I have been thinking about this thread far too much for the past few days as I've been procrastinating on getting my syllabi ready for the next semester, as usual. And I knew, of course, that LLBiMG would get me for continuing the off-thread discussion of the scientific establishment. And he was right to do so, but-arrgh!-part of my frustration and joy (hey--I'm a masochist, so it's all the same to me) in this discussion is the analytical assumption that is at the heart of the scientific process as it has been practiced in the West.
Ok: so I'm not disputing that millions of replicable experiments show that water boils at the same temperature under certain specific conditions and did so even when we didn't know that! However, that thought brings up a bunch of different thoughts for me, which I'm going to try very hard to deal with in a systematic, analytical fashion (although please be aware my penchant is for synthetic, contextual, poetic forms of knowledge. . . . won't get into whether that's nature or nurture . . . )
First, I experienced ball lightning when I was a kid. I was sitting on the couch during a tremendous midwestern thunderstorm, and poof! the lights flashed and a blue ball of electricity streaked across the room and fizzled on the dining room carpet. I didn't realize it had a name, or even that it was a fairly rare experience, until a friend of mine told me that he'd experienced it once too-another Iowa thunderstorm, lightning hit the air conditioning unit that was outside the basement window he slept next too, and poof! pop! His split into two, bounced around the room, and then fizzled.
Several years later, in the 1990s, scientists began to be able to "create" artificial forms of ball lightning, thus, for most people, "proving"-or at least very strongly suggesting-its existence as a scientific fact. The problem heretofore had been, precisely, the replicability of the experience. Many scientists were skeptical of the existence of ball lightning because it's not readily replicable. But also, as this article-particularly the reference to Ludwig Fleck's The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact explores, there is a degree to which until phenomena like "ball lightning" can be fit into a scientific discourse, they do not "exist" as facts . . . And this has all kinds of cultural ramifications.
Which, I hope leads me to my second thought. For which, I want to go back to the NYTimes article abstract I quoted earlier:
[the] research subjects in China, Korea and Japan [tended, in this experiment to] pay greater attention to context and relationship, rely more on experience-based knowledge than abstract logic and show more tolerance for contradiction; [the] American subjects [tested by this experiment] tend[ed] to detach objects from their context, avoid contradictions and rely more heavily on formal logic
I put in additions and cautionary phrases to show how my thinking tends to work: cautiously. Like the scientists who disbelieve in ball lightning despite many claims by non-scientists like me (and even some scientists) of having experienced it, until the experiment is repeated many times, I remain cautious. However, despite my extreme degree of Western-Academic trained skepticism about the reporter's claims for this experiment and the conclusions we may draw from it, I do believe that this very discussion echoes the claim suggested in this article. Those arguing for the "objectivity"-or observer-independent reality-of scientific facts seem to me to be pretty much following the trend that the American subjects of this study showed: first, detaching the SM from the context of Western science/scientific culture. Second, they have had a tendency-and I'm trying not to sound perjorative myself when I say this but apologies if I fail-to equate formal logic with rationality. And, 3) I feel, the "observer independent" (OI) folks have been finding contradictions in the more culturally-focused arguments (CF) where those posting those CF arguments quite possibly either don't see their arguments as containing contradictions or who are perhaps more "tolerant" of contradiction.
For example:
You are surrounded by technology that would have been considered miraculous centuries ago. To dismiss the understanding that made this possible as "culturally dependent" is really to engage in extreme scepticism or solipcism - these are not used pejoratively at all. Simply, I believe that they are the only real way to deny the success of science without prejudicially rejecting the whole bag.
See, for me, I don't see this conclusion, since I don't "prejudicially reject the whole bag" of science. But I've had trouble articulating why. So I've continued thinking about it. And it occurred to me that the word "dismiss" in the second sentence suggests an assumption that I don't make, but that many scientists, and to be fair, most of the Anglo-American educated public share. To me, to say knowledge is culturally dependent is to say it is as real as it gets for us. I believe the implicit hierarchy "real" vs. "cultural" to be bogus. We can't fully step outside culture; to accept a fact as a fact requires cultural activity-an activity that is invisible when the fact is something as non-controversial as water boiling but which is more visible when its ball lightning. Or the intelligence of women.
Why is the cultural activity surrounding the existence of ball lightning, intelligence in women, more visible than boiling water? Because of several factors, perhaps most importantly: history. And historical knowledge is part of the scientific method: here's why: if a result has to be repeatable, then memory must be invoked. And not just memory, but "logic" and "reasoning" by an (accredited) agent. That is: someone whose opinion "counts" has to decide: is this "carefully controlled circumstance" exactly the same or "exactly enough the same" as that to "count" as a "repetition"?
I promise I won't talk about rivers or stepping in them twice, but: someone has to decide that some variables in an experiment "matter" (e.g., pouring other substances into the water) and others don't (e.g., the color of the lab technician's shirt). And, when the question is controversial, as the question must be or-outside a secondary-school class experiment-the experiment wouldn't be being performed at all!, then it automatically "matters" who is deciding whether the experiment counts as an instance of repeatability.
So, again, I find it difficult to detach the SM from cultural context because there is no method in a vacuum; methods require agents, and agents come from specific cultures, which will shape the way they see the world, willy nilly...
And although it was said facetiously, I don't believe the scientific method could ever establish what is going on in bears brains: it can't have complete access to reality. Water only boils at exactly the same temperature under carefully controlled circumstances, circumstances which don't ever occur in "nature," because as soon as soon as it's outside the lab, well, science has a hard time making absolute, conclusive statements.
(The other issue I'd love to talk about, but won't because I've gone on far too long is the faith in miniaturization that is at the heart of the scientific method as it is practiced in the West. But basta! ya basta! .…) |
) insists on some kind of old-school essentialist argument. Exactly the kind of argument that is roundly rejected by most contemporary schools of western philosophical thought, and by most philosophically trained scientists and mathematicians for reasons far to numerous to mention here.