gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (08/22/88)
In article <468@ztivax.UUCP> ref@ztivax.UUCP (Dr Robert Frederking) writes: >>which is of no benefit to anyone, the use of the word "science" must >>be due to the belief that it will bring benefits. > >Or the belief that it's an accurate name, whether that belief is >well-founded or not. Why implicitly attribute ulterior motives to them? Debunking. >It is odd that you display this confusion between science=good, >not science=bad Not odd at all. How many times have you seen the comment "X is not scientific enough" or "In order to place X on a more scientific footing" or "we need a more scientific approach". I presume all of the politics and ideology of science are passing you by. In the 1960s and 1970s it was certainly not "trendy" to be a non-science (cf non-sense). Each era has its own canons of certainty. In ours, it has been the methods of empirical science, which as we all know, any philosophy undergraduate and most arts undergraduates can shoot through in seconds when it comes to the claims made for the certainty of scientific experiment. I presume you think AI will be better once it's scientific (not yet => needs to be in the future)? Of course, we are told, "real" science doesn't follow these methods at all. Text book accounts of scientific method do not capture what "real" scientists are doing at all. If so, enlighten me. What ARE they doing and why can't we see it in black and white like the crude positivism which all scientists, so the story goes, have abandoned, nay, never really endorsed? To summarise, in sociological terms there is an ideological battle between science, intuition, custom, religion (in many guises: biblical, mystical, occult), and the "argument" of the humanities as to the proper basis of certainty. Science has the upper hand at the moment, largely because of its value to material production. Despite hi-tech, as we move towards a knowledge-based and personal skill based service dominated economy, it is arguable (and thus I argue) that the hegemony of scientific method as the ONLY proper source of truth will be unsustainable. It just doesn't work for human related activities (see Dilthey and the Hermeneutic tradition, ... for starters :-)). >More paradoxical confusion. Or is this intended ironically? Some irony, but I don't see the immanent paradox (sarcasm this time :-]) >build nuclear weapons and rockets to the moon are, of course, engineers. Not in Los Alamos they weren't. Cultural histortians attribute much influence to the atom bomb in establishing the power of the boffins' 1st XI. Only a decade before, Fleming was working with two assistants and a sink and Chain was making penicillin in milk bottles. Science did not have the hold in the 1930s which it has by the 1960s. Something changed, and WW2 and the products of science (radar, missiles, jet engines, synthetic penicillin, ergonomics, etc) seem to have played a major role in easing out the likes of Gestalt psychology for the rat and pidgeon circuses of failed chemists. >From what I have seen, people in cognitive science perform experiments on >physical entities. They are therefore entitled to use the term science, as >long as their experiments conform to some reasonable version of the >scientific method Let's hear it for the good version then! RA RA RA, reasonable scientific method, HOORA HOORA, YOWSA, YOWSA, YOWSA Tell us why it works. My first degree was in education. In 1981, there was little from cognitive psychology which could be applied directly to the education of 11-18 year olds (but much from social and affective psychology, e.g. motivation, a jolly good physical entity, what what?). What's changed? Where's the science got us? Why will it get us anywhere? How do you get a class of low achievers with "reading" ages under 11 through an exam for the average 15 year old? What is science going to do here? >Engineering is so certain as to be almost boring Science is so isolated as to almost irrelevant ... :-) >If they called themselves a science while only engaging in rhetorical > battles without any experiments, one could complain. I complain when they DO use experiments too. Ever heard of experimental DESIGN as opposed to experimental method. It is not method which makes the best experiments in psychology. It is the raw insight and imagination behind the design of the experiment. Method can be written down for the terminally unimaginative. Design cannot. Look at the debate between psychologists and you will see as much debate about the design of an experiment as about the method of its conduct. >I think what Richard O'Keefe may have meant is that the funding agencies >certainly aren't fooled. At least for very long. How long is very long? 5, 10, 20 years? Look back to 1960s funding and see who's still around from the "systems" and "science" schools of that decade, still plodding on with their naive empiricism and continued lack of inspiration in experi-mental design. Even 5 years of funding is enough to leave a slowly decaying ideology around. It will take decades to de-odourise the humanities after the hot positivist party of the 1960s. Your assertion is a historical one, and the evidence is easy to check. Look at the net. Someone in comp.ai.edu is still looking for measures of readability like "weight" or "length". Will the funding bodies not be fooled again after the plus-science non-sense of the 50s and 60s on this issue? Will my posting choke the style checker? Anyway, where do I stand? I stand with both feet in the dualist camp that holds that the evidence given to sense data is adequate for a fairly mechanical modelling of natural processes, but is hopelessy inadequate for the study of autonomous, conative agents embedded in a language and culture. I despise Method in human studies as the refuge of the insensitive or incompetent. I use methods of course, but would never appeal to the magic of a technique in order to try to convince. The aim of study, whether of cognition or anything related to human action, is to improve our understanding of ourselves. Reductionist scientific method brings anything but understanding. There are more imaginative approaches to experiment which deliver NO LESS certainty than classical scientific method. They are all known to any well educated person under 40, and to many over that age. All of them recognise that subjectivity and the biasing of language are unavoidable in the study of human action. Unlike science, which represses subjectivity under a myth of objectivity, most post-modern approaches to knowledge confront subjectivity with a head-on honesty. It is this candour that makes work so more convincing and authentic than the ritualised masques of positivist science. And what of Cognitive Science? I prefer Edinburgh's old "epistemics", which is far less committed to any one paradigm, but couldn't get block ESRC funding like a proper science can :-) -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert
eric@snark.UUCP (Eric S. Raymond) (08/26/88)
In article <1578@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> Gilbert Cockton writes: > [lots of bashing of 'positivist' science] > > Anyway, where do I stand? I stand with both feet in the dualist camp > that holds that the evidence given to sense data is adequate for a > fairly mechanical modelling of natural processes, but is hopelessy > inadequate for the study of autonomous, conative agents embedded in a > language and culture. Gilbert, you have 'scientific method' confused with reductive materialism. This is not a completely unreasonable mistake, since (as you point out) many scientists have fallen into the same error. But it is a mistake no less when *you* do so. Scientific method is a *theory of confirmation*, proceeding from the identification of 'truth' with 'predictive value'. Whether the model one is seeking involves 'material' or 'immaterial' entities is irrelevant to the method. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you want to criticize some aspects of the socio-historical impact of 'big science', go right ahead; plenty of that deserves bashing. But don't confuse that with a refutation of the method itself. Another point: you attribute the lure of 'big science' to its success at facilitating 'material production', but very much as though that's a sort of inferior substitute for something else. Care to name the 'something else'? I'll bet you wouldn't speak so slightingly of 'material production' if you were living in the conditions of poverty, misery and fear that were the lot of 99.9% of humanity before the beginnings of scientific improvements in 'material production'. 'Big science' has flaws, but it gets imitated because it is a stunning and unprecedented *success* for humanity. You forget or ignore this only at the risk of looking rather silly. -- Eric S. Raymond (the mad mastermind of TMN-Netnews) UUCP: ...!{uunet,att,rutgers}!snark!eric = eric@snark.UUCP Post: 22 S. Warren Avenue, Malvern, PA 19355 Phone: (215)-296-5718
dc@gcm (Dave Caswell) (08/28/88)
In article <1578@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) writes:
.To summarise, in sociological terms there is an ideological battle
.between science, intuition, custom, religion (in many guises: biblical,
.mystical, occult), and the "argument" of the humanities as to the
.proper basis of certainty. Science has the upper hand at the moment,
.largely because of its value to material production. Despite hi-tech,
.as we move towards a knowledge-based and personal skill based service
.dominated economy, it is arguable (and thus I argue) that the hegemony
.of scientific method as the ONLY proper source of truth will be
.unsustainable. It just doesn't work for human related activities (see
.Dilthey and the Hermeneutic tradition, ... for starters :-)).
Your stating something like that as the economy becomes more service-oriented
that we will add other things (mysticism etc.) besides science as a basis
for truth. Your argument leaves a few questions unanswered.
1) How can mysticism, occult, religion provide any basis for truth.
2) Why is a service oriented economy any more likely to settle for
invalid means of asserting truth.
Science may not be the "only proper source of truth", but what in the world
does intuition have to do with it?
Why does religion have less value (your word) in material production and
more in a service dominated economy.
--
Dave Caswell
Greenwich Capital Markets uunet!philabs!gcm!dcpete@wor-mein.UUCP (Pete Turner) (08/30/88)
In article <573@white.gcm> dc@white.UUCP (Dave Caswell) writes: > >Your stating something like that as the economy becomes more service-oriented >that we will add other things (mysticism etc.) besides science as a basis >for truth. Your argument leaves a few questions unanswered. >1) How can mysticism, occult, religion provide any basis for truth. >2) Why is a service oriented economy any more likely to settle for > invalid means of asserting truth. > I hate to sound esoteric, but what is truth? And what does science have to do with truth? James Burke's BBC TV series, "The Day the Universe Changed", touched on these issues. If I understand him, he holds the view that science is a means of devising a "map" to help you work with the world. But I don't believe that maps can encapsulate truth. Science seeks to devise better maps. Truth is the realm of religion. Pete
gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (09/01/88)
In article <573@white.gcm> dc@white.UUCP (Dave Caswell) writes: > >Your stating something like that as the economy becomes more service-oriented >that we will add other things (mysticism etc.) besides science as a basis >for truth. No I'm not. What I'm saying is that classical scientific method is less productive for the sort of problems which face a service as opposed to a production dominated economy. Science remains of paramount importance for production. As for "adding", this is not the case. Nothing needs to be added because all the alternative forms of knowing which I mentioned already exist. I have invented nothing. What will change is the balance between science and other forms of knowing in terms of which is the right approach for certain classes of problem. I was not predicting the victory of religion or mysticism, only an increased awareness that classical scientific method isn't the only answer to our ignorance. I presume all your dealers in Greenwich Capital Markets are scientists and that management assess all staff by scientific criteria? >1) How can mysticism, occult, religion provide any basis for truth. Ask a mystic, occultist or religious person, not me. I just recognise that these are valuable ways of knowing for some people, but that science gets all the money for state religion these days :-) >2) Why is a service oriented economy any more likely to settle for > invalid means of asserting truth. It won't. It will just have to change it's ideas about validity (*it* being those portions of society with the power to advance one way of knowing over another). In the 1960s science was advanced over the humanities, now in medicine and management, the "case-studies" tradition of the humanities is becoming dominant again. The issues here are over research policy, as most people are not full-time scientists in their day to day interaction. >Science may not be the "only proper source of truth", but what in the world >does intuition have to do with it? Come on, have a guess :-) >Why does religion have less value (your word) in material production and >more in a service dominated economy. Did I say this? I only thing I hinted at was the relationship between science and religion in economies driven by material production. Religion hasn't been very good at many things which science has had a hand in, maybe? I'm happier with arguments for the historical trend than I am for any hypothesis on its cause. Historically, there has been a tendency to deny the validity of religious knowledge for an understanding of nature since Bacon's time. As to why, the simplest explanation is one of power. Religion has lost its secular authority and science has replaced it in many areas. But the loss of secular authority by religion (in the West at least) has had as much (if not more) to do with changes in political ideology as it has with the rise of science (secularism preceded the Great Instauration). Oh, and don't put words into my mouth, it's full anyway :-) -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert