• Realism vs constructivism, ontology vs epistemology, realism vs idealism, singularism vs multiplism - Inevitable oppositions or is there a way out?
• "Granted, then, that empty space extends without limit in every direction and that seeds innumerable are rushing on countless courses through an unfathomable universe ... Lucretius, c 99-55 BC
• [this system of logic] is not something distinct from its object and content; for it is the inwardness of the content, the dialectic which it possesses within itself, which is the mainspring of its advance ... Hegel, Science of Logic (paragraph 63), 1815
• Thus the dialectical movement of substance through causality and reciprocity is the immediate genesis of the Notion, the exposition of the process of its becoming ... Hegel, Science of Logic (paragraph 1281), 1815
• "Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that ... Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling." ... Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942 (see also "Space ... room not only to explore but to create")

Evolution, Emergence	Neurobiology
no designer, blueprint, conductor algorithmic exploration, what is depends on what has been and randomness no "essentialism", no "immutables" species (at any given time) themselves examples of "incomensurables" no form/content distinction, no external reference frame no final state (asymptotic or otherwise), no inevitability ("What starts without a Word ought not to be expected to be ended by one") an ongoing exploration of quasi-stable forms of matter rather than a "struggle to survive" an evolving, non-deterministic, somewhat inchoate "out there", which in turn discovers, brings into existence a distinction between "in here" and "out there" and causally significant "intentionality", "word", "meaning", additional reference frames?	the appearance of the bipartite brain and story telling increased stability through "unitariness", solution to hill-climbing problem? an idealist sitting on the back of a pragmatist creation of new problems/opportunities ... conflict (in absence of absolute reference frame) "perception" a product of brain, ALWAYS interaction/context-dependent, a resolution of ambiguous information and therefore never either definitive or inevitable does not preclude possibility of noticing PARTICULAR aspects of context-dependence, successfully transcending them, but does make absolute transcendence unachievable does not preclude possibility of interpersonal agreement, but does challenge notion of inevitability and even desireability of interpersonal agreement Story telling introduces "reality", "intention", "meaning" .... "ideals" but they should always be recognized as creations/tools of the exploratory process and never misunderstood as definitive or inevitable "Testability", "falsifiability", "correspondence theory of truth"? Implications for theory and practice of science?

Revisiting Science in Culture: Science as Story Telling and Story Revising (see also A Conversation)

• "Science" neither justifies nor depends on a concept of a singular describable "reality" out there that is independent of observers
• The story of an independent and describable "reality" has played/will continue to play a useful role in science but it also creates problems both for the interplay between science and other spheres of human activity and for science itself
• There is no basis for a presumption that there are only a finite number of ways to create stories that adequately summarize observations, and hence no reason to believe that "falsification" will lead to an asymptotic approach to a description of "reality". The history of science itself suggests a pattern of development more like that characterizing biological evolution: the continuing generation and interplay of incomensurable stories some of which prove to be generative in the future and others of which do not.
• Scientific statements are not "testable" but should in general be "falsifiable". The rationale here relates not to a correspondence theory of truth but rather to the centrality of "profound skepticism" as a guarantor of continuing exploration/evolution.
• It is time for both scientists and others to outgrow the treatment of science as a non-denominational substitute for the Word, and embrace instead the space/room/opportunity to not only discover but create.
• The existence of multiple stories, context dependences, is not a problem for science but an asset.
• A sharp demarcation between "science" and other venues of human activity is not in the best interests of either as evolutionary/exploratory systems.
• There will for some time at least continue to be a useful distinction between explorations/creations of what is out there ("science") and of what can be conceived ("art", "culture") with the former more constrained by "observation". Both, however, are fundamentally blends of "realism" and "constructivism", of the pragmatic and the ideal, and of a fundamental multiplism that may at times use singularism as a productive tool. And the distinction is likely to be further blurred as the two sets of activities increasingly interact with and influence one another.

  Richard Rorty, A Pragmatist View of Contemporary Analytic Philosophy

  "... the great divide is between representationalists ... and antirepresentationalists .... Representationalists are necessarily realists, and conversely. For realists necessarily believe that there is one, and one one, Way the World Is In Itself, and that there are "hard" areas of culture in which this Way is revealed. In these areas, there are "facts of the matter" to be discovered, though in softer areas there are not. By contrast, antirepresentationalists believe that scientific, like moral, progress is a matter of finding ever more effective ways to enrich human life. They make no distinction between hard and soft areas of culture ... Realists think of antirepresentationalists as antirealists, but in so doing they confuse discarding the hard-soft distinction with preaching universal softness

  The realist conviction that there just must be a non-human authority to which humans can turn has been, for a very long time, women into the common sense of the West. I think it would be a good idea to reweave the network of shared beliefs and desires which makes up Western culture so as to get rid of this conviction ..."

Your thoughts? Welcome in course forum area.


| Course Forum | Course Home Page | | Science in Culture | Serendip Home |