gilbert@cs.glasgow.ac.uk (Gilbert Cockton) (08/08/88)
In article <250@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >Do any of these names actually mislead anyone? On the grounds that no normal (i.e. not abnormal) behaviour persists which is of no benefit to anyone, the use of the word "science" must be due to the belief that it will bring benefits. Academics seem to feel safer if their discipline can be called a science. It is worthy of funding, objective, guaranteed to produce an accretion of knowledge. Thus either the would-be scientist, or significant others, or both are influenced ("mislead?") by the name. For us to rise above names, there must be some "real" and "true" referents which will resist the improper use of terms. A good contemporary example of the importanace of names is "bastard" -> "illegitimate" -> "non-marital". As these children are still really bastards (according to my dictionary :-)), surely we are being "mislead" by "non-marital"? On the other hand, the denial of the title of "science" to a discipline is intended to have consequences. Knowledge from that discipline is not to be regarded with the certainty of a real science (like Physics, which is full of experimenters). The root of the problem is the post-war "big science" period where only the paradigm which produced the atom-bomb could deliver true certainty. The crude positivism of this period was already out of date, yet during the 1960s one discipline after another, especially in the United States, fell prey to the mediocrity of wanting to make things more scientific. In came systems theory and mathematical models into Geography, rat experiments in Psychology, functional models in Sociology, the stench of the numbers of cliometry to History, (the implications of numbers for the demise of American Slavery could not be argued with - anyone remember Fogel and Engelman's "Time on the Cross"?) and statistical analysis of style in literature. No-one had the courage to stick up for the "studies" approach of the Humanities. Today, no-one should be so uneducated as to believe the dogmas of the fundamentalist versions of scientific method. Yet again and again we see scientists and technologists who have somehow picked up incredibly crude and flawed arguments for experimental method. These people, more than anyone else, are the ones misled by names - so much so that they must join the constant procession around the boundaries of the scientific parish, denying the totem of science to all non-positivist sinners. -- Gilbert Cockton, Department of Computing Science, The University, Glasgow gilbert@uk.ac.glasgow.cs <europe>!ukc!glasgow!gilbert