4 The Great Science - Culture War

Salmon, pan-galactic wasabi, salmon, ... lovely ... but first your discourses and the great war of words between objective fact and messy reality ...

Hola, مرحبا , 你好, ສະບາຍດີ, नमस्ते, Bonjour, привет, Hello ....

Discourses

Science and Culture Earth Wars

So many dichotomy battles! Social versus technical, disciplines versus empirical problems, modern versus post modern, objects versus subjects, right versus wrong, utopia versus distopia, cause-effect versus properties, mind versus matter, praxis versus cognition, things versus humans, observational versus interventional, realist versus phenomenologist! The list goes on! The biggest one and my all time favourite has always been opinion versus fact. Classic Level 3 conundrum.

The Grey Master, Thomas Kuhn, and in particular his seminal work "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is important in your discourse assessment. He may visit earth again as a NAPSTA Level 4 accreditation advisor. There is a nice review of his book here. 

(Polanyi also came up with these ideas around the same time).

In "Structure", Kuhn described how scientific paradigms change, how one day science is cruising along and everyone is happy with the theories and beliefs they have, and then suddenly people start to challenge the accepted paradigm. Suddenly, Netwon's laws of physics can't explain sub atomic particle behaviour. 

Galileo's observation that your world circled your sun (heliocentrism) turned religion and philosophy on their heads. I do miss him ...

Paradigms change relatively quickly and lead to "incommensurable" new ways of looking at things - the new beliefs cannot be harmonised with the old set. They are ... incommensurable. Chalk and cheese, Earth salmon and Augmentan vinegar! Yuuuuuuk!

Many of these oppositions have grown in recent Earth decades. To see how the wars battles evolve, lets look at an example, highlighted by terran lecturer Paul Ralph (who incidentally is being considered for a Midorian Scholarship). 

Ralph employs Quine the Philosopher against Philosophy itself. 

Quine battles for the sci-tech team. The battle is about which disciplines own metaphysics. Ho hum .....

Reducing dreams to chemicals 

Quine: Who owns metaphysics? Real science of pseudo science?

Betelgeuse Philosopher: Quine, do you dream in chemicals?

W.V. Quine, major heavy weight thinker and tinkler, argued that philosophy (traditionally a humanities subject, not a physical science) should hand over the keys of "metaphysics" (Def: Abstract branch of philosophy, or theory or talk with no basis in reality) to the scientists, psychologists (social scientists) and biologists (natural scientists).

How humans think, Quine argued, is not explained by stuffy scholars sprouting opinions in their offices, we need empirical data and experiments to figure our how people think, when they think, how sense data informs thinking, what the input or output is. Let's move metaphysics into the lab. Let's naturalise metaphysics. We need white coats, not stuffy scholars.

Quine's call recruits pure science to describe and explain all phenomena, regardless of whether laboratories are the most appropriate tool. He gets his modes mixed up.

You can use a hammer to hit a nail, but not to decide what picture to put up. Quine's input-output model, and individual cognition frame risks evaporating what goes on between people and across meanings - arguably the foundation of social interaction.

The Great War Goes Global

This war relates directly to Dr Walker's original question about human directions.

Where the modern says science helps us create a better life, the postmodern questions a better life for who? Whereas postmodernists claim all meaning is but illusory, modernists says we should get on with building, measuring and classifying and not let doubt deconstruct what we are doing already.

Fascinating Chomsky video on science versus literature - sums up the warring animosity.

At times, the subject disciplines are pretty incommensurable. Last earth century's expansion of globalisation, and the meeting of different discourses from different peoples and countries has exacerbated the progress/critique split, ... the science versus culture war has now become a global war.

Pervasive war above the world

Disciplines from Design to Management and IT all suffer from the hard soft split, the progress/doubt dichotomy, and the socio-technical divide. These opposing forces lead to divided knowledge, and difficulties for disciplines to work together. These lines lead to academic journal spats between respected professors, even about earth garden sheds - see for sheds and against sheds. Even the inane is contested.

Most importantly, the natural science versus social science war diverts attention and resources from global problems and progress. Are expensive missions to Mars, the Higgs Boson mega-experiments or Brain Maps the most optimal way of yielding results and using resources?

Earth solutioneers need a way to focus on real earth problems and understand them, they are complex and localised; they are not grand narratives to take ideological positions on from the top of a discipline skyscraper. Complexity is the slave of ideology at Level 3; it cannot be at Level 4.

Now, excuse me while I go eat, its been a looooooong time since I had earth salmon and I will need it before we move onto your re-design project, your design tinkering, your design networks and knotworks.




We am Puhg.

... I will return.