File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_2003/bhaskar.0312, message 306


Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 11:59:56 +0000
From: "steve.devos" <steve.devos-AT-krokodile.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Voloshinov etc - response to Jamie/Marshall


Tobin

What worries me in  turn about 'realist' attitudes towards science is 
the tendency to believe that entities and scientific sub-disciplines and 
discourses like 'eugenics' might in any sense at all, not be human 
inventions but discoveries, as if a physics is not possible without the 
notion of gravity. Which could quite easily disapear tomorrow in a n ot 
dissimlar way that the entity dark matter is on the verge of going... 
Isn't it the case that the reason you believe in  socio-historical 
products because you have to be able to address these cases prior to 
history smoothing out the actual events?

Recently reading Zizek's reptitive comments against Habermas's arguments 
that some genetic scientific research should never take place - I have 
atypically found myself agreeing with Habermas rather than Zizek - (I 
think it's because of my liking for Lyotard...)

Whilst I have reservations of  writing notes about everyday objects - I 
am inclined to push for the extreme case in relation to Mt Fuji - this 
being that in all its senses it is a construction, an invention because 
the Real remains untouchable. (Besides it's not a mountain its a rubbish 
tip covered with the detritious of  human beings...)

The quote context was after a long system's analysis session in which 
I'd been interviewing him about a support system I was working on, after 
which we sat around drinking coffee and then vodka discussing  somewhat 
randomly string-theory (which i think had just been invented around 
then...) he was emphasizing the socio-historical context of all human 
and non -human knowledge. Obviously he was and is a realist - just one 
who believed that for example therre was nothing inevitable about the 
vistory of Max Planck over  Ernst Mach...

regards
steve

Tobin Nellhaus wrote:

>Hi Steve--
>
>Believe it or not, I'm actually sympathetic to certain aspects of
>constructivist theory, but only certain aspects.  Sometimes it's rather hard
>to tell whether constructivist language is literal, imprecise, or simply
>hyperbolic.  Consider this passage:
>
>  
>
>>                    A scientific entity can often take
>>hundreds of years of empirical and theoretical effort to invent and
>>locate, sometimes even to find them.  From an anti-realist understanding
>>you state that a scientific entity is an invention, created within very
>>obvious social and historical moments.
>>    
>>
>
>Taken in one sense, there is nothing that I find objectionable in this
>claim, insofar as it says that scientific (or for that matter, any)
>knowledge is a sociohistorical product.  CR supports this position.  The
>problem though is the term "invent": what exactly does it mean?  That there
>literally was no (say) gravity until someone came up with the idea? or, that
>the concept "gravity" is a social invention without any basis in concrete
>reality whatsoever? or, that the concept "gravity" is a social-rooted theory
>that is a serious effort to understand concrete reality (whether or not the
>theory is correct)? or something else?
>
>Or, to return to the Mt Fuji example, do you mean that Mt Fuji is a human
>invention, or that "Mt Fuji" is a human invention?  I consider the former
>claim false, but the latter one true.
>
>I'm also a bit skeptical about the position you relay:
>
>  
>
>>        As a high energy physicist once said to me over espresso and
>>vodka "... no no there is nothing inevitable about the atom...".
>>    
>>
>
>The quote sounds terribly out of context, and I'd be interested to know what
>the context was.  As we have it, it could be referring to the same issue as
>does the statement "there is nothing inevitable about homo sapiens."  All
>sorts of material contingencies are/were involved, and the universe doesn't
>require us to exist.  (And the way we're destroying our planet, we may well
>cease to.)  The physicist could also mean something like "the atom is an
>artifact or creation of human perception," alluding to the Copenhagen
>Interpretation of quantum mechanics, which (as is well known) Bohr advocated
>in order to preserve positivist conceptions of reality -- in other words,
>one needs to attend to the truly *ideological* character of the physicist's
>assertion, and not take it at face value (which, I'm sure you'll agree,
>would be naive).
>
>This is related to another difficulty, which is that people often conflate
>"scientific" with "true."  The theory of phlogiston *was* a scientific
>theory -- but it was wrong.  Things certainly get dicier with social issues,
>and I have little doubt that lots of mainstream economic theory consists of
>apologetics and rationalisms for capitalism, and that it's both wrong and
>wrongheaded; nevertheless I think it's reasonable to claim that mainstream
>economic theories are scientific.  Critical realists, at any rate, have to
>take seriously the implications of fallibilism, one of which is to
>acknowledge that false theories may nevertheless be valid scientific
>efforts.  One can say the same thing about the concept of a "gay gene,"
>which you hold up to scorn.  I don't know if there is or isn't a gay gene,
>but I do know that there are plenty of gays out there who believe that there
>is -- that their homosexuality is not a "lifestyle choice" or a "sin" or an
>"illness," but instead was something they were born with which caused them
>much pain and hardship but is not subject to "curing," "deprogramming," or
>"moral teaching."
>
>Meanwhile, I still would like you to respond to my question about the
>possibility of error.
>
>Thanks,
>
>T.
>
>---
>Tobin Nellhaus
>nellhaus-AT-mail.com
>"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce
>
>
>
>
>     --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>  
>


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