[iDC] reading list // religious mediated spaces

Mon Sep 11 10:04:06 EDT 2006

This debate touches on one of the few things that keeps me awake nights -
the conflict between phenomenologically derived relativist thought and
material rationalism.

These are not necessarily polar opposites as this depends on how extreme or
purist you take either of these positions. Nevertheless, it is a tension.
Perhaps this represents a necessary stress that contributes to creativity.

My usual fix on this (only a fix, not a carefully argued conclusion) is to
accept a "good enough at this time" solution. That is, phenomenology
suggests that no amount of verified data is ever going to prove anything due
to our not knowing for sure that it (or anything else) is real. However,
stuff seems to exist and science seems to verify this as, at the very least,
a very convincing shared hallucination (at least better than any other
method). To me that seems good enough at this time to be getting on with
things - although I retain the right to say it was all in my mind.

Regards

Simon

On 11.09.06 14:20, "Stallabrass, Julian"
<Julian.Stallabrass at courtauld.ac.uk> wrote:

> I know that this is how we are meant to think in humanities-world, and that it
> makes us feel warm and comfortable inside, but I wonder...
>  
> Objectivity died with quantum physics, and any statement is dependent on its
> language. Yes to both, up to a point; but quantum physics is not contradictory
> in its mathematical formulation (Feynman is good on this), only when that is
> translated into words, so maybe one statement cuts against the other.
>  
> Kuhn underestimates the extent to which scientific ideas build on each other;
> his classic case--of relativity--really works against his argument, since
> Newtonian physics was retained (and is still of course used) in many
> situations. And, of course, scientists (like anyone else) are often
> conservative and like to defend ideas they have put a lot of work into. So
> what? At least they have more of an idea than many in the humanities about
> what counts as a counter-example, and theories do get discredited.
>  
> In a way this argument reflects those in theory of photography, in which it
> was rightly said that photographs are never entirely objective; they reflect
> the subjectivities of their makers and users; they are ideological, and so on.
> But does this mean that there is no objective element present at all, as some
> theorists of the 1970s onwards would have us believe? That we wouldn't rather
> have a UFO sighting recorded by a group of amateur photographers than amateur
> watercolourists?
>  
> Likewise with science, if you really believe there is no objectivity there (as
> Gellner put it) you have the problem of explaining how we moved from being
> five thousand years ago a few scattered roving bands of scavengers to
> corresponding globally like this now.
>  
> Regards
>  
> Julian
>  
>  
>  
>  
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: idc-bounces at bbs.thing.net on behalf of John Saccà
> Sent: Sun 10/09/2006 00:20
> To: Simon Biggs
> Cc: idc at bbs.thing.net
> Subject: Re: [iDC] reading list // religious mediated spaces
> 
> 
> 
> 2006/9/9, Simon Biggs <simon at littlepig.org.uk>:
>> To me it seems
>> a given that science depends on an eternally sceptical view of data of any
>> kind. In such a context belief must be absent.
> 
> This view of science was refuted long ago by Thomas Kuhn and Paul
> Feyerabend, among others.  As Feyerabend pointed out (in his
> _Philosophical Papers_), the terms in which any scientific observation
> is expressed inevitably depend on a metaphysical ontology.  For
> example, in order to count things, you have to believe that the
> universe is constituted in such a way that there are discrete entites
> that can be counted.
> 
> Science cannot be exempt from Wittgenstein's observation that the use
> of language depends, at some point, on an unjustifiable belief that
> the words we use have coherent meanings.
> 
> In very practical terms, as Kuhn showed in _The Structure of
> Scientific Revolutions_, the pursuit of what he called "normal
> science" depends on belief in a paradigm that justifies the costs and
> risks involved in undertaking certain kinds of research rather than
> others.  Far from being an unfettered pursuit of scepticism, "normal
> science" (i.e. almost all science) seeks mainly to extend the
> application of an existing paradigm, whose validity is taken for
> granted.  "Revolutionary science" occurs when one paradigm is
> abandoned in favour of another.  But the strength of belief in the old
> paradigm, so necessary for the social cohesion of scientific
> disciplines, often makes scientists resist revolutions with all their
> might.
> 
> John
> 
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Simon Biggs

simon at littlepig.org.uk
http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
AIM: simonbiggsuk

Research Professor, Edinburgh College of Art

s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
http://www.eca.ac.uk/