‘Science is Social Relations’: Some Reflections1

Returning to Bob Young's opus is a strange experience for those of us who knew him and worked with him: evoking memories, ghosts, and assorted emotions. Focusing on Bob's article ‘Science is social relations’, which evolved from a talk given at the BSSRS (British Society for Social Responsibility in Science) conference - Is there a socialist science?- held in February 1975, to the essay which was published in Radical Science Journal No. 5 in 1977, proved to be particularly evocative in countless ways. Gary Werskey's description of this essay as ‘possibly his [Bob's] most outrageous piece of writing’ (2007: 438) gave returning to this essay a further edge.

Bob Young's ‘Most Outrageous Piece of Writing’

Taking a cue from Werskey's (2007) appraisal, Bob's distinctive mode of writing in that piece merits attention. Bob himself commented about this - telling readers that the article was experimental and there are a number of interjections that form a metacommentary on his uncertainty about his mode of communication. He pronounced that the article was in style ‘sometimes weird’ (Young, 1977: 66). It certainly was very different in mode and presentation from his preceding publications in the history of science (his book- Mind, Brain and Adaptation (1970)- and his earlier articles). This publication was distinctive not just in the avoidance of what had become his characteristically ‘long, discursive’ (p. 67) footnotes - a feature which he foregrounds. Reading this essay, it is striking to find how adept Bob was at coining distinctive slogans and aphorisms. Indeed, perhaps he missed his opportunity to produce a distinctive range of commodities - particularly t-shirts (of a kind which he himself might have modelled). There are many of these aphorisms and slogans, but each is distinctive and merits consideration. They begin with the title: Science is social relations.

There follows a long list of others: ‘Science is not value neutral’, ‘Science is ideological’ (p. 69)