In his classic text,
pragmatist philosopher
Richard Rorty explains how epistemology has tried to faithfully mirror reality (or, "nature"). Philosophy of the twentieth century was seen as a concern for knowing and being able to discuss "truth." Language was always getting in the way, though. As Rorty's title even indicates, metaphor and other tropes often intrude onto any objective representation of reality, warping and distorting it. By abandoning objectifiable and universal claims to a
foundational truth upon which to build a systematic understanding of the universe and our place in it, Rorty argues, we instead "dissolve" philosophical problems rather than solve any grand questions.
In the passage provided, Rorty explains and draws upon the work of the philosopher of science,
Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn's own radical argument was that science proceeds not through patient and careful addition of testing and discovery, but through an oscillation between "normal" testing and experimentation and "abnormal" crises Kuhn calls "paradigm shifts."The classic example here is the
Einsteinian/ quantum revolution in physics. Where
Newtonian physics guided everything for centuries, encounters with subatomic particles and electromagnetic wavelengths produced results that confounded explanations based on Newton's laws. Still, these were dismissed initially and chalked up to human error. It took Albert Einstein and his cohort of physicists to convince the scientific establishment of the day that these confusions could be cleared up by simply changing the ways we thought and spoke about sub-atomic particles. In other words,
scientific discourse had to change from a Newtonian one of discrete balls of matter interacting to an Einsteinian one of potential quanta flitting about the universe. Moreover, scientific discourse was a matter not of an autonomous and pre-existing realm of knowledge, but was, rather, a result of hundreds of years of human history and debate since at least Galileo. That history and debate was how scientific discourse comes to us as a
social construction.
Now, what do you think? Is science just a social construction? How can we test this theory? And once we do test it, how do we adjudicate between different kinds of knowledge in the debate over environmental use, policy, ethics, etc.? If it turns out that science is as much a social construction as religion, then religion has as much legitimacy in the debate as science. [
Why, hello, President Santorum! You say mountain-top removal is a gift from God and we should pass a law to that effect? Oh, well, your discourse is as legitimate as any scientist's!" (that link just underscores my point, now doesn't it?)].
Respond to these questions after you have read the Rorty piece (pay special attention to pp 331ff, where he really gets going).
**Before I get going, I just want to preface this post by acknowledging that I am almost certainly channeling Carl Sagan. I am also sorry for going overboard.**
ReplyDeleteRobert Kalb, Regarding Rorty’s Scientific Paradigm, Pt. 1/3
What distinguishes scientific inquiry from religious or mystical explanations of the cosmos is that the religious will inexorably be tied to social and political dilemma that define the limits of acceptable knowledge. Certainly scientists, the human individuals that study the cosmos, are susceptible to cultural manipulations, predispositions, and prejudices, but the character and nature of the cosmos we have seen is not. Regardless of socio-political trends, helium will always have two valence electrons, gravity will always affect bodies relative to their mass, the molecules that compose my body have always originated in phenomenon in the cosmos. Because of socio-political trends, the description of helium as having two valence electrons, the description of gravity affecting bodies relative to mass, and the description of the cosmic origin of the molecules constituting my body can easily become fodder for cultural prejudices, predispositions, and manipulation.
In the Rorty text, both Cardinal Bellarmine and Galileo are guilty of cultural distortion in their cosmic understanding -- both Bellarmine and Galileo acknowledge the logical and mathematical correctness of the Copernican system but the Cardinal relegates that knowledge to novel inquiry and commercial ventures while Galileo cannot bring himself to give up the “perfection” of the circular orbits of the planets. Regardless of cultural propensity, the observations of the movement of the planets and the mathematical modelling that describes the planets’ elliptical orbits are consistent with one another. This is the nature of science; humanity attempting to translate the language of the cosmos by way of physical observation and mathematical modelling. The durability of mathematics is its logical foundation; all mathematical questions, like all logical questions, are answered either yes or no.
What is not discussed in the Rorty text that deserves recognition is that a contemporary of Bellarmine and Galileo, Johannes Kepler was able to shed his cultural prejudices to successfully translate the language of the cosmos; Kepler was the first (modern, Western...it is possible that someone far earlier than Kepler made such a discovery) person to accurately describe the movement of the planets. Kepler’s articulation of planetary motion, however, was not a eureka! moment. Kepler struggled desperately to make Tycho Brahe’s planetary observations fit with circular orbits. Ultimately, he could not; Kepler had to face the empirical reality of elliptical orbits.
A uniqueness of scientific inquiry is the pursuit of objectivity, the attempt to transcend human culture which invariably. Religion and mysticism, on the other hand, are culture. Earlier, pre-agrarian generations venerated and deified the wolf for its cunning and resourcefulness; agrarian man vilified and hunted wolves nearly to the point of extinction because of its predation on livestock. I will return to this point later, but for now I wish to focus on the great benefit of hindsight being the emancipation from cultural prejudice. We can look at past human intellectual endeavor as silly, misguided, possibly even corrupt, because our perspective has transcended the prejudices of that particular time. The conflict between quantum and Newtonian physics could to viewed in the same light by historians in a few distant centuries. (Although in mathematical terms, Newtonian physics was rejected for “breaking down” over great distances and speeds as well as at the sub-atomic level. Newtonian physics was pragmatic for basic human endeavor, but for describing the characteristics of the cosmos, it fell short.)
Robert Kalb, Regarding Rorty’s Scientific Paradigm, Pt. 2/3
ReplyDeleteToday, physicists wrestle with cosmic forces that we can describe but not define. We know that gravity acts on bodies relative to their mass. We can describe Earth’s gravitational affect -- generally accelerating bodies toward it at a rate of 9.81 meters per second per second -- but we cannot define the force that causes bodies to possess the characteristic of gravity. Though there are some individuals whose cultural prejudices lead them to argue that gravity is caused by human sin and cosmic bodies that have not been touched by humanity have no gravity; these are the people that we quickly dismiss as web forum trolls (and, honestly, for good reason because we can observe stars which have planetary satellites wobbling in space...that wobbling explained in mathematical modelling as being caused by the gravity of its orbiting satellites).
I think that Kuhn’s notion of a scientific paradigm has limited applicability. As research reveals the shortcomings of what had been considered fact, we struggle to grapple with the conflict. I’m not so sure that Kuhn’s scientific paradigm argument is relevant specifically to the community of scientific researchers. Instead, what Kuhn describes is a very political conflict. The ability to establish theory, methods of inquiry, and standards in a system that self-perpetuates is really the consequence of power. Hannah Arendt quite notably argued that the nature of power is not in the capacity to impose will (she calls that force or strength) but from the recognition of legitimacy leading to acquiescence. I see Kuhn’s argument consistent with this political phenomenon. When we are considering the development of modern scientific methodology, theories, and standards, we can recognize that it corresponded with political conflict and the possibility that modern scientific inquiry was an unintended consequence of that conflict without rejecting the logical validity of the results of that inquiry. Ultimately, the inability of previous theories, methods, and standards to consistently and reliably explain the nature and happenings of the cosmos to courageous and inquisitive minds brought about the conflict between the mystical and scientific paradigms. The religious and mystical paradigms were simply inconsistent with the readily observable physical reality. Yes, observable truth is a new standard of the scientific paradigm relative to the mystical paradigm, but our survival and well being, the same for all life on Earth, hinges on our ability to process data in the form of physical sensation streaming in from the environment around us.
Robert Kalb, Regarding Rorty’s Scientific Paradigm, Pt. 3/3
ReplyDeleteOur data processing faculties are likely what led us to develop what we now call mystical explanations for the nature and order of the cosmos. It is likely our interpretation of the cosmos -- or one (especially western) thread of many -- changed over the course of one hundred thousand years...
...“That thing high above me when I can see food, mates, and predators is different from the thing high above me when it’s hard for me to see food, mates, and predators and when I feel sleepy. Also, there are a lot of little things high above me when it’s hard for me to see.”
…“That thing high above us is a great bird that makes the rain fall and the plants grow. That other thing high above us is a different bird that ushers in the darkness and speaks to predators that might hurt us. Those little guys are vultures waiting for the different bird to help the predators make a kill. We should make sure the great bird is happy and the different bird isn’t angry with us.”
…“Those two big things in the sky travel in circles around us and this land upon which we live. They were put there by an all powerful creator for our benefit but they can also hurt us when we upset the creator happy. Those little guys in the night sky are definitely not other creators; please don’t worship them as such or the creator will definitely be mad.”
…“Our sun is just one of 400 billion in our galaxy. We on Earth orbit the sun the same as the other seven planets. Our planet was formed probably four billion years ago by the gravitational attraction of matter drifting through space after a massive supernova. Life on our planet probably began two billion years ago from collections of carbon-based organic molecules. It wasn’t until maybe 100,000 years ago that a species resembling us could be found on Earth. We are just one species among millions to currently inhabit this planet and our closest biological relatives are the great apes though we are related to all life.”
With each passing epoch, our understanding of the cosmos builds on previous understandings. Modern science is replacing mysticism in metaphysical relevance, but it could not have happened were it not for those early mystical attempts at cosmic translation.
With respect to the context of this course, as emancipation from cultural prejudice gives liberty of motion to scientific inquiry, we can escape an ethic that encourages environmental violence. Scientific inquiry has been co-opted by rampant, commercial individualism to the detriment of life on our planet. This does not mean we abandon the only tools that permit us to translate the language of the cosmos and of nature.
To use Kuhn’s rhetoric, we have operated in a paradigm that theorized humanity’s superior place in the cosmos, demonstrated as the force and strength of our machinery easily subjugated landscapes and the life therein to our whims. At first, the limited scope of the subjugation was not alarming, nor was it particularly dangerous. Early man used tools to cultivate crops to sustain local human populations; the individual efforts were so isolated from one another and so small in scope that unintended consequences were also limited. Increased industrial, corporate, and mechanical capacity has enabled us to collaborate and expand the scope of our efforts to the point that we cannot conceive fully the true danger we are facing from unintended consequences.
An environmental paradigm has emerged to compete with the prevailing industrial paradigm. This new paradigm has theorized that human activity was changing the planet’s ecosystems faster than the life contained therein can adapt, and has measured changes in ocean temperatures and the rate of extinction. This theory challenges the notion of human exceptionalism propagated by the industrial theory that argues increased production and consumption improves the lives of all humans, a theory supported by the standard of GDP.
Funny thing happened. Today I fell down a youtube rabbit hole and landed upon these videos.
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/QlfMsZwr8rc
http://youtu.be/M9w7jHYriFo
(I apologize that I couldn't fit these into the post more organically; I think the Blogger comment section isn't as friendly about linking and posting images as the actual interface for the owner of the blog is.)
They're of a guy named James Randi. If you don't know him (I didn't) he's a former stage magician that decided to dedicate his life to debunking claims of the paranormal. If someone said "hey, I have ESP," or "hey, I'm a faith healer," Randi would investigate and solve the scam. He has had an offer of a million bucks (formerly ten grand, but times change) for legitimate evidence of the supernatural since the late '60s, and over a thousand have taken the challenge, and none have been successful.
Imagine my surprise to have checked out this blog assignment after watching a bunch of videos about a dude who was using logic and facts to counter blind belief. Science vs faith on stage and screen.
(Randi doesn't believe in a god, btw.)
One of the blog prompts asks if science is as much of a social construct as religion. Well, I look at it from the other end. Don't try to lessen the legitimacy of science; just remember that religion used to fulfill science's current role. Humanity needed to explain reality, so we came up with some stuff about gods. That was as legitimate an answer as was available at the time. Before physics and orbital mapping of planets, people knew with a capital K that the Earth was the center of the universe, that a god simply organized the stars. It was as factual to them as current science is to us now.
So! Where does that leave us in regards to environmental concerns. Well, so much of what we've been reading in the anthology is art-based; an appeal to human emotions on a personal scale. It's odd how much that strategy is employed with regards to the environment; it's as if theories about global warming, or pollution, or fossil fuels (or whatever) haven't been convincing enough. Facts aren't working, so defenders of the environment turn to its beauty, or to tapping into pity. Emotional appeals. Is it because humanity strides across the Earth like an unstoppable colossus, and science be damned--"we want to fuck Earth for all it's worth!" Or is it because nature is still a mystery to us? Science hasn't explained it all, there's still room for god(s) in its origin and its continued presence, and that its majesty is rooted in the same unexplainable concept of Beauty that drives HUMAN art, which also opens the mind to the possibility of the divine?
I am, at this point, deliriously deprived of sleep, and I sort of feel like my last paragraph may have spun out of my control, away from my original intent. Right now I'll rely on faith that it makes sense. I'll look for evidence against it in the morning.
For me, Kuhn's article really hit home when, nearing the end of his argument, he lays it out for us: "To sum up the line I am taking about Kuhn and his critics: the controversy between them is about whether science, as the discovery of what is really out there in the world, differs in its patterns of argumentation from discourses for which the notion of 'correspondence to reality' seems less apposite" (332).
ReplyDeleteWhile not necessarily crucial to the philosophical aims of this particular argument, Kuhn's recognition of "difference" as the key to this controversy reveals (what I consider to be) one of the most significant obstructions to sweeping environmental progress--in terms of working (as a nation) to conceive, establish and sustain a policy that (we agree) places environmental ethics on the same level as the rest of our "ethics" (or reasons for doing). Kuhn is referring, specifically, to "difference" in terms of discourse--does scientific discourse differ from any other discourse? or is science more "real" than, say, literary analysis? But even the nature of these questions reveals the extent to which we desire to define all "ways of seeing" through their difference from each other.
And, to reiterate, the environmental/political problem seems to be, at least partially, a result of exactly this obsession with maintaining a perspective on (certain) "ways of seeing" as diametrically opposed to each other.
This is especially the case with organized religions and science. The following videos beautifully illustrate this conflict. (I found this first video thanks to the links that Jake provided in his comments. Thanks a bunch, Jake, for the fascinating detour...the, *ahem* two-and-a-half hour detour...)
In this video,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts_To4zmEdE
Anderson Cooper (along with guest James Randi) confronts Sylvia Brown's publicist(?) to discuss alleged psychic Sylvia Brown's inaccurate prediction in the Shawn Hornbeck case (She told his parents that he was dead. He wasn't.) The entire video is fascinating and frustrating, but in this section, out of frustration, Sylvia Brown's rep launches into a brief attack against Jame's Randi's personal beliefs.
At around 5 minutes, she halts the discussion to exclaim, "...and for Randi, as a professed atheist, to judge anyone of spirituality is a joke. He has now negated--no, wait a minute--everything she does is through God, with God; she gives God credit for everything. Randi is a professed atheist who claims that anyone who believes in a religion is weak-minded and superstitious. He's negated Christianity, he's negated Islamic, he's degraded every religion--" before Anderson Cooper cuts her off (to suggest that she's using high school debate tactics to attack her opponent rather than her opponent's argument).
What's really fascinating is that her frustration arises from a perceived attack on Sylvia's religion/spirituality (she repeatedly states that Sylvia's psychic ability is inseparable from her spirituality), even though Randi, clearly, doesn't see it this way. His attack is against psychics, in general, who he sees as misleading tricksters who abuse the gullibility of a general population, sometimes to devastating effect.
But for Sylvia's representative, Randi's motivations don't really matter a whole lot. She seems to understand the situation as dichotomy: "Randi doesn't believe in Sylvia's powers. Randi doesn't believe in God. Randi's ideas are threatening to Sylvia's spirituality."
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletePart 2
ReplyDeleteIt is this divisive attitude (Science is opposed to Religion, and they are enemies, and they must fight each other, etc.) that can also be traced through much political discourse. In this segment on the Colbert Report,
http://www.hulu.com/watch/331594/the-colbert-report-indecision-2012-rick-santorums-energy-war-alarm#s-p1-sr-i1
(really sorry about the ad...) Stephen Colbert ridicules Santorum's assertions that Obama (and "radical environmentalists") are "doing everything [they] can to raise the price of energy in this country" by "shutting down all sorts of opportunities for us to drill for oil."
But interestingly enough, his real source of disgust toward Obama ISN'T necessarily that he is impairing the nation's well-being, but that his agenda is based on "some phony ideal,some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology." (That "phony theology," by the way, is "radical environmentalism"--Santorum clarified later when criticized for these remarks).
What's disturbing to Santorum is simply that Obama's treatment of environmental issues relies on "A DIFFERENT THEOLOGY," that Obama does not make his decisions using Santorum's theology (WWJD? ...or WWJDATWISHD? what would Jesus do according to what I say he would do...) And that is threatening to Santorum, who surely views science (or anything that isn't religion) as mutually exclusive to his own specific religious beliefs.
But what's really disturbing and, as a nation, self-destructive is the assumption that our ideas are mutually exclusive--that our "theology" (in Santorum's words) cannot exist simultaneously with another way of seeing, and so we must attack that which is not in unison with our foundational ideologies. "If someone believes in measuring/managing human impact on the earth using scientific methodology (which MUST exclude religious perspectives) then that person is wrong." (And vice versa?)
And this brings us back to Kuhn, and his recognition of the controversy's roots in "difference." We simply can't seem to develop an understanding of the ways in which "different" (seemingly mutually exclusive) ways of seeing might have shared principles, values and goals, because instead, we'd rather understand it in a way that allows US to be correct and moral and good and righteous (so THEY are evil and corrupt and wrong and not really worth listening to anyway).
So it seems sometimes, that our environment is doomed simply because, like children, we refuse to understand that those who seem different from ourselves (because of what they think, or how they look, or what they say, or how they say it) might have something to contribute to our own ways of seeing the world.