On Sep 16, 2009, at 1:35 PM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote:
It's funny, I have the general notion that "scientists" shouldn't
know better. I don't mean that based on their intelligence, but I
think it is much easier for scientists to go about doing the stuff
they do, and they do it better, if they think they are REALLY doing
it. Albeit, it may be fun to predict where a cannon ball is going
to land, or what the orbit of the planets will be, but if people
didn't think they were finding out something "real" about "gravity"
I doubt the activity would have been as engaging.
I think that's a really neat way to think about it. I'm sure that it
is helpful to a lot of people, and in fact as the reference I sent
makes clear, it would actually be impossible to accomplish anything
without some ability to conceptualize things as if they were real,
or certainly to communicate them. On the other hand, the belief that
such things are real has lead to all sorts of mischief -- including
scientific materialism itself, but also see say classical economics.
Oh, and predicting "where a cannonball is going to land". Somehow I
wish that scientists were a little less adept at that sort of thing,
and in fact we might even become deliberately poor at such tasks if we
gain an appreciation of the broader context of complex interaction,
i.e. including flesh and bone. Or better, we might see it as part of
our responsibility to impress upon others the potential impact.
Scientist do this of course, i.e. Union of Concerned Scientists but it
would be nice if that were the rule rather than the exception.
As a more "real world" example, take the development of a new
antibiotic or vaccine. If I am driven purely by a local imperative to
cure a particular disease, or increase hog yields, and see that
problem as "real", while the much more complex problem of pathogenic
adaptation is "not real" -- because I don't know how to conceptualize
it properly! -- that's a problem for everyone else.============================================================
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