Modern science and the scientific method emerged in the western context. Its Eurocentric approach was naturalized and this institutionalisation of eurocentrism constructed an image of science as some sort of transcendental activity in the pursuit of truth operating with a scientific method that is necessarily objective and neutral (Harding, 1991). The methods are usually deductive, empirical, and reductionist. The scientific method is considered reliable and reproducible and often hypothesis-driven. The method of science thus has been co-opted and expanded and sometimes challenged by different academic disciplines. This edited volume titled Mapping Scientific Method: Disciplinary Narrations by Gita Chadha and Renny Thomas (published by Routledge in 2022) explores and maps how different disciplines engage with and critique the scientific method. It is a book that is a great value addition to our understanding of the limits of the scientific method and it is a commendable effort to initiate a discourse involving scholars from India.

The volume engages with the notion of method in different disciplines. It is interdisciplinary evident in the vast range of authors from different disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, linguistics, mathematics, biology, political science, and philosophy to name a few, reflecting on the scientificity of the disciplines.  The book argues for epistemic plurality and diversity and attempts to challenge the power and authority that the scientific method brings with it to expand the narrowed understanding of epistemology within the disciplines.  

As the editors note, it is not easy to discuss all the chapters, hence I have chosen three chapters that discuss methods in literary studies, human genetics, and economics for this review to offer a glimpse of the arguments.

‘If Not Precisely a Science: The Provocations of Literary Studies’ by Sharmila Sreekumar succinctly traces how literary studies forged the scientific method that led to the delineation of literature from literary studies. Literature as art and literary studies alludes to science-caused binaries. The literary criticism sought to reframe the object and the objectives of literary studies, professionalise and systematise the same by turning to science. It involved methods like close reading of the text and poems and procedural analysis of the facticity involving objective observation like sciences. Literary criticism in India followed the lines of western literary criticism. Such a methodological analysis is bereft of the socio-historical and cultural location of the text and the authors. Sreekumar notes that this scientism led to a crisis in the discipline and that a possible consensus to emerge within the field of literary studies might be difficult.

Chitra Kanabiran traces the complexity of the scientific method through the history of human genetics.  She argues that studies in biology may involve both deductive as well as inductive processes and creativity, speculation, and intuition often play an important role in knowledge production. Biology and specifically the study of genes was reductionist at the starting point. The Human Genome Project (HGP) revealed that human life is a complex system, and the revelation necessitated a synthetic or systemic approach. Another important turnaround is the realization that genes interact with environmental factors and that they cannot be studied in isolation. Kanabiran notes that HGP also resulted in a paradigm shift in the practice of science necessitating larger collaborations and the recognition of the role of big data in scientific analysis.

Neetha in her chapter ‘Economics, Feminist Economics, and Women’s Studies: Methodological Orientations and Disciplinary Boundaries’ discuss how neo-classical economics has been largely quantitative and considered a ‘rational man’ as the unit of analysis. She posits feminist economics as a heterodox approach which challenges the ideas of women’s labour and domesticity, unpaid and paid work, and production.  Neetha reflects that feminist economics has not been able to alter the questions at the macro-economic level though it has challenged the notions of man as a unit of analysis. Narrating her work experience she reasons that the location of women’s studies and quantitative research as diverse areas could be the reason for feminist economics remaining largely in the realm of microeconomics.  She suggests that mixed methods could offer possibilities for a gendered lens in economic research.

Different essays in this volume have articulated the stories of the methods and, historicised and contextualised the same. There is a careful examination of the method from within the disciplines arguing how the scientific method informs and/ or at the same time seeks to diversify, democratise and reframe the disciplinary methodological boundaries. Different chapters complement each other, and editors have sequenced them mapping the scientific method/s across the fields in a commendable manner.  This edited volume engaging with the question of the scientification of methods across the various domains of humanities, social sciences and sciences is the first of its nature to evolve from the Indian context and stimulate further exploration.   

Reference:

Harding S. G. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca. NY: Cornell University Press.

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Indumathi Sundararaman holds a PhD in Education from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. Her work focused on gendered experiences in science classrooms. She holds a MA in Elementary Education from TISS and MSc in Botany from Bharathiar University, Coimbatore. She has over 15 years of professional experience as a science teacher, teacher educator, and researcher in pioneering organisations such as Azim Premji University, Quest Alliance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, and Indian Institute for Human Settlements. Currently, she is consulting independently and based in Bangalore.