Hi Matt
On the below, I am surprised that you do not see SOM as key to the
development of science, my readings in intellectual history and
history of science seem to point strongly to this, Galileo is largely seen
as introducing the mathematisation and desubjectification of nature
into science, Descartes then gives as the subject-object dualism that
helps prise apart quantities and qualities, plus reductionism and
atomisation allows for the full metaphysical split into subjects and
objects giving us the materialist wing of the Enlightenment and
allowing the separation of science and church, a political
separation made possible by a metaphysical barrier set up
between subjects and objects, countered but equally dualist
in the idealist-romantic reaction. A philosophical-political mix
that science is as caught up in as anything else. Even today
naive realist scientists and analytical philosophers can pretend
to escape the values and metaphysics at stake here by claiming
some sort of neutrality or even detached objectivity (as if one
side of the SOM dualism had been abolished). Claiming science
is not caught up in the dominance of SOM seems to me odd, almost
blind to the history, have I misunderstood your point? However, your
second point is quite right, nothing wrong with talk of objectivity
based on best data available, or according to the best public
discourse/expert agreement, best models we have, etc, but not
where it claims exclusive access to facts, as there is more to
understanding and evidence and experience than what we
can agree on as the current complex of facts, and as you say
more to reality too.
All the best
David M
Matt said:
That's interesting. This might be a genuine disagreement, then,
because I'm not sure I would say that the subject/object distinction
served at all in the history of the physical sciences, for example. It's
beyond my ken to substantiate the claim one way or the other, but to
answer it would mean to isolate an operative sense of the distinction
that isn't replaceable with, say, one of the one's I offered, or others
(observer/observed is another one I thought of just now). I'm not sure
there is a differentiable sense. (One person I know who does make a
big deal of the distinction is Bruno Latour in We Have Never Been
Modern, but I think he's wrong when he suggests that the overlapping
conceptual senses of subject and object that Boyle and Hobbes
unconsciously exploited in unconscious collaboration to separate politics
from science was necessary to unlock the power of something he calls
"modernity." However, I do think he is right that there was some
conceptual promiscuity going on.)
And Matt said:
There'd be nothing wrong with talk about "objectivity" if it could be
detached from
the premise that "only objective things are real."
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