>At 9:19 AM 11/16/96, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >>I refer to my other comment, that the quotes >>cited do not deny material reality, but material reality "independent of... >>humanity." This is what the quote actually says, and this last clause, not >>the *existence* of material reality, is where all the action is. Your >>omission of the all-important phrase is telling. And Doug responded, >My omission is hardly telling. As I said in my response to Greg Ransom, I >do believe in a material reality independent of humanity. If every last >Homo sapiens were to drop dead after lunch tomorrow, I don't doubt that the >earth would go on without us. If a tree fell in the forest without a human >audience, there would be no one there to hear the sound - and obviously the >terms "hear" and "sound" depend on a human audience - but the tree and the >forest would still exist. I agree with the last sentence, which does not mean that reality is independent of humanity. People who are still interested in this subject (anybody?!) might check out Bruno Latour's LABORATORY LIFE: THE CONSTRUCTION OF SCIENTIFIC FACTS. Latour worked for a time as a tech at the Scripps Institute (participant observation). His description of how certain enzymes in the human body were not "discovered" but *invented/constructed/produced* by means of particular "inscription devices" -- i.e. machines that perform certain operations on tissues and body fluids and parts and such -- is brilliant and compelling. The point is that these enzymes, which we use to cure "real" diseases and such, did not exist independently of human science; they were not just "there," in the body, waiting to be discovered, but only exist because of the particular scientific machinery (literal and metaphorical) necessary to construct them; that a different kind of science would not have produced these enzymes and they wouldn't exist. Explaining this better or reproducing the compelling quality of his description here would require a *very* long message, but if you're interested, read the book. Blair Blair Sandler [EMAIL PROTECTED]
