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Re: Social Science, Science, and Empirical Study by Mike Alexander 16 July 2002 02:39 UTC |
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[Luke:] Here’s the clincher of where I
see a problem in your argument. You
say “scientists are still the empirically-focused materialists we
always were when we are doing science.”
What does this really mean? … I understand the ‘when we are doing
science’ part. What I don’t
understand is the term “empirically-focused materialists.” That expression is very
problematic. By way of an example,
I looked up the definitions
of dialectic and historical materialism on Louis Proyect’s Marxism Mailing List
site. As far as I can tell, there’s
really nothing in those definitions that could pose an irreconcilable difference
with Chaos, Complexity, Relativity theory, or Quantum Mechanics. Nothing whatsoever. {Even I, with my own philosophical
commitments to Western Classical thought, literary models for the sake of
expressing certain important principles in human experience and the natural
world, plus my great interest in the above theories of C,C,R, and QM – but also
Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetics and Whole Systems Theory, even I could
legitimately be a historical or dialectical ‘materialist’ and still keep my
commitments to all these other models as well.} There’s really nothing in the
definitions given that could exclude or contradict the basic premises of any of
these other fields. (At least
that’s my own personal opinion, no more and no less.)
[Mike:] I also see nothing
irreconcilable about materialist viewpoints and C, C, R, and QM.
[Luke:] Yet, if we look at the use of the term ‘materialist’ as
it’s used in public (which is a model that posits a universe of objective,
static-state matter {set against another view of the cosmos as being one of
fluid-dynamism with layer upon layer of matter-force-energy relationships within
itself}) there’s a level of meaning that’s not in the definitions; a level of
meaning having more to do with what I call normalism, manifest objects, ‘what
you see is what you get’, and the idea that matter is “just stuff” (as I’ve
explained in earlier posts here on WSN).
[Mike:]
I don't see how materialism makes any claim about the motion of matter (e.g.
static). I used it in the sense that materialist don't invoke supernatural
or relgious explanations. A scientists may be very devoutly
religious, but he will refrain from incorporating religious doctrine into his
scientific theories. If he doesn't not, he ceases to be a scientist, as
for example practitioners of "creation science".
I still am
not following what you mean by matter-force-energy relationships, and
fluid-dynamism. Can you give some explicit
examples?
[Luke:] The ‘materialism’ of the “Material
Girl” (Madonna) is a very different materialism from the ‘materialism’
[and thus the empirically-focused materialism] of scientists.
[Mike:]
I did not mean to use the word in this sense.
[Luke:] ...the field one’s in, very
much so, determines/(picks & chooses) the manner of empiric orientation and
the kinds of data scientist utilizes in his or her own field).
[Mike:] Well of course. You did
not address my point that empirical demonstration is a key element of
science. Scientists need to be convinced that an idea "works" before they
will buy it.
[Luke:]
But Science is still about the episteme of trying to understand the
nature, processes, and phenomena of the universe primarily. Only secondarily is it about how we use
it to improve peoples lot in life.
And, this is true for both the Natural/Physical Sciences and the Social
Sciences]
[Mike:] Here you are talking about the
different goals between science and technology, which I discussed
before. I don't see how the basic activities or approaches of the two are
different. Both science and engineering use a type of knowledge
aquisition based on observation, reasoning, and repeatability. Their
approach is quite different from that of the religious mystic, the artist, the
lawyer or the philosopher.
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