Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 08:12:00 +0200
Subject: BHA: object, subject and socail action(know-how)



Colin 

I'm putting together these thoughts could, you please help read through.


Why is science or scientific research done at all? Is it for it's practical
consequences i.e. problem solving etc? Holme and Solvang writes that value
free and objective social sciences is possible and that knowledge and
interest are relational therefore the object of study and the researcher
have the same relationship to there environment. 

There is a problem with this statement and its object relationship, which
takes us back to object and subject dualism which explanatory theory is
trying to solve. Doing science is not like hunting or faking in love that
one has to be fully involved.

Philosophical ontologies articulate the specific contents of the world,
which are characterised as intransitive objects of specific epistemics of
scientific programmes. Notice too that philosophy as any other science
branch does not exist independent of the sciences and other social practice
forms, which it can arguably be written, is derived from or is about.
Scientific ontologies represent the general categorical form (facts) of the
world as presupposed by the nature of scientific or other activities. Not
how a scientist reason about objects of science. A bad behaved son is not a
mere neurological processes a reason why children behaviour in urban
centres and rural areas might differ radically. Object of science as people
actions, have given degrees of abilities or potentials, which can be acted
upon differently in differing environments. 

It is the cradle of intransitivity and transitivity of objects of knowledge
and as such the object and subject relationship falls apart and Freudian
science can be brought back into material social processes.  

Even if it is categorically clear that science should be space and time
specific, the above statement might lead to scientific objects being
reduced not to their emanate effects but to evaluation starting points of a
scientist who does this science. It is here the present scientific
structures excrete the categorical mistakes or error. An assumption that
geometry can exist without geometrical objects. That love can be taught
without experiencing it, that trust can exist without practising it. 

What is meant, is the fact that objects of science have inherent power, the
emergent power or causal powers, the generative mechanism to generate
knowledge independent of the scientist? A criminologist does not create his
or her knowledge but the objects of crime under study generates that
knowledge therefore a criminologist (scientist) only organises that
knowledge to make it intelligible. 

A psychologist does not create meaning, as a fictional novelist but rather
put together split and deformed experiences of the object under study in
order for those experiences to be understood. It is more evident in
development psychology, where human behaviour is inherently the same and
does not radically change unless they are influenced. We can likewise
relate the above statement with present social issues, the development of
industrial social structures, their subsequent decline and the behaviour
arrays they do generate. 

There are several issues, which one has to put in mind. For any field of
scientific descriptions, explanations and predictions, object of science
are not bound to a scientist relationship to the object in reality. Science
has social implications for example in social fields but also in the
technological  field. 
Depression, stress, crime, abnormal behaviour, magnetism, photosynthesis,
chemical reactions are effects of an underlying substructure. It is true
that some of these variables are rampant in state. 

That is how we have to take social practices as technology itself.

Technology, the-know-how are not moral judgements but rather genuinely
prescriptive, practical and evaluative rational social practices, which do
not practically follow empirical statements of fact and scientific
theories. Moreover knowing how to go about - social doing is a technical
knows how of life and the technology of social being.



















_____________

Bwanika 

url:      http://www.uganda.co.ug
e-mail  uhpl-AT-starcom.co.ug
           Bwanika-AT-telia.com

tel:       +256 (0) 41- 23 57 98 / 23 59 10
           







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