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CHAPTER FIVE

THE ADHERENCE TO METAPHOR

 

Every social hierarchy claims to be founded on the nature of things....It thus accords itself eternity; it escapes change and the attacks of innovators.  Aristotle justified slavery by the ethnic superiority of the Greeks over the barbarians; and today the man who is annoyed by feminist claims alleges that woman is naturally inferior (Hertz 1960 [1909]:89).

It should be clear that our belief machine is capable of maintaining its user's confidence in various ways.  But the question arises "Why bother?"  What is at stake in the use of a particular metaphor for people to argue so vehemently for its truth?  Why maintain a belief in an omnipotent God if it creates such difficulties?  Why maintain a belief in an earth-centered universe for two thousand years?  In other words, if we build a belief machine, the machine must be able to bind its user's allegiance to one metaphor over another.  We might simply say that we chose one metaphor over another because it is "better"; but what makes it" better?"  Why do we believe that some view of the world is simply in "the nature of things"? 

In this chapter I want to try to demonstrate how our adherence to one metaphor over another is influenced by social and cultural factors, and how one metaphor may be better than another solely because it fits with certain of our social experiences.  This idea is not new by any means; it has its roots in nineteenth century writers such as Auguste Compte and Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, and was developed fully by Emile Durkheim in the early part of this century.  This conviction that social and cultural forces influence, if not determine, our beliefs has been a central tenet of anthropology ever since.  Some of the best work in this area has been done, not only by anthropologists, but by historians and people working in the area of the sociology of knowledge and the history of science, and one of my purposes in this chapter is to review some of that work, and show how it relates to the construction of a belief machine.

We begin by noting that people often justify their beliefs by claiming that they are somehow in the nature of things.  The capitalist "robber barons" of the late nineteenth century, for example, legitimized their activities by recourse to the Darwinian metaphor of "survival of the fittest"; it was in the nature of things, they said, for the fittest to rise to the top.  Here is how William Graham Sumner put it:

The millionaires are a product of natural selection acting on the whole body of men to pick out those who can meet the requirements of certain work to be done....It is because they are thus selected that wealth---both their own and that entrusted to them--aggregate under their hands...They may be fairly regarded as the naturally selected agents of society for certain work.  They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society.  There is intensist competition for their place and occupation.  This assures us that all who are competent for this function will be employed in it, so that the cost of it will be reduced to the lowest terms (Quoted in Hofstadter 1944:28).

The segregationists in the American South justified their beliefs by claiming that racial separation was in the nature of things; God intended, as the bible says, that different species be kept apart.

All through history people have tried to justify the hierarchical ordering of society by claiming that hierarchy is "in the nature of things."  Or, more accurately, it has been in the nature of things for those at the top of the hierarchy.  Those toward the bottom have found it less natural.  And in this lies an issue. 

As we have seen, the metaphors we use make a great deal of difference in the meaning we assign to experience.  And the meaning assigned can make a great deal of difference to the people involved.  It certainly was to the advantage of nineteenth century capitalists for persons to view their world through a Darwinian metaphor, as it was to the advantage of segregationists for people to accept the analogy between race and species.

Let me illustrate the difference a metaphor makes in how people order themselves vis-a-vis others with an example from seventeenth century England. For a period of some twenty years there were a series of radical and anarchist movements that tried, in the words of Christopher Hill's classic study, to "turn the world upside down." The conflict, as we shall see, was between two levels of a hierarchical society, but before the struggle ended it would influence the history of science and the view we have of the world of matter.

Prior to 1640, England was still a feudal society ruled by a landed aristocracy that was supported by the church.   As Hill put it:

The function of the state church was not   merely to guide men to heaven: it was also to keep them in subordination here on earth.  Different societies, different church: but to want no state church at all seemed to  traditionalists a denial of all good order (Hill 1972:98).

Below the aristocracy was a class of merchants, craftsmen, artisans and farmers, and, under them, a group made up of "masterless men" who were thrown off land by enclosure, younger siblings disinherited by the rules of primogeniture, and others suffering the consequences of the economic hardship gripping England in the years 1620 to 1650.  Many in these groups were bitter toward those at the top.  One Bishop in 1589 lamented about 

the loathsome contempt, hatred and disdain that the most part of men in these days bear towards the ministers of the Church of God (Hill 1972:28).

In the 1630's and 40's mobs pulled down church altar rails, burned church documents, destroyed statues on tombs, desecrated altars, and baptized pigs and horses.  People preached that there was no difference between master and servant; all people were equal.  Hill sums up one seventeenth century narrative of the view the lower orders had of those at the top of the hierarchy:

 Kings...are burdens.  The relation of master and servant has no grounds in the new testament; in Christ there is neither bond nor free.  Ranks such as those of the peerage and gentry are `ethical and heathenish distinctions'.  There is no ground in nature or scripture why one man should have 1000 pounds per annum, another not one pound.  The common people have been kept under blindness and ignorance, and have remained servants and slaves to the nobility and gentry.  `But God hath now opened their eyes and discovered unto them their Christian liberty. 'Gentlemen should be made to work for their living, or else should not eat.  Learning has always been an enemy to the gospel; it were a happy thing if there were no universities, and all books except the bible were burnt.  Any gifted man maybe chosen by a congregation as their minister (Hill 1972:37).

It was the lower classes who rallied around Oliver Cromwell and made up the New Model Army--the first democratic army in modern history--and overthrew the Royalists led by Charles I.  In fact, it was the New Model Army which served as a training ground for the leaders of the radical religious sects emerging in the 1640's and 50's, which advocated democratic and utopian ideals.

The goals of the radical groups were set out by, among others, Henry Denne:

 It hath been...mine endeavor...to give unto every limb and part not only his due proportion but also his due place, and not to set the head where the foot should be, or the foot where the head.  I may peradventure to many guilty of that crime which was laid against the Apostle, to turn the world upside down, and to set that in the bottom which others would make the top of the building, and to set that upon the roof which others lay for a foundation (Hill 1972:37).

It was not unusual for the lower orders of society to want to rise to the top, or to attack those at the top.  The radical sectaries of the seventeenth century were continuing a tradition likely as old as social hierarchy itself, and were direct descendants of the heretics of the Middle Ages that we examined in the previous chapter.  The heretics used the metaphor of twin creators to attack the established church, but the radical sectaries used as different approach; they tried to collapse the hierarchy using a different set of metaphors. 

One of the most fascinating leaders of a radical sect was Gerard Winstanley.  A London cloth merchant whose business failed in the 1640's, Winstanley, along with others, began a campaign to occupy deserted common land, farm it, and build a society on communist principles.  The "Diggers," as Winstanley's group was called, were quickly driven off the land, but Winstanley continued to write and distribute pamphlets describing his program.  Particularly interesting were the metaphors he used to express his beliefs.

Winstanley placed great emphasis on the worth of the individual. Reason, he argued, pervades the entire universe, and dwells in every creature, especially man:

If you subject your flesh to this mighty governor, the spirit of righteousness within yourselves, he will bring you into community with the whole globe (Hill 1972:139).

The idea that the spirit of God was in each person implied, much to the despair of the State Church, that each person could communicate directly with God without the need of church sanctioned intermediaries.  As the radicals saw it,

A Christian who thinks God is in the heavens above the skies, and so prays to that God which he imagines to be there and everywhere...worships his own imagination, which is the Devil.  Your saviour must be a power within you (Hill 1972:141).

Winstanley urged the poor to confiscate and cultivate the commons, forest and waste land:

If the waste land of England were manured by her children, it would become in a few years the richest, the strongest, and [most] flourishing land in the world (Hill 1972:129).

There would be no private property in Winstanley's society, no rules, no social classes, and, since no man would need to covet the property of his neighbors, no need for courts or judges.  Furthermore there would be universal education for boys and girls.

The dominant metaphor in Winstanley's arsenal was the earth as a "common treasury"; the following passage illustrates how this this metaphor, as well as others, were used to collapse the hierarchy:

In the beginning of time the great creator, Reason, made the earth to be a common treasury, to preserve beasts, birds, fishes, and man, the lord that was to govern this creation....  Not one word was spoken in the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another...  But...selfish imaginations...  did set up one man to teach and rule over another.  And thereby...man was brought into bondage, and became a greater slave to such of his own kind than the beasts of the fields were to him.  And hereupon the earth...was hedged into enclosures by the teachers and rulers, and the others were made...slaves.  And the earth that is within this creation made a common storehouse for all, is bought and sold and kept in the hands of a few, whereby the great creator is mightily dishonoured, as if he were a respecter of persons, delighting in the comfortable livelihood of some and rejoicing in the miserable poverty and straits of others.  From the beginning it was not so....  (Hill 1972:132).

The common treasury, according to Winstanley, was disrupted by force.  Addressing the Lords, he writes,

The power of enclosing land and owning  property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you,their children.  And thereafter, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by the power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land (Hill 1972:132-133).

Winstanley was doing exactly what the robber barons, segregationists, and so many others have done: he was seeking in nature a message about society.  For the robber barons and the English aristocracy a hierarchical ordering of society was in the nature of things; but for the Diggers and other radical movements, equality was the proper nature of things.  Nature, the external world, was believed to carry a message about the proper ordering of relations among people, an idea, incidentally, central to the whole idea of totemism.

The idea that nature held the key to the meaning of relations in society had major implications for science, as well as politics, since it was the self-designated task of science to uncover the secrets in nature.  But if nature was a metaphor for understanding society, or if the structure of society was a vehicle for understanding nature, what was said of one had obvious implications for the other.  It should come as no surprise, then, that the science of the radical sectaries was different from the science of other groups.

Part of Winstanley's program was to remove the scholastic theologians from the universities and put an end to the use of Latin, Greek and Hebrew.  Instead of being taught in universities, Winstanley wanted science, philosophy and politics taught in every parish by non-specialists; he wanted science to be applied to problems of everyday life.

Astrology, alchemy and natural magic were the sciences of the radical sectaries.  These were not, at the time, marginal beliefs and practices.  Virtually all the notables of the day consulted astrologers; Henry VII kept contact with Italian astrologer William Perron, while Henry VIII frequently consulted German astrologer Nicholas Kratzer.  Elizabeth I called on noted astrologer John Dee for his opinions on the comet of 1577, Sir Walter Raleigh was a sympathizer, and mathematician Edmund Gunter was known to cast horoscopes.  And in 1649, forty respected members of London society organized the "Formal Society of Astrologers" (see Thomas 1967).

The invention of the printing press made possible the popularity of almanacs containing forecasts of notable events of the year.  In 1659 one edition sold 30,000 copies.

Alchemy was a common and accepted practice, and one of Issac Newton's interests.  This was an era of sympathetic magic when the universe was alive, and a knife wound could be treated by applying a salve to the knife.  The favorite activity of university students was conjuring spirits.

If nature was a metaphor for society, the vitalistic, pantheistic and animistic universe of natural magic, alchemy and astrology was ideal for the purposes of Winstanley and the other radical groups.  If God was everywhere and nature was alive and vital, then everyone had access to God and the powers of nature, and consequently had no need for scholars, physicians, clergy or kings.  In a universe of natural magic there was equal access for all to the mysteries and powers of nature.  This was a time when "Culpepper's Herbals" was a best seller, and men could treat their own illness without the help of physicians. It was no coincidence that  magicians (or "proto-scientists") such as Paracelsus and Campanella were passionate social reformers and advocates for the poor.

The metaphors of the Diggers, Rosicrucans, Levellers, and other radical groups, assigned a meaning to nature corresponding to the meanings they wished to assign to society.  In effect, a connection was thought to exist between society and nature, and the way nature, as metaphor, was construed, determined, in a fashion, the way relations among men were to be understood.  Nature had what Steven Shapin calls a "moral force":

Insofar as nature is viewed as God's creation and the carrier of messages from him, the argument proceeds like this: from the evidence of scripture, revelation and nature itself God exists; since God exists, he has manifestly designed nature so that it incorporates His wisdom; nature is thus available to man (along with Holy Writ) as a set of instructions of ethical significance. Properly read and decoded, the order of nature is emblematic of the proper order of society. One may be pointed to as a set of recommendations relevant to the other....  The natural world will be morally loaded (Shapin Manuscript:3)

Since the radical sectaries view of nature implied that God intended man to live in a non-hierarchical society, it is not surprising that others, occupying positions of authority, would hold different views.  The situation was similar to the one existing in the Middle Ages between the heretics and the church; the meaning found in nature by dissenting groups needed to be refuted by the higher orders of society for them to maintain what they saw as their rightful place in the social hierarchy.  Revisions had to be made in the belief system to respond to those who would overturn the established social order.  The aftermath of a popular, but only partially successful popular rebellion seemed an ideal time for such revisions.

The year 1660 marked the end of the Interregnum and democratic rule in England, and the restoration of the monarchy, albeit in a less totalitarian form.  The same year the Royal Society of London was formed.  Members of the Society led by Robert Boyle articulated a view of nature different from that of the radical sectaries.  They rejected magical philosophy and the idea of an animate universe, and argued instead for mechanical philosophy and a corpuscular theory of matter. Nature was not "alive"; it consisted of particles of inert matter blindly obeying certain laws.  Matter was "brute and stupid," inanimate and irrational, and, unlike the matter of the sectaries' universe, could neither move nor organize itself.  The universe was a hierarchy, a great "chain of being," with God at the top ruling over a realm that passed through God's agents on earth, through other men and women, down through the beasts and inert matter. 

Boyle's famous experiment on air pressure in which water would rise in a straw when air was sucked out was used to refute the Aristotelian idea that water rushed into the straw because nature abhorred a vacuum.  Aristotelian physics, said Boyle,

supposes that there is a kind of anima   mundi, furnished with various passions, which watchfully provides for the safety of the universe; or that a brute or inanimate creature, as water, not only has the power to move its heavy body upwards, contrary...to the tendency of its particular nature, but knows both that air has been sucked out of the reed, and that unless it succeeded the attracted air, there will follow a vacuum; and that this water is withall so generous, as by ascending, to act...like a noble patriot, that sacrifices his private interests to the publik ones of his country (Quoted in Bloor 1982:285).

Water was not animate, reacting to empty space; it was inert and reacting to external forces, specifically the force of air pressure.

To us, in retrospect, it seems that Boyle and the members of the Royal Society of London made the right choice to opt for corpuscular theory over the animate theory of nature.  However, at the time, there was no experimental evidence to prove one point of view over the other.  Likewise, there was no reason why the Aristotelian view, which had been maintained for over two thousand years, could not have been upheld if people had a mind to do so.  Boyle himself believed in the animate view of nature until later in his career.  Why, then, was the metaphor of active matter rejected by Boyle and his followers, and replaced with a view of matter as "brute and stupid"?

Historians and philosophers of science such as David Bloor and Steve Shapin have some interesting answers to that question.  You need, they contend, to look at the social context.

The radical sectaries justified their proposals for economic and social reform by saying it was in the nature of things for all people to have equal access to God's common treasury.  But others were alarmed at these views.  Boyle, who was instrumental in formulating and disseminating the corpuscular theory, was particularly disturbed at the religious and economic chaos resulting from the Civil War.  He had suffered economically during the conflict, and was concerned about a resurgence of radical movements.  In the 1640's he had written of them as follows:

There is lately sprung up a sect of men, as well professing Christianity, as pretending to philosophy, who...do very much symbolize with the ancient heathens, and talk much indeed of God[?], but mean such a one, as is not really distinct from the animated and intelligent universe (Quoted in Bloor 1982:286).

Boyle was a "latitudinarian"; he believed religious dissent should be allowed, but only within the limits of the church, and that the authority of the church and the king must be upheld.

Boyle, like the sectaries, believed nature carried a moral message written by God, and by studying nature one was studying the signature of God.  The study of nature was the decoding of God's message.  As Boyle said,

For each page of the great volume of nature is full of real hieroglyphicks, where (by an inverted way of expression) things stand for words, and their qualities for letters (Quoted in Bloor 1982:287).

But the reading of the "hieroglyphicks" given by Boyle and the men of the Royal Society was very different from the reading of the radicals.  For the members of the radical sects, a God immanent in each person required no priestly hierarchy.  A spiritually imbued world required no dependence on spiritual intermediaries.

A universe of "brute and stupid" matter, on the other hand,  had very different social implications from a universe alive and animate; for instead of a society made up of self-governing men, you get a society governed by forces external to men.  Consequently the men of the Royal Society  read the dictionary of nature in such a way as to validate their social interests and position.

The dictionary that will tell us which things stand for which words in the great volume of nature is therefore simple and short.  For inert matter read "people"; for active principle and force read "Anglican Church"; for natural hierarchy of matter and spirit read "social hierarchy."  To deny that matter can move and organize itself is to deny that (certain) men can organize themselves (Bloor 1982: 288).

  The debate over God, nature and society did not end with the rise of science in the seventeenth century.   It continued into the eighteenth century, but instead of the sectaries, there were the "freethinkers."  They argued also for religious freedom, and supported their position with recourse to nature; for them, also, matter was active and did not require God's constant maintenance and will.  God was anima mundi, immanent in all matter:

If matter were indeed inherently imbued with activity and sentience, then the patterned phenomena of nature could be accounted for by principles immanent in itself; there was simply no need for external animating agencies or the imposition of activity and order from without.  Anglican apologists...saw little difference between the freethinkers' God and no God at all (Shapin 1981:199).

Another dimension to the debate between the freethinkers and the advocates of corpuscular theory, now led by Issac Newton, was the famous controversy between Newton and Leibnitz over the nature of God. Leibnitz advocated a view of God similar to the freethinkers.  Leibnitz also denied that nature required the constant intervention of God. In one of the many uses of the clock as metaphor in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Leibnitz said,

Sir Issac Newton and his followers, have also a very odd opinion concerning the work of God.  According to their doctrine God almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time....  He had not, it seems, sufficient forethought to make it a perpetual motion.... [The Newtonians] must needs have a very mean   notion of the wisdom and power of God (Shapin 1981:193).

Samuel Clarke, a follower of Newton and a member of the Royal Society, had an interesting response to Leibnitz and the freethinkers. It places the ideological conflict explicitly into the context of English political affairs.  To say God does not constantly intervene in earthly affairs, is the same as saying a king is unnecessary; and if a king is unnecessary, then you remove God from the world altogether:

And by the same reason that a philosopher can represent all things going on from the beginning of creation, without any government or interposition of providence; a skeptic will easily argue still further backwards, and suppose that things have from eternity gone on (as they do now) without any true creation or original author at all, but only what such arguers call all-wise and eternal nature.  If a king had a kingdom, wherein all things would continually go on without his attending to or ordering what is to be done therein; it would be to him, merely a nominal kingdom; nor would he in reality deserve at all the title of king or governor.  And as these men, who pretend that in an earthly government things may go on perfectly well without the king himself ordering or disposing of any thing, may reasonably be suspected that they would like very well to set the king aside; so whosoever contends, that the course of the world can go on without the continual direction of God, the   supreme Governor; his doctrine does in effect tend to exclude God out of the world (Shapin 1981:201).

If we look back on the debates between the sectaries and freethinkers on the one hand, and the latitudinarians and church elite on the other, we see the debate was not only over the constitution of matter and the nature of the universe; the issue was the proper ordering of society.  All sides assumed nature to be a metaphor for society, and assumed, magically and mythically, that the metaphor must be the same as the thing it represents.  The argument was over the interpretation of nature as metaphor.  Shapin sums it up well:

The setting is that of conflict over the proper constitution of society, the distribution of rights, powers and privileges in society and the like.  In this context there are differences of opinion about the correct order of society (or some segment of society).   These differences may be expressed (not  necessarily in documentary form) by social groups in conflict with each other; the groups may be, but need not be, large-scale social configurations such as denoted by "social class."  In pursuing their ends, social groups provide "legitimations": arguments intended to secure or further their interests by linking them with resources and institutions highly valued in that setting.  Among these legitimations, a certain portion will be justifications by way of nature, although others will point to history, tradition, God's   will (without reference to nature) and the constraints imposed on the possibilities of action by limited resources (Shapin Manuscript:7).

The question now is what do the debates over the selection or interpretation of metaphor tell us about the nature of the belief machine?  We asked why people become so attached to a particular metaphor or set of metaphors, and in the above examples we see how persons selected metaphors that legitimized certain actions or reinforced specific patterns of social relations. Nineteenth century industrialists selected the Darwinian metaphor to justify their accumulation of great wealth; corpuscular theory was selected by the men of the Royal Society of London to legitimize the social position of the gentry and the church; and the animistic metaphor was chosen by the lower classes of seventeenth century England to legitimize their challenge to church authority.  Thus we might assume that people tend to become committed to metaphors that buttress their social interests.  For example, the shared interests and experiences of the the nineteenth century industrial capitalists predisposed them to interpret existence as a struggle in which the fittest, themselves, had prevailed.  They did not invent Darwin's theory; but it was available as a tool to apply to experience and which justified and legitimized their place in society.

The idea that utopian movements, such as the heretics in the middle ages or the radical sectaries in the seventeenth century, provoke the established order to defend their ideologies is present in the work of Karl Mannheim (see Mannheim 1936).  Mannheim also recognized the influence of social interests in the selection of metaphor, but he stopped short of saying that social interests also influence the selection of metaphor in science.  So to further explore this social interest model of metaphor selection I am going to examine two cases of conflict in the history of science.  In each case persons argued about the proper interpretative tool to use to assign meaning to experience.  In each case there was little empirical basis for choosing one metaphor over another.  The first case will be the debate over phrenology at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the second will be the dispute at the beginning of the twentieth century over the seemingly arcane role of statistics in biology.

 

PHRENOLOGY IN EDINBURGH

Phrenology was developed toward the end of the eighteenth century in Germany by Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurtzheim.  It gained notoriety in France, and was the focus of heated debate in Edinburgh from around 1800 to the 1830's.

Phrenology as a science was based on three principles: first, that the brain was the organ of the mind; second, that the brain was divided into twenty-seven to thirty-three "organs," each controlling a different facet of behavior.  For example, there was an organ of "tune" determining person's musical ability; there was an organ of "amativeness" controlling a person's powers of love; there was an organ of "philoprogenitiveness" determining a persons ability to procreate and nurture children, and so on.  And, third, phrenologists believed that the size of the organ was a measure of its power; a large organ of tune implied the person was high in musical skills. Moreover, phrenologists believed that the contours of the skull were shaped by the underlying cerebral organs, and it was possible to "read" a person's mental makeup by studying the bumps or depressions on their skull.

The theory was empirically derived.  Examinations were made of live persons, pictures of historical personages, and animals; rabbits, for example, had large organs of "amativeness," and the superstitious and credulous "negroid" had large organs of "veneration."  However, the size of the organs was not fixed.  Instead they were susceptible to environmental influences, which could modify the faculty. 

It is relatively easy to look back and see phrenology as a "quack" science, but this would be a gross simplification and a mistake.  In the early nineteenth century it was widely accepted in the most respectable circles, and it was as viable an explanatory framework as the prevailing view it sought to displace.  In Edinburgh this was the moral philosophy of Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart.

The two most dominant characteristics of moral philosophy were the belief in a limited number of intellectual faculties such as perception, concreteness, abstraction, memory, judgment and imagination, and the conviction there was a vast interval between mind and body.  But this scheme was no more empirical than phrenology.  In fact phrenologists claimed their position was more empirical and "scientific" since it was testable, whereas the introspective theories of the moral philosophers were not.  Moreover, phrenology was not that different from the psychological theories that followed it.  Phrenologists assumed there were certain innate psychological predispositions which could be modified by the social environment.  In phrenology this predisposition involved a physical construct, the structure of the brain and the shape of the skull, whereas later psychological constructs, such as "id," "urges," "needs" and "self-concepts," were theoretical only.  But if phrenology could, in its own temporal and spatial context, be made plausible, why was the debate over it so heated?

A social interest model first requires that we examine the social and cultural setting of the debates.  Edinburgh in the eighteenth century prided itself on its social cohesiveness, the harmony between its social groups, and the fact it had not industrialized.  Toward the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, this environment began to change.  A new section of the city was built and populated by the elite members of society, new mercantile and industrial groups began to threaten the power of the landed and professional classes, and the political importance of the city began to decline.  Soon people in Edinburgh were looking back at what they thought was a fleeting and idyllic past, as in the following contemporary account:

Very old men say they remember when our old town castes were so oiled with mutual respect that they were wrought like the parts of a machine, every wheel contributing its quiet force to the general effect.  There might be a little ambition now and then forcing one of a lower grade into a higher, but there was no such hatred and envy as we see now.... (Quoted from Shapin 1975:224).

The new mercantile middle class had little access to the old ranks, and so began to reject the social manner and privileges of Edinburgh's elite, and they began to openly challenge their political and cultural dominance.  Thus by 1817, the middle class had its own newspaper, the "Scotsman," whose editorial policy was openly critical of the upper classes, the university and the established church.

Phrenology entered this setting in the early 1800's.   Spurtzheim's visit to Edinburgh in 1816 triggered an initial outburst of criticism, but he also recruited his major British convert, Edinburgh lawyer George Combe.  The debate over phrenology that followed was heated.  Phrenology was vehemently opposed by the upper classes, whereas it was embraced by the skilled working class and the lower middle class.

The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was founded in 1832 by a merchant-dominated group, and Combe gave lectures for audiences of up to five hundred people.  The class appeal of phrenology was well recognized by Combe:

Phrenology advances here rapidly in the   humbler grades of the middle rank.  The   philosophies of the old school and the   religious combine to denounce it in the higher and it scarcely gains ground among them, except with the young (Quoted in Shapin 1975:228).

Combe correctly identified the resistance to phrenology of the upper class.  The resistance was based, not so much on theoretical doubt, but, instead, on its effects on social groups.  As one opponent of phrenology said,

When considered as addressed to a   promiscuous audience and chiefly intended for the benefit of young persons in the middle and   lower classes of life, these [phrenological] lectures cannot be too strongly reprobated....Their direct tendency appears...to be to render the great mass of the community discontent with their condition, and with the existing relations of society....   Phrenology...now appears as the disturber of the peace and well-being of society (Quoted from Shapin 1975:228).

  The ruling elite also objected strongly to the social and economic program advanced by the phrenologists.  It called for penal reform, enlightened treatment of the insane, scientific education for the working class, education of women, modification of capital punishment, and the rethinking of British Colonial policy.  Thus the debate extended well beyond phrenology itself, and included a challenge to the social and political programs of the elite.  Passions rose so high that Combe, though on friendly terms with the principal of the University of Edinburgh, was prohibited by the school's ruling body from using a classroom to respond to anti-phrenology lectures, in spite of the fact, as Combe pointed out, that Spurtzheim was offered lecture facilities at Cambridge University.

In effect, the schemata of phrenology became, as Shapin puts it, a banner, a totem,  around which a social group could rally in its opposition to another group.

Think of a natural legitimization as being a kind of totem: a collective rallying point. Like a flag or standard raised in battle the  legitimization offers a point around which the shared sentiments of the group may coalesce.  Once coalesced, group activity in respect of collective goals then becomes more effective. In the case of the symbolic behaviors involved in the natural legitimizations of the "totem" may become effective as a rallying point because it conveys complex information to members and potential members about what course of action best serves the collective interests and because it utilizes cultural resources common to the group.  The "totem," the natural legitimization, states, in effect,   "Here we are; this is the world and and this is how we would like the world to be ordered" (Shapin Manuscript:23).

But if phrenology was a totem encapsulating the desires of a particular group, why was it chosen rather than some other ideological banner?  Totems, as we saw in Chapter two, are usually selected because they carry a specific meaning thought appropriate to transfer to a particular group.  Thus sports teams are given the names of aggressive animals, rather than passive or tame ones.  What, then, was it about phrenology to make it an appropriate totem for Edinburgh's lower and middle classes?

First, phrenology carried a very different meaning about the relations between the social classes than did the prevailing ideas of the "common sense" school dominating Scottish intellectual circles. The latter maintained there was a vast gap between mind and body; thus, as philosopher Thomas Reid put it,

There seems to be a vast interval between mind and body, and whether there be any intermediate nature that connects them together, we know not....  There are two great branches of philosophy, one relating to body, the other to mind (Shapin 1979:58).

This position was remarkably similar to the one held by corpuscular theorists a century before; the "head" was held to be distinct from the "hand," as the spiritual was held to be distinct from the corporeal.  Or, in its social meaning, the ruling group must be held distinct from groups beneath it.

Phrenology, on the other hand, like the metaphors of the radical sectaries and freethinkers, collapsed the hierarchies.  Mind and body became one in theory.  However, there were differences of opinion among phrenologists regarding the equality of mental faculties.  Some restored a partial hierarchy to the system by proposing that certain faculties were higher than others.  Thus Combe suggested that the intellectual and moral faculties were to be more esteemed than the "animal propensities." This view, however, was disputed by other more "egalitarian" phrenologists.  W.B. Hodgson wrote, for example, that

To the supremacy of the intellect and moral sentiments, or to the supremacy of any of the faculties...I have long objected; the brain is a republic, not an oligarchy, much less a despotism (Quoted in Shapin 1979:59).

A second reason why phrenology was an appropriate totem for the lower and middle class is it gave meaning to the growing division of labor occurring in industrial Britain.  Scottish enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Furguson, Dugald Stewart and Thomas Reid emphasized the ill effects of social differentiation.  Human differences were to be deplored for the divisiveness they bring to society.  Combe, and members of Edinburgh's middle class, on the other hand, were interested in showing how differentiation was in the nature of things; whereas the old philosophical elite looked with distaste and hostility on the emerging industrial system and the division of labor which accompanied it, the working and middle class welcomed it for the economic possibilities it brought.  It coincided with their economic and social interests.

Third, phrenologists taught that the brain was divided into different, but equal, segments, and that each segment was necessary and unique, as each person was thought to be necessary and unique. Combe, for example, was able to use phrenology to attack the church schools.  They emphasized, Combe said,  rote pedagogical techniques, and failed to make allowances for the individual differences so valued in industrial societies.  Phrenology celebrated human differences.  As Combe put it,

no individual is a standard for human nature; and...those whom we are prone to condemn for differing from us in sentiment may have as good a right to condemn us for differing from them, and to consider their own mode of feeling as equally founded in nature as we consider ours (Quoted in Shapin 1979:62).

Finally, phrenology had the added advantage of being a people's "science."  Unlike the psychology of the "common sense" school, phrenology as a technique, was accessible to all.  In one day a person could learn all there was to know to begin "reading" bumps.  It was a democratic science, unlike the science of the upper orders of society, the university and the church.

Phrenology, then, represented a metaphor which assigned a meaning to experience which was more in line with the interests of one group than it was with the other.  As we saw in chapter four, phrenology could even be sustained through an examination of the brain, so resistance to it could not have been based on empirical grounds. Instead, some rejected it because, if it was a correct reading of nature, it threatened their social interests.

EUGENICS, STATISTICS AND THE SCIENTIFIC NATURALISTS

"Darwin's metaphor," as T.H. Young calls it, dominated intellectual thought in the last part of the nineteenth century.  It was the focal point in the famous dispute between a group made up of such people as Thomas Henry Huxley, John Tyndall, W.K. Clifford, Herbert Spencer and Francis Galton, and spokesmen for the church elite.  In retrospect it is hard to understand what all the fuss was about.  Certainly the idea of evolution was not new.  Nisbet argues it was little different from the metaphor of organic growth popular for at least 2,500 years (Nisbet 1969).  Few of the evolutionists were atheists, and a number of churchmen had already begun to reconcile evolution with Christianity.  So why the dispute?

As with the disputes between the corpuscular theorists and the radical sectaries, the phrenologists and Edinburgh's elite, the dispute over evolution also involved the transfer of a metaphor from the realm of nature to the realm of society.  Evolutionary theory became the metaphor around which a group advocating a new social order could rally.  This group, the scientific naturalists, shared a philosophy which held that nature should be viewed as a single, vast mechanism, that the theory of evolution was the working of the mechanism, and that there was no reality to "psychic" or spiritual phenomenon (Young 1970:15-16).

The scientific naturalists actively sought to extend the evolutionary metaphor to all of society.  Huxley realized, according to Frank Turner,

that before the complete physical and moral benefits of the new nature could be enjoyed, two tasks must be accomplished.  First, the ordinary Englishman must be persuaded to look toward rational, scientific and secular ideas to solve his problems and to interpret his experiences rather than toward Christian, metaphysical, or other pre-scientific modes of thought.  Second, scientifically trained and   scientifically oriented men must supplant clergymen and Christian layman as educators and leaders of English culture.  The champions of the New Nature set out to publicize the advantages of embracing scientific and secular ideas and of acknowledging the cultural preeminence of men of science (Turner 1974:9).

Darwin's metaphor was being used as a tool to further the social and cultural interests of a rising professional elite, as corpuscular theory and phrenology had been used to advance the social interests of one group over another.  The question is whether there was something particularly appropriate in the metaphors of "struggle" and "selection" to make it attractive as a flag for a particular group?

The most ambitious social and political program of the scientific naturalists was eugenics.  It was a direct outgrowth of Darwin's theories, and represented an attempt to apply the principles of natural selection to human populations as a way of improving the species.  The explicit goal was to promote the reproduction of the "better" types, while, at the same time, reduce the birth rate of the socially inferior.  The following discussion is based on Donald McKenzie's brilliant study of the history of statistics in Britain.  It represents only a portion of McKenzie's work, but since it is one of the most comprehensive applications of the social interest model, it is worth exploring in some detail. 

Since the idea of eugenics was to increase the number of "better" people, and reduce the number of "inferior" people, it is important to know how who was better was to be determined.  Sir Francis Galton, the founder of eugenics, had very definite views on this matter.  His view of British social structure is represented in figure 9.

 

 

                                                Genetic Worth

 

The eugenic hierarchy, like others we have examined, was, according to its proponents, in the nature of things;

The eugenic theory of society as elaborated by Galton is a way of raising the structure of social classes onto nature. People differ according to their innate qualities and capacities; those at the top of the social hierarchy have, according to this model, the greatest quantities of good qualities and capacities--the largest amount of brains (MacKenzie 1981:18).

The distribution of people by income was, according to the eugenicists, the result of the operation of the law of selection on human populations.

However, the eugenicists feared that the law was being circumvented by the excess breeding of people at the bottom of the hierarchy; consequently, they must be induced not to reproduce. There were various recommendations of how to accomplish this: programs of voluntary sterilization for the poor, cutting out public assistance for poor families with more than a specific number of children, and putting people under a "special watch" to see if children were being raised under "decent conditions." Even as late as 1931, responsible eugenicists such as Julian Huxley argued State benefits should go only to the unemployed who ceased to reproduce;

Infringement of this order could probably be met by a short period of segregation in a labor camp. After three or six months' separation from his wife [the unemployed man] would be likely to be more careful next time (Quoted from MacKenzie 1981:44).

Strict measures to enforce breeding rules, such as recommended by Huxley, were justified by explicit reference to nature. Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandson and a leading eugenicist, said:

All this sounds very hard, and it is hard; but its hardness is solely due to the fact that in some matters nature is absolutely inflexible (Quoted form MacKenzie 1981:21).

At the same time they tried to limit reproduction among the poor, the eugenicists recommended ways to encourage "desirables" to increase family size, such as increasing family allowance payments for those those with large families. The question, of course, is to whose social interests does eugenics correspond?

A glance at the above figure  should answer that question. It was not the upper class, since class standing was not an infallible indication of genetic worth; rather wages and professional standing were to be used as indicators of genetic standing. "The rate of wages," wrote Leonard Darwin, "may be made to offer some indication of the innate quality of the wage earner" (Quoted from MacKenzie 1981:34).

The "test" or "examination" was a metaphor frequently used by eugenicists, Galton suggesting that in his eugenic utopia people would judge each other by their "mark" on a "eugenic examination." School grades allegedly were especially good measures of genetic worth.

Obviously eugenics would appeal to certain groups in society; it would appeal to the successful, and to the professional middle class-- doctors, biologists, teachers, social workers, statisticians and psychiatrists-- on whose skills a eugenic program would depend. It is not surprising, then, that membership in groups such as the Eugenic Education Society was overwhelmingly professional.

The majority of the members of the eugenic movement shared three characteristics: first, their social position was between the bourgeoisie and the working class; they differed from the bourgeois because they did not own or control substantial amounts of capital or land. They differed from the working class because their work was defined as "mental work," and was thought to be superior to manual labor. Second, recruitment to the professional middle class was not automatic; it had to be achieved through the educational system, through examination. Consequently, a major concern of persons in this group was insuring that their children attained professional status. Third, they shared an interest in the development of capitalistic economies, since the number of professional jobs and their social prominence increased as the economy grew.

Yet there was no direct appeal by eugenicists to this group. Eugenics, it was argued, was in the national interest. It would solve the problem of urban slums, and the "residuum"--the poor who inhabited the slums-- while, at the same time, strengthen the country in international struggle;

 

The Eugenicists had a biological explanation of the "residuum" and a biological solution to the problem it posed. The suspension of natural selection through the operation of   charity, medical science and sanitary reform had led, they claimed, to the flourishing in the hearts of the great cities, of a group of people tainted by hereditary defect. Members of this group were unemployed because they lacked the health, ability and strength of will to work. Hereditary weakness turned them   towards crime and alcohol.... The Eugenicists warned that although natural selection was largely suspended within British society, competition between different nations went on. Britain was engaged in a struggle for survival   that was normally commercial but might at any time become military. National fitness for this struggle was necessary (MacKenzie 1981:40).

  The social interests of the professional middle class did more than influence the development of popular movements such as eugenics. As MacKenzie also shows, they affected the growth of the seemingly arcane field of statistics.

Francis Galton was not only the founder of the eugenic movement, but he was also, among his other accomplishments, the founder of modern statistics. He was an archetypal member of the intellectual elite, born into one of its leading families, and was, along with Huxley, Spencer, Tyndall and Clifford, one of the leading propagandists for scientific naturalism. He argued that the professional elite-- of which he was a member-- was a "natural" and not just a social elite. An entire chapter of his classic book on hereditary genius was devoted to proving there was no overwhelming barrier to the most able achieving eminence even if they were born outside the elite. Later in his life he wrote a novel, Kantsaywhere, about a genetic utopia, and he even suggested eugenics become  an alternative to Christianity,

a naturalistic religion in which individuals would find their places as manifestations of the immortal germ plasm (MacKenzie 1981:55).

Statistics for Galton was a major tool to achieve his eugenic goals. Statistics, considered as metaphor, a symbolic expression of portions of reality, is a way of ordering experience and establishing systems of relations. And it was the perfect tool for a eugenic program because it ordered experience according to a distributional scheme that revealed averages and deviations from those averages. And, as MacKenzie shows, Galton modified existing statistical theory to better adapt it to a eugenic program.

Prior to Galton's innovations, statistics was based largely on "error theory"; it was used primarily in areas such as astronomy and gunnery where the interest was to predict or determine the true position of a planet or artillery shell, and compensate for the error to be expected. Galton used error theory in his book on hereditary genius. However, without going into technical details, it is apparent that error theory was inappropriate for eugenic purposes. Error theory was a statistical technique used to eliminate variability; you used it to eliminate variation in the firing of a cannon or the prediction of the position of a planet. In eugenics, however, variability was the source of racial progress, as it was in Darwin's theory of evolution.  If there was no error (variation), there was nothing for natural selection to operate on.  As Galton put it,

The primary objects of the Guassian Law of Error were exactly opposed, in one sense, to those which I applied them.... They were to get rid of or provide a just allowance for errors. But these errors or deviations were the very things I wanted to preserve and to know about (Quoted from MacKenzie 1981:59).

  The need to rework statistics to meet eugenic goals prompted the development of the concepts of "median values," "interquartile distances," and "standard deviation," all standard tools of modern statistics. Since the eugenic program required a statistical description of the degree of association between the characteristics of one generation (e.g. height, intelligence, criminal tendencies, etc.) to the next, the techniques of correlation were developed by Galton. As MacKenzie put it, eugenics did not merely provide a motive for Galton's work, it determined the content of it:

Galton's statistical theorizing was informed by a goal absent in the work of [others]. This goal--or its absence--affected not merely the choice of one area of research but also the detailed technical mathematics employed.... Further the presence of this goal has to be explained in terms of the needs of eugenics. And Galton's eugenics reflected the social interests of the group of elite professionals to which he belonged. Hence we have an instance of the effect of social interests on the conceptual development of statistical theory (MacKenzie 1981:71-72).

However the role of social interests in the development of statistics did not end with Galton. It also played a role in a controversy between Karl Pearson, Galton's successor in both eugenics and statistics, and William Bateson, the founder of the field of genetics. The debate was over the importance to be attributed to the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's experiments on heredity. As with other struggles over the selection of metaphors, the debate generated far more heat then one would expect over a theoretical point; in fact the two positions could have been easily reconciled if the participants wished. Instead the Pearson-Bateson or Mendelian-Biometrician controversy resulted in

the shattering of personal friendships, heated public debate, suggestions of fraud, and long standing division within the British scientific community.  Pearson suggested that the early death of his co-worker Weldon could be attributed in part to the strain of the controversy (MacKenzie 1981:120).

In many ways the dispute is reminiscent of the controversy over the naming of a high school football team; the issue seemed to small to generate such passion unless something more fundamental was at stake. Let's begin by taking a look at Karl Pearson.

Pearson was a remarkable man.  His publications included poetry, a "passion play," art history, studies of the Reformation and Medieval Germany, philosophy, biography, essays on politics, and over four hundred articles on mathematical physics, statistics, and biology.  He was an active socialist and feminist, although he was not an egalitarian.  He believed in evolutionary progress governed by a select few.  He was an ardent Darwinist and argued that evolutionary principles could be applied to orderly human progress.  A philosophy of history, he said, is only possible since Darwin:

here are mighty forces at work likely to   revolutionize social ideas and shake social stability.  It is the duty of those who have the leisure to investigate, to show how by gradual and continuous change we can restrain these forces within safe channels....  (Quoted in MacKenzie 1981:82).

Pearson was no doubt referring to the threat of political upheaval feared by the British since the French Revolution; British intellectuals of the early 1900's still wondered why Britain had not had its revolution.  To the upper and middle classes this prospect of violent revolution was frightening; instead change and progress had to be gradual and orderly.  Human progress, as Pearson said,

like nature never leaps....  No change ever occurs with a leap...is as much a law of history as of nature (Quoted in MacKenzie 1981:82-83).

While Pearson was an exponent of Darwin's metaphor, he was not a believer in capitalistic "rugged individualism."  Instead he argued that

the chief locus of the struggle for existence was no longer the individual but the group. The spur to efficiency was not individual competition, but inter-group struggle; survival went to the fittest group not the fittest individual.  In inter-group struggle, the social organization of the group counted for as much, or indeed more, than individual fitness of individuals comprising the group. The internal competition that resulted from laissez-faire capitalism weakened a nation in international struggle (MacKenzie 1981:83).

Pearson was also an avid eugenicist.  To him eugenics and socialism were inseparable.  Thus joined in the person of Karl Pearson were all the programs and ideas of the British professional middle-class-- socialism, Darwinism, scientific naturalism and eugenics.   But Pearson is best known for his work in statistical biology, where he turned Galton's work into the new science of biometrics.  He founded a department of biometrics at the University of London, began the journal Biometrika, and headed the Galton Laboratory of National Eugenics, which was established through a Galton bequest.

As Pearson was developing biometrics, Gregor Mendel's work on heredity, done in the 1860's, was rediscovered in Europe, and seized upon by Cambridge biologist William Bateson to establish the new science of genetics.  The Mendelian theory of heredity postulated the existence of discrete particles that were passed unchanged from generation to generation, and which determined the characteristics of offspring of parental pairs.

The biometricians, whose work predated the rediscovery of Mendel's experiments, were not concerned so much with the inheritance of discrete particles as they were with the degree of similarity of traits from one generation to another.  The biometricians used a statistical model of heredity to predict the distribution of inherited traits from one generation to another.  The Mendelians, on the other hand, were constructing a mechanical model of heredity.  They wanted to explain how the traits of one generation were passed to the next, and how particular genotypes resulted in certain phenotypes.

MacKenzie's study of the history of statistics demonstrates clearly that the goals, methods, and theories of the biometricians were very much linked to eugenics.  However that in itself cannot explain the controversy which erupted between the Mendelians and the Biometricians.  The approaches, while different, were complementary, not conflicting.  Yet each side bitterly attacked the other, and neither could by logic or experiment alone refute the other.  What then were the interests sustaining the debate?

MacKenzie says there are two ways of looking at the social interests at stake.  The first involves the skills and knowledge required of geneticists and biometricians.  It may be, says Mackenzie, that the biometricians argued for the statistical model because they were adept at statistical analysis and lacking in the skills required in genetic research.  At the same time, geneticists selected a mechanical model because they were expert at it, and lacked statistical knowledge.  Bateson did openly admit that he had no capacity whatever for mathematics.  But there may have been another reason for the debate.

Biometrics, as a tool, was especially appropriate for eugenics, and, in fact, evolved to meet the need of eugenic programs.  The mechanical model of Mendelian genetics was not only ill-suited to eugenics, its adoption would have been a disaster.  To begin with, Mendelian genetics of the early twentieth century was too uncertain a theory to be used in eugenics.  The notions of "genes" and "chromosomes" were, at the time, theoretical concepts only.  Moreover, Mendelian genetic theory was undergoing constant modification.  In one of his critiques Pearson said,

The simplicity of Mendel's Mendelism has   been gradually replaced by a complexity as great as that of any description hitherto suggested of hereditary relationships....The old categories are...being found insufficient, narrower classification are being taken, and irregular dominance, imperfect recessiveness, the correlation of attributes, the latency of ancestral characteristics, and more complex detrimental theories are becoming the order of the day (Quoted from MacKenzie 1981:139-140).

The threat to eugenics of this sort of complexity was clear.  If the public was to be convinced to adopt eugenic reforms, it must be reassured the reforms, as drastic as they were, were based on highly reliable knowledge; the public had to be reassured the scientific techniques used to select persons for differential breeding were infallible.  Pearson's statistical theory of heredity, unlike the Mendelians, was derived from observation, and allowed what seemed to be theory-free predictions of the genetic makeup of future generations.  Genetic intervention was thought to be fully predictable with the use of statistics; the biometric concept of heredity simply summarized what happen in the passage of characteristics from one generation to another.

To fully appreciate what was at stake imagine yourself a member of a group campaigning for industrial safety and wanting to control the number of industrial accidents each year.  To convince the public of the need for action, you have two theories to choose from.  The first is a statistical theory that shows that for every bridge built in the country, twenty workers will be killed.  The other is a mechanical theory which tries to predict the particular workers who will die.  If the ability to predict accurately is the criteria on which to choose your theory, which would you select? Basically that is the choice the Biometricians thought they had.

However, Mendelian genetics posed another threat to the eugenic program, because the ideas of genetic dominance and recessiveness could have what one Biometrician called "scandalous consequences." For example, the Mendelians said that feeblemindedness was a simple Mendelian recessive, as were a whole host of other traits of eugenic importance.  The Mendelians drew from this a fact Pearson thought not only foolish, but immoral.  The Mendelians claimed that weakness in a characteristic should be mated with strength, strength with weakness.

One of the Biometricians produced a devastating critique of this Mendelian conjecture, retorting that

The future of the race depends on the strong mating with the strong and the weak refraining from every form of parenthood. Nothing short of this rule will satisfy the true eugenicist (Quoted in MacKenzie 1981:140).

We can now appreciate why the debate between the Mendelians and the Biometricians was so heated; it was not over the validity of the metaphor as it was over the consequences of extending the metaphor to other realms.  While it is not necessary to elaborate here, MacKenzie also shows Bateson and the Mendelians with their own deeply-rooted social interests to defend in the romantic-conservative ideology prevailing at Cambridge.  He concludes his analysis of the Mendelian-Biometrician debate with a good summary of the social interest model:

It is not my claim that all individual   biometricians were rising professionals   motivated by meritocratic ambitions.  All I suggest is that biometry was an appropriate world view for such a professional group, and that it was actually used in furtherance of this group's interests.  Similarly, my claim is merely that Bateson's biology was an appropriate account of nature for romantic conservatives, and that it was used to advocate a form of society congenial to their interests (MacKenzie 1981:151).

Before we move on to one additional problem in the selection of metaphor a warning is necessary.  It is tempting to view the story of Galton, Pearson, Bateson, and other Victorian and early twentieth century scientists as cautionary tales about the dangers of allowing social or political concerns effect scientific work.  This would be a mistake.  It has been said, for example, that Galton let his interests in eugenics overshadow his contributions to the field of statistics. The fact is Galton probably never would have developed statistics if it were not for his interest and belief in eugenics.

Social interests do not simply intrude on the selection of metaphor to interpret experience.  They guide the selection.  A metaphor is adopted and developed because it "seems right"; it seems to focus one's subsidiary awareness on a proper image, and it does so because these subsidiaries include a person's social position and interests.

A scientific theory, like any metaphor, is more than an adherence to the truth of some particular phenomenon the metaphor is supposed to make comprehensible.  If Darwin's metaphor was used to explain biological evolution only it could hardly cause widespread social consternation.  But theories or metaphors never remained attached solely to the phenomena they were developed to understand; they migrate, jump, are pushed or pulled to other realms of experience where, often, their implications have more direct relevance to our lives.  In a like manner, when someone adopts, develops, applies or becomes committed to a specific metaphor, it, in the words of Michael Polanyi, carries him or her away; it transforms the view of the world, and so the commitment to the metaphor is magnified.

PATTERNS OF SOCIAL CONSTRAINTS AND THE ADHERENCE TO METAPHOR

There is, however, a problem with making social interests the major factor in the adherence to one metaphor over another, since people often adhere to beliefs that may not be to their social interest.  After all, there are probably as many peasants as aristocrats who would argue fiercely that the hierarchical ordering of society is in the nature of things.  Consequently we need to ask whether there are other attributes of a social setting that influence a person's commitment to one metaphor rather than another.

Anthropologist Mary Douglas has an interesting approach to the social influences on belief.  The social environment, says Douglas, creates a bias towards certain cosmological perspectives, or, in our terminology, metaphors. By social environment Douglas means the patterns of constraints and incentives that influence person's behavioral choices.  Each pattern of reward and punishment helps persons find some principles to guide them in selecting those beliefs or values that work as justifications for actions.  These constraints and incentives are distributed within two social dimensions: the first is the "group" dimension, and the second is what Douglas calls the "grid" dimension.  The first determines who a person can interact with in a given society.  For example, are persons free to move from group to group or are they constrained by group boundaries? Conversely, is the person able to gain support and sustenance from a single group or must he or she seek support from many groups?  The grid dimension, on the other hand,  determines how persons interact, how constraints and incentives operate on the person to determine the nature of their interaction with others.  Are they free to define their relations to others, or are roles, statuses and rankings clearly demarcated by the society?

Societies or groups, says Douglas, may vary in these two dimensions.  Thus at one extreme of the group dimension, persons are free to interact in any group they choose; group boundaries are loose and ill-defined.  At the other end of the group dimension group boundaries are strong, and are primary determinants of a person's identity; people make strong distinctions between persons who are members of the group and those that are not, and there are strong constraints against the crossing of group boundaries. 

At the strong end of the grid dimension, says Douglas, people cannot freely interact with each other; rigid social classifications keep them apart and tightly regulate their interactions.  People, as such, do not have the freedom to transact their interactions with each other.  As Douglas puts it,

At this point for grid, male does not compete in female spheres, sons do not define their relations with fathers.  The grid is visible in segregated places and times and physical signs of discriminated rank, such as clothing and food (Douglas 1978:8).

Societies at the weak end of the grid dimension, on the other hand, have few ascribed statuses.  Persons are able to transact their statuses with others more freely.  In this type of society Douglas says,

The substantive signs of ascribed status are scraped, one by one, and supplanted by abstract principles.  Of these, one is sacred still, that is the holiness of contract itself.  As individuals are supposed to transact more and more freely, the rules governing transactions may even multiply.  Society turns into a veritable market, and for every new kind of deal, further external effects transform the social structure (Douglas 1978:8).

Douglas combine the dimensions of grid and group, and ranking social environments as high or low in each dimension, suggests there are four types of social environments: high group, high grid; low group, low grid; high group, low grid; and low group, high grid. Giving each a label, a diagram of the four types looks like this:

 

Grid-Group Classifications
Grid Dimension	High Grid	B Atomized Subordination (low group, high grid)	C Ascribed Hierarchy (High Grid, High Group)
	Low Grid	A Individualism (Low Group, Low Grid)	D Factionalism (High Group, Low Grid)
		Low Group	High Group
		Group Dimension

   

Because of the different patterns of incentives and constraints that influence behavioral choices in these different types of societies, people will respond differently to metaphors used to justify or legitimize social actions. In other words, people will be more likely to respond favorably to those metaphors that correspond to their feelings of the constraints of grid and group characteristic of their social environment.  As David Bloor puts it,

By a process of selective reinforcement, characteristic forms of argument will emerge in a social setting, standing out by their frequency.  This will give each social structure its dominant repertoire of explicit legitimations and its characteristic style of knowledge (Bloor 1982:205).

Let me illustrate by examining each of the four types of societies Douglas is talking about, and looking at the kinds of metaphors that might be most appropriate to each.

In factional societies (high group and low grid) the strong distinction between in-group and out-group lead persons to make strong distinctions between good and evil. Metaphors of struggle dominate factional societies:

...the universe is divided between warring forces of good and evil.  Leadership is precarious in such groups, roles ambiguous and undefined.  The group boundary is the main definer of rights: people are classed either as members or strangers.  Magical danger is associated with the idea of boundary.  Evil is a foreign danger introduced by foreign agents in disguise.  Group members accuse deviants in their midst of allowing the outside evil to infiltrate....The cosmos is endangered by the vile, irrational behavior of human agents of evil.  It is preoccupied with rituals of cleansing, expulsion of spies or witches and the re-drawing of boundaries (Douglas 1970:169).

In factional societies we find "nature," as well as society, metaphorically divided into lambs and wolves, along with other metaphors that focus on vulnerable "us," and predatory "them."