Vorkosigan

I don't know what you're talking about. You raise some interesting points again in your reply and i want to get to responding, but we have both agreed that this issue is the presupposition behind everything that needs to be questioned.

Hmmm....

I can well believe your story from grad seminar days but it has nothing to do with whether or not there exists a sure path to progress which religion should keep off.

Really....?

Moreover, am i supposed to take your assertion as anything more than a massive non sequitur?

No. Have you read Higher Superstition?

The instrumentalist irrealist account of the success of science does not imply that cow shit is as good as antibiotics.

It doesn't? As Hagendijk pointed out

• "So much emphasis is placed on the "negotiability" of scientific knowledge and research that it becomes impossible to analyze what is beyond negotiation or manipulation for certain people at particular times and places, and why this is so."

(1)

How is it possible for me to say that cow shit isn't as good as antibiotics? Where in this shifting interplay of humans and their social structures can I find some solid ground to stand on?

I don't know where you're getting this stuff

...two years of grad seminars.

from but i hope you'll add some further remarks defending your claim - at the moment it's nothing short of inexplicable.

Then you haven't read enough criticism of SSK.

Vorkosigan
(1)"Structuration Theory, Constructivism, and Scientific Change" in Cozzens & Gieryn, Ed. Theories of Science in Society.

Celsus

Hi Bede,
I suspect that you might be in deep trouble here, on two points. Firstly, my original point is that Christian theologians were deeply involved in studying the natural world, and were not held to an understanding of it as "lawlike" from the Bible (which was your original statement--lawlike understandings coming from Christian Theology). Indeed, such an understanding would have to reject miraculous intervention in general. So if non-Biblical sources of theological interpretation are admitted, then their conclusions may as well be coming from Natural philosophy: hence my chicken-and-egg scenario.

Secondly, "theology affecting science" depends on whether science itself later proves the inference correct or not (even in the case of inhibiting science, we can only know this from a later vantage point of retrospection). And since I argued originally that we'd have a chicken and egg problem, which is exactly what happens in the thick of a new (or even old) discovery, then my point stands. So whereas the possibility of other worlds was rejected, we have now come to a time when the multiverse and extraterrestrial life are seriously considered by scientists despite any empirical evidence for them. At this point in time, an evolutionary understanding of ideas simply points to those best reflecting the natural world as having survived.
Ok, did a little bit of reading about him. Apparently, he influenced Thomas Aquinas. This doesn't seem to show that he was very unsuccessful in Latin Christianity as you claimed.
Ok, let me rephrase: While it may simply be due to lack of time to properly explain your arguments, you seem to caricaturise Islam much the way you want to defend yourself from caricatures of Christianity. Perhaps you can point me to where you are giving a fuller picture of Islam?
I seriously doubt that Robert Pennock is a Christian. He mentions Quaker roots in The Tower of Babel, but that's hardly Christian. Also, by saying "it roots out arguments it doesn't like," I still think you are skewing the picture, again showing the same sort of disdain for reasoning and evidence as a causal factor that the SSK proponents do. Christians are forming a strange alliance indeed with the social constructivists just so that they can attack science (and in this case, running counter to your goal of propounding faith and reason). Not surprising whom Christians will pick for allies, since the Pope and Iran sided together against contraceptives at Cairo. But I think you'll find that they aren't good allies in the long term.
Yes, true believers make good propagandists. But I'm curious, what myth about science might this be? And what then do you say of Christianity influencing this mythical aspect about science?

Joel

Celsus

Hugo,

Are you going to give us some snippets of Shapin's The Scientific Revolution? Here's a snippet from Shapin and Schaffer (rightly lampooned in J.R. Brown's Who Rules Science? (an excellent layman's introduction to the philosophy of science if ever there was one), and of course, Gross & Levitt's Higher Superstition):

• As we come to recognise the conventional and artifactual status of our forms of knowing, we put ourselves in a position to realize that it is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know. Knowledge as much as the [political] state, is the product of human actions.
  
  Shapin & Schaffer, 1985, Leviathan and the Air Pump, p. 344

In other words, there is no grounds for differentiating between cow dung and antiseptics since what we know about them comes solely from ourselves. To do so would require one to acknowledge external reality and reliable knowledge about it--or the scientific realist position.

Joel

Hugo Holbling

I hope you'll both excuse my skepticism, but i don't accept that your knowledge of instrumentalism is so poor as to suppose this to be much of an argument against it, or even against social constructivism, any more than there is a similar difficulty for anti-foundationalists in epistemology. Moreover, you have a long way to go before this example shows that realism isn't Laudan's "ultimate petetitio principii".

Instead, i wonder if you would address what i asked: viz., is it possible for science to arise without realist assumptions? I'm not sure that it is. At the moment i wonder if the two of you even know what instrumentalism or irrealism are, since pointing me to Higher Superstition is hardly going to help with Goodman or van Frasssen. If you want to discuss the warrant for scientific realism then it really needs another thread.

Celsus

Sorry Hugo. I seem to have missed the "instrumentalist" part of your statement. Anyway, are you willing to back up Shapin? As for a Philoscience realism vs. antirealism thread, I'm preparing one as we speak (though maybe not by tonight). Would you rather it be in S&S (where you'll get attacked by naive realists) or Philosophy (where you (and I) will get attacked by everyone )?

Joel

Bede

Joel - I'll get back to you.

In the meantime, here's an essay on this whole subject. It doesn't argue for any particular point outside mainstream views and was written to show my PhD interviewer I knew what I was talking about (successfully, as it turned out ).

Medieval Science, the Universities and the Church

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Hugo Holbling

I've been asking about this for some time now...

No. This thread is not about social constructivism. Why don't you read his other works for yourself? A Social History Of Truth will be right up your alley.

It's all the same to me - i'll take on the underdog position, however ridiculous or poorly supported it is - as you well know. Question is: will you support what you think or try the challenge of backing up something you don't buy? Why not do both? I'll be happy to bash realism but i'm also inclined to give some stronger versions of it.

Moreover, i hope we'll see more than just realism vs. anti-realism; what about irrealism and superrealism, as well as instrumentalism on its own? Let's discuss constructive empiricism and Fine's Natural Ontological Attitude, too.

I propose the thread be placed in the humour forum.

Celsus

Heh. Thanks Bede, I will have a look at it.

Hugo, I guess I'll have to eventually accept your offer, so I'll postpone the philoscience thread for now. I'm willing to try either the antirealist or instrumentalist position except that I don't know a great deal about it. I mean, where is Laudan coming from? I haven't got a clue, and it's not helpful to read his critique of convergent realism to get an idea of what his position is. I'm also in the middle of getting through Steve Fuller's Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times--it's a breathtaking, but very heavygoing (for me) book, though sure to provide some ammunition. Also, I'll be away this weekend on holiday, and won't be back till Tuesday night. With luck, I may have finished Fuller (and possibly Feyerabend) by then.

Joel

Hugo Holbling

For Laudan, take a look here, Joel. You still need to check out his paper, imho, since it's a powerful argument contra realism. As for Kuhn, the best work remains this one, i'd say - just look at the contributors.

Celsus

Thanks Hugo. I've already read A Confutation of Convergent Realism, and an attempt at a reply to Laudan's laundry list of discredited theories was going to be the basis for a new thread. As for Fuller, the best thing about the book is that it's not really about Kuhn (the subtext, "A Philosophical History for our Times" says it all really). I consider this to be (or hope it will be, since I'm still reading it) much stronger SSK research, far superior to the likes of Latour or Shapin.

Ok that's off topic enough for now...

Joel