: Cécile Rol, Christian Papilloud (eds), Soziologie als Möglichkeit, Wiesbaden, Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2009

Abstract

"Space and the Spatial Orders of Society," the ninth essay in Georg SimmePs Soziologie, is perhaps best known for his account of how spatial proximity and distance shape social life. In exploring the complexities of this point, he makes a brief observation on the relationship between spatial proximity and the social relations that are characteristic of science. Following the neo-Kantian philosophy of science that was dominant at German universities in his time, he maintains that the distinctive feature of science is abstraction: the contents of a science can be exhaustively expressed in logical forms and thus can also be written down (Simmel 1992: 716–17). Due to logical abstraction and the possibility of a complete written record of scientific activity that follows from it, the social interactions of science can span remote distances. On this view, the results of scientific work are reproducible in texts such as theoretical monographs and reports of experiments that are fully intelligible and transparent to all scientists with the requisite qualifications, regardless of where they are situated and the texts are produced and circulated. This means that locales of research are irrelevant to science. "Localization," the 'sense of place" (Őrtlichkeit), and the "individualization of place," which are generally important factors in structuring social relations (Simmel 1992: 708, 711), have no bearing on scientific work. This is one way to state the standard view of scientific objectivity, the "everywhere and nowhere" conception of science, as one historian of science has called it. The validity of science "extends universally while its place of origin is nowhere in particular (that is to say, no specially privileged place)" (Golinski 1998: 80; see also Nagel 1989).

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel