Introduction

Although it is starting to become passé, sociology ¹ (and, especially, the sociology of knowledge, and science and technology studies) recently went through an ‘ontological turn’, led by the philosopher John Searle. This shifted analytical interest from what people think and know to the objective and subjective ‘reality’ of social phenomena:

So let us just summarize where we are right now. We need the distinction between observer-relative and observer-independent facts. We also need a distinction between epistemic objectivity and subjectivity on the one hand and ontological objectivity and subjectivity on the other hand. Most of the phenomena that we are discussing, such phenomena as money, governments, and football games, are observer relative. But at the same time, they contain components of observer-independent but ontologically subjective human attitudes. Though the constitution of society thus contains ontologically subjective elements as absolutely essential to its existence, all the same the ontological subjectivity of the domain does not prevent us from getting an epistemically objective account of the domain. In a word, epistemic objectivity does not require ontological objectivity. If it did, the social sciences would be impossible. Now with all that by way of preliminaries, we can state the basic logical structure of human societies. Here goes.

(Searle 2006, 15) To put it another way, we all agree that, for example, the Mona Lisa is a painting by Leonardo da Vinci, completed in the early sixteenth century and displayed in the Louvre in Paris. These are observer-independent facts. Whether or not the Mona Lisa is the greatest painting in the world is, however, a subjective judgement. To claim it is the greatest painting articulates an observer-relative fact. This needs to be the basis of any social study, apparently, because it is Terribly Important. Few sociologists noticed this, and even fewer were moved to adopt this as a perspective.