Why don’t You Jump out of a Multi-Storey Building to Prove that Gravity is Socially Constructed?

The title of this post is a question often asked to those working on the social construction of science, particularly since the infamous Sokal Affair. This question usually arises from the uncritical worshipers of scientism rather than the natural scientists who do science. The question often carries a condescending attitude and dismisses the social sciences’ contributions to understanding science. This post attempts to understand social construction by unpacking the title question and illustrating certain philosophical underpinnings of this question. This post can also be read as a detailed annotation of a previous post by Varughese (2024) on typologies of social construction.

A major presumption implicit in the title question is the conflation of gravity with free fall. Asking whether gravity is socially constructed raises the question of free fall’s social construction. If we focus clearly on free fall, the answer is an emphatic “no” in this context[i]. However, that is not the case of gravity or the theory of universal gravitation. While free fall is an observable phenomenon tied to perception, gravity is an inferred concept that cannot be directly observed. Understanding the intricacies of the messy relationship between perception and inference or whether a pure perception is possible without inference are not recent concerns of STS scholars of the last few decades, but has been a longstanding issue, discussed by scholars for centuries[ii], and remains central themes of ontology and epistemology in contemporary philosophy of science such as transcendental idealism[iii], metaphysical realism,[iv] and others.

If the perception is real as it can be observed, can one also say that the inference is real? This is the philosophical question that the High Church domain of STS[v]and this post would be more interested. One immediate answer to this question could be from the naïve realist standpoint which holds that scientific theories offer a direct and accurate representation of the natural world. The title question comes from such a naïve realist position of believing that the facts and theories of empirical sciences would provide an actual picture of the natural world as it is. Those who ask the title question, however, fail to remember that the realists’ camp doesn’t buy any naïve realist position but a critical realist position today. Thanks to the influential work of Roy Bhaskar (1975), critical realists do not understand scientific theory as reality but as the best possible approximations of reality.

It may be remembered here that even a critical realist standpoint is not singular. To complement the typologies of social construction as explained by Varughese (2024), one may pay attention to the typologies of realism as well for a nuanced understanding the relationship between scientific theories and the natural world. Providing a detailed account of different realisms is beyond the scope of this note. However, a brief description about two kinds of realist standpoints – entity realism and structural realism[vi]– is provided here. For entity realists, if the scientists can manipulate the unobservable entities to bring about observable effects, the reality of the theory holds water. For instance, if scientists can predict the observable features if they manipulate the putative features of an electron, one may have a stronger conviction about the reality of an electron.In the case of structural realists, more than the descriptions of unobservable entities provided by scientific theories, the claims these theories make about unobservable structures- certain relations that exist in the world- matter.

Discussed above are a few philosophical aspects of mistaking knowledge as a direct acquisition of facts. Coming back to STS, one characteristic of scientific knowledge is its distancing of meaning from knowledge. However, in the case of universal gravitation, the meaning (numerous meanings that human societies make about the falling of an object) and the knowledge (the gravitational pull of the Earth) remain closely connected. This concordance between knowledge and meaning is one of the factors that enhance science’s persuasive power, as noted by Jasanoff (2010). The profound influence of universal gravitation and Newton’s anecdotal metaphor of the falling apple likely stems from this everyday accessibility and connectivity.

Besides its everyday resonance with people’s experiences, another key reason for the persuasiveness of universal gravitation leading to conflating with free fall could be its simplicity and practical utility. The aspect of simplicity becomes even more apparent when compared to the complexity of general relativity.  A crucial point that the critics of social construction who ask the title-question about the social construction of gravity often overlook is that universal gravitation is not the best explanation of free fall as accepted among the physicists now. Owing to the inability of universal gravitation to explain phenomena such as Mercury’s orbital precession, general relativity is considered as a more comprehensive explanation of free-fall now. As per general relativity, the apple falls down not because of the Earth’s gravitational pull as conceptualised by universal gravitation. Instead, the mass of the Earth creates a curvature in spacetime, and this curvature influences the inertial motion of the apple. Rephrasing the title-question in these terms might lead to asking, “If spacetime is a social construct, why don’t you jump…?” However, such a question doesn’t sound plausible because spacetime, being far more complex than universal gravitation, is difficult to grasp through everyday experiences or common sense. Moreover, universal gravitation’s enduring relevance is also tied to its utility. The simplicity of its mathematical formulation, f=gm1m2/r²​​, allows for easy calculations of gravitational force. This capability has immense practical value, especially in the context of contemporary technologies that rely on precise gravitational calculations.

To further explore this issue of confusing free fall with gravity, one may remember that there were explanations to free fall even before the popularisation of Newtonian Physics. One example is the Aristotelian Mediaeval worldview where free fall is explained through laws of natural motion and theories about understanding the universe as terrestrial and celestial, two distinct and bounded regions. According to this framework, all elements have a natural position. Lighter elements, such as air and fire, naturally move toward the periphery of the universe, while heavier elements, such as earth and water, move toward the centre, in a geocentric understanding of cosmology. Here, an apple falls down is not because of gravity but due to apple’s composition as a heavy element seeking its natural position in the centre of the universe.  Similar explanatory frameworks were prevalent in various parts of the world. The Indian theory of five elements (panchabhuta) is, in this way, similar to the Aristotelian worldview[vii]. The Cartesian vortex theoryof 17^th century is yet another explanation of free fall. Here, the Earth’s rotation generates a centrifugal force, causing layers of invisible matter to move outward toward the vortex’s periphery. Since there can be no vacuum in nature as Cartesians also endorse Aristotelian plenism[viii], displaced particles accumulate at the vortex’s edges, creating inward pressure. Here, an apple falls down as the inward pressure pushes heavier matter toward the centre of Earth.

Why an apple falls down has been answered in diverse ways across cultures and historical periods, reflecting the shifting paradigms, in the Kunhian sense, through which humans have sought to make sense of the natural world. Now, the takeaway point is that, be it universal gravitation, general relativity or Aristotelian natural philosophy, they are not free fall but different explanations of free fall of different epistemic communities of different time periods. And all these explanations are fallible because, in the Kantian sense, they contain synthetic propositions. Synthetic propositions are fallible and cannot be absolutely true because of majorly three problems as expounded in the domain of philosophy of science- induction, sensation and theory-ladenness. 

What is the process happening between a scientist seeing an apple falling down and arriving at the theory of general relativity/universal gravitation/any other explanation? Different explanations of social construction as outlined by Varughese (2024) in a previous post would make better sense here. The earlier view that scientific facts are intrinsic within nature and a scientist going to nature or bringing nature to their laboratory to find out the scientific facts is the challenged view. Instead, the facts are constructed through certain processes of mediation between nature and facts. In another way, the scientific facts are socially constructed. Gravity too.

Notes

[i] We make sense of fall, movement, direction, the endurantist understanding of the falling objects and so on as part of collective epistemic efforts of human history. In this sense, free fall also could be understood as socially constructed. These aspects are not considered in this post for the sake of a focussed engagement with the title- question – the social construction of gravity. 

[ii] For instance, the pervasion relation between pratyaksha (perception) and anumana (inference) is a matter of discussion among the Nyayaikas  of Indian tradition. Sarukkai (2005) examines how this discussion is a central theme in Indian logic and explores the proposal of the Nyaya scholar Gangesa to resolve the scepticism about the relationship between the perception and inference.

[iii]Transcendental idealism, as Kant presents it, differentiates between noumena (things in themselves) and phenomena (appearances). Kant argues that while we can only experience phenomena, the true nature of things -noumena – remains beyond our knowledge. Space and time, for Kant, are not properties of the external world but are forms of human intuition that structure how we experience objects (Stang, 2024).

[iv]For metaphysical realists, the world exists independently of how humans or other inquiring agents perceive it. The objects in the world, along with their properties and the relationships they form, determine the nature of the world. These objects and their characteristics exist regardless of our ability to discover or recognise them. Metaphysical realists assert that beliefs about the world can only be objectively true if they correspond to an independent reality. This perspective holds that truth involves accurately describing the world as it exists, and beliefs are objective when their truth (or falsehood) does not depend on individual opinions or perceptions(Khlentzos, 2021). Scientific realism that asserts the entities and structures described by science (such as electrons, quarks, and gravitational fields) correspond to real, mind-independent entities- which is briefly discussed in this post – is different from metaphysical realism. The claim that the world’s constituents exist independently of our minds does not imply that these constituents are accurately depicted by science.

[v]High Church and Low Church are very useful analogies presented by Fuller (1993) to make sense of two approaches in STS. The Low Church STS is compared to the Protestant Reformation of the 16^thand 17^thcenturies, emphasising accessibility, democratisation and pragmatic, policy-oriented approaches of science and technology. In contrast, the High Church STS corresponds to the radical hermeneutical criticism of the Bible during the 19^thcentury, focusing on deep theoretical and philosophical critique that refuses to understand science and technology for granted.

[vi] For an exhaustive understanding of entity realism and structural realism, see Khalil (2023) and Ladyman (2023). 

[vii] Both the Aristotelian and Indian worldviews extend their cosmological explanations to other domains, such as human physiology. For instance, while the humoral physiology of Aristotelian natural philosophy understands the human body as composed of four humors and these humors as composed of four terrestrial elements, the tridosha are specific combinations of the panchabhuta.

[viii]Plenism is the ontological position based on the belief that nature abhors a vacuum (horror vacui), a principle often attributed to Aristotle. The influential debate between Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle over plenism has implication regarding the social construction argument of this post which has been brilliantly explicated by Shapin and Shaffer (1985).