We love enlightenment here at Larvatus Prodeo. And I feel that it’s my duty, as a friendly sociologist to reach across the 46 year old divide to the ‘other culture‘ and extend a smile and nod every now and then.
I stumbled across this terrific Op-Ed piece by Lisa Randall in the NY Times via Sean at Cosmic Variance (get it free while you can)
I want to leave aside, for a moment, Sean’s oddball deduction humourous quip that anyone writing on the Public Understanding of Science (itself a formidable concept in sociology literature) must be reading their blog. One needn’t contend with several decades of sociological literature on “how scientists communicate with the public” to realise that this problem has existed long before that inimitable blog started and even before Dubya was elected. 12 years after Snow’s “Two Cultures” thesis was published, Jerome Ravetz publised this landmark text. In this sense, it’s probably just the airplay of pieces like this one on the ‘theory/law/fact of evolution’ that’s increased.
But, of course, they’ve also been put on high rotation for good reasons.
Randall suggests that
Some problems [of distorted communication of science] stem from the esoteric nature of current research and the associated difficulty of finding sufficiently faithful terminology
Yes! Yes! Words/theories/facts/laws in an esoteric setting are often drawn from the experience of researchers with highly specialised equipment and training, experiences the average person are unlikely to share. This isn’t because they will never get to see what the researcher sees or have the training the researcher has, but because they occur within a particular insitutional configuration – arguments with colleagues, engagement with publics etc.
Randall isn’t the first to point out that
[t]he very different uses of the word “theory” provide a field day for advocates of “intelligent design.” By conflating a scientific theory with the colloquial use of the word, creationists instantly diminish the significance of science in general and evolution’s supporting scientific evidence in particular.
But diminish it from where? Sociology started off smashing beliefs with “laws” – “Social Physics” we called it. ’twas the style at the time. They were all doing it (especially these two). Where is Sociology now?
Back to Randall:
If [physicists'] theories correctly describe the world, there will be a precise enough link between [heavy particles known as Kaluza-Klein modes] (which will be experimentally observed) and extra dimensions to establish the existence of extra dimensions
Precise enough. So, we hope against hope against falsification so our theories aren’t thrown on the heap with Cartesian theories of light, Pouchet’s biochemical explanations of yeast fermentation and the gazillion others. Our solution here at LP? Enlightenment must be provided by the Scientific World View, der Wissenschaftliche Weltauffassung The revolution is to be made by the workers; but is to be enlightened by the Scientific World Conception. Take up Arms and Microscopes Comrades! … sorry, wrong … errr … blog … Where was I? Yes, Randall:
The information from an unmanned space mission is no less legitimate than the information from one in which people are on board. This doesn’t mean never questioning an interpretation, but it also doesn’t mean equating indirect evidence with blind belief, as people sometimes suggest.
Well said. Who would advocate “blind belief” in unmediated experience? That’s tricky metaphyiscal and phenomenological territory, but it’s the bedrock of Positivism. My problem with that kind of platform is that “slippery slope” philosophers seem so fond of employing. As soon as we start talking about the transportation of information without mediation, without transformation, without interpretation, where does it end? Where does this commonsensical mouth shutting end? This is where the Positivist project implodes in my books. The opposite of relativism* isn’t ‘realism’, but absolutism – the impossibility of seeing the world in more than one way and hence the impossibility of more than one Truth. I think that the history and philosophy of science are the first place to show that that’s not a politically sustainable project.
Some parting words from Sean from Cosmic Variance, then you can start bashing me with this stuff or whatever else is handy. (Of course, if you, like mick, don’t want to subscribe to such iconoclasm, feel free to substitute “right” with “accessible” and “wrong” with “inaccessible.”)
So let’s just quit the charade and let the unwashed masses in on the truth as far as “theory” is concerned. It’s a shorthand term for a model of some part of nature ‚Äî but the label implies absolutely nothing about how true that model is. (The phlogiston theory didn’t stop being a theory once we knew it wasn’t true.) What matters isn’t whether we label something a “theory” or a “law” or a “fact,” it’s whether we label it “right” or “wrong.” As in, Darwin was “right,” the creationists are “wrong.”
Amen.
*ahem*
Word.
*I’m flaggin this term to denote a multiplicity of interpretations – both by the unwashed (ie. you people) and us haughty Science Studies people sitting in our Ivory Towers.
Just a small clarification. Sean’s wasn’t an oddball comment. He was just being humorous.
Cheers Mark – duly updated. Seemed like the best segway into the literature.
Nobody understands my caustic wit. Great post, though.
Nice one dk.au. Good reading for today’s commute.
Excellent post, dk.au!
Cheers guys. Thanks for stopping by Sean and keep up the great posts.
Um, I don’t know what iconoclasm means…
Nice post.
so … was that a request for clarification?
On a far more important issue dk, whaddya reckon of “Supernature”?
My take is “slightly disappointing”. There’s about four killer tracks and the rest so far seems to be filler, albeit very frappe filler. Mind you, after listening to “Satin Chic’ alone, I do not begrudge buying the whole thing.
Back OT. I’d venture to suggest the whole “two cultures” thing (which CP Snow rode for all he could get out of it, and not what it was really worth) is no longer much of a schism in a digitized 21st century. Once you can crunch everything into bytes and bits then data can become arta and vice versa. It’s all about pattern recognition in the long run.
Yea, a little. Um, I’m having language issues. Crossover between humanities and the sciences… Um, that wasn’t actually a joke, even though in light of the article it could be taken as one.
Mick, sounds like yer having an “um” night generally.
I’m in Europe, so it’s an “um” day…
Ok, *deep breath* one at at time:
Nabs I’m an album-as-a-unit kinda guy, and on that basis, Supernature is one of the best of the year in my books. I agree that some of the tracks are a little disappointing, though they’re becoming less so with time.
Mick, here’s the OED entry on iconoclast:
Understanding the first takes you to the second – which is the sense (after this guy) I’m using it. I put in the iconoclasm quip to underscore that scientific institutions need much more fierce ‘boundary maintenance’ in the USA.
Nabs, if a conference I attended this year on ‘bridging the gap between the humanities and natural sciences’ is anything to go by, there are still some normative, linguistic, semiotic, metaphysical, sociological, institutional and practical issues surrounding the reductionism you’re talking about – where the likes of Duncan Watts start to echo Comte: “just a young discipline. more funding and time and we’ll come to you with answers.”
Still, whilst Mode 2 reigns, serious research agendas = meal tickets for my kind.
“‘bridging the gap between the humanities and natural sciences‚Äô is anything to go by, there are still some normative, linguistic, semiotic, metaphysical, sociological, institutional and practical issues surrounding the reductionism you‚Äôre talking about”
reductionism, shmuckedisdism. Anyone usng the term “bridging the gap” is still thinking geographically. That’s so 20th century.
“more funding and time and we‚Äôll come to you with answers.”
So you have learnt where the grain grows high, grasshopper.
did I mention I was available for kids parties too?
Hmm, one of us has been drinking heavily tonight and I’m fairly certain it’s not you.
dk.au – Thanks for the translation. BTW, I don’t know if you noticed that Randall’s piece was careful to only mention the “testable” elements of string theory. String theorists have been quietly under attack for some time now from some other fields of physics (mainly from condensed matter physicists) for pushing the limits as to what constitutes a physical theory. Many are saying that they should stop trying to call in physics and just fess up to the fact that it is mathematics (and stop taking the extra $$$ you get by calling yourselves physicists).
Forgot to mention The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox : Mending the Gap Between Science and the Humanities. Interesting though not one of Gould’s best (lack of editing means that it can be heavy going).