Segment 4
Dear List,
This post will address paragraphs 18 to 21 of the paper, "Sciences as
Communicational Communities." The paragraphs are reproduced below in
their entirety. As I have mentioned before, this segment appears to
be the crux of the paper, where JR lays out his vision of scientific
communication (similar in most respects to that already discussed in
this slow read in relation to the paper, "Peirce and the Socratic
Tradition"). He then formulates his understanding of the relation of
scientific communication to academia, and delivers his key insight
regarding how, in practice, scientific communication can be
maintained, despite the realities confronted in academic institutions.
JR makes four important points in these paragraphs about the
character of scientific communication:
1) [P18] Scientific communication must be sincere. Otherwise
multiple perspectives on the subject-matter will fail to cohere in a
coordinated manner, and the subject-matter will cease to control
inquiry.
2) [P19] Scientific communication must be about subject-matter that
is unitary and real. Otherwise, the subject-matter itself will fail
to produce a coherence of perspectives.
3) [P19] Scientific communication must evidence objectivity, which
can be defined both as an attitude of the inquirer and as a formal
feature of the inquiry process. Otherwise, communication will tend
toward chaos.
4) [P20] Scientific communication must regard all (sincere)
participants as being peers, equal with respect to both the shared
public understanding of the community's subject matter and with
regard to being entitled to respect in relation to the perspectives
they contribute to the community's communication. Otherwise the
coordination of perspectives will become deranged (fail to cohere as
the subject-matter, in truth, would dictate).
JR then concludes with a final point about the relation between
scientific communication and academia:
5) [P21] While the fundamentally hierarchical character of academia
inevitably plagues the sciences, corrupting and compromising its
practices, the norms of science remain unchanged by this corruption
and stand in enduring opposition to those of academia.
In this section, JR sets forward an alternative to the academic
politician's negotiational view of the relation between scientific
inquiry and academia. He grants that science is generally situated
in academic contexts that disease and deform it politically.
However, JR does not recognize the same degree of integration
occurring at the science/academic interface that the sociologist of
knowledge does. In JR's view, this interface does not permeate the
sciences so completely as to have modified the community's basic
norms of conduct. As a result, it is still possible to conceive of
living a scientific life while also maintaining a separate status as
a professor. The two identities may come into conflict when their
norms are not in harmony, but they nonetheless each have their own
discrete character.
In this final point, JR is able to explain how the authoritarian,
hierarchically-oriented, politically-governed behavior that
scientists have been accurately documented as occasionally (even
habitually) exhibiting can be seen to occur while science in general
can remain apolitical. Because scientific norms remain uncorrupted
and uninfluenced by academia, it is possible for scientists, even if
they are also professors, to engage in scientific inquiry according
to the norms of a scientific life proper. If they fail to do so, it
is because they fail to conduct themselves according to the norms of
science, not because science is nothing but a "negotiational"
endeavor.
A few questions arise in relation to JR's views presented in this segment:
* How distinctly is JR speaking "in the spirit of Peirce" here, with
regard to his 4-fold definition of scientific communication? Does
Peirce place the same kind of stress on each of these four points as
JR does? Is there any deviation or inclination, however subtle, that
might identify a Ransdellian take on Peirce here? Would Short, or
Ketner, or Houser, or de Tienne, or Apel, or deWaal, or even Eco, or
other interpreters of Peirce put it quite the same way?
* What, exactly, is "unitary" subject-matter as JR employs the term?
A great deal is hanging on this concept, it would seem. Is inorganic
subject-matter more unitary than organic subject-matter? If so, that
would explain why the hard sciences have the superior status they are
granted in this paper (it might even necessarily explain it,
following JR's logic of objectivity). I have no immediate
recollection of how Peirce uses this concept in relation to science.
Perhaps some listers may be able to give some additional detail on
this.
* In the paper, "Is Peirce a Phenomenologist?," listers may recall
that JR stressed the differences between what he termed the
"mechanistic-technological" conception of science (p. 5, 6),
associated with Descartes and, more recently Kreis and Carnap, and
Peirce's pragmaticist (teleological) conception of science. JR
claimed that for Peirce, the character of the subject-matter did not
exercise a defining influence on the identity of science. In this
earlier paper, JR writes that Peirce, "does not identify science or
the scientific by reference to any special type of property of the
subject-matter of the science (its "primary qualities," for example),
or by reference to some special "scientific method" (in the sense in
which that would usually be understood) but rather by reference to
the communicational relationships of its practitioners . . ." In
view of the arguments presented in the paper now under discussion, it
would seem that JR, in the phenomenology paper, is edging up to more
of a "negotiational" perspective than would seem to be tenable under
the terms of the present paper. I wonder what "unitary-ness" is if
it is not a "primary quality" of scientific subject-matter. I
wonder what "controlled observation" is if it is not a special method
developed in relation to the primary quality of unitary-ness of
scientific subject-matter. Do other listers see here a
contradiction in JR's two papers?
It seems worth noting that, in the phenomenology paper, which was not
addressed to scientists, JR seems strongly critical of the
mechanistic-technological conception of science and characterizes
that conception as having "reigned in modern times." One would
assume that JR saw it as having reigned in modern times in the
discipline of physics as well as in the other sciences. However, in
this paper, addressed as it is to physicists, JR seems to be
retreating from that critical view of the reigning conception of
science in their discipline. Instead, JR presents a view in which
"unitary and real" subject-matter is an essential condition for
enabling scientific communication, and praises the hard sciences for
its special method of dealing with such subject-matter. Has JR
compromised Peirce's perspective here as well as his own? Has he
made the subject-matter of science unnecessarily exclusive and
hierarchical? For, if some subject-matter is better for science than
others (more "unitary"), is there not then a politics inherent in the
hierarchy of unitary-ness as exhibited by the various objects of
scientific inquiry? If not, how can JR's views as presented in these
two papers be reconciled?
I hope to post again in 5 days times.
Best,
Sally
SEGMENT 4 of "Sciences as Communicational Communities"
[paragraphs 18-21]
But leaving the plight of the sociologist aside for the present, I
believe that if the basic conception of scientific publication as
communication that I articulated above in a crude but basic form is
thought through consistently, it will be seen that this entails first
of all that everything said about the subject-matter should be said
responsibly and sincerely, which is to say that lying, misdirection,
evasion, waffling, and all other forms of deliberate or tolerated
misrepresentation--in short, any of the many forms of
insincerity--are the most fundamental of all violations of scientific
method. Secrecy is a limitation on science: where secrecy begins
science ends, strictly speaking; but that is a limitation on the
scope of inclusion of a scientific community, and although
necessarily crippling to whatever extent it is practiced, it is not
secrecy but rather insincerity--lying in its most general form--that
kills science immediately insofar as it enters into it effectively.
Why? Because no real subject-matter can be understood from the
perspective of a single person--reality has facets--but is
essentially a matter of the coordination of multiple perspectives on
the same thing, and lying introduces pseudo-perspectives that tend
toward defeating attempts within a scientific community to establish
a coherent coordination of the perspectives available at a given
time, thus deracinating inquiry by destroying the integrity of its
connection with its subject-matter as its ultimate source of control.
[19]
The coordination of the diverse perspectives of the individual
members of the community, which is a primary function of the
publication process, assumes that the subject-matter which concerns
its members is unitary and real, since if it were unreal this would
be shown by a continuing inability to establish such a coordination.
And what is meant by objectivity in inquiry, considered as an
attitude of the inquirer, is the commitment to establishing such a
coordination by reference to a common object, and by the cultivation
of communicational practices designed to maximize the kind of
collaboration that can have such a result. Objectivity considered as
a formal feature of the inquiry process, rather than as a stance
taken by the inquirer, is that referential structure in the
communicational process regarded logically. Where such
communicational practices exist, authentic publication policies are
in effect and are working effectively; where there is no attempt at
such a coordination there is no objectivity in the field, and the
publication practices are more likely to be conducive to chaos than
to growth and to function more as a blight than a blessing.
[20]
Though it may not be readily apparent, this also implies that
every individual in such a community is to be regarded as
presumptively equal with every other as a provider of content to be
assimilated into the coherent coordination of perspectives sought
for, and although it is true that some people's opinions will
inevitably be weighted more heavily in practice than others--and no
doubt should be if they establish a track record that warrants
it--this must remain at the level of individual judgment and not be
confused with the shared public understanding of a given scientific
community, which is always concerned only with characteristics of the
subject-matter since it is that and that only which constitutes the
concern constitutive of the particular community of inquirers as
such. In other words, no community of scientific inquiry as such can
legitimately concern itself with ranking its own members in terms of
their status and worth in the community because to do so is to lose
sight of its subject-matter by lapsing into group introspection
instead. More could be said about this, and will be elsewhere, but I
will only add further here that we see here the typical point of
attempted entry of authoritarianism into inquiry, and can see why its
effective entry always corrupts to the extent that this effect
ramifies.
[21]
This is why it is of the first importance not to confuse what
it means to be a scientist of this type or that with being a
professor of this rank or that in a local hierarchical university
system. I don't doubt that such confusions do in fact plague the
sciences like they plague every other academic field, causing a
falling away from science into the acrimony of politics, and that the
essential egalitarianism of science is betrayed in many ways as it
actually exists in practice; but these compromises and betrayals are
academic diseases and deformities, inherited as congenital birth
defects due to the origins of academia as a medieval hierarchical
institution, not a norm of the scientific life proper, which is
fundamentally at odds with this hierarchical heritage. Let me stress
that the point is not to adopt an unrealistic view of the importance
of prestige and accomplishment, but rather to recognize that pains
should be taken not to allow this to subvert in practice the
principle of presumptive equality which is the essential element of
the idea of a peer. The reason is essentially the same as in the case
of lying: a peer is--logically regarded--equivalent to a respected
perspective on the subject-matter, and to treat a peer either as
superior or inferior is to derange the coordination of perspectives
which is the constant task of the ongoing science.
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