Tauber A I
Center for Philosophy and History of Science, Boston University.
Sci Context. 1995 Winter;8(4):579-607. doi: 10.1017/s0269889700002209.
Two research traditions in immunology, supposedly centered on the same issue of immune identification, have followed different theoretical goals and originated from competing philosophical foundations. These may be labelled modernist and postmodernist, respectively, thereby applying cultural and philosophical categories to immunology in order to articulate potential scientific resonances with the broader culture. To accept that exercise an important caveat is imposed, namely, this translation is most appropriately discussed at the level of metaphor. In other words, I will structure my treatment of these issues as expressed in the metaphorical language of the discipline, and thus the bulk of this discussion will focus on how the language and modeling of the science draws from the culture-at-large. Scientists seek images from their everyday lives to describe phenomena that may be poorly articulated in their technical discourse; such is the utility and importance of metaphors generally, and thus it is not surprising that we might discern echoes of a postmodernist sentiment in the metaphors borrowed from post-World War II culture. I will also discuss, to a more limited extent, how postmodernists have sought support for their own ideological arguments in immunology. This last topic serves only to illustrate the bidirectionality of scientific discourse with the society in which it is embedded.
免疫学中有两种研究传统，本应围绕免疫识别这同一个问题展开，但却遵循了不同的理论目标，且源于相互竞争的哲学基础。这两种传统可分别被标记为现代主义和后现代主义，从而将文化和哲学范畴应用于免疫学，以便阐明与更广泛文化之间潜在的科学共鸣。要接受这种做法，需要提出一个重要的告诫，即这种解读最适合在隐喻层面进行讨论。换句话说，我将以该学科的隐喻性语言来构建我对这些问题的论述，因此本次讨论的大部分内容将聚焦于该科学的语言和模型是如何从整个文化中汲取养分的。科学家们从日常生活中寻找意象来描述那些在他们的专业论述中可能难以清晰表达的现象；隐喻通常就具有这样的效用和重要性，所以我们在从二战后文化中借用的隐喻里察觉到后现代主义情感的回响也就不足为奇了。我还将在更有限的范围内讨论后现代主义者是如何在免疫学中为他们自己的意识形态论点寻求支持的。最后这个话题只是为了说明科学论述与其所嵌入的社会之间的双向性。
