Have people seen the science debate?

Tue Dec 14 15:03:59 UTC 2010

Hi all,

Interesting enough, in Italian "humanities" translates as "scienze umane" namely 
"human sciences".
Contrarily to the recent restrictive meaning taken in English, "science" is 
Italian has a wider meaning.

(Or at least this is my impression)

I just saw on the AAA website that they are already backtracking, anyway - or 
trying to.

Yours,

Valentina Pagliai

Department of Anthropology
American University
Washington, DC 20016

 Phone# (908) 668-4840  (h)

There Is No Place Like Everywhere

________________________________
From: Steve Black <sblack at UCLA.EDU>
To: LINGANTH at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Sent: Mon, December 13, 2010 2:36:38 AM
Subject: Re: [LINGANTH] Have people seen the science debate?

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
>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...)