拼裝的科學革命――以美國第一回達爾文爭議為中心

A Scientific Revolution Assembled: A Case Study on the First Darwinian Debate in the United States

什麼是科學革命？科學知識社會學與行動者網絡理論分別提出貌似不可共量的解答。有鑒於此，本文試圖以「美國第一回達爾文爭議」（the first Darwinian debate in the United States）為例，自拼裝觀（assemblage thinking）汲取靈感，回應此問題。所謂「美國第一回達爾文爭議」，係指哈佛大學植物學者格雷（Asa Gray,1810-1888）與其同事阿格西（Louis Agassiz,1807-1873）於1859年就物種起源及分布展開的爭議。即便該爭議已被廣泛討論，然研究者至今仍未回答：為何該爭議涉及「北太平洋探險」的調查成果？何以日本植物相成為兩人爭議的焦點？格雷為什麼會對日本植物相感興趣？他如何自日本及其周邊區域取得研究材料？受拼裝觀的啟發，筆者不以社會利益∕興趣解釋兩人爭論的根源，也不分析他們如何將自身建構為不可取代的「計算中心」。本文強調，拼裝觀主張社會現實及其變遷均涉及人與非人元素跨尺度的隨機與偶然連結，似更能幫助研究者摒除「社會」與「自然」等既定範疇，壓低姿態，細索這些範疇如何浮現與穩固。拼裝觀於認識論與本體論的立場，或可在兩種面向上幫助理解「什麼是科學革命」：第一，將格雷、阿格西與達爾文等學術名人去中心化――除了關切人蔘、大鯢、毒漆樹等物件於其思想脈絡中的位置，更讓植物採集者、在日本等異鄉以武力協助採集者的指揮官等「隱形技師」現身；其次，以全球視野審視演化思想史上的變與不變，又不至落入全球與在地、西方與東方等二元對立的窠臼。 What is a scientific revolution, after all? To this question, the two major schools in science and technology studies (STS) have proposed their respective －but rather incommensurable－answers. In this light, this essay takes the so-called first Darwinian debate in the United States as an example, drawing inspiration from the assemblage view to better capture what a scientific revolution is, after all. The so-called first Darwinian debate in the United States, according to historians of American science and historians of evolutionary thought, refers to a series of crossfires between Asa Gray (1810-1888) and Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) in 1859 regarding the origin and distribution of species. Although the Gray-Agassiz debate belongs to one of the most thoroughly studied debates in the history of American science and that of evolutionary thought, thus far researchers have not been able to answer the following questions: why did the debate relate to the results of a scientific expedition under the name “the North Pacific Exploring Expedition”? Why did the flora of Japan become the focus of the debate between Gray and Agassiz? Why did Gray become interested in the flora of Japan? How did Gray acquire research material from Japan and its vicinity? Inspired by “the assemblage view” widely discussed in recent anthropological and geographical literature, this essay does not use social interests to explain the origin of the Gray-Agassiz debate, nor does it analyze how Gray and Agassiz constructed themselves as irreplaceable centers of calculation. Compared to SSK and ANT, this essay argues that because the assemblage view highlights that social reality and its change both rely on human and nonhuman elements' random and contingent associations across multiple temporal and spatial scales, it can better help researchers lower their tones, as SSK scholars suggest, and abandon such given categories as “society” and “nature” and lower their gestures as if they were ants to explore how the “social” and the “natural” emerge and get stabilized, a view which ANT scholars advocate. This essay shows that the epistemological and methodological stances of the assemblage view contribute to our knowledge of what a scientific revolution is in two ways: first, it makes researchers decentralize prominent scientific figures like Gray, Agassiz, and Darwin: that is to say, it not only concerns the roles played by nonhuman elements such as ginseng, giant salamanders, and poison sumacs, but also makes collectors who gathered specimens for prominent naturalists, commanders who backed collectors with military means and therefore enabled them to collect effectively and efficiently in a foreign land like Japan, and other “invisible technicians” visible. Second, it helps researchers examine continuities and changes in the history of science without getting entangled in such dualisms as the local vs. the global, and the East vs. the West.