Previously I suggested that science is best judged from its explanation (end product) rather than the practices that lead to it. Obviously not all explanations are equal and scientific ones require a defining and exclusive premise.
I originally called the premise the "subject matter" which immediately lead to all kinds of needless confusions.Unfortunately I have found no other more suitable term, so I need to qualify it. Subject matter in this context does not mean some objective thing out there, rather a particular conception of subject matter which in turn relates to what is there in objective reality (hence it is some steps removed from a direct equation between the concept and the reality).
Reality is not made up of descreet bits, yet the idea of a subject matter makes is a premise which assumes ripping a part from the whole. The very articificalness of this procedure means that not any conception of the subject matter will do, but rather the base conception must somehow define the subject matter that are compatable to the specific interconnections with the rest of the universe.
Now the first objection to this is that such understandings are rarely if ever concieved by scientists themselves (who get by fine presuming them to be simply present in reality rather than artifically constructed) and where stated in the history of science are rarely so well stated to make such an assumption clear.
However some deductive reasoning is also required. That science is a rational understanding of the real world cannot be doubted (however incomplete this may be), it would nlot be useful in the way it is without this being its basis. That it is a rational explanation also suggests other forms of explanation are somehow basically irrational (not that they are without reason and sophistication) - how then are we to tell the difference (individual and historical errors aside)?
First individual theories from science can appear equal to individual theories from other modes of thought especially when viewed in the traditional opposition of "some people believe X but science says Y".
Only once science is accepted as a whole do such oppositions carry any wieght (but this is where the illusion is - in this form they carry no wieght but pander to our biases).
Science as a whole (as a number of related and rational explanations) does carry wieght (ie as a series of related onotologies however superficially understood), especially when something of its subject matter crops up within a different world conception (the earth is not carried on the back of a great turtle).
This example, partly illustrates why science is not just a rational ontology (many religions can claim this) but a case of such ontologies resting (limited and determined) by a particular (implicitly also rational and implicitly ontological) conception of a subject matter.
It is beyond my abilities to go much further than this, clearly if this holds the secret of science is the particular way the subject matter is conceived, but if we take this as a general point that is all scientific onotologies rest implicitly on a scientific conception of subject matter then we can see this as standing in the middle between science as its end result and the practices which lead to it.
The conception of the subject matter (what properly belongs or does not belong to it) mediates all the various practices (some purely speculative, others observational and experimental). The practices feed into it and the end-product flows out of it - moreover, there is not another way to assess science and leave it distinct from other forms of knowledge and perhaps this is the critical part - science as mere practice does nothing more than science as a given and practical explanation, niether solve the riddle.
Subject matter not only sets the limits (that is what belongs and does not belong) it also determines the method of explanation (again this depends on a particular conception of subject matter).
>From time to time subject matters become subsumed under other subject matters, sometimes the subject matter itself seems to dissolve and become something else (the transition between alchemy to chemistry to phyiscs etc), but in all this change something of its former self mainatains itself (the experiemental method of chemistry relies heavily on the practice and conceptions of alchemy even though it has long been overtaken).
The trouble with using scientific practice as the defining point of science, is that it is incapable of grasping why a theory (insight) may be negelected at some point only to be taken up at another, or how sciences become enmeshed in errors of their own making which if looked upon at any particular time contain just as much ideology as rationalism, at another time this same ideology is put aside and a new burst of rationality replaces it.
Likewise, how previous theories such as Newtonian ideas are subsumed by latter developments (in hegelian paralnce sublamated - ie negated, cancelled, subsumed but also changed, preserved and retained) are not understandable by scientific practice or science as a given explanation (unless by special explanation).
Science as a series of distinct but related ontologies does not give a magical insight or even a handy definition - but rather points out an area (a subject material) upon which science stands, however this is more philosphic area then we need to deal with (and one quite beyond my capabilities). Scienists don't need to worry themselves with such things, in a sense a good scienitist assumes all of this unconsciously, while bad scientists would make a hash out of any such speculation.
Why discuss it all then? I justify it this way - when a science is going well, no one needs to really think about such things - scientitists just keep on doing what they do - but what about when things are going badly in a science - when things have ground into well worn grooves and refuse to move meanigfully out of them - that is when the science becomes stuck!
At such a point it would serves any scientist well to rethink their subject matter and review the development opf the ontology of their field based on this. In this way by reforming (bettrer understanding) the actual subject matter usually serves in shifting the whole ontology forward and often into unexpected areas.
The big jumps in science have often come about in this way - science before Einstien's famous E=MC2 saw energy and mass as two separate realms (as two subject matters), in one blow Einstien shifted the subject matter (combining and redefining what was thought to be distinct and largely unrealted). Science (after the inevitable lag before the obvious is apprieciated for what it is) jumped forward.
Historical Materialism is stuck - whether you see it as a science or not. No Einstien will supply us with a forumar to get unstuck, but we do need to do what Einstien did, that is look at all the parts not as separate and unrealted stand-alone theories, but as related parts of a whole - in essense we need to redifne and recombine our subject matter and shift the whole enterprise up a notch.
Greg Schofield Perth Australia g_schofield at dingoblue.net.au _______________________________________________ _______________________________________________
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