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Feminism and the scientific method

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03:16 / 03.08.02

"Then we're really not talking about the SM at all, are we?"

For Christ's sake! I *think* what we're talking about whether or not there exists some sort of pure, abstract SM, or whether it's something that does not exist outside its application. The argument isn't 'there is SM and then there are its applications, and I think we should talk about the latter', but, 'there is no SM but application, and talking about anything else is mystification'. Obviously we disagree on this point... (and Lurid, I don't think you can get around this by projecting a 'totality of applications' with particular properties, although it might be worth trying...)

On the other hand, if "science is an enterprise to uncover or project observer independent knowledge about the material universe', I think SM is a singularly bad method, because it does not seem (to me) to do this. One of the things I think is interesting about the way the 6 steps are laid out, is that they do not allow for establishing facts as such, or observer independent knowledge, only working hypotheses. So the 'truth value' of anything you work out by SM isn't so much an objective value, as how much you can do with it. I do not mean it as a criticism; I think it's pretty cool, actually. (I think Stengers says something like this; that science is not so much about falsifiability as risk, how much you are willing to stake on the possibility that any particular hypothesis is wrong...)

But to establish any fact, it seems to me, is to leap beyond the bounds of SM via some kind of metaphysical fiat. I mean, it's pretty undeniable that water boils at a constant temperature or whatever, but you don't get to make that a fact via SM, you only get to make predictions based on that assumption.

10:50 / 03.08.02

DPC. Though I tend to agree with the thrust of what you are saying, it introduces complications that I was deliberately glossing over. And it tilts on a semantic, rather than an actual difference in viewpoint.

Yes, the SM can only offer one working hypotheses rather than "truth" or some such metaphysical object. But... I'd say that the observer independent knowledge consists precisely of these theories. After all, a well established scientific theory offers predictions that are really astoundingly precise, and which can be used to construct the technological observer independent effects that we agree on.

Although you do raise good points about the tentative nature of science, it seems a strange use of language to me. 'No scientific knowledge was used to construct planes or go to the moon. Science has no knowledge, only theories.'

Fair enough, in a sense. Though it is such an exacting use of the word "knoweledge", that its hard to see how one could use it in any context.

05:46 / 06.08.02

i'm sorry, but when we started arguing about whether there's a difference between method and application we all gave up all right to complain that people were talking semantics.

09:05 / 06.08.02

It wasn't meant as a complaint and I didn't realise how much people objected to it. ah well.

02:02 / 09.08.02

well i was trying to be funny but obviously it didn't come across.

anyway, i don't think it is a semantic point at all. the difference in these basic conceptions of science - motivated by a search for unproblematised truth or motivated by the search for useful hypotheses - seems to me incredibly important. one licenses more or less anything, since truth is its own sorting criteria (never mind that SM doesn't let you achieve it, except by slippage). one makes you think about the outcomes of what you're doing. i think we disagree about whether this is a good or bad thing, but whatever - just wanted to point out there is more than a semantic issue at stake (and i.e. the feminist philosopher of science nancy kilpatrick has argued that the laws of physics are useful only insofar as they are untrue - will try to unpack that later)

11:36 / 09.08.02

Ah yes. A sense of humour. I tried having one of those once, but it didn't work as most of my music collection is from the eighties.

But, DPC, although you are absolutely right in saying that science deals with hypotheses there are a couple of points to make. First, I don't think that any scientist would claim that science is a search for unproblematised truth. In my experience this is a straw man. After all, the last century saw some of the biggest shifts in understanding of physics.

However, I'd still claim that science produces knowledge - problematised, but still knowledge. This is for two reasons. First, one has to have working hypotheses to interpret any part of reality. These can and often are mistaken, yet that doesn't invalidate the use of the word "knowledge".

Second, science offers such startling accurate predictions that it takes a determined amount of disbelief to say that there isn't something "real" approximating the objects of the model. Of course, one has to allow only an approximate correspondence, as any knowledge of Newtonian mechanics vs Relativity will tell you.

However, it is reasonable to say that while Newtonian mechanics is utimaely wrong, any theory that supercedes it must become a very close approximation of it within certain scales and speeds. In other words, in an appropriate context, Newtonian mechanics is more or less true. I think that this is probably a good way to look at scientific knowledge.

09:59 / 10.08.02

All you people are great. I have nothing to add. Thank you.

13:26 / 14.08.02

.I have nothing to add.

You knew I was lying, didn't you?

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