Abstract
The careful reader will have noted our use of the term ‘interest’ at a number of places in earlier chapters and will rightly have concluded that this concept plays an important role in the network theory of knowledge. The purpose of the present chapter is to elaborate upon this notion. We may start by recalling that we talked, earlier, of the ‘workability’ or ‘utility’ of networks and argued that this is the acid test of the success thereof. If a network allows the individual to interact satisfactorily with his or her environment, then it is upheld and reinforced. If, on the other hand, the behaviour of the environment is unpredictable from the standpoint of the network (as in the case of Xaanthi and his notion of ‘mammal’ or the child and the parrot) then this network is undermined and susceptible to change. However, in order to judge network workability, the individual has to ask questions of it. The network is not an idle set of terms disconnected from reality. It is a tool that may be used when the individual is trying to achieve a goal or solve a problem. It is an instrument, fashioned for certain purposes. It is a resource that allows the individual to move from A to B in his or her environment. It is, as we saw, like a map that will serve certain interests and not others.
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Endnotes
For a detailed sociological analysis of the race-intelligence debate see Jonathan Harwood, ‘The race intelligence controversy: a sociological approach, (1) Professional factors; (2) External factors’, Social Studies of Science, 6 (1976) pp. 369–94; 7 (1977) pp. 1–30;
‘Heredity versus Environment; an episode in the continuing history of the Welfare State’, pp. 231–51 in Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin (eds), Natural Order, Historical Studies of Scientific Culture, (Sage, London and Beverly Hills, 1979).
Our description and definition of these two knowledge-generating interests is close to that of Barnes. See Barry Barnes, Interests and the Growth of Knowledge, (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1977). However, there is one important difference: Barnes argues that, ideally, it might be possible to envisage knowledge directed solely by an interest in prediction and control, and without legitimating social-control interests. We argue (see Ch. 20 onward) that this is wrong. There are always interests in social legitimation present. The important point is whether these are local (e.g. professional) or global.
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© 1984 John Law and Peter Lodge
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Law, J., Lodge, P. (1984). Interests and Knowledge. In: Science for Social Scientists. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17536-9_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17536-9_12
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