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From: dcs2e@darwin.clas.virginia.edu (David Swanson)
Subject: Postmodernism and Science
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I'm posting this for its author (jcautill@astro.ocis.temple.edu):

 
                Post Moderism and Science

As I begin to write, I realize that for many (including some of my 
readers) the title of this article appears to be an oxymoron. Indeed
many 
scientists have accused postmodern philosophers of being antiscience
and 
indeed some are. However, much of postmodernism is not antiscience but
the 
natural evolution of thinking after the discreditation of realism. It
is 
quite the trend in most contemporary sciences with the noticable 
exceptions of psychology and linguistics, which still appear to be 
domenated by realistic thinking. While several post modern approaches
exist  
in psychology and linguistics such as narative psychoanalysis,
feminism, 
and radical behaviorism, this paper chooses to highlight RB for three 
reasons (1)it is the only current model with widespread and
demonstrated 
effectiveness in developing technologies for both acceptance and change
at
verious levels of analysis such as individual, group, organization, and

culture (2) it has been largely misunderstoodand misrepresented by its 
critics and (3) it has recently been suggested by Dr. Ruiz in a 1995
article
"Radical behaviorism: historical misconceptions and grounds for
feminist 
reconstruction" in Psychology of Women Quarterly as a way of linking
the 
feminist theory into an effective pratice (for examples of this see 
Biglan's book Changing Cultural Pratices on Context Press, of
particular 
not is the chapter on reducing sexism).

What is postmodernism?I will not attempt to supply a definition of 
postmoderism for I believe that it is a movement that is currently 
evolving. Instead I will attempt to understand what is meant by 
postmodern by placing it in its historical context. Let us briefly 
compare postmoderism to moderism and medieval thought. In midieval
times 
society was mostly stagnent. Ideas, technology, and the understanding
of 
the universe began and stayed for generations.In this stable
enviroment, God 
was believed the key to understanding man and nature.

In the Rennissance, new technology emerge (e.g the printing press) and
ideas
became more fluid.A new form of art emerged in which man became
fascinated with
the realistic form of man.No more flowing images covered with robes.
The
artist was concerned with creating man exactly as he was scene.
Experimentation
was made in depth perception to enchance the appearence of reality in
the 
pictures. In short society became kinetic.God was replaced by man as
the 
key to understanding the world. Science began to take a realist flavor 
also. Reality was considered "out there" to be discovered. Logical 
positivism, cartesian philosophy, and truth by agreement dominated 
science, politics, philosophy and art.In politics, democracy emerged
with 
the idea that given consensus society would move toward a "more perfect

union"and America became a melting pot. Gradually, the machine with its

push/pull forces  became the model as to how the 
world worked replacing further the notion of spirits and God.

Once again life has changed, information has moved from the kinetic to 
the hyperkenetic. With this movement the limits of our technology of
the 
moment have become appearent.This questioning of certainity is where
the 
postmodern era began. Postmoderism was first evident in the artistic 
community with the struggle to rid the world with the concept of the
artist as a
genius capturing some essential (real) characteristic of the world.
High art
became the point of contention and was replaced eventually by
individual
meaning. In literature understanding of meaning of texts changed from
its
essential nature (its ability to capture truth) to a work that must be 
understood in its historical context
(deconstructionism/reconstructionism). In 
politics many began to question if reality was the same for all. 
Multiculturalism and feminism emerged to question if the dominante
society 
could really experience the world the same way as the nondomenant
classes. 
Man has been replaced by person in context.

Science and philosophy by their own discoveries shifted from certainty
to 
uncertainty. Biology was the first feild to shift. The mechanistic 
metaphor of billard balls and push pull machanics was seriously 
challenged by a new model- evolution. When we speak of "cause" in the 
evolutionary sense, we are not referring to the action reaction concept

of early physics but to a much more impercise mode "selection by 
consequence over time".Initially this model of causality troubled 
physicists who spent most of the early part of this century debating 
biologists ovewr the plausiblity of selection as a causal mode. One of 
the most highly publicised debates was the debate over the age of the 
sun. Using most combustion standards of the time the sun could never be

old enough for the scale of time biologists were calling for.Physics 
was 
the next feild to adjust. Findings that suggested that Newtonian
physics 
could not be applied to all physical phenomena initally shocked the 
science community but then led to stunning developments in quantum 
machanics. Initially however, certain aspects of nature were nolonger 
straight forward and calculable.  

Finally, critiques in the philosophy of science as well as developments

in social study of science have undermined the notion of scientists 
proceeding in a logical, rational, objective way. Kuhn developed his 
concept of paradigm and with it has swept away popular notions of 
absolute truth. Knower and knowledge became realized as one and 
inseperatable. The key element to this change was the recognition that 
even in the process of validating scientific knowledge there is a
measure 
of arbitrary decision making. In the shift a wave of authors ranging
from 
scientific journalists to  scientists of the highest calibre cited the 
change in both breath and depth. Some examples from the popular media 
are: The Toa of Physics (Capra, 1975); Mathematics: The Loss of
Certainty 
(Kline, 1980); The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific 
Revolution (Merchant, 1982); The Turning Point: Science, Society, and
the 
Rising of Culture (Capra, 1983); Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue

with Nature (Prigogine & Stengers, 1985); Mathematics and the Search
for 
Knowledge (Kline, 1985); THe Cosmic Blueprint (Davis, 1987); Chaos: 
Making a New Science (Gleick, 1988); A brief History of Time (Hawkins, 
1988) and Does God Play Dice?(Stewart, 1989).

Just as postivistic models were falling out of favor with physicists
they 
were heralded by psychologists and linguists desparetly trying to 
establish credability from thier feild. In the feild of linguistics
most 
of contempory research is associated with Noam Chomsky. Chomsky has 
adopted a policy of isolating crucial variables essential to
language.(1) 
In Rules and Representation, Chomsky (1980) tries to determine "parts
of 
an innate endowment that defers the human essence". To do this Chomsky 
quickly moves his science to an idealized world of speaker and listener

behavior. For Chomsky the relationship between words and the world is 
intrinsic, fixed, and determined.Language is an individual process.(
For an 
excellent critique of the problems with this type of reasoning readers 
are referred to Palmer & Donohue. Essentialism and Selectionism in
Cognitive
Science and Behav Analysis.American Psychologist- 1992). One model
opposed to
this was Skinner's (1957) book Verbal Behavior: a selectionistic
account.

Skinner's model, takes place in a dynamic and fluid world. His approach
is a 
powerful way to analyze context by looking at antecedent variables and 
consequences over time which select for particular classes of behavior 
(2).Also the model highlights multiple causation and places it at the
center 
of the discussion. Finally for Skinner verbal behavior is "behavior 
reinforced through the mediation of others." Thus Skinner treats
language 
as both an individual process and a relational account. The relational 
account of language is at the heart of the postmodern movement.

What is Skinner's account? According to Lana (1995) in his article in
the 
Journal of Mind & Philosophy, Skinner's model is an axiomatic system 
which is consistent in the Godeliansense and uses a noncentral concept,
the
behavioral repitior to account for genetic and previous 
behavior-enviroment relations to acheive completeness. In
this model, like in Darwin's model one assumes generativity to be the
norm and
the enviroment (context) to place constraints on the selection and 
maintenence of behavior.

An example of verbal selection is as follows. Let's apply this
distinction to a common phenomenon. You are out playing baseball with
some friends. The ball is hit to you and you say to yourself"If I keep
my
eye on the ball, I'll catch it." Notice how this phrase does not
"control" your behavior. You can for example say the phrase and not
perform the action, of looking at the ball. At the same time, if you
say
the phrase and yet you conmtinue to miss the ball, you will eventually
stop saying the phrase. Finally, if you say the phrase, commit the
action
(looking), and catch the ball (reinforcing looking). First the
probablitiy that you will say the phrase the next time the ball is hit
to
you will increase and the action itself will also increase. Eventually
the rule will become nolonger necessary to be stated and will
extinguish
and the looking will come under natural control of the contingencies of
catching the ball.

Skinner's major contribution to the study of Verbal Behavior was his 
recognition of the philosopher Ryle's(1949) distinction between
'Knowing 
that' and 'Knowing How'. In Skinnerian terms this is the distinction 
between rule-governed and contingency shaped behavior. A rouhg 
distinction between the two would be learning by contact with the 
contingencies (experience) and learning by what you have been told.As 
Skinner noted many times rule govern behavior and contingency shaped 
behavior may look a like but their may be subtle differences. Let's
apply 
this distinction to a common phenomenon. Joe has  taken a new job. He
is 
told by his supervisor that the she does not like the place because of 
all the innacurate accounts of people that circulate. She warns him not

to talk to others in the job enviroment to much.Their behavior of not 
talking to others may look similar but Joe's supervisor may have a 
feeling of "correctness" of the behavior that Joe lacks. 

Let us now apply this to a topic of recent interest to psychologists:
the 
social construction of knowledge highlighting the scientific method.
The 
traditional view of the scienctific method is that you observe the
world, 
create a theory about the world, logically decide on ways to test the 
theory,and then gather results. Thus results are removable from the 
context and can be taken as "truths" and applied to new contexts. Since

verbal behavior is itself historically conditioned, then the very idea
of 
truth conceived as universal and transhistroical is a contradiction. 

Just because truth in this traditional sense is not accurate does not
mean 
that one can not decide between conflicting claims. Science does this
by 
establishing goals and evaluating based on those goals. No one study is
a 
enough to make a claim plausable; however, each study allows the 
scientist to have a formal critique to the information (i.e. if one
does 
a group design study with pre-post testing then questions about the
study 
revolve around sample size and mortality).I believe this to be 
completely in line with Rorty's work; however, I am often amazed at his

misrepresentations of behaviorism.  If you are interested in 
learning more about this approach then I suggest an article by Steven &

Linda Hayes in 1992 titled "Some Clinical implications of contextual 
behaviorism: The example of cognition in Behavior Therapy number 23 and

in that same issue O'Donohue and Smith "Philosophical and Psychological

Epistemologies in Behaviorism and Behavior Therapy".

(1)Mayr (1976) used the world essential to replace the word realism.
(2) To Skinner it is important to note that behavior consists of
anything 
that the organism does, such as think, feel, or act.



