The political ‘implications’ of scientific theories: A comment on Bowler

Summary

Peter Bowler's account of the biology and social views of E. W. MacBride is to be welcomed. He is correct in saying that the case of MacBride, who was both a Lamarckian and a Right-wing eugenist, ought to remind us that scientific theories bear no intrinsic, logically inherent, political implications. But it would be wholly mistaken to attribute the view that theories do contain such implications to the sociology of scientific knowledge. It is one that no consistent proponent of the sociology of scientific knowledge can or does accept. As Bowler says, and as sociologists of scientific knowledge have long asserted, links between scientific theories and political positions are features of particular social circumstances. These connections can always, in principle, be broken or revised, and in practice they fairly frequently are.