Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1998 15:50:44 NZST
Subject: Re: PKF: Walking On


So many things to think about.

Sorry Alexander I'll have to get back to you later (really I will).

Firstly to Viktor - Okay so Bill made a small slip perhaps he should
have said that social factors influence science, but thats by the by.
Though funnily enough in his work Socio(onto)logy Ben Agger talks
about they way disciplines discipline their followers. So if some of
us are sociologists then it would make sense to say that our
discipline (whatever branch(es) of sociology we follow) may indeed
stucture the sort of arguments we might make about "science" and the
sorts of facts about science we regard as relevant to research. And if
some of us are sociologists who are doing science then ..... need I
say more.

Now Bill wrote lots including

>... it does not follow that theoreticians or experimenters ought
>somehow to apply some sort of Kentucky windage to their work to
>compensate for these things. I doubt very much whether the conceptual
>and analytical tools exist to support this. Even if a "general model
>of reality" is inaccessible to us, we must try and do the best we can
>with the tools that we do have at our disposal. Old socialists like
>Jan Osers understood that much. So what if certain truths, values and
>facts, eluded them ? It is better, in my view, to maintain a firm
>grasp of the obvious, than to grasp nothing at all.

I agree all we can do is try our best. In fact I don't know about
where you are but politicians here are constantly telling us exactly
that. They are always it seems doing the best thing for the country no
matter what it is they are doing. But Bill just because they are
trying their level best doesn't mean they have a firm grasp of
anything at all. An opinion I can promise you I am not alone in
sharing in this country. My point is that attempts to create a general
theory in spheres like politics are doomed to failure from the start.
Because no parties here at least can argee on the facts, the truth,
and which values are better to hold than others.  Each party though is
sure of one thing, that is that they know best.

In New Zealand the public became so fed up with the lies and broken
promises fed to us by politicians with their TINA (there is no
alternative) speak that we changed our system of parliament from a
first past the post system to a mixed member proportional (MMP)
system, in the hope that having more alternative voices in the house
would alter the way business there was conducted. Unfortunately though
after our only MMP election so far we discovered that the lies and
broken promises continued unabated and further that the behaviour of
members actually degenerated!!! So now we are faced with the prospect
of having a referendum on whether we should return to the old system
or change again to another one.

Anyway back to the point it seems that in the area of politics we can
form all the general theories we want but never reach agreement and as
a consequence in my opinion stuff up the country and on a larger scale
the world. If on the other hand we apply Feyerabend's methodological
anarchism and move away from that wonderful positivism that you praise
at the end of your letter and towards a system that seeks out
alternative viewpoints instead of not even considering them I might be
able to say as you imply thar "hey they goofed but at least they tried
their best". Our mistake here if you like was to change the
parliamentary system without some sort of parliamentary reform before
hand (ie we should have changed the way parliament works before hand).

Bill also wrote some stuff about "what is" and "what was"

Well I guess if we could agree on what is and what was we wouldn't all
be enjoying this conversation would we. 

By the by what is Kentuky windage?



Mike Eathorne-Gould
(michael-AT-sol.otago.ac.nz)
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