JUSTIN:
">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."
We certainly disagree here - science is its end product that is theory. How that theory is produced encompasses a great variety of means even within the single science (even within a single field within a science). What you give is a sociological understanding of the science industry, which of course has its place - but what is science? a mere social organisation?
Science is more than a form of social production - it is a very special product - it is the product, not the means of producing it which is the Science, precisely the theory - the rational understanding that it produces. Of course to produce this requires some special forms of production given all other social conditions but of course this is absolutely meaningless without its final product.
"Nor can a science be defined simply by its subject matter as you have read my statement."
I am sorry I am using subject matter in its theoretical sense, that is the basic conception on which a particular science rests. Obviously in reality nothing exists as descreet subject matters, chemistry, maths, physics etc are all a jumble and all found together. The subject matter of a science is in a sense its primary question and gives shape to the exploration no matter how elaborate and over-lapping it becomes.
JUSTIN:
">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 science 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."
Justin the suggestion of apriori knowledge may be an extreme interpretation, obviously I suggest no such thing. But lets look at it closely, are you suggesting that we can begin a scientific enquiry of any kind without a prior notion of subject of science, I assume when put this way, you would agree it is absurd. Now we may have derived our idea of science from previous results and we can easily in our imagination tumble this backwards to the first explanations of nature - however at some point, long before scientific practice was established a particular form of understanding was scientific as against all non-scientific understandings - what is the defining characteristic of this other then its logical (hence ontological) assumptions - hence it becomes an explaintation within a prior given concept of rational "scientific" explanation.
It is a circle that cannot be got out of, but no magic is needed to create it, simply the desire to know the logic of a thing-in-itself, rather than as thing-for-us (this has a social basis of its own but that is a bigger question).
JUSTIN: "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."
Justin your criticism makes sense if you assume that such an ontological concept can only come about fully formed (that would indeed require a great deal of apriori knowledge). Worse you assume that the ontological concept once created does not move with the reality it hopes to apprehend. Both assumptions are unnecessary. The concept of subject matter is the base of the onotology, this is not beyond change and refinemenmt and occassionally when the science becomes mature enough - amalgamtion with what was seen as separate subject matter.
The concept of the subject matter is the first limit which gives shape to the science, on close inspection often this appears quite arbitrary (ie chemistry as against phyicis, as against bioology ect), but looking at the development of understanding the rational relationships between topics within each, the same limits seem all too purposeful and very useful. So what gives? simply smaller ontologies working within larger and often more general ontologies.
Ontologies are not the means of scientific enquiry, but the expression of their findings and what finally judges them as scientific (and some time overturns or otherwise modifies what was previously there). The end product is the production of rational understandings of reality which is meaningless outside the entire onotology (E=MC2 can have tremendous meaning or none at all depending on this context alone).
JUSTIN: "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."
Inquiry is a method and methods themselves do not produce results by themselves, the human mind can make the jump of understanding something that may or may not be posed by a method of inquiry, but then this understanding has to be rendered into something which fits it into a greater body of abstract knowledge.
Yes we have a single real world, but we have a multitude of different means to comprehend it - science is special and singular amongst these - the question is what makes it so?
The discreet theories of science sound convincing to those who already, perhaps unconsciously, understand the context. Years ago an anthropologist studying traditional aboriginal Australian's asked them about how babies where concieved - none of those questioned gave a biological answer, nor did they attempt to link the observations (amongst humans but they were keen naturalists also) with physical reproduction. The anthropologist concluded that they were ignorant of the physical nature of reproduction.
However, I believe this is not the case, hunter-gatherers have a gigantic and complex knowledge of the natural world rendered in spiritual expressions. I think if the anthropologist was able to pose the question in a way which was clear he would be told what copulation physically achieves - the problem is that this form of explanation has no place in such a society, it was not a case that did not know, but rather they could not concieve why anyone would want to know and hence they probably never thought of it.
Aboriginal trackers know animals so intimately that they can tell exactly what an animal was doing just from the marks left - they had viewed copulation thousands of times, and birth - in a sense simply creating a dialogue which gave them reason to put two and two together - the correct "scientific" answer would soon follow - in this sense they were not ignorant of biology just that they found the "scientific" quest rather arcane and useless. I also note that when the anthropologist explained the "science" the aboriginals did not express suprise but disinterest (probably I suspect because they viewed such a simple explanation as childish - true but useless, especially after giving the athropologist really useful knowledge on how children gained spritual ancestors from different places and circumstances of their birth as moderated by their kin relations).
Knowing something and knowing something scientifically are two distinct things.
JUSTIN: "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."
It is not just a body of theories, but a body of theories in distinct relationship with one another. The sociological explanation has some real historical sense to it, but it still does not differentiate science from any other product of the mind. The philosophy of science cannot be a sociology of science, nor even a history of it, it must be a logical exposition of what science is. Such an explanation relates science to the real world epistomological as a particular form of knowing which has very important attributes not duplicated in other systems.
Your point on intuative jumps which give solutions to scientific problems is in fact the necessary method of the mind in creating such solutions - but I agree it is no more science then the method approach you are promoting. Both are separate from the end product, though both might be necessary in creating it - what is the end product in this example - not the idea itself (the solution as imagined) nor the various experiments designed to prove the hypothesis (which is applicable in some sciences but not all), but the body of theory which emerged party by acceptance of the idea and partly from testing the hypothesis in order to accept the idea.
The proof is how it fits in realtionship to everything else (uneveness in development though often leaves some fragments floating about but this is the excpetion not the rule in science). The result stands then, at the end of the process, by itself as part of related body of science.
JUSTIN: ">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."
Think of an ontology as a spiral of understanding, each pass re-qualifies the start point, adding to it, departing from it but also returning to it as a clearer understanding of what was first approached. The spiral need never end, but perhaps it does exhaust all understanding based on its original approach (both are possible) in either case it can become part of a larger ontology without necessarily dispensing with it (consider the periodic table as a mini-spiral which includes far more in its assumptions then just a table).
When John Wheeler said that an electron is just an equation, I believe all he was saying was for the purpose of moving ahead leave that particular spiral alone. I am ingnorant of such high physics, but I don't think, he, or you actually believe an electron is just an equation, rather it says that the equation for whatever reasons is the best "picture" you can get of one within that context - perhaps for this form of science that is all an electron can be, that asking more understanding means travelling elsewhere or just getting lost between sciences.
JUSTIN:
">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."
Justin you have to forgive my clumsy expression, what you have said above is what I was attempting to say. My philosophical bias is that I have to resolve the question epistomologically while you are approaching it historically. Now most of this appears to be talking at cross purposes. Historical Materialism and many other things (such as sociology etc - soft sciences) would not fit into a meaningful historical explanation.
As the whole thing turns on the claim of whether of not HM is scientific this is barking up the wrong tree. From a phiolosophical-espitomological point (albeit from a particular school of philisophy) yes it is. But not from a historical point of view - hence I think our cross purposes.
JUSTIN:
">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."
Simply the same thing you said a paragraph before (clumsy expression I am affraid).
<SNIP>
JUSTIN:
">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."
But Justin you pluck the key part out when you throw away Hegel - take this out and all the major interconnections drop away - we get young Marx and old Marx, Marx the economist, Marx the politician, Marx the philosopher. We end up with lost of discreet theories all mixed up with each other - the traditional mess.
No-one wants the mechanisalism of Newtonian theory, but if you are looking at a system (rather then a mechanical variety of it) it is there, I understand however how it appears to be absent and it was this that drove me to Hegel in the first place as I could not get HM as a whole. Hegel is the missing link.
Justine:
">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."
I can only say what place do you give Hegel's Science of Logic in all this? As I said if it is rejected we have what we have but what about if it is embraced?
<SNIP>
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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