Hi Pedro
I'm unable to send this list any email.
Regards
Gavin
-----Original Message-----
From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On
Behalf Of Pedro C. Marijuan
Sent: Friday, 11 March 2011 10:47 p.m.
To: fis@listas.unizar.es
Subject: [Fis] Social Validation of Knowledge
Dear FISers,
I was intrigued with the recent exchange between James, Jerry and
others. Taking the central topic --limitations of ancient science,
particularly Aristotelian one, to develop into modern science-- from
another angle, my contention is that the main transformations from
Ancient to Modern science did not concern the "core contents" (e.g.,
logics, mathematics) but the social procedures of knowledge validation.
"Tribunals" and "witnesses" judging experimental "facts" together with
an "invisible college" of learned societies and learned journals. Those
new social procedures arouse and were made possible by a new
informational vehicle to disseminate knowledge in a new, far more
efficient way: the printed book. At the stake are the limitations of the
cognizing individual: the auxiliary "memories" that have been central
along the knowledge accumulation enterprise: numbers, writing, tablets &
papyri, codices, printed books, computers... without them, no knowledge
accumulation possibilities.
The printing press ("the Gutenberg Galaxy", McLuhan dixit) so
revolutionized the knowledge world that in the first century of its
existence there were more printed books circulating that handwritten
ones in the accumulated history of mankind. This phenomenon was behind
the scientific revolution, and the new social procedure of knowledge
validation: by "verificatio experimentalis" (with oral "disputatio"
persisting, but now in the background). In our times, we are living
another period of intense transformations, and new social procedures
that have been instantiated around knowledge validation, e.g.:
"simulatio computationalis", the computer as a cognizing instrument
itself. The "data deluge", with another words.
These are too rough comments, obviously, and I have cavalierly jumped
upon the other and more genuine scientific revolution in the 19th
Century --machine driven. Given that science is finally a modality of
social "accumulation" (creation, elaboration, validation) of knowledge,
with very peculiar and stringent standards (so its transformative power
and prestige), my contention is that some of its main transformations
along history have had external social causes, very humble ones quite
often (see for instance the history of the "0" figure).
best wishes
--Pedro
PS. Thanks again to Zhao for his elegant text; I wonder whether we could
organize a future discussion session focused in the
humanistic-scientific "fusion" around the informational streak. Let us
invite Main, Mihir, and also co-ordinate with other artists already in
fis list --Jim Cogswell, Luis Rico...
--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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