Objectivity (science)

Objectivity in science is a value that informs how science is practiced and how scientific truths are discovered. It is the idea that scientists, in attempting to uncover truths about the natural world, must aspire to eliminate personal biases, a priori commitments, emotional involvement, etc. Objectivity is often attributed to the property of scientific measurement, as the accuracy of a measurement can be tested independent from the individual scientist who first reports it. It is thus intimately related to the aim of testability and reproducibility. To be properly considered objective, the results of measurement must be communicated from person to person, and then demonstrated for third parties, as an advance in understanding of the objective world. Such demonstrable knowledge would ordinarily confer demonstrable powers of prediction or technological construction.

Problems arise from not understanding the limits of objectivity in scientific research, especially when results are generalized. Given that the object selection and measurement process are typically subjective, when results of that subjective process are generalized to the larger system from which the object was selected, the stated conclusions are necessarily biased.

Objectivity should not be confused with scientific consensus. Scientists may agree at one point in time but later discover that this consensus represented a subjective point of view.

Objectivity in science appeared in the mid-nineteenth century. In the early eighteenth century, before objectivity, there existed an epistemic virtue in science which Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have called truth-to-nature. This ideal was practiced by Enlightenment naturalists and scientific atlas-makers and involved active attempts to eliminate any idiosyncrasies in their representations of nature in order to create images thought best to represent “what truly is.” Judgment and skill were deemed necessary in order to determine the “typical,” “characteristic,” “ideal” or “average.” In practicing truth-to-nature naturalists did not seek to depict exactly what was seen; rather, they sought a reasoned image.

In the latter half of the nineteenth century objectivity in science was born when a new practice of mechanical objectivity appeared. “‘Let nature speak for itself’ became the watchword of a new brand of scientific objectivity.” It was at this time that idealized representations of nature, which were previously seen as a virtue, were now seen as a vice. Scientists began to see it as their duty to actively restrain themselves from imposing their own projections onto nature. The aim was to liberate representations of nature from subjective, human interference and in order to achieve this scientists began using self-registering instruments, cameras, wax molds and other technological devices.

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