[A nice long quote by Gould on philosophers and
historians involvement in science below]:
> SA injects his own comment to a note from Bo to Ham:
> > Again, your misunderstanding of most people here,
> > Bo, is probably due to your declaration that
> intellect is som and so therefore all your
reasonings are
> som. Again, our subjectivity has lead to the
science we
> > have today.
Ham:
> Nothing in this comment makes sense to me.
SA: Of course not. I wouldn't except anything less
from you. I'm not being sarcastic or mean, just bein'
real. I don't understand your thesis, so, we're on
equal footing.
Ham:
> 1. Bo did not make a declaration, he expressed an
> opinion.
SA: What's the difference on a public forum?
Ham:
> The rendering of
> an opinion is not due to a misunderstanding, whether
> others agree with the opinion or not.
SA: Ok, when somebody doesn't understand how somebody
else's opinion, as Bo did, then he simply
'misunderstood'.
Ham:
> 2. In my opinion, intellection is a subjective
> analysis of perceived
> information. Perceived experience is always
> differentiated and relative
> to the subject. Hence intellectual knowledge,
> and the process
> of acquiring it, is a subject/object phenomenon.
SA: Yes and no. s/o, but one of integration exists,
too, were the categorizing or differentiation by
somebody doesn't differentiate an event into either s
or o. I'm referring to the process of s and o not
just s or not just o. As you say, your "perceiv(ing)
experience" and what you differentiate from this
experience. This is a process of s and o working
together, not just the s or the o doing all the work
or involved in the experience.
Ham:
> 3. Subjectivity is rejected by Science. Scientific
> methodology focuses
> entirely on objective data as interpreted by the
> intellect.
SA: No it's not, says who? Scientists know it is
their subjectivity in collaboration that decides how
science will be interpreted. Scientists are well
aware of their methodology, their subjectivity, may
not be understanding the objective data that well, so
therefore, they do more tests, and ask others in
different geographies to do these tests. The more the
same interpretation is the outcome, the more reliable
these interpretations become. Philosophers sit with
scientists in meetings and forums to help discuss and
sharpen the interpretation of data.
Taken from "The Structure of Evolutionary
Theory"{Chapter One: Defining and Revising the
Structure of Evolutionary Theory} by Stephen Jay Gould
(the scientist who collaborated with Niles Eldredge
in Punctuated Equilibrium). This book is by far, the
most involved book on Evolution that I've ever seen.
Here's what he says about philosophers, historians,
and collaborations to understand the
intellect-empirical bridge (yes bridge for one can NOT
do without the other):
"Yet, on these basic questions in formulating
evolutionary theory, we often read and thought for
months, and ended up more confused than when we began.
The general solution to such procedural
dilemmas lies in a social and intellectual activity
that scientists do tend to understand and practice
better than colleagues in most other academic
disciplines-collaboration. Far more than most
colleagues, I have tended to work alone in my
professional life and publication. But for each of
the conceptually difficult and intellectually manifold
issues of reevaluation for the central logic of the
three essential Darwinian postulates, I desperately
needed advice, different skills, and the give and take
of argument, from colleagues who complemented my
limited expertise with their equally centered
specialties and aptitudes for other aspects of these
large and various problems. Thus, on the first leg or
branch of hierarchy theory, I worked with Niles
Eldredge on Punctuated equilibrium, and with Elisabeth
Vrba on levels of selection and sorting... And on the
thrid leg of extrapolationism, my earliest interests
in the logic and justification of uniformitarianism in
philosophy, and of Lyellian perspectives in the
history of science, could not have developed without
advice and substantial aid... with historians Martin
Rudwick, Reijer Hooykaas... and with philosophers
Nelson Goodman, Bonnie Hubbard, and George Geiger.
(Geiger, my mentor at Antioch College, was the last
student of John Dewey and played with Lou Gehrig...
In fact, and as a comment within the sociology of
science, I would venture that future historians might
judge the numerous seminal (and published)
collaborations between evolutionary biologists and
professional philosophers of science as the most
unusual and informative operational aspect of the
reconstruction of evolutionary theory in the late 20th
century. Research scientists tend to be a philistine
lot, with organismic biologists perhaps at the head of
this particular pack (for we work with "big things"
that we can see and understand at our own scale.
Thus, we suppose that we can afford to be more purely
empirical in our reliance on "direct" observation, and
less worried about admittedly conceptual problems of
evaluating things too small or too fast to see). Most
of us would scoff at the prospect of working with a
professional philosopher, regarding such a enterprise
as, at best, a pleasant waste of time and, at worst,
an admission that our own clarity of thought had
become addled (or at least as fear that our colleagues
would so regard our interdisciplinary collaboration).
And yet, the conceptual problems presented by
theories based on causes operating at several levels
simultaneously, of effects propagated up and down, of
properties emerging (or not) at higher levels, of the
interaction of random and deterministic processes, and
of predictable and contingent influence, have proven
to be so complex, and so unfamiliar to people trained
in the simpler models of causal flow that have served
us well for centuries, that we have had to reach out
to colleagues explicitly trained in rigorous thinking
about such issues... Professional training in
philosophy does provide a set of tools, modes and
approaches, not to mention a feeling for common
dangers and fallacies, that few scientists (or few
'smart folks' of any untrained persuasion) are likely
to possess by the simple good fortune of superior raw
brainpower...
Indeed, I know of no other substantial conceptual
advance in recent science so abetted by the active
collaboration of working scientists and professional
philosophers...
SA continues: Long enough of explanation for ya.
Ham:
> I suggest that we allow Bo to present his ideas
> without attacking him
> midcourse.
SA: Midcourse? He's not saying anything different,
is he? "Attacking him", don't know what you mean by
this?
rained this morning,
SA
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