Re: Further thoughts on science as culture ...

Luke: (Previous Post) – Plain Text

Elson Boles – Bold Text

Luke Responds:- Plain Text Underlined

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Tell me: if science can't provide "truth", then what can it provide? Can science truly provide us with "knowledge" of any sort? Boles: Truth, no. Knowledge, of course.

Luke: Isn’t some knowledge at a certain pt. dependent on principles of “truth?”

Also, if it is a just a system of meaning, then doesn't this rule really extend then as well to the data we collect in science, the information we organize, and even our overall perceptions/ readings/and observations in scientific investigations? Isn't this material also and equally shaped/skewed by our systems of meaning? Boles: "Just" doesn't make sense to me. Meaning-systems are significant for the participants. Yes, all the data, etc. is part of, in this case, the scientific meaning system.

Yes. I would agree they hold relevance for the participants. But must they not also hold significance in- and-of-themselves even before we come to the matter of “significance for the participants?” … By mentioning about ‘science being “just” {another} system of meaning’, I was placing emphasis on what I see as the problem of ‘systems of meaning’ arguments. They can’t distinguish between say the imagined ideal of the old Yugoslavian state and the more grounded system we know as “scientific inquiry.” Science-as-method (empirical investigation) and “Science/Scientia”-as-knowing (epistemology) will always be more real than “Yugoslavia” ever was because they can be something more than being purely self-referential. Even if only to a smaller degree, they can be other-referential.

However, if you can make the case that they are also just self-referential as other [meaning] systems are, then they might have to be purely or merely “cultural.” But I’m really not so sure we want to go down that route, because it entails defining/redefining “science” and “social science” as being part of the humanities. Do we really wish to make that claim? I’m sure the classical humanists would love us for it, but it does render the higher order of scientific investigation rather useless. Being as it would be just self-referential and cultural, telling us more about ourselves than about our world, science would have no more valid case in explaining the world the way it does than Biblical Fundamentalists do by using what’s afforded them in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. And, would you be willing to argue they are both on the same par? … If not, then “science” must be more than being merely a system of meaning. Or, if you are still insistent on science being a meaning system, then at the very least we must make the further argument that there are various gradations of meaning systems; science and epistemology must be on a higher level than “imagined communities” (ala Benedict Anderson and his very interesting concept). Otherwise “nations” would have to be as real as what we know about our world through Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Social Science. I’m not sure I’d be willing to go that far. Would you?

You're argument while stripping away at the solidity of "science" seems to be crystallizing the notion of "culture." Boles: Not stripping away the solidity. Science, by virtue of it's methods, is probably the most relatively objective means of obtaining knowledge. Of course, science provides knowledge of a particular kind, e.g. knowledge of what is observable/measurable. It doesn't create ethnic knowledge (e.g. language, customs, mores, artistic, or religious knowledge). But science can provide knowledge - the study of - these other meaning systems and their methods of knowledge (and of itself, e.g. scientific studies of scientific methods). Universities employ the scientific method to study a variety of other meaning systems.

Yes, and I’d agree with the assessment you make in the first section of your reply-passage here. And, true, it doesn’t create ethnic knowledge; but does Science create physical, chemical, biological, cosmological, or otherwise knowledge either? I would say “no.” Obtains yes, discovers yes – but creates knowledge [in terms of the information, data results, fundamental principles, and so forth]? … I don’t believe so. Even in regard to “ethnic” or more generally “social” knowledge, I would even say that “social science” doesn’t create “ethnic knowledge”; social consciousness might <ala my own socscience terminology>, but as far as social science (the “science of society”) is concerned, I have to reiterate -à it doesn’t create knowledge or the principles/dynamisms of human experiential reality; it only “discovers” it.