Have people seen the science debate?

[Steve Black]

Dear all,
Without taking any particular stance, I would like to remind us all that when used in actual talk, the term "science" we are discussing usually includes a modifier, the adjective "social."

Steven P. Black

Department of Anthropology
University of California-San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr.
San Diego, CA 92093-0532

Phone: 310-804-9917

On Dec 12, 2010, at 12:17 PM, Francis Hult wrote:

> My favorite response is from Rex at 'Savage Minds', quoted in Daniel Lende's post on the Neuroanthropology blog: 
> 
> "The opposite of 'science' is not 'nihilitic postmodernism' it's 'an enormously huge range of forms of scholarship, many of which are completely and totally committed to accuracy and impartiality in the knowledge claims they make..."
> http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2010/12/01/anthropology-science-and-public-understanding/
> 
> Francis
> 
> --
> Francis M. Hult, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Bicultural-Bilingual Studies
> University of Texas at San Antonio
> 
> Web: http://faculty.coehd.utsa.edu/fhult/
> 
> New Book: Directions and Prospects for Educational Linguistics
> http://www.springer.com/education+%26+language/linguistics/book/978-90-481-9135-2 <http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-90-481-9135-2> 
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: Linguistic Anthropology Discussion Group on behalf of Loralee Donath
> Sent: Sun 12/12/2010 10:41 AM
> To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Re: [LINGANTH] Have people seen the science debate?
> 
> 
> 
> <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...)