Tuesday, May 13, 2008Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, there's an interesting post on "science studies," postmodernism, etc. The comments are interesting too. The crux of it comes from a reprint of Norman Leavitt, of which I think this is the nut:[Professor el Hajj's] ideas are at the least heavily tinctured with what, for want of a better term, is usually called "postmodernism." This incorporates the attitude that knowledge claims are, perforce, political claims, that "objective knowledge" is an oxymoron, and that modern science, in particular, is a repressive ideological edifice designed to bolster the hegemony of western capitalist patriarchal societies, not least by demeaning and displacing the "alternative ways of knowing" that are embedded in non-western cultures or are simply more appropriate to marginalized sub-populations (women for instance!)A few thoughts: When I was in grad school, I ran across Postmodernism, Post-modernism and postmodernism. I don't remember which was which, but one of them, drawing on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, simply argued that 1) the observer does affect the observed, 2) the position of observation affects what is observed and 3) as a result, knowledge has inherent in it a certain amount of instability. This was a counterpoint to the view of "moderns" that if we did enough science and studies, eventually, we'd decode the whole universe and know everything we might want to know. Another variant worried about the power inherent in knowledge claims and decided that most knowledge was suspect, but seemed vaguely aware that in asserting this it was biting its own tail. The third variety said that power over knowledge was tyrannical and seemed to finish by claiming that only the powerless could therefore exercise untainted knowledge. It is the third school that the most outrageous postmoderns belong to, and that critics of postmodernism like to criticize the most. For what it's worth, I'm borderline postmodern - I do think knowledge is unstable. History makes this pretty clear. And while science seems to go on steady marches toward ever-refined truth, it seems to me that every time it gets too close to solving all the riddles, we stumble on something new that blows all the old stuff out of the water. No matter how well you peel the onion, there's always another layer. However, science is not truth - it's knowing. And to the extent that science helps us reliably predict the future based on past experimentation, it's real. Even to the extent that it helps us consistently explain the past - i.e. evolution and astronomy - it's worth doing. In other words, I don't think science will ever solve the ultimate question of the universe, much less find it to be something as simple as 42. But it will solve a lot of other questions that can help us both better understand our world and get a better sense of what our options really are before we're forced to rely on intuition or faith for the final judgment. Where do I stand on "science studies"? They raise real questions, but the answers should be in the practical realist vein (just because ultimate truth is unknowable doesn't mean we can't find some pretty good provisional truth and work with that unless and until we find something that works better). Some fit this bill, but many are illogical cranks who use their status as marginalized - a marginalization owing to their daftness and petulance - to assert that they have the truest, or maybe truthiest, truth. It is true that scientists will find what they're looking for. Not only did Israeli archaeologists find proof that their narrative of history was borne out, but physicists keep finding proof of an ordered universe that makes sense and is explainable by physics, at least until something new comes along and they're sent back to the drawing board. To their credit, though, they go back to the drawing board, as opposed to arguing that they're being oppressed. The problems come when provisional knowledge is conflated with ultimate truth. The evolutionists and creationists conceivably could find common ground if the evolutionists admitted that they don't really have proof or understanding of how non-life became life and therefore can't rule out God while the creationists admitted that if testing drugs on a rat tells us if they'll be fatal to humans then an evolutionary model that says we have things in common with monkeys - far more similar to humans at a glance - is worth using to think about how life works. One issue though, with reference to one of the comments: Whenever I find myself in agreement with JFThomas, I have to do a reality check--but I agree with his point about the influence of "science studies" folk. They may affect the victims studies/various ethnic studies programs, but I don't think they will be designing and socially constructed bridges for the rest of us to drive on any time soon.That sounds good as far as it goes and marginalizes (there's that word again!) the importance of the debate. But it ignores that while the "science studies" folks aren't designing bridges, their brethren are undermining our belief in standardized tests and the metrics used by education systems and certification organizations such that they may get a greater say in who does design bridges, perform surgeries, etc. than we'd be comfortable with. 
posted by gbarto at 11:15 AM
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