From: "Ronald M. Carrier" <rcarrier-AT-suba.com> Subject: Re: Ideology: or, the "real" problem here... Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 17:49:04 -0500 (CDT) Greetings Ed Kazarian wrote: > To Ron: I had no intention of bashing science. I do think that > conditions of reality are different from reality to the extent that > they show that reality (no matter whose construct you are talking > about, science, politics, etc) has a history and, as a discursive > function, is a result of a process of selection. This is not to say > that what is selected isn't real, just that it isn't absolutely real. I > don't know a single scientist who'd deny this, frankly. This is what > they mean when they say they're using models. And I fully agree that > scientific models, take seriously, often have very interesting > philosophical possibilities. OK. So far we're on the same page. > What I was talking about was how certain > discourses, the kind we find on this list, or in journals, or in > classrooms, which try to problematize the usual discursive regimes of > "reality" or show that there are implications in some of this work that > people might not have seen, get selected/reduced by the application of > another and much more "normative" reality principle--what I was calling > NYT discourse--to the point where thier openendedness and fluidity is > replaced by a set of rigid, nearly dogmatic claims, and then it is > claimed: 'look how ridiculous this is, why are we giving these people > money/jobs, etc..." I see your point, I think. But at the same time, I want to say that not all problematizations (ouf!) of discursive regimes of "reality" (ouf!) are created equal. Here's what I mean: although my AOS (or more accurately, potential AOS, as I'm still a graduate student) is not the philosophy of science, I do have some familiarity with the philosophy and the sociology of science as it currently stands. The problem with the great majority of work in the philosophy and the sociology of science is that the philosophers and sociologists are...well, philosophers and sociologists. That is to say, neither the philosophers nor the sociologists really _know_ science, in the sense of knowing enough about the theories and the practice of a particular science in order to participate productively in that particular science. The majority of philosophers and sociologists couldn't pass muster in the scientific fields that are their subjects of study. (Northwestern is exceptional in possessing _two_ philosophers of science who can pass muster, Arthur Fine and David Hull). In my experience, the main defect of most critical examinations of science as a practice is that those who produce them don't know enough (about) science in order to make their critical examinations worthwhile. (And so far as I can tell, critical examinations of science are pretty much the only critiques in which it is not considered a fault to have little familiarity with the object of critique!) Now, that's bad enough as it is as long as such faulty critiques circulate primarily within academic circles (not that scientists are particularly concerned by them, since scientists rightly feel little need to seek legitimacy for science as a practice from philosophy or sociology). But what's the likely effect when such faulty critiques of science--and especially the anti-realist ones of the sort that Sokal pillories--get into "public circulation"? Given the level of fearful incomprehension of science out there, is not the likely effect of these faulty anti-realist critiques to reinforce this fearful incomprehension? And this has happened already: advocates of creationism appeal to anti-realist accounts of scientific practice in order to bolster their claim that evolutionary biology is "just a theory" that ought not to be given preference over the first two chapters of _Genesis_. > I think scientific discourse is one of the most > openended there is, but that it can be, and is reterritorialized in the > same way as academic discourse often is. All I was trying to say is > that the entire affair seems to me to be an example of a kind of > reterritorialization that we ought to watch out for. I see your point. At the same time, though, I can't help but notice that science--not so much the products of science as the practice of science--seems to have a pretty weak hold on the imagination and intellects of the American public. If anything gets flattened out more through a normalizing popularization than critical examinations of science, it is science itself. Witness the drivel about quantum-mechanical "explanations" of psychic phenomena and the sheer incomprehension that manifests itself in the face of evolutionary biology. I can see why one would be worried about reterritorializations that have the effect of closing off the critical examination of scientific practice. But I hope I have made clear why I'm more worried about reterritorializations that have the effect of closing off the _pursuit_ of scientific practice, of which I think there are far too many, within and without the groves of Academe. Later... -- Ronald M. Carrier rcarrier-AT-suba.com (or: rcarrier-AT-casbah.acns.nwu.edu) Philosophy, Northwestern U. "Philosophy--I'm only in it for the money." ------------------
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