The word "science," of which Chuck gave common definitions, implies -- nay, means -- systematic knowledge. Of course pure comprehensive systematic knowledge is impossible, and I suppose if you tried really really hard you could find something you could, with some willfullness, interpret as systematic in a baby's or antelope's cognition, but the concepts are still quite different.
Also, even though I keep needling Charles over his symboling obsession, I think this is one place where you probably do need language. Which babies do not possess.
--- On Wed, 9/2/09, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
>
> The problems with suggesting that science doesn't
> correspond to the ideal
> definition of science are 1) as Shag suggested, the
> impossibility of an
> inductive and objectively naturalistic science - it is a
> social relation
> sometimes tragically and sometimes farcically practiced
> under conditions
> direction found and transmitted from the past and 2) once
> the ideal
> definition is abandoned, the uniqueness of Science goes out
> the window and,
> upon close investigation, its knowledge production
> processes run remarkably
> parallel to the others you want to place elsewhere and
> probably below.
>
> Moreover, what residual uniqueness there is can be found
> Science's almost
> transcendent tendency towards reductionism and the
> ideological commitment to
> generate technical solutions to social problems...
> solutions that tend to
> bracket or displace staggering percentages of problem
> causality. These
> institutional priorities, it can be argued, have nothing to
> do with (pure)
> Science and everything to do with the (impure) Society
> within which Science
> must operate but the idea that a pure Science would emerge
> if we could
> purify/perfect Society fundamentally misunderstands
> everything we know about
> the partiality and non-innocence of all situated knowledges
> and standpoint
> epistemologies.
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