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From: hexis@netcom.com (James C. Harrison)
Subject: Re: Heidegger
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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 04:55:49 GMT
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Michael Tobis (tobis@scram.ssec.wisc.edu) wrote:
: : You're working with a narrow notion of utility.  As I am using the
: : term, it is useful to know what happens when one walks off roofs or
: : looks through telescopes.

: Well, now we have reduced our differences to purely semantic ones.
: Why don't we agree that "things happen", that knowledge about which things 
: happen is possible, and that "science" is the name of the process whereby 
: we determine which things happen?

: We use "truth" as a shorthand way of saying that the same things happen
: whether we understand them or not. For instance, when you thought you
: planted a broccoli and it came up cabbage, your honest belief in brocolli
: was "wrong", and that had you a better understanding of the botany of
: such species you would have been more likely to be "right", i.e., had
: a closer approximation to the belief-independent "truth"?  And finally,
: that your expectation of broccoli had no noticeable effect on the cabbage?

: In other words, e pur si cabbage.

: There are no extravagant logical positivist claims there. Logical positivism
: (following the law of unintended consequences) seems to have had as
: the main result of its existence the provision of a straw man for
: relativists to shoot at. As far as I can tell, it's otherwise extinct.

: The reason to look at Galileo or Planck is ultimately to understand
: the intensity with which the moral primacy of objective reasoning should be
: upheld *against* the social construction arguments, which, make no mistake,
: were the ones the bishops used against the moons of Jupiter and the
: ones the Nazis used against Einstein and Bohr.

This paragraph is an example of the mythology of science. It is based on 
a "Just so" version of history that, make no mistake, is based on zero 
historical research. See my previous posting for details. 

: I take this whole discussion very seriously because several historical
: incidents show that there is a profound moral obligation to take
: objective methods seriously. What the "truth" means in a philosophical
: context is a nice matter for discussion over beer. How the truth, 
: whatever that may be, constrains us and defines our world is, however,
: a matter for serious investigation, the techniques of which have been
: extracted at great effort and sometmes even great personal cost.

This paragraph is simply the way that scientists refuse to look through the 
telescope. It also includes the quite incredible suggestion that there is 
a methodology for serious investigation that defines science when it's 
quite clear that nobody scientific or philosophical has been able to 
extract it from the incredible hodgepodge that is actual science. The bit 
about "great personal cost" is the sheerest propaganda, especially since 
scientists have not been very frequent victims in history, at least 
compared to those who have really suffered. I suspect that Mr. Tabis' 
view of the history of science was formed from watching Dr. Erlich's 
Magic Bullet and similar edifying movies. Hey! I liked 'em too, but I 
know they don't reflect what actually happened.  
 
Feel
: free, then, to debate what "truth" means. But please have the decency
: to maintain respect for the hard-won techniques that can tell a broccoli
: from a cabbage based on a single fossilized seed, and for the people who
: take the trouble to learn those techniques.

I'll take your word for it that somebody can tell a broccoli from a 
cabbage based on a single fossilized seed, but I won't let you get away 
from acting as if a general technique for figuring things out can be 
abstracted from this essay in paleobotany. I work with scientists of many 
different kinds and in the course of my work read many of their papers. 
Aside from formal tools like logic and math that hardly distinguish the 
sciences from other investigative disciplines, I have yet to encounter 
this wonderful methodology you guys talk so blithely about in these 
postings. The unity of the scientific method is as astonishing a dogma as 
the infallibility of the Pope, with which, come to think of it, it shares 
a more than formal similarity.

Your defense of science is not very scientific. It is ideological, and 
not a great deal different than the kind of talk you hear from any group 
of people who fear that they will lose some of their privileges (lawyers, 
doctors, etc.).

hexis

: mt



