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Well, someone has to play devil's advocate here. 
Once again, simply because of ********'s, shall we say, eccentricities, the points he makes are ruthlessly and unfortunately swept aside as mad ravings by the rest of the "normal" populace in PDD.
One point I'd like to bring up is that ******** is often making sociological/philosophical statements that literal-minded, strictly-scientific people are dismissing out of hand, especially when they're presented in slightly cryptic & occasionally grammatically incorrect English.
E.g., Krypton, I believe you completely missed the whole point of the USENET issue. He was not using a USENET post to back up a scientific claim. He was bringing up USENET in a sociological context to illustrate social truths -- basically showing how it is a tool of a socially constructed reality. That what people will take as true more often than not comes from these kinds of sources, which includes news reports, hearsay, and so on.
The notion of scientific research as a source of truth is a very recent newcomer, historically speaking, and is an odd fit to our cognitive capacities, which have evolved to construct a reality based on what our fellow tribesmen/women reported to us, as well as to folk notions of biology, astronomy, etc., which are basically "hacks" in our minds to try to understand the world around us, in a very un-scientific way -- using the strict meaning of the concept. ("Folk" here used in the sense of folk psychology).
I understand that as a forum for debate, the PDD has a very heavy emphasis on citing sources and so on, but this often misses the philosophical/historical side that ******** refers to. His talk about social truth versus scientific truth is very much in the vein of serious debates in the HPS field (History and Philosophy of Science). Basically, the study of science and how it operates, what it actually is, the nature of its claims, its limits, etc.
I wouldn't be surprised if many people here didn't know that the notion of "scientific reality" is heavily disputed in such areas of academia worldwide -- including such famous places as the London School of Economics (weird place to be an HPS hotspot, I know, but there's history behind that) where the famous Karl Popper made his mark. I.e., the notions of "realism" versus "anti-realism", e.g., whether atoms can be really said to be real. Of course, the literal minded (and philosophically unsophisticated) "scientific" person might think, "Of course atoms are real!!11" but upon reflection on history (hence the emphasis of history in the HPS field), the scientific notion of an atom has gone through very large shifts, unrecognizable to each other. E.g., from the Bohr model of an atom with discrete subatomic particles physically circling around a nucleus, to the current quantum mechanic notion of a probability cloud with no certain location for any particle. With this in mind, what on earth are we referring to when we talk about "atoms"? Are we referring to the theories? In which case we're not talking about "reality". Are we referring to the atoms "out there"? But what do these look like, if we keep changing our minds about them? Perhaps the most we can say is that we can only talk about atoms, with regards to their properties or how they interact with with each other and with the laws of nature -- which is the only thing that science can uncover. But we can't talk about what they actually are, since we don't really know. This is the position of the "structural realist" as opposed to the "entity realist" (who believes atoms are really real as depicted in their theoretical descriptions).
But aside from the position of realism is the whole other realm of anti-realism. One point that is naturally hinted at from the discussion of atomic theory changes is that of the so-called Pessimistic Induction -- that is, that since each and every scientific theory in the past has been eventually shown to be incorrect (history presents a "graveyard" of scientific theories), so, by induction, our current theories will eventually be shown to be wrong, and replaced by "better" and "more accurate" theories which will themselves, eventually, be displaced as well. In light of this, how can we seriously talk about the objects that science discusses as actual, "real" things, if our ideas about their very existence or natures will drastically change in the future? This is the position of the anti-realist.
Then there are sociological considerations to the philosophy of science, the sub-field called the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge or SSK. This part of the article will undoubtedly shed light on ********'s approach on "social truth" (the quote discusses the arguably more interesting form of SSK called the "strong programme"):
| quote: | | ...strong sociology/ the strong programme does not deny the existence of a human-independent reality. Neither does it affirm that all knowledge claims are 'really true' just because the relevant community accepts them as true. The position of strong sociology is that sociologically interesting knowledge (e.g. institutionalised forms of knowledge) are human products even when they have been formulated as a result of interaction with a human-independent physical world as is the case in the so-called natural sciences. Such sociologically interesting knowledge is not given with the physical world but is a product of group/social processes. Passively observing the world will not convince 'rational' individuals to assent to such knowledge. |
This is saying that "scientific facts" are not necessarily just objective truths that we are discovering about the world, but are largely accurate and tentative notions (which we shall loosely call "truth") that are heavily influenced and shaped by the sociological forces that they arise in. Science is, after all, a human pursuit, made by humans with all our flawed and evolutionarily hacked cognitive systems, not the product of some Uber-rational perfect beings that make no mistakes (regarding mistakes, think back to the considerations from the pessimistic induction). Thus, "scientific facts" are human products as the article states, not Dictates from Reality.
Obviously this is not claiming that all our scientific knowledge is worthless -- far from it. I fully trust science whenever I use my computer or step on a plane or -- while we're at it -- when the question of the moon landings comes up. And if it seems that this is what is being claimed, then I think that's just because my knowledge of HPS/SSK is very rusty (it's been a few years).
So note that I'm just presenting HPS/SSK at a very brief/incomplete/inaccurate level, in order to try to show that ******** is making interesting points that people are completely overlooking in their blindness caused by mouth-frothing demands for citations, coupled with a prejudicial contempt for ******** as a person. For shame!! Mind you, it doesn't help that ******** himself doesn't address some of these things directly, so in the end, each "side" speaks over the head of the other, and it all gets reduced to ad hominem nonsense, with most people ganging up on ********.
I've noticed this unfortunate pattern with most threads ******** gets involved in, and I at least would be very happy if it all stopped (even if I'm just mostly a lurker and rarely participate directly). There's too much ad hominem on these boards anyway, which sours the otherwise interesting discussions.
P.S. If anyone is intrigued at all by the talk of philosophy of science -- and I don't see how anyone interested in science here wouldn't be! -- I heartily recommend you read up on it in Wikipedia and other "trusted" sources, then follow their references. Reading an introductory textbook is even better, and auditing or sitting in on a local university/college introductory course on Philosophy or History of Science is ideal (with the instructor's permission of course).
[EDIT: for clarification]
Last edited by Alccode on Jul-28-2009 at 21:52
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Finally, the right and left wingers are reconciled!
