The following is based on part eleven of Jacob Bronowski’s BBC series on the history of science and invention, “The Ascent of Man” (1973). This one is about quantum physics:
We used to think that science could give us a perfect picture of the material world. But we now know, because of quantum physics in the 1900s, that absolute knowledge is impossible. There is a limit to what we can know – even with the most perfect and most powerful instruments imaginable.
For example, with a high-powered electron microscope you can see atoms. Yet no matter how much you increase the power you will never get a sharp image.
Even something as simple and straightforward as the position of a star in the sky is not perfectly knowable: different human observers come up with different positions and even the same person repeating the observation does not come up with the very same answer each time.
Karl Gauss in 1795 noticed that the observations made a bell curve – the closer you get to the average position, the more observations there are. But you cannot even say that the star is at the average position – all you can say is that it is the most probable position, which is not quite the same thing as its true position.
Gauss lived in Gottingen, a small German university town. It was here, over a hundred years later, in the 1920s, that some of the leading minds of physics came on the train from Berlin to work out the physics of the atom and its parts: quantum physics.
The atom is made of moving parts, such as the electron, and yet there is something very strange about them. Werner Heisenberg in 1927 found that you can tell what the position of an electron is but not its speed and direction – or, if you nail down its speed and direction, then you cannot tell its position. It is one or the other but never both at the same time. This is Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
Gottingen had something else: a collection of skulls. These skulls were used to support a racist view of the world, a view of the world that dealt in inhuman certainties. It came to power in the person of Hitler. The skies darkened over Europe, as they had in the days of Galileo. The great minds of Europe fled – or fell silent:
It’s said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That’s false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
See also:
- Jacob Bronowski: Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people – the conclusion of this part
- Jacob Bronowski: World Within World – part ten
- Jacob Bronowski: The Starry Messenger – about Galileo
- Hitler
And yet we social scientists are still accused of practicing “fuzzy” science.
As your article points out, the only difference between the social and physical sciences is that we have to deal with chaos on a much more macro scale. The underlying fundamentals, however, are the same.
I particularly enjoyed the shout out to the skull collection. Because anthropology learned to accept relativism and uncertainty long before, say, chemistry and biology, the biodeterminist view of race was destroyed in our branch of the sciences quite early.
People like our pal Steve Sailer and his sock-puppet RR think that they can put the genie back into the bottle with genetics. Their goal is to return us to that determinist view of science and these are usually the first guys who complain that the social sciences are being “politically correct” when we reject their “evidence”.
But they are being deeply unscientific. They want to renew in biology a determinist dynamic that is on the way out in all the sciences.
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There is a number of points about this pos. Here are a few random thoughts, in no specific order.
1. The natural sciences (physics, chemistry, etc) are ‘easier’ to predict than the ‘social sciences’ (psychology, economics etc) primarily because the former is based on ‘laws of nature’ whereas the latter involves ‘human activities’ where humans have choice (ie free-will). Its the free-will of human beings to make choices, whereas it assumed a stone has no such choices is teh ultimate difference.
2. There is a danger of ‘reductionism’ ie the world on the micro level may operate in a completely different way to the macro world. So ‘the whole may be greater than the sum of its parts’. In other words reducing an analysis of the world to atoms etc is not a ‘perspective’ that most human would conceive. Most would view themselves as being a free-agent in a society/world but not as a collection of electrons etc
3. Science is culturally relative
4. Science is not ‘objective’ its defined by a stricture of rules derived from a given society/culture.
5. Science as we have it now is a eurocentric conception. Egyptian culture undertook many technological enterprises that involved mathematics, like the building of the pyramids etc. However, in the Western world, it is considered that
‘science’ (ie the ability to reason and rationalise) could not occur before the Greeks came on the scene
(ie 550- 330 BC)
6. The world of Quantam Physics has opened our thinking to a world that is not ‘fixed’ and ‘rigid’ and determined upon the laws of ‘Mother Nature’
7. There is an ‘arrogance’ and also a ‘humility’ with ‘knowledge’. Since with knowledge can also come ‘absolute power’. The wise person will reside within the latter (ie humility). Most of us will find ourself in the former (ie arrogance).
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Well…….
1) Free will isn’t so much a problem in sociology and anthropology because we don’t try to predict individual actions but the actions of people in aggregate – what Durkheim calls the “social reality”. Like many laymen, you seem to confuse the purpose of sociology with that of psychology. Societies do not have free will. They are not even, in fact, actors: societies do not “decide” to do anything. They are chaotic constructs, much like the weather or the flow of water: where an individual atom goes is unimportant, but the over all flow can definitely be descried even somewhat predicted.
2) Again, Durkheim came to this conclusion re: society in the 1890s, far ahead of physicists. Not what you’d expect of a “soft science”…
3) Is it now? How so? I’m not saying I disagree, but I wonder if you have an operational explanaitoin for this or if it’s just some convenient rhetoric you’ve picked up in order to not have to think about what science is. Personally, I’m sick of hearing fairly ignorant, poor kids tell me that they “don’t need to know that stuff ’cause it’s all made up by Europeans, anyhow”.
4) Define “objective”, please. Because Descartes certainly doesn’t presume that science is “objective” in the sense that you seem to use it.
5) Not so sure about your comment that “the West” believes that science began with the Greeks. I was always taught that it began with the Egyptians, myself. Seems lkike this is more rhetoric than real, though of course there are racist sciences teachers like you claim. It seems to me that this contradicts your points #3 and 4 above. Either the Egyptians taught the Greeks – and thus the science we study has its roots in Africa, not Europe – or Egyptian science was completely different from greek science because the two were “different cultures”. You want your cake and you want to eat it, too, J: either science is on to some transcultural truths or your point regarding the Egyptians is of no consequence whatsoever. 😀
6) Ah, yes. Quantum physics. Another deeply European concept, no? So why is this preferable to any of that other dead white guys stuff?
7) If you want to talk “arrogance”, I find nothing more arrogant than the complete dismissal of the work of millions of humans simply because it’s “eurocentric”. Now, I’m not saying this is what you’re doing, but I’ve heard trhe same arguments used by kids who don’t want to study and who thus lcok themselves in ignorance and poverty.
I’ll say this: after close to a decade of administring classes in Rio de Janeiro, mostly among the poor and working classes, the arrogance of the poor with regards to knowledge is absolutely stunning.
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This is what bothers me now, political ideology has become a certainty and in some instances become a religious certainty. I hadn’t realized this until I became immersed in the blogosphere. I get the feeling that those that espouse liberty the most are the ones who would be most readily to deny it. I wrote an essay in which a commenter referenced Bronomski.
http://hathor-sekhmet.blogspot.com/2007/05/arrogance-of-angels.html
This is why it is becoming more difficult to govern and too many citizens take comfort in that certainty.
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Thad,
“They are not even, in fact, actors: societies do not “decide” to do anything. They are chaotic constructs, much like the weather or the flow of water: where an individual atom goes is unimportant, but the over all flow can definitely be descried even somewhat predicted.”
It is important where an individual atom goes or what it does that is how our physical world is constructed. How molecules are made and even with the uncertainty of the location of an electron there are boundaries. Other wise the molecules will not hold together. It is not chaos.
I think you need to know much more about the physical sciences, before you make comparisons.
J.
The scientific method is design to prevent bias, although data can be manipulated. The experiment to back your theory up has to be able to be duplicated by another party and results scrutinized by peers. Science is not Eurocentric, you need to look at the rest of the world.
Great cities of the ancient world have been destroyed by fire, natural disasters and wars. Anthropologist try to reconstruct those societies to find the lost cultures and their level of science and technology.
Political ideology is what is driving the divide of Western
Civilization. At one time the whole of the Mediterranean was included also more of Africa and the Middle East. Since WWI, this has changed.
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Thad
I do not understand your response. I wrote and gave you my opinions.
I was not directly referring to you except for in point 1, where I attempt to show why the West prefer ‘natural sciences’ to the ‘social sciences’.
Further you make claims for things I say that I did not
eg “Quantum physics. Another deeply European concept…?”
I am not sure if it is wise for me to go into what I perceive
as your eurocentric outlook here.
For instance you say societies are constructs, but I put it to you who makes society. Is it not human beings??
It is clear to me that our initial convesation on Brazil has
in effect affected your perceprtion of me and this post.
this is worrying…and this is the ‘humility’ aspect I was referring to in my last point..
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Briefly, since I have to rush off here…
With regard to
The scientific method is design to prevent bias, although data can be manipulated. The experiment to back your theory up has to be able to be duplicated by another party and results scrutinized by peers. Science is not Eurocentric, you need to look at the rest of the world.
I think you do not understand the nuance of my argument.
Science (the study of knowledge) and teh scientific method (the methodology and tool to get you to the study of knowledge) are two things that are inter-related but also different.
The scientific method as used in the West is based upon
’empiricism’ ie you observe a phenomena in the world, you note it, then you come up with a hypothesis to explain it. Thereafter you then proceed to test it through experimentation. After many tests, if you can predict the outcome. Then theory is held to be true. Until another theory comes along that can give a greater understanding.
This is teh Western Scientific method.
However, from an Afrocentric perspective Egyptian science was different. the aim was to elevate man to a higher consciousness.
There was also an integration of the universe so unlike teh West they did not make a distinction of matter and mind like Descartes.
Where Descartes wrote, I think therefore I am. The African would write: “I think therefore I am, but also and equally important because we are I am”
The difference between the two positions is taht one relies on individualism for ‘existence’. The latter relies on the ‘community’ and without the traditional African outlook on community. There cannot be any individual.
It is these subtle differences taht i am referring to..
Hope this clarifies somewhat
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abagond, you wrote:
“For example, with a high-powered electron miscroscope you can see atoms. Yet no matter how much you increase the power you will never get a sharp image.”
It appears you are claiming that a thing does not exist if man cannot see it.
Of course the physical world comprises molecules, atoms and the components of atoms. Despite our limited powers of observation the elemental parts exist, and we are able to manipulate those parts to our advantage.
Unfortunately, the world is filled with people who have absurd, bizarre and naive explanations, definitions and descriptions for things that are invisible or intangible.
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Hathor sez:
It is important where an individual atom goes or what it does that is how our physical world is constructed. How molecules are made and even with the uncertainty of the location of an electron there are boundaries. Other wise the molecules will not hold together. It is not chaos.
I think you need to know much more about the physical sciences, before you make comparisons.
Yes, it’s important. When your object of study is ATOMIC. When your object of study is complex flows, no it is not that important what one atom is going to do. And individual human actions are likewise important – to psychologists. They are less so to sociologists.
I’m not making an absolute division here. Obviously, the physicist who concentrates on complex flows had better know atomic structures and sociologists need to have a working knowledge of psychology. Nevertheless, the metaphor stands, Hathor.
I know a fair amount about the physical sciences, btw. Certainly more than your average physical scientist knows about the social sciences.
The scientific method is design to prevent bias, although data can be manipulated. The experiment to back your theory up has to be able to be duplicated by another party and results scrutinized by peers. Science is not Eurocentric, you need to look at the rest of the world.
Precisely. Science, like religion, can be seen as “eurocentric” under the current sociohistorical regime. That does not invalidate the concept of science, nor make science itself “western” or “european” or what have you.
J asks:
For instance you say societies are constructs, but I put it to you who makes society. Is it not human beings??
Yes. And billions upon billions of water atoms make a river, no? And yet the river does not behave as a single water atom does. It is, in fact, a completely different phenomenon entirely, for all that it is made up of water atoms.
So the human individual and human society. Society is not simply psychology written large, J. It’s another animal entirely.
BtW, J empiricism is hardly an exclusively western concept. It occurs in many peoples’ philosophies. And you betray your fundamental misunderstanding of how human culture and history works when you say “The African would write: ‘I think therefore I am, but also and equally important because we are I am'”
THE African, J? Bushmen, Yoruba, Egyptians and Ethiopians all together, huh? They all have the same philosophical and cultural view, do they…?
It seems to me that your view has more to do with American protestant transcendentalism and romantic communualism than anything African. You project onto the entirety of Africa a view built by 19th and 20th century Americans.
There is no singular African tradition of “community” and corporativism is a pre-industrial, pre-urban human trait in general. Durkheim’s entire view on human social change was predicated on the observable fact that Europeans were moving from communalism and corporativism to individualism.
You thus apply “community” as if it were exclusive to Africa in opposition to an “individualism” that’s supposedly essentially European when, in fact, both of these aspects of human social life have more to do with technological and economic shifts – shifts which Europe happened to pioneer but which are by no means exclusive to Europe.
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It appears you are claiming that a thing does not exist if man cannot see it.
Didn’t understand the point at all, as per usual.
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I am caught with doing six million other things but here goes a quick response..
Thad cannot you see the contradictions in your arguments??
For instance we can speak of a Scientific method and outlook that is Western and European.
However, no ‘European’/Western scholar would think to suggest and say would a 14th Century Albanian think in this way??
Would a 7th century Hungarian historian think this way??
and so forth.
What happens is the Western world has a tradition of what Science and the scientific method is starting from Greece, up to the period of enlightenment. In a way Abagond’s post using Bronowski in fact reinforces the point.
So when I speak of an African collective outlook, in the same way that Western people do for their nations.
A spurious form of reasoning, in my opinion comes into play.
Using your own reasoning and carrying it to its logical end then there can be no European/Western way of looking at things simply because as you say:
“There is no singular African tradition of “community” “
As there is no singular ‘African tradition’ then the same can be applied to the Western World also. ‘mutatis mutandis’
However, this is something Western academics are reluctantto do but eager to do when an African centred perspective is postulated
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J,
What you speak of is philosophy, not science.
The development of geometry by Egyptians moved philosophy into mathematics, so I am certain that their science moved away from philosophy. The introduction of logic and proofs ( in Geometry ) provided the basis for the scientific method. Much of what was Greek was Egyptian, but as I have said quite a bit of their original knowledge had been lost.
For me the only thing that defines science is the method. It helps to keep out religion, ethnocentrism, nationalism and politics from determining the physical world. A society that has to deal with modern problems has to deal with facts, not how we wish the world to be. This is quite often how we wind up with thinking we are ascendant to God.
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What contradiction, J?
You SERIOUSLY believe that empiricism was a “western” invention, do you? That’s as silly as saying that “god” is a western invention.
As for “collective outlooks” as a social scientist and a historian, I would NEVER use that concept for collectivities on the level of races or continents, be they African or European.
You’re correct: there IS NO “european/western” way of looking at things, just like there’s no African way. But then again, YOU were the person who brought up those adjectives, J. Not me.
You’re making a strawman, friend. You’re trying to ascribe to me a position which you yourself hold. I’m not the guy claiming science is “western”: you are. Thus your objection that somehow I’m reifying the west but not Africa has no basis to it whatsoever.
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Methodology is a good starting point for making difference between rigid sciences and social disciplines/humanities.
But is it?
Problem number one: There was a whole pretty serious school of thought which tried to use scientific method on humanities and other non-rigid-non-natural sciences (such as sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history…) There are still people who try to apply this method.
Problem number two: It’s impossible to be fully objective and absolute. A science might be about physical world, but scientists are humans. They are subjective beings. Consciously or subconsciously, they will incorporate their beliefs, norms and their view of the world into their work. It’s impossible to escape it. One should wonder if scientists should even try to escape.
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Thanks Hathor…
I am referring to the scientific method under the subject of
‘philosophy of science’.
I would also add that science is not ‘objective’, even the issue of perception is culturally conditioned.
Finally what I was trying to get at and I have decided to move away from Egypt is tha the Harrapan (Indian) civilisation had a different outlook (here read Scientific method and also outlook ) to the world than modern day Western science.
‘Science’ if you use a working definition that it involves man’s understanding of his/her environment and/or place in the world. Then all human beings participate in ‘science’.
However, this participation by all cultures is not exactly the same. Since each culture will view the world differently, they will have a different emphasis and so on and so on…
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With regard to
“What contradiction, J?
You SERIOUSLY believe that empiricism was a “western” invention, do you? That’s as silly as saying that “god” is a western invention”.
Nowhere in my writings did I say this…
I am glad you concur that:
“You’re correct: there IS NO “european/western” way of looking at things, just like there’s no African way..”
This then ultimately mean that Western science as highlighted in Abagond post here cannot be true and further still the term ‘Western Science’ would also be a misnomer.
Moving on slightly, I would like to add that Mira made some very good points…
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Concur?
J, the point I have been making for ages is precisely this and you only twig to it now? 😀
And, by the way, where is the concept “Western science” used in this post?
YOU were the person who brought the term up, J: no one else. If the use of “wsetern” is thus a misnomer, friend, then it’s your misnomer, not mine, Abagond’s or Hathor’s.
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Not quite… I had inkling this might be your view.
However, and even you must concede that your views, are not in keeping with the ‘World’ – if you permit me to use that term.
This is why I introduced the term ‘Western Science’ because for the vast majority it is NOT a misnomer.
So if the world can recognise a ‘Western science’ then why cannot it equally recognise an ‘African science’??
Its one thing to have a view on the world like there
is no such thing as ‘race’, and/or ‘Western science’ and yet another to what is believed and actually takes place in the real world.
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Mira,
In order to eliminate bias, the experiment has to be reproducible, fit the mathematics of the discipline and is scrutinized under peer review. There is quite a lot of competition in scientific theories, so peers are not looking to give other scientist a free ride.
Two things that would be of extreme use, cold fusion and finding the unified theory. The cold fusion experiment touted some years ago has yet to be reproduced. If this could work, it would solve the worlds energy problem. There is tremendous bias in wanting it to work, but it has not been possible.
For years Einstein struggled to tie in gravity with the nuclear forces, could not get to the point of designing even a thought experiment, the math just wouldn’t work. In the future another scientist might just find the unified theory and find the experiment to prove the theory.
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Forgive me here
With regard to:
“In order to eliminate bias, the experiment has to be reproducible, fit the mathematics of the discipline and is scrutinized under peer review”
This is the aim and the objective but it still does not eliminate the ‘bias’.
For instance in looking at the ‘material world’ many in the ‘West’ would suggest that matter is ‘dead’
This position is derived from a cultural outlook, and a host of other factors.
Looking at the same material world there are others who would view the ‘material world’ as ‘alive’
In this instance who is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’??
Its an issue of ‘perspectives’ (ie here read ‘bias’ which is pre-determined by a cultural outlook etc)…
And from these each different perspectives of the same entity, scientific theories would be postulated
If you follow the reasoning…
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<
@Hathor
Mira,
In order to eliminate bias, the experiment has to be reproducible, fit the mathematics of the discipline and is scrutinized under peer review. There is quite a lot of competition in scientific theories, so peers are not looking to give other scientist a free ride.
True. However, before the experiment, there must be a hypothesis, and before it, there must be a question. A scientist must form a question, or to see a problem he or she wants to solve or to explain. The way scientists form their questions, choose problems or define hypothesis is subjective. And yes, it depends on where and when scientist in question lives and works.
In other words, science is subjective and culturally specific as any other thing.
For years Einstein struggled to tie in gravity with the nuclear forces, could not get to the point of designing even a thought experiment, the math just wouldn’t work. In the future another scientist might just find the unified theory and find the experiment to prove the theory.
They are trying to prove it, but it’s not an easy thing to do. Proving relativistic theory wasn’t easy, and this one is more difficult/complicated. They are trying to understand universe better (hence all those particle colliders).
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J.
That is a metaphysical property.
If a stone falls on your head and cracks your skull does it matter if it is alive or dead and it doesn’t change the rate it falls or the force that it hits you.
Now how you might deal with being hit might be determined by whether you believe matter is alive or dead.
Just how would you think scientist would think of matter, when they know that atomic particles are in motion unless they are at absolute zero and matter is composed of atomic particles and that matter is equivalent to energy and the limits of their knowledge tells them that neither can be created or destroyed.
I don’t think dead or alive can even describe the universe, myself
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Apart from what I am trying to say here – and by the look of things it does not seem to be that clear…ha ha
I would say I am in total agreement with all that Mira has said thus far.
There is also another issue in the ‘Philosophy of science’ viz. that scientific theory can never never be ‘proven to be true’ but they can be demonstrated to be ‘false’ (Karl Popper/the falsification theory) by the inherent logic processes at work
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And in agreeing with Mira, I observe he says:
“In other words, science is subjective and culturally specific as any other thing”.
which is something I also said, re-reading through the post viz.
“3. Science is culturally relative
4. Science is not ‘objective’ its defined by a stricture of rules derived from a given society/culture”.
SNAP – I think…’I’ve Got the Power’ ha ha ha ha
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Mira,
I see the many questions in science as not being culturally specific. I would agree the problems of a society guides scientific inquiry along those lines, but I think the general curiosity of humans is very broad. I think it is similar across cultures. As children we always ask why and one of the first things we look at is the sky. Man across the board got the correlation between the sun and moon with growing food and the seasons. The stars fascinated us. Defining the universe is a basic human endeavor.
I would say the social sciences would probably be more prone to have the biases of the culture, but in some cases the physical sciences have pushed out the bias as biology making the case that race isn’t a scientific theory.
There is somewhere in some corner of some little known college, garage, desert, rain forest, mountain or ocean; a scientist whose research is based only on a hunch he has had from childhood. One of those “why questions” that never got answered as a child.
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Mira and J,
I hope that neither of you are scientist.
You have boxed yourselves in, leaving no room for imagination to conceptualize the problem or the question.
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Anyone got a bit of time on their hand..he he
This book: What Is This Thing Called Science
discusses some of the issues here
and the good thing about the book, as long as you have the time – its easy to read
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=WQh5wDlE8cwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=What+is+this+thing+called+science&source=bl&ots=QunCVQPYc1&sig=49NzFnQ8H5R3FHeKOl7Xk75gHOw&hl=en&ei=HxRnS_v9E8OQjAfv–CsBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CA8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=&f=false
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@Hathor
I see the many questions in science as not being culturally specific. I would agree the problems of a society guides scientific inquiry along those lines, but I think the general curiosity of humans is very broad. I think it is similar across cultures. As children we always ask why and one of the first things we look at is the sky. Man across the board got the correlation between the sun and moon with growing food and the seasons. The stars fascinated us. Defining the universe is a basic human endeavor.
True. And I am not saying scientists are 100% subjective and unable to work outside their cultural norm.
However, people who work in natural sciences often forget that their field of work is not as absolute defined, as rigid, as – as they want to believe. There’s always a subjective part, and culture does make an impact.
Special relativity, for example. It’s really surprising it was a white man (of a western culture) who came to this idea. Even today, it’s considered to be one of the most complicated fields in physics, something it’s really difficult for many students to understand. However, I’ve been told that the way of thinking needed to understand laws of relativity is the norm in some other cultures (I believe some Native American cultures were mentioned). To them, it’s an easy thing to understand special relativity, but not some other concepts that western scientists (and students) understand more easily.
I wrote a paper on this matter recently, about astronomy in Ancient Greece, and whether it’s culturally specific for their given time and place, and if it’s possible to speak of cultural heritage when it comes to natural sciences.
@J
Mira is a she. 😛 I know I use a guy as my avatar and it often confuses people, but I am a girl.
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@Hathor
I am an archaeologist (with certain knowledge of sciences like astronomy- not much, but more than an average archaeologist). While I do respect processual archaeology, my method is more in line with post-processual archaeology. In other words, no, I don’t apply scientific method.
What is interesting is that you accuse J and me of being “unimaginative”, while we’re trying to point that being fully objective (absolute, rigid) scientist is impossible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processual_archaeology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-processual_archaeology
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However, and even you must concede that your views, are not in keeping with the ‘World’ – if you permit me to use that term.
Why? You can ask “the world” what it thinks, can you? 😀
What you’re saying here, J, is “I believe that everyone believes something simply because I say it’s so.” Where’s your proof the world thinks this way?
Finally, what does “the world’s” thoughts have to do with the topic at hand anyhow? You weren’t originally criticizing science because “the world” thought it “western”: YOU were making that claim.
It is a false claim and it makes no difference whether or not “the world” believes that bs in the context of what we’re discussing here.
Looking at the same material world there are others who would view the ‘material world’ as ‘alive’
In this instance who is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’??
Define you variables and publish proof. If we can get your results to work for us, then it’s a pretty good indication that you’re on to something. This is what empiricism is all about, J. This is what “scientific proof” is.
It is not an “issue of perspective”: it’s an issue of reasonably objective proof. “Objective” here meaning that other people can see what you’re seeing and reproduce your results.
No, the world does not happen in your head, J. It has an existence that is separate from you. That is the big objective/subjective split you seem to be on about and that view is not specifically western. Other peoples and philosophies have similar ideas.
And no, a scientific theory cannot be postulated from a position that says “The world is as I choose to see it.” Sorry. Can’t be done.
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Hi Mira
Forgive me there…
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Thad
With regard to your last post, it is clear you do not understand what I am saying.
Rather you are hearing that what you want to hear in my words but not that what I am telling you.
As I said in a different post. its good if one takes the time to read peoples’ post carefully, before making what ends up as un-wanted comments.
I kindly ask you to re-read my posts again.
And then come back and tell me, what it is that Iam saying…NOT what you think I am saying, irrespective of whether you disagree with it or not??
Then I will reiterate what my position is/was.
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J, I think you’ve made your position quite clear. You believe that science is a “western” thing, correct?
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Hi Mira
Forgive me there…
It’s ok. Like I said, it’s partly my fault for having a guy on my avatar. 🙂
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Again that is not my position – even though you did not take the time to re-read what I said and ‘jumped the gun’
What I am saying is that the methodology of Science today is derived from the Western tradition and culture and in essence world-view.
However, if we look at another group in ancient history ie the Chinese.
Then you will see they had different concepts ie they believed in feng shui, astrology, Taoism, ying and yang and so forth.
These concepts and names are intrinsic to Chinese culture but they do not appear in the Western tradition.
So with regard to the science of medicine for instance the Chinese believed that many health problems is the result of the life-force ‘chi’ being blocked or diminished within the human structure.
So there focus with regard to health is based upon re-dressing this issue.
The Western model of health is one based on the disease model viz. the body is sick or at a ‘dis ease’ and some form of medication must be found to cure it.
This is why ChinesE use accupunture to cure ‘ill-health’ and many in the West refuse to believe in it.
And again the principle of Tai Chi as a way of improving healthwas practised within China for thousands of year. However, it is only within the last 50 years or so it has caught on the West.
This is what I am referring to when I wrote that
Science AS WE HAVE IT NOW is a eurocentric conception.
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OK, J, I say “You believe that science is a western thing”.
You say I don’t get it and then state:
What I am saying is that the methodology of Science today is derived from the Western tradition and culture and in essence world-view.
…which, of course, is essentially the same thing. Then, to prove my point, you bring up Chinese mysticism – NOT Chinese empiricism – as an example of what you might consider to be a non-western “science”.
I’m hearing you quite clearly, J. I’m reading your points quite clearly. I do not agree with them. That’s different from not understanding them.
Acupuncture, which you bring up, is indeed a good example of Chinese empiricism. It works, observably so, but we don’t know why. It has thus been incorporated into what you call “western” science. In my city, people with certain problems routinely get referred to acupuncturists and our medical system is quite scientific, thanks.
So acupuncture is a great example of why science is not western, but transcultural.
Now, if your point is that most practicioners of science have historically come from a certain restricted set of backgrounds and that this has introduced certain cultural biases, I agree.
But “science as we have it now is eurocentric”?
C’mon, man. Open your eyes. Science is less eurocentric now than ever before. When I walk the corridors of major American physical science departments, the names on the doors are like as not from India, Pakistan, Africa and even China.
Science is very non-Western today and moving ever more so in that direction. Why does it take so long? Because it’s by nature a slow process and this has only been going on for 60 years or so.
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What you have written in your last post is in agreement with what I say, even if you do not belive it.
So I am going to use your own words to demonstrate the point.
1. OK, J, I say “You believe that science is a western thing”.
2. What I (ie J) am saying is that the methodology of Science today is derived from the Western tradition and culture and in essence world-view
3. I’m hearing you quite clearly, J. I’m reading your points quite clearly. I DO NOT AGREE WITH THEM. That’s different from not understanding them.
4. Now, if your point is that most practicioners of science have historically come from a certain restricted set of backgrounds AND THAT THIS HAS INTRODUCED CERTAIN CULTURAL BIASES…THEN I AGREE
5. But “science as we have it now is eurocentric”? (quoting J)
6. C’mon, man. Open your eyes. SCIENCE IS LESS EUROCENTRIC NOW…THAN EVER
7. Science is very non-Western today…AND MOVING EVER MORE SO IN THAT DIRECTION.
WHY DOES IT TAKE SO LONG? Because it’s by nature a slow process and THIS HAS ONLY BEEN GOING ON FOR 60 YEARS OR SO.
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Like it or not, science is objective — it goes where the facts lead.
Force = mass times acceleration. Energy = 1/2 mass times velocity squared. These are basic facts of physics.
Accupuncture, on the other hand, is NOT science. Though sticking pins in humans at specific sites might affect humans in some way, that hardly qualifies the practice as a “science.” Like getting a massage, the results are of dubious value.
The issue here boils down to the mis-use of the word “science.” To make it work here, it gets a modified definition that equates “science” with “skill” or “practice.”
Meanwhile, in the scientific quest for facts, many avenues and paths are explored, and then dropped when ideas fail the basic requirements of the “Scientific Method.”
On the other hand, when it comes to all the fuzzy stuff of “social sciences”, then even the total failure of an idea is not enough to toss it on the reject pile.
The economic failure of North Korea and Cuba has not deterred those who believe in Marxism. Venezuela may be the next nation to experience Marxist failure.
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And yet we social scientists are still accused of practicing “fuzzy” science.
As your article points out, the only difference between the social and physical sciences is that we have to deal with chaos on a much more macro scale. The underlying fundamentals, however, are the same.
I particularly enjoyed the shout out to the skull collection. Because anthropology learned to accept relativism and uncertainty long before, say, chemistry and biology, the biodeterminist view of race was destroyed in our branch of the sciences quite early.
People like our pal Steve Sailer and his sock-puppet RR think that they can put the genie back into the bottle with genetics. Their goal is to return us to that determinist view of science and these are usually the first guys who complain that the social sciences are being “politically correct” when we reject their “evidence”.
But they are being deeply unscientific. They want to renew in biology a determinist dynamic that is on the way out in all the sciences.
Far from acknowledging uncertainties involved in studying humans, in the 20th century innumerable social scientists attached themselves to pseudo-sciences like Marxism and psychoanalysis. They claimed that these theories could explain human behavior, even though it was always abundantly clear that they lacked empirical support.
This tendency of social scientists to believe in whatever seems to confirm their socio-political fantasies is exemplified by cultural athropology. Boas and his followers did not replace a supposedly “biodeterminist” view of race with something more realistic but rather with a cultural determinist view that is as absurd as the most ridiculous caricature of “biodeterminism”.
It is blank slatism and cultural determinism that are being made obsolete by the progress of science. As Steven Pinker put it, “All behavior is the product of an inextricable interaction between heredity and environment during development, so the answer to all nature-nurture questions is ‘some of each.'” Or as Ernst Mayr, the world’s leading evolutionary biologist and taxonomist noted in 2002, “Those who subscribe to the opinion that there are no human races are obviously ignorant of modern biology.”
Rather than acknowledgement of uncertainty, what we have often seen in social science is obscurantism and nihilism in service of political ends.
The colossal failure of many fields of social science is seen in the fact that books written a hundred years ago or more, such as those of Durkheim, are still considered relevant in them. In actual sciences, something written a century ago is of interest mainly to historians of science. Science is progressive, or as Max Gluckman put it, “A science is any discipline in which the fool of this generation can go beyond the point reached by the genius of the last generation.” The sad fact is that in many social sciences there has been few new insights since the founding of the discipline.
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Absolute knowledge of some things are possible. Absolute knowledge of all things is impossible.
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Far from acknowledging uncertainties involved in studying humans, in the 20th century innumerable social scientists attached themselves to pseudo-sciences like Marxism and psychoanalysis.
As did numerous physical scientists (and let’s not mention science’s flirt with fascism…). If you’d look at the issue honestly, you’d see that the early 20th century was the time these ideologies were in full swing. The social sciences were no better nor worse than any other branch of science during this period.
This tendency of social scientists to believe in whatever seems to confirm their socio-political fantasies is exemplified by cultural athropology. Boas and his followers did not replace a supposedly “biodeterminist” view of race with something more realistic but rather with a cultural determinist view that is as absurd as the most ridiculous caricature of “biodeterminism”.
Actually, Boas was far from being a cultural determinist, though many of his followers certainly were. You’re right in criticizing cultural anthropology for being just as determinist as it’s social evolutionary or racialist predecessors. It’s worth pointing out, however, that Boas’ primary enemies in anthropology weren’t the racialists (or as you put it, the biodeterminists), but the social evolutionaries.
It is blank slatism and cultural determinism that are being made obsolete by the progress of science.
How anyone can associate “blank slatism” with “cultural determinism” is beyond me. Cultural determinism most certainly doesn’t presuppose a blank slate. It presupposes an immensely over-written and grossly predetermined slate.
“All behavior is the product of an inextricable interaction between heredity and environment during development, so the answer to all nature-nurture questions is ’some of each.’”
Quite true. And this was, of course, Boas’ point.
I dare you to find one article in Boas in which he claimed that culture determined every aspect of human life.
You’re setting up a strawman, Jack. Radical cultural determinism has been a minority position in anthropology for quite some time now. It’s supposed founder, Franz Boas, certainly didn’t believe in it.
“Those who subscribe to the opinion that there are no human races are obviously ignorant of modern biology.”
No, actually I’m quite cognizant of modern biology. In fact, I teach anthropology to biologists precisely BECAUSE I’m cognizant of both the biodeterminist position and the culturalist critique.
Mayr’s point is a bit of a rhetorical slight of hand, useful for convincing impressionable freshmen but not very impressive to his collegaues. Like many neo-racialists, he claims that the existence of patterns in human biology means that races exist. Nothing could be further from the truth and it would take a deeply cynical biologist to make this claim. Unfortunately, they are many deeply cynical – or simply ignorant – biologists.
The “race” concept was very clear: it supposed predetermined, wholistic and stable “packages” of human genes which, in turn, supposedly determined human behavior.
If there’s one thing modern biology has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s that genes don’t come in packages. The melanin content of your skin does not determine, say, whether or not you carry the gene for sycle cell anemia. The race concept, as historically constructed, believed this to not be the case. The best one can do with what we know today about genes is argue for some sort of statistical linkage. But linkage, as you know, does not imply causality and race was very much a determinist theory.
Mayr is thus doing his students a disservice when he implies that statisical linkages in genetic clines in human populations are, in fact “races”. The two concepts are completely different. This is a very transparent attempt to pour old wine into new bottles and Mayr should be ashamed of himself for mixing his political views with his science.
Rather than acknowledgement of uncertainty, what we have often seen in social science is obscurantism and nihilism in service of political ends.
Get down off your high horse, Jack. ALL science has been afflicted with obscurantism and nihilism and biology certainly doesn’t have a clean slate in that regard. Perhaps we should discuss biology’s role in giving scientific support to Hitler’s final solution…? That would be fun 😀
The colossal failure of many fields of social science is seen in the fact that books written a hundred years ago or more, such as those of Durkheim, are still considered relevant in them.
Of course, no one in biology reads hundred plus year old books. Perish the thought! The Origin of Species was thrown on the dust heap of history by biologists decades ago… And hell, Einstein? Physicists don’t use him anymore! He’s obsolete! And the only interest they have in Newton is purely historical, as you mention. As for mathematicians, they certainly don’t use any theorems which were developed more than 20 years ago.[roll eyes] ¨
Are you SURE you’re a scientist, Jack? You sound more like a polemicist who’s read a few googles articles about science.
Actually, we probably could use a little more classicism and “back-to-roots” courses in the social sciences. At the UW Madison, for example (widely recognized as the U.S. primier sociology department) one is liable to have only two classes which even touch on the Three Little Piggies (Marx, Durkheim, Weber). Most students get through their undergrad programs without having read more than a couple of chapters of each.
The vast majority of what’s used in the social science classroom today has been developed since the 1970s on. In my view, we are the poorer for it.
Jack, I admire your rhetorical style and especially your habit of stating mistruths with authority, as if they were unargueable facts. However, it’s pretty obvious that you don’t know sweet f#$%-all about the social sciences and how they work, or the history of science in general, beyond what you’ve managed to round up on Wikipedia.
But hell, it’s amazing to me that you’ve managed to complain, in the same virtual breath, that social science swings along with every pop breeze that blows our way and yet still has not changed one iota since the mid-1840s. 😀
Your argument would have a lot more rhetorical “oompf” if you just stuck with one of these suppositions. As is, you’re what we call in Portuguese a “metralhadora giratoria”, spraying bullets all over the landscape.
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I have to agree with Jack’s position.
With regard to science and the ability to derive known facts ‘knowledge’.
The natural sciences of (physics, biology etc) are way ahead of the ‘social sciences’.
I don’t even think it is a contested issue. Any attempt to portray the social sciences in the same light as the natural sciences here, in my opinion is totally misleading
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As did numerous physical scientists (and let’s not mention science’s flirt with fascism…). If you’d look at the issue honestly, you’d see that the early 20th century was the time these ideologies were in full swing. The social sciences were no better nor worse than any other branch of science during this period.
The difference here is that Marxism, psychoanalysis etc. did not determine the substance of theories in the natural sciences, whereas that is exactly what happened with the social sciences. There are some exceptions to this, such as Lysenkoism in the Soviet Union, but, overall, politics did not prevent the progress of the natural sciences.
Actually, Boas was far from being a cultural determinist, though many of his followers certainly were. You’re right in criticizing cultural anthropology for being just as determinist as it’s social evolutionary or racialist predecessors. It’s worth pointing out, however, that Boas’ primary enemies in anthropology weren’t the racialists (or as you put it, the biodeterminists), but the social evolutionaries.
I said Boas and his followers. What is terrible is that some fields have not only failed to progress but have in fact regressed.
How anyone can associate “blank slatism” with “cultural determinism” is beyond me. Cultural determinism most certainly doesn’t presuppose a blank slate. It presupposes an immensely over-written and grossly predetermined slate.
That’s all semantics. I’m referring to people who refuse to even consider the possibility that variation or, conversely, cross-cultural similarity in a given behavior may be due to genetic causes.
The “race” concept was very clear: it supposed predetermined, wholistic and stable “packages” of human genes which, in turn, supposedly determined human behavior.
If there’s one thing modern biology has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s that genes don’t come in packages. The melanin content of your skin does not determine, say, whether or not you carry the gene for sycle cell anemia. The race concept, as historically constructed, believed this to not be the case. The best one can do with what we know today about genes is argue for some sort of statistical linkage. But linkage, as you know, does not imply causality and race was very much a determinist theory.
Racial categories have always been based on correlations between traits. In classical anthropology different races each had a different set of traits. Some or all traits may be found in all races (e.g. at least some people in all races have black hair), so what matters are the correlations between traits.
Nor was the cladistic nature of racial variation lost on even very early racial thinkers. Who and when do you think wrote the following anti-essentialist passage on race:
For although there seems to be so great a difference between widely separate nations, that you might easily take the inhabitants of the Cape of Good Hope, the Greenlanders, and the Circassians for so many different species of man, yet when the matter is thoroughly considered, you see that all do so run into one another, and that one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them.
It was none other than Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) whose five-race classification is the most influential one ever.
From Boas’s era, this is R.A. Fisher in his “Statistical Methods for Research Workers” (1925):
When a large number of individuals are measured in respect of physical dimensions, weight, colour, density, etc., it is possible to describe with some accuracy the population of which our experience may be regarded as a sample. By this means it may be possible to distinguish it from other populations differing in their genetic origin, or in environmental circumstances. Thus local races may be very different as populations, although individuals may overlap in all characters…
Thus it is really a straw man argument to assert that racial classification is biologically meaningless because races are not “predetermined, wholistic and stable ‘packages'”. This is driven home very eloquently by A.W.F. Edwards in this article. Many recent studies confirm Edwards’s argument empirically. For example, this picture of genetic clustering of Nigerian Yoruba (left), various sorts of Europeans (top center), and Japanese and Chinese (right) illustrates how correlations between traits (genetic variants in this case) give rise to distinct racial categories.
There are many sets of alleles that are more common in, say, the European cluster than the East Asian one, and vice versa. This may lead to behavioral differences. Whether you think races are real or not is really immaterial from this perspective. Geographically or otherwise separated populations differ from each other for the normal evolutionary reasons: isolation, drift, selection. It may not be possible to decide where the lines between races are, but what is clear is that geographically separated populations such as Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans form genetic clusters that are distinct from each other. To assert that there cannot be heritable differences in behavior between different races betrays a complete ignorance of modern population genetics.
Get down off your high horse, Jack. ALL science has been afflicted with obscurantism and nihilism and biology certainly doesn’t have a clean slate in that regard. Perhaps we should discuss biology’s role in giving scientific support to Hitler’s final solution…? That would be fun 😀
Natural sciences progressed at a brisk pace under Stalin and Hitler just as they do under Obama, whereas many social sciences did not and do not. That’s the difference. There are no equivalents in the natural sciences for the sort of anti-scientific nihilism exemplified by deconstruction and postmodernism.
Of course, no one in biology reads hundred plus year old books. Perish the thought! The Origin of Species was thrown on the dust heap of history by biologists decades ago… And hell, Einstein? Physicists don’t use him anymore! He’s obsolete! And the only interest they have in Newton is purely historical, as you mention. As for mathematicians, they certainly don’t use any theorems which were developed more than 20 years ago.[roll eyes]
Perhaps one in a thousand PhD physicists has read Newton’s Principia or any of Einstein’s papers. Similarly, biologists do not read The Origin. This is because all of these works have been superseded by newer ones. What was good in them has been incorporated in newer theories and books, while the bad bits have been discarded and forgotten. If you want to learn physics or biology, it would be crazy to read anything by Newton, Darwin or any other old fogey.
Are you SURE you’re a scientist, Jack? You sound more like a polemicist who’s read a few googles articles about science.
A scientist? Moi? Certainly not. There’s no money in it, so why bother;)
Jack, I admire your rhetorical style and especially your habit of stating mistruths with authority, as if they were unargueable facts. However, it’s pretty obvious that you don’t know sweet f#$%-all about the social sciences and how they work, or the history of science in general, beyond what you’ve managed to round up on Wikipedia.
Frankly, I must say the same of you.
But hell, it’s amazing to me that you’ve managed to complain, in the same virtual breath, that social science swings along with every pop breeze that blows our way and yet still has not changed one iota since the mid-1840s. 😀
There have been myriad intellectual fads, but relatively little accumulation of knowledge. That’s the problem. Of course this does not apply to all social science. Rather, I’m speaking of the likes of you who rail against “determinism” and “reductionism” (i.e. scientific thinking), while simultaneously making the most far-reaching conclusions based on the flimsiest data, as exemplified by this post of yours: http://omangueblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/black-women-and-white-men.html
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