tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post2970132994294817680..comments2024-03-13T04:57:22.459-04:00Comments on Understanding Society: Paradigms, research communities, and the rationality of scienceDan Littlehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15953897221283103880noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-32613125474919161932012-01-20T13:27:42.210-05:002012-01-20T13:27:42.210-05:00I actually think that Kuhn went farther in the dir...I actually think that Kuhn went farther in the direction of reconciling those two aims -- sociological and epistemological -- than many people give him credit for. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was itself a revolutionary sociological approach, but Kuhn offered (in my view) a more nuanced approach in his essay "Concepts of Cause in the Development of Physics," reprinted in The Essential Tension.<br /><br />As I read Kuhn, he did not deny the objective reality of the outside world or claim that scientific theories were relative sociological constructs. He really did believe that science could/did evolve, in terms of describing a greater variety of physical phenomena, more accurately. Quantum mechanics really is more complete than Newtonian mechanics. <br /><br />But Kuhn's absolutely brilliant insight was that in the process of advancing accurate description, scientific theories also must learn to ignore (or settle by default) their most fundamental (inspirational?) questions -- the the case of physics, the concept of "cause". <br /><br />This suggests (to me) that every(?) "science" begins with an unanswerable question (Biology: "What is life?" Economics: "What is value?" Psychology: "What is "mind"?). This founding question is much worried by the scientific originators, but must be forgotten (or "settled") by their successors in order to make progress in approximating a description of that (somewhat arbitrary) part of the world that the science explores. That's what I take from Kuhn.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-67445365162951005672012-01-16T07:51:37.096-05:002012-01-16T07:51:37.096-05:00I think it is much easier to be an Economist than ...I think it is much easier to be an Economist than any other thing. Our definition of "Good Science" is the good and old better result. The better model is the model which gives the better results independent of how it is built.<br />In short, instead of realism versus idealism, we have people running thousands of regressions and actually feeling to have reinvented the wheel while presenting their results - those old things that are being repeated since the begining of time ....Eduardo Weisznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4058766287077382431.post-5759702057761410822012-01-15T19:14:20.494-05:002012-01-15T19:14:20.494-05:00Isn’t the answer to your query about a middle grou...Isn’t the answer to your query about a middle ground between “scientific truth and reference” on one side, and context and personal/cultural/historical contingency on the other, to be found within the title of the post: the research community? Research communities decide what is acceptable or valuable. While those decisions or norms are not fixed, eternal, and true principles, they are more stable and rational than one would expect from the mere opinions of a crowd of people worried about their status.<br /><br />I claim that my research is rigorous and objective. This is not justified by appeal to my personal traits, by claiming that I am an impartial and rational scientist. I make no claims to possess any kind of ultimate objectivity or quality of research. Rather, my claim of objectivity is justified by the fact that my research community accepts my research as being rigorous and objective within its own standards and norms. This is a fuzzy issue. No official board has given me a certificate saying my work is rigorous and objective. But my proposals to the National Science Foundation do get funded, my peer-reviewed articles do get published, my colleagues seem to appreciate my intellectual and professional abilities, and public critiques of my research do not include attacks on my rigor or objectivity (well, usually they don’t!). So it is my research community that has “decided” that my research is rigorous and objective. <br /><br />On the sociology of science, I find it hilarious when these folks scratch their heads and try to figure out why scientific knowledge is stable. If everything is contingent and relative, knowledge should change all the time (like high-level theory in anthropology, for example). Well, just maybe there is a real world out there, and maybe science does approach an understanding of how it works, and maybe that understanding is at some fundamental level independent of the individual non-science beliefs or behavior of scientists.<br /><br />But these issues are decided by the research community, not by some ultimate board of standards, and not by sociologists or philosophers of science.Michael E. Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03942595266312225661noreply@blogger.com