The Weekly Qualitative Report Volume 1 Number 10 December 8 2008 62-66 http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/WQR/daston.pdf A Review of Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s Objectivity Tom Strong Division of Applied Psychology, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada Lorraine Daston’s and Peter Galison’s Objectivity (2007) traces historical and cultural developments as the word “objective” acquired different meanings and associated scientific practices. Similarly, Daston and Galison consider the changing relationship of the word “objective” as it relates to the subjectivity of the researcher. Objectivity will interest any reader interested in how the conceptions and practices of science change historically and culturally. Key Words: Science, History, Objectivity, and Qualitative Research. A claim to objective knowledge is an absolute demand for obedience. Mendez, Coddou, & Maturana, 1988, p. 170 The answer to the question “Why objectivity” lies precisely in the history of the scientific self to be eliminated. Daston & Galison, 2007, p. 197 Most qualitative researchers have at some point run up against the argument that their research and science is not objective. The word objective implies a kind of rigor or neutral omniscience that philosopher, Thomas Nagel (1989), aptly described as the “view from nowhere.” Most people are willing to grant “objectivity” the status of an ideal, one that methodologically rigorous, subjectively untainted, and expertly peer-reviewed, research can hope to reflect and approximate. Deemed “objective,” such knowledge is used to underwrite policy directives, act as the source of scientifically warranted practice, and end controversies in social or other arenas where such controversies need to “be put to rest.” Examined historically, objectivity has been a shifting human ideal, an ideal that scientists have flirted with, fetishized, and modified to fit the cultural virtues of the day. Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison have well-established track records as scientists and historians of science at two of the world’s most renowned centres of scientific knowledge: Germany’s Max Planck Institute and Harvard University. I first encountered Peter Galison’s wonderful 2004 book, Einstein’s Clocks and Poincaré’s Maps: Empires of Time, a few years ago where he highlighted the convergence of ambitions and insights of scientists like Einstein and Poincaré, and the politics that went into developing the world’s 24 hour clock and its related time zones. There, science and its outcomes took on a very human face. But, it is precisely this humanness, and its presumed downsides for science that motivated Daston and Galison (2007) to write Objectivity. Objectivity’s “evil twin” so to speak is subjectivity. For scientists, this realization has prompted some historical variations metaphorically equivalent to trying to lose one’s shadow, and it is these variations that Objectivity recounts. While its use as a word had