Actually, although I used a different word from Greg, I think I did understand him, and I disagree.
>
>Science cannot be defined by its practice, the closer you get to this
>"practice" the more it dissapates, unless we use practice as a broad term
>meaning what scientists do when they do science.
That is precisely how I would define science. And, as I said, what that means is that to qualify as science, inquiry has to be a matter of subjecting more or less precisely defined propositions to empirical testing, these propositions being concerned with the nature, explanation, and prediction of the phenomena we are concerned with. There is, I agree, no universal scientific method, though as a matterof fact, the hypothetico-deductive model and Mill's methods are pretty good approximation of what most scientists do in their actual research.
Nor can a science be defined simply by its subject matter as you have read
my statement.
>
>An Ontological system such as Hegel's Logic is self-supporting and
>complete, yet has room enough to endlessly develop itself. Obviously most
>sciences have such room, are self-supporting (in reference to their subject
>matter) even if some are not yet complete there is no doubt they strive to
>complete concept (not the same thing as complete knowledge of a subject
>area).
>
The problem with such a Hegelian notion of s cience is that it presumes that we can have a priori knowledge of the ontological nature of the subject of science apart from the results of scientific inquiry. That gives a lot more credit to the power of raw thought than I think it has. Thus, for example, one might have thought, in the 19th century, that the ontological object os physics was the properties of mass and force. But reloativistic physics whos us that there is no such thing as mass, rather ther is mass-energy; and nos uch thing as force. Likewise, as with my discussion with Charles, many people thought in the 19th century that to qualify as scientific, a model had to be deterministic along Newtonian lines. Kant in fact believed that the fundamental premises of Newtonian mechanics could be shown to be a priori true. With the results of quantum physics, we know that this is not so. To wax Hegelian for a moment, the ontological nature and character of the object under scientific inquiry changes depending on the results of the inquiry. I would prefer to put this in realistic rather than absolute idealist terms: we fiund out a posteriori, as the results of our inquiry, what is the real nature of the objects we are interested in.
>It is the ontological nature of science which explains one of its most
>powerful features, the integration of "scientific knowledge" (read
>scientific theories). Newtonian conceptions were not thrown out, but "found
>their proper place" by the development of the science. It is the logic of
>the concepts and their relationship to the subject matter that makes it
>scientific.
I guess I would put my explanation of this point in realist terms: there is one world, and it is the way it is; we find out about it through scientific inquiry. If our theories are approximately true, they will be preserved at least as special cases or approximations. Thus Newtonian mechanics, though strictly false, except at the limit where spacetime is flat (and, to betechnical, the velocity of light is inifinite_, is preserved rather than discarded, as phlogiston theory of Aristotlean physic was discarded, because it is good enough for most purposes, and a lot earier to use for building bridges or launching rockets than relativistic physics. Most of the relativistic effect aren't significantly detectible at low velocities or in the small regions of spacetime in which we work.
>
>So-called "scientific practice" much lauded but very difficult to actually
>pin down in any meaningful way. The so-called practice is just a number of
>mediating conceptions useful for creating ideas, testing them and debating
>them but does not produce the reliable system it is often purported to be.
By this do you mean that there has not been any successful attempt to formulate a general scientific method? In a sense this is true, but, as I noted, for most purposes, the rough and ready schematization of the H-D model and Mills' methods does just fine.
In short science can only be known by its product, a coherent, logical,
interrelated concept of the subject matter.
>
This is not correct. Science is not just a body of theories, nor a concept of the subject matter of those theories. It is the entire social practice that produces those theories. The discoverer of the nature of benzene, whose name escapes me just now--he was Hungarian--maybe Kekule?--fell asleep reading Hegel's Philosophy of History, a common consequence of reading Hegel, with the discussion of the myth of the World Serpent in Hindu mythology, who encircles the world and has his tail in mouth. He awoke with a start, and realized that benzene is a hexagonal ring. That was insight, but it wasn't science. It wasn't science until he subjected it to the usual sorts of tests. One can't realiably generate chemical insights by reading Hegel. In fact, there is no reliable way of generating insights. But the way you find out about chemistry is by doing the thiungs chemists do to test your chemical insights, however tiu get them.
>However science begins and ends with a ontological conception.
Does this mean that you start and end with an idea of how things are, of the
nature and character of the subject of inquiry? As a realist, I think so,
but many scientists are positivists, are are just interested in accurate
predictions. I don't think you can account for scientific unification and
other features of science as a social practice unless realism is true. But
realism is not a necessary part of the practice of scientists. At least they
don't have to believe it. In college, I was despairing over how to
understand the collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics. I could
do the math, which I can't any more, but I couldn't grasp what was
happening. My physics teacher, John Wheeler, a Nobel prize winner btw, told
me not to worry. "An electron is just an equation," he said.
>
>Science is distinctly non-ideological, not that ideology does infect >it,
>and it is often expressed through ideological conceptions, but at >its core
>is a logical conception (theory) which relates to the body of >logical
>conceptions which define the science and in turn relate it to reality.
I have no idea wqhat this means. I understand ideology to be a set of beliefs that are systematically distorted by interests so that they tend to be false in a certain way. I think science is nonideological because the interests that drive it tend to produce true beliefs. In my view, this is connectedw ith the fact that there is a real world in the following way. The world is as it is, and unless we get it right, it will frustrate our attempts to manipulate it to get what we want. The world is not in itself sensitive to our wishes and desires. Certain interests, such as commercial interests in manipulating nature to achieve certain results, such as to synthesize dyes, drive scientists and those who employ them and fund their research, to master the refractory nature of things, and turn them to our use. Other interests, such as the interest in maintaining power, drive ideologists and those who employ them to cover up and distort the way things are, such as to deny that people are equally fit to rule. So realism plays into the picture, but I don't think in the way that you suggest.
>
>Distill the ideology out of sciencific publications and what you are left
>with but a growing body of phenomenological logic.
I don't know what this means.
> Caught in the social production of such knowledge scientists are some of the worst ideologues for what they do, enmeshed in a form of intellectual production they constantly get the theory mixed up with the means of debate, the illustrations (the demonstration) with the actual proof (which is always rational and real)
I don't think these things are seperable for the reasons explained.
>and a primitive objectivism which they cannot really explain but is there
>somehow.
Well, I am a certainly a fan of primitive objectivism, as is now clear. Many scientists are not. Maybe most are not. Certainly experimentral physicists and wuantum physicists are not.
>
>As for HIstorical Materialism being a science, well that depends on what is
>meant by science
Surely.
>- it is certainly not the science as most scientists would have it -
If not, then it is not science. That's almost true by definition.
>
>MY point about this is that there is a complete conception of Historical
>Materialism despite the fact that most of us disagree as to what that is
>and hence hanker after imaginary flavours.
I disagree. Historical materialism is at most a tradition of research. It encompasses many contradictory ideas, some of which may be more or less adequate. We don't which until we try to apply it and develop them and seewhat they explain. There is almsot no likelihood that these will ever emerge into a coherent, stable, relatively closed body of theory like Newtonian mechanics.
>having a whole lot of unrealted theories bussed under the title of
>Hiostorical Materialism makes fertile ground for ideological fanatsies.
Well, that's our situation. And hankering after The Ideal Theory buried in the text is a waste of time. It's not in the text. It hasn't been formulated yet. Our job is to think it up, not to find it in what has already been said. Of course we can refer to what's been said, but textual analysis will only produce better knowledge of what has been said, not what is true.
>My point is that we need to address Historical Materialism seriously and
>with rigor, we need to aim to understand the complete system, understand
>the role that different parts play and from this pose real questions and
>seek real answers. Less than this is juvenile coimic-book stuff and society
>as a whole has out-grown such nonsense though our movement wallows in such
>purile past-times.
>
Quite right, but you and I have very different notions of what that
involves.
jks
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