On Thu, 7 Dec 2000, James Heartfield wrote:
> Peer review is an institutional check. Scientists involved in it
> understand that the warrant of scientific findings comes from the object
> of investigation, not the act of being read.
>
> It's very difficult to do science if you believe that truth is socially
> constructed.
> --
> James Heartfield
On the contrary: it's impossible to do science if scientists do not engage in the social construction of truth. It is only through peer review, discussion of results, and other social practices that any finding becomes a scientific truth. If you take away the social practices, there can practically be no scientific truths.
Does this mean that scientists' social practices create the objects of study wholecloth? Not necessarily. But whether or not the object of investigation is "really there", above and beyond any human investigation and social practices, it is in fact the social practices that construct scientific truths.
Looking forward to dogmatic philosophical claims about the poverty of nominalism,
Miles