Scientists revise their criteria of rationality as they enter new domains
"The conventional model of science, technology and society locates sources of violence in politics and ethics, that is, in the application of science and technology, not in scientific knowledge itself.
The fact-value dichotomy is a creation of modern, reductionist science which, while being an epistemic response to a particular set of values, claims to be independent of values. According to the received view, modern science is the discovery of the properties of nature in accordance with a 'scientific method' which generates 'objective', 'neutral', 'universal' knowledge. This view of modern science as a description of reality as it is, unprejudiced by value, can be rejected on at least four grounds.
All knowledge, including modern scientific knowledge, is built through the use of a plurality of methodologies. As Feyerabend observes:
There is no 'scientific method'; there is no single procedure, or set of rules that underlines every piece of research and guarantees that it is 'scientific' and, therefore, trustworthy. The idea of a universal and stable method that is an unchanging measure of adequacy and even the idea of a universal and stable rationality is as unrealistic as the idea of a universal and stable measuring instrument that measures any magnitude, no matter what the circumstances. Scientists revise their standards, their procedures, their criteria of rationality as they move along and perhaps entirely replace their theories and their instruments as they move along and enter new domains of research (Feyerband, 1978, p. 98).
The view that science is just a discovery of facts about nature does not get support from philosophy either. If scientific knowledge is assumed to give true, factual knowledge of 'reality as it is', then we would have to 'conclude that Newtonian theory was true until around 1900, after which it suddenly became false, while relativity and quantum theories became the truth' (Bohm, 1981, p. 4)."
(Vandana Shiva, 1990)
1). Shiva, V. (1990). 'Reductionist science as epistemological violence'. 'Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity'. A. Nandy, Oxford University Press: 314.
Paul Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society (London: New Left Books, 1978).
David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
New Directions in Interdisciplinarity: Broad, Deep, and Critical
"Before interdisciplinarity in either the disciplinary producing or disciplinary-circumscribing senses could manifest itself, disciplinarity itself had to take on its peculiarly modern form. Any assessment of interdisciplinarity - multi - and trans-, noncritical and critical- will benefit from an appreciation of this background.
Prior to the modern period, learning exhibited a kind of unity that might be called predisciplinary. Aristotle, it is true, introduced distinctions between logic, physics, and ethics, but these were never of a kind to raise the possibility of cross-disciplinary formations such as 'physical ethics.' During the Middle Ages, the division of the artes liberales into grammar, rhetoric, dialectic (the trivium), arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the quadrivium) ensured that the education of 'free men' included all the knowledge and skills needed to exercise their social roles. Insofar as it existed, disciplinary specialization was present more in the 'servile arts' of artisans and tradesmen. Not even teachers of the liberal arts became specialists in their different branches, because the idea of, for example, possessing arithmetic without grammar would have been considered a deformation of the mind. In the monastery schools, the unfettered pursuit of knowledge was viewed skeptically, criticized as curiositas, and therefore subject to disciplinization in a premodern behavioral sense. Only at the end of the Middle Ages, as the infinite pursuit of disciplinary knowledge took on the character of a spiritual activity, would Renaissance men become necessary to cross boundaries and synthesize diverse areas of learning."
(Robert Frodeman and Carl Mitcham, 2007, p.508)
[1][2] Frodeman, R. and C. Mitcham (2007). "New Directions in Interdisciplinarity: Broad, Deep, and Critical." Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 27(6).
CONTRIBUTOR
Simon PerkinsSHARE
Integrated circuit turns 50 - vnunet.com
Integrated circuit turns 50 Jack Kilby's invention enabled modern electronics Written by Shaun Nichols in San Francisco vnunet.com, 12 Sep 2008 The integrated circuit, the device that enabled computing as we now know it, is 50 years old today. The circuit was first constructed in 1958 by Jack Kilby, a newly-hired engineer at Texas Instruments.
CONTRIBUTOR
Shaun BelcherSHARE
Barthes: Death Of The Author
"The author is a modern figure, produced no doubt by our society insofar as, at the end of the middle ages, with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation, it discovered the prestige of the individual, or, to put it more nobly, of the 'human person' Hence it is logical that with regard to literature it should be positivism, resume and the result of capitalist ideology, which has accorded the greatest importance to the author's 'person'."
(Roland Barthes 1967)
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
Interdisciplinarity is implicitly an idea of a unified, whole reality
"Interdisciplinarity is a commonly discussed alternative to the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge. It is often presented in the context of a critique of the disciplines. However, interdisciplinary enquiry emerges in response to problems defined in terms of the disciplines, and it is usually advanced as a way of enhancing the disciplinary pursuit of knowledge of reality. Most significantly, the emphasis of interdisciplinarity is on the unification of knowledge as a whole. Like the disciplines, interdisciplinarity is implicitly an idea of a unified, whole reality. It does not replace the disciplines but fills in alleged gaps between them by creating "cross-disciplines" that are in effect additional disciplines. The purpose of going "between" the disciplines is to realise a broader, more complete, and integrated understanding of phenomena than is afforded by any single discipline. Modern interdisciplinarity seeks to resolve sharp disciplinary distinctions in order to render the pursuit of knowledge into a coherent totality. It tries to repair the modern fragmentation of knowledge and bring the disciplines together so that the disciplinary project of knowledge of reality can be realised. For these reasons, interdisciplinarity is largely an uncritical extension of the disciplines rather than a critical alternative. Interdisciplinarity functions, in practice as opposed to rhetoric, as a logical implication of the disciplines and defines itself in terms of them."
(Roger Philip Mourad Jr., p.81-82)
Mourad, Roger P Jr. 1997 'Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education', Westport, USA: Bergin & Garvey. ISBN: 0897895541
CONTRIBUTOR
The Constellations ProjectSHARE
