Have people seen the science debate?

[Loralee Donath]

<I realized that the message I wrote yesterday did not go out to the
list..>
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Ron, no need to duck and cover! ;)

I appreciate your comments and think discussion on this could be very
fruitful. My own data from undergraduate engineering researcher
discourse have shed quite a bit of light on the issue and I've thought a
lot about the ole science vs humanities divide (which I'm not sure
exists the world over, but it certainly is present in this corner of
cyberspace). 

First, I do need to point out that in your final lines your spoof
naturally lacks an empirical basis. By spoofy analogy with what I assume
is your target--let's say research on social processes--you assert that
such research likewise lacks an empirical basis, and that is untrue.
That research sometimes seems to get dismissed and/or ridiculed because
its data--and the methods used to wrangle and analyze that data--are not
recognized as such. (Hence, the very practice seems like 'hocus pocus'
as my friend called it). (It _is_ strange to me that this happens
(unintentionally?) among colleagues here on the linganth listserv).

You put it very nicely when you said
> the best way we have
> discovered so far to describe and explain that reality (including our
> own social and linguistic reality) is to rely on data and evidence;

Absolutely! One might even add "our analytical faculties" or simply
"reason." Here again, what (and historically, who--sometimes half of an
entire population) gets recognized as analytical or rational depends on
who has the biggest, longest platform, and the most resources.

Certainly
> hypothesis forming, testing, revision, and falsification; and using
> the hypotheses that
> survive this process to construct theories 
are all important practices for knowledge construction. They are not the
most useful for addressing every kind of inquiry, nor are they
sufficient for any kind of inquiry. They are of course formalized in the
scientific method, a useful tool that nevertheless fails to represent
some of the most important practices that self-named "hard" scientists
do. 

At my research site one of the things engineering faculty said they
sought help with was getting students to get away from the pre-packaged,
institutionalized template where the goal was to find the "right"
answer, but instead drive their own research, find the questions worth
asking. What they were asking for was the "open-ended" inquiry needed to
generate hypotheses in the first place. Inductive reasoning plays a
pretty critical behind-the-scenes role in scientific research--off the
record. It's not represented when the credits roll. I was interested to
see how students engaged in it with their faculty advisors, as when one
student described how their close, systematic observations of cell
membrane behavior--via multiple strategies (ex. imaging and cell counts)
that were recorded in a research notebook and analyzed--guided and
changed the questions they were asking...

Anti-science? Ethnographers, for example, make important use of these
same practices; the difference is that they formalize them and
acknowledge them as central to their knowledge production. Supposedly
"pro-science" people appear to be unwilling to legitimize these methods,
the data and analysis the methods produce, and the people who
claim/produce them--and they appear to have the prerogative to continue
to do so.

Pass the eggnog,
Lori

On Sat, 2010-12-11 at 08:58 -0500, Kephart, Ronald wrote:
> On 12/11/10 12:12 AM, "Loralee Donath" <donathl at CARCOSA.NET> wrote:
> 
> > I thought the proposed change in the wording was more precise and
avoided the
> > nebulous question of what "science" means, who it includes.
> >
> 
> See, I just don't think that the concept of science is all that
"nebulous."
> To me, it means simply (and maybe I'm too simple-minded to see the
> complications), that there is a reality out there and the best way we
have
> discovered so far to describe and explain that reality (including our
own
> social and linguistic reality) is to rely on data and evidence;
hypothesis
> forming, testing, revision, and falsification; and using the
hypotheses that
> survive this process to construct theories (grammars) of whatever
domain we
> happen to be investigating.  Science is our best means of producing
> synthetic propositional knowledge about the world.
> 
> And, just to get myself into even more trouble, I reject the idea of
science
> per se as a western, white male hegemonic narrative, in the same way
that I
> reject the idea that algebra was Arabic/Islamic terrorism perpetrated
> against me in middle school, or that traffic lights represent
> African-American hegemonic control over my driving.
> 
> Ron (Running for cover...)