I guess I should probably be flattered by Christopher Pearson’s contention that Julia Gillard’s chances of being an enduringly successful Prime Minister would be enhanced by taking more advice from sociologists. No doubt he’s right about that.
Though I’m not sure that many sociologists would agree that it somehow follows from the fact that public acceptance of the truth of climate science has declined that:
It’s probable that quite soon the recent mild warming trend will come to be seen as par for the course and in no way a threat to the planet or mankind. The manufacture of statistical artefacts such as the hockey stick, with which a couple of ingenious climatologists hoped to erase from popular and scientific consciousness the whole medieval warm period, will come to be seen for the astonishing confidence tricks they are.
Pearson goes on to write:
The development of the global warming debate will be analysed primarily in terms of what the sociology of knowledge calls plausibility structures.
Well, I don’t know about “primarily”, but, yes, it could be analysed in such a way, and in fact has been: quite extensively. That is to say, much interesting work has been done on what contributes to the political, cultural and social reception, or rejection, of climate science.
Pearson, if he has an interest, could find quite a lot of such sociological work in the published literature. But not much of it would employ the concept of “plausibility structure”, which isn’t in fact a term common to the “sociology of knowledge” as such. (Not many people do that stuff now; it’s more in the vein of the “so-called Scientific Marxism” Pearson refers to – a bit of an artefact of the 60s and 70s, really).
But, in any case, this particular concept was something Peter Berger extrapolated from his sociology of religion; a phenomenologically influenced version thereof that was in part one of the fruits of the (belated) influence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on sociological thought in the late 1960s. Some French currents of thought alerted a larger number of English speaking social scientists to the work of the Austrian thinker Alfred Schütz, one of Husserl’s students.
Without wanting to detour too much into the history of social theory, though, the point is that Berger’s interest lay primarily in how particular views of how the world worked fostered or negated the acceptability of religious beliefs (“plausibility structures”). Berger, rightly I think, has since reversed to large degree his acceptance of the secularisation thesis, but what he’s getting at here is how religious faith began to appear less plausible in a modernity whose norms of argumentation revolved around reason and science, and more precisely, when those norms began to shape everyday culture and thought (“the lifeworld”).
So it’s actually quite a stretch to apply Berger’s concept to the denial of scientific rationality, unless Pearson is attempting some sort of Engels inspired overturning of the dialectic.
Probably the most pernicious result of Berger’s work was the appalling and loathsome phrase “social construction”. If I had my way, this notion would be banished entirely from first year sociology teaching, where I think a combination of sloppy textbook thinking and really poor social science has permanently lodged it, only then to disseminate further to make all sorts of lazy arguments which are either tritely true (and not necessarily carrying any particular political implications) or meaningless unless you want to hold to some sort of popularly postmodern mixture of nominalism and relativism.
This form of postmodernism is, of course, as present on the right as on the left, and I think, in fact, more so.
It’s what Pearson really falls into when he confuses and conflates two things.
There is, firstly, the process of arriving at a scientific truth, which is a social process. (This does not negate the fact that it speaks truth about the world. The truth of the cosmos has to be mediated by and accountable to human reason, as a follower of St Thomas Aquinas and St Anselm like Christopher Pearson must know. Fides quaerens intellectum and all that.)
Scientific findings are then disseminated, and received, through social, and political processes. That makes them do somewhat different work in the world. (The planet doesn’t care what people do to it, it will go on anyway as bare nature, as it were, except that nature and the human are stuck in an eternally iterative feedback loop).
Of course, to write as if science happens first, and then its reception (or rejection), is to simplify and distort things, because in actuality it’s much more recursive. But then, making sense of the social world always implies positing some sort of directionality in causality (cf. “scientific method”) even as the miasma of social life is always already too complex for our poor minds to grasp in all its totality.
But the fallacy is to think that the political contest between truth and falsehood (and the political distinction that is made between friends and enemies) negates scientific truth. To think this way, as Pearson does, is to fall into a relativism as dangerously sloppy as that of those who bandy around the phrase “social construction”; because it is the very same thing, in all truth.
It’s also, if one wants to invoke the sociology of knowledge, or maybe, better, social epistemology, a sign of fundamental confusion about things like the role of evidence for assessing various types of propositions, and for that matter, a confused reversal of explanandum and explanans. Not to mention the different conditions under which different statements can be true in different contexts (see also, British analytical philosophy, particularly the work of J. L. Austin, or, for that matter, the later Wittgenstein). All that, among other reasons, because it’s a political adjudication of things which are not subject to political reason and therefore political judgement. And that, in itself, says something interesting about the way ‘science’ is now deployed in public argument. (I don’t say – “public reason”.)
In short, Pearson’s argument cannot be anything other than a relativist one. It has to posit incommensurable standards for assessing truth, or it fails to even work as an argument (which, from a different direction, it does anyway, but that doesn’t stop its needing to embody relativism for its internal structure to be at all coherent).
It is a sign of the times, then, that someone like Pearson so mimetically reinscribes the postmodern discourse of relativism.
He should probably, if he thinks that sociologists and philosophers have something to offer politics, read Ian Hacking’s The Social Construction of What?.
oh god he’s a fucking idiot.
furrfu, that’s an awfully longwinded way for Pearson to say that when a government does unpopular things it’s going to get less popular.
But what if the unpopular thing is nonetheless the proper thing to do?
That, to me, is the money quote, Mark! It’s the genesis of the denialist non-sequitur that the earth is cooling because…Galileo!!
Oh good, Pearson doesn’t think climate change is real. I can sleep well with that reassurance.
Mark, you appear to pay Christopher Pearson the compliment of assuming his sincerity.
Are you being disingenuous?
Wish I had more books on medieval history on my bookshelf so I could wax lyrical on mediebal warming. But, just from memory, I don’t see how it applies to the present day, where our climate problems are a result of what used to be known as the Industrial Revolution. (I haven’t read widely on the latter for a couyple of years, but the last time I looked historians were having a debate if there was any such thing as the Industrial Revolution. It was, it appears, like climate change, cumulative.
I’d love to comment on the sociology of it, but my understanding is limited to first year textbooks and some asprcys of the philosophy of history;, apart from the sociology of deviance which I got into a little trying to understand the nature of crime and, quite, well not entirely unrelated, the behaviour of politicians. especially when they verged on sociopaths.
*Goes to magnetic shopping list on fridge, adds POPCORN*
Katz, I’ve known Christopher since 1985 and I can assure you that he is sincere. Deluded, but sincere.
*runs away*
She needs more than that
Christopher, if you’re reading this, do you have any knowledge of statistics whatsoever?
For instance, you happen to share your name with the most common and elementary test of the strength of the linear relationship between two sets of data – the Pearson correlation coefficient.
If you were given, say, the GISTEMP global average mean temperature data, could you calculate a Pearson correlation coefficient, and a statistical significance value, for it?
And if you can’t do that, as I strongly suspect you can’t, what the hell are you doing opining on “statistical artefacts” when you wouldn’t recognize a statistical artefact if it personally introduced itself to you?
I question Pearson’s sincerity when he purports to give Julia Gillard advice on how to achieve her survival.
All the evidence I have seen suggests strongly that Pearson is committed to Gillard’s destruction.
Fair enough, can’t argue with that.
Mark, just getting on to the middle part of your post…
…could that be the origin of the trash-tabloid “skeptics” claim that the AGW hypothesis is a ‘religion’? Or that AGW-proponents are somehow motivated by ‘religious’ belief in the AGW theories? Is that what you’re getting at?
I’ve never understood the basis of the claim that the desire to mitigate AGW is a ‘religious’ position. To me, that accusation falls under the category of ‘not even wrong’.
Do you think it’s merely a case of projection on the part of the “skeptics”, many of whom are themselves in fact motivated by faith-based beliefs in the place of humankind at the apex of capital-C Creation??
It certainly seems to me that this is where Pearson’s head is at, invoking the “plausibility structures” of religious belief to explain the motivations of a humanistic, secular, materialist, scientific, environmental movement.
“But what if the unpopular thing is nonetheless the proper thing to do?”
Indeed. My impression, from all this, is that Christopher sincerely believes all matters should be seen through the prism of the latest Newspoll and how they have most lately fudged the questions for guaranteed results.
Above all, he is a good company man. Rupert would really respect him for that.
This blog is rapidly becoming an obsessive-compulsive discussion forum on the column of the day by OO writers. If it’s not Pearson, it’s one of the Shanahans, or Kelly, or Albrechtson or Burchell or god knows who else.
Yet, strangely, the discussion is always about how out of touch or irrelevant or just plain wrong they are.
Well, yes, but in which case why give them so much attention?
I’d be far more impressed if those who talk about the tide turning against AGW belief could point to credible scientists moving from belief in AGW to denial. What the misinformed or uninformed believe doesn’t count for much beyond their own behaviour.
As you point out reality doesn’t really care what people believe / wish for, it’s up to us to try to believe in what’s realistic. Denialists are trapped in this faith based response to AGW because all they’ve really got is a desperate desire to disbelieve.
They’re like Canute’s advisors, believing political will can literally stop the tide on a whim
@13 – Merc, yep, the thought had occurred.
If you took a sample of AGW supporters or deniers and asked them why they held their position I am sure you would get some interesting answers. In both cases it would be unusual for the answer to depend on a personal evaluation of the science. It would depend on things like a personal judgement of the key supporters of either side as well as raw tribalism.
It would also depend on the extent to which people have decided that the information they are being fed is misleading. For example, my bullshit detector goes off when I see climate change graphs that start at the mini-ice age in the 19th century. (The irony is that graphs of the last 2000 years are far better at showing just how unusual the hockey stick is.)
So to some extent I agree with Pearson – understanding how people decide to jump in an area they haven’t really got the expertise (or time) to check the arguments is something that politicians need to understand if they are going to sell complicated policies.
However, I would go further than Pearson. There are a whole range of professions that need to be involved more in the process. Part of the problem with Julia is that she comes across as a lawyer arguing a brief rather than someone who is committed to the brief. Worse still, an industrial relations lawyer is good at getting a deal set up.
In terms of climate action the government needs input from people with technical and social professions as well as people with management experience in areas such as the construction and operation of major projects.
I am a bit with Sam @15. We have been rabbiting on re how hopeless Abbott et al are since Abbott became leader yet somehow the hopeless bastards bastards have been doing much better than expected in the polls. Perhaps we need to ask what he is doing right and try and come up with something a bit smarter than the voters are dumb?
The model of “climate science” that Pearson asserts is utterly fanciful.
According to Pearson’s model — a pathology that he shares with all other denialists — is of “climate science” as a hermitically sealed priesthood. This priesthood, according to the denialist view, perpetrates a giant conspiracy of misinformation on the world.
It is clear to see, therefore, that denialists are conspiracy theorists par excellence.
In fact, this denialist model of “climate science” is completely factually incorrect. In essence, there is no such thing as “climate science”. On the contrary, the scientists engaged in climate research come from a wide range of disciplines — several branches of physics, organic chemistry, meteorology, paleontology, applied statistics, among many others. These scientists are as engaged as any others in their field in the business of their respective disciplines. They are not sequestered in latterday closed monkish communities. As such, their work is constantly monitored and refereed by their discipline colleagues.
Denialists are faced with a horrible dilemma here. Either “climate scientists” represent normal science, with all its achievements and customary habits of scrutiny and criticism, or the entire scientific community, and not just “climate scientists”, is perpetrating a giant conspiracy on the world.
Sensible people already know which explanation is correct.
Denialists, on the other hand, are emotionally entwined in their own conspiracies, and cannot be corrected.
That being the case, denialists, in justice, can only be lampooned, or ignored.
AGW as religion? Simple. All goes back to the Flood and Noah’s Ark. God promised not to destroy the world by water ever again. (Hence the pretty colours of the rainbows.) So,it therefore follows that if God is not going to destroy the world by water he must be going to destroy it by earth (earthquakes) air (cyclones etc) and fire (scorching us within an inch of our lives with increased temperatures.) Of course, only fundies would actually believe in all the proceeding.
Probably the most pernicious result of Berger’s work was the appalling and loathsome phrase “social construction”.
Aw, it’s a nice phrase. It makes me think of people in woollen swimsuits forming human pyramids on waterskis.
@22 – Heh!
Sam @ 15, many of us see Murdoch as a malign media presence and we like to see his writers picked apart in blogs. Murdoch has the only quality printed newspaper easily available in four of the six states, and he has a tabloid monopoly. His conservative opinion pieces get greater coverage than anything else in printed form, and they have a strong online presence. So, while LP should not become a Murdoch Watch, it is reasonable for it to regularly take issue with his columnists.
With you Sam@15 and John@19. Hence my question previously on how does Direct Action measure up on the triple bottom lines. Anyone wth a comprehensive link re legit DA analysis?
Christopher Pearson a pomo relativist!
Mark, you’ve made my day.
I have no idea what you are on about here. It is not at all clear what Berger’s “secularization thesis” is, or why it is relevant to the climate change debate. If he has reversed it, why is that relevant either? Pearson does not mention religion at all in his article, so I don’t know what your point is.
You say that Berger was right to reverse his secularization thesis. Who cares?
Peter Berger is a Christian apologist and darling of the Neo-conservatives. As a supposed leftie, you have no business relying on him.
@silkworm, Mark explains how it’s relevant only a little further on:
Mark is not endorsing Berger in any way by pointing out that Pearson is using his concepts erroneously. It’s just emphasising that Pearson is bloviating about sociological theories that he doesn’t appear to even understand.
“Murdoch has the only quality printed newspaper…”
Huh?
I’m with Sam. Why waste time deconstructing nonsense?
(And that’s all I can really contribute to this thread, as I am not going to waste my time reading OO commentators.)
Oh wait, I found Tonys social construction of AGW.
Meanwhile, in a social construction of an other kind and generally pissin in the wind ….
Mark, you must never have worn a woollen swimsuit to have made that query.
They are biproduct of the mercantilist lunacy of a bygone era. They were definitionally unfit for purpose. Swimming required clothing that repels water. Wool soaks it up.
Be happy that whatever the miseries of your childhood were you were spared a woollen swimsuit.
Pearson’s understanding of the data has been and still is poor and far from up to date. But that’s not surprising.
The Government – and the media for that matter – are sorely in need of people who have the skill and grace to explain, tirelessly, cheerfully, accurately and in simple terms for busy people:
how good the science on global warming really is
how much warming we have now and can expect to have in 10, 10, 30 years
how we can tackle that practically
how a carbon price/carbon trading scheme works and what it will cost
what inaction will cost
People of good standing who can talk in plain terms to politely, patiently, consistently show up the sort of tricks that Pearson, Ackerman, Minchin and the others keep trying on.
Ootz@30
You sure don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows in the Liberal ‘leadership’ and the Abbott claque.
The benefit of getting the Oz, apart from the puzzle page, is the post-prandial relief of a trip to Loon Pond, especially on a Saturday morning:
http://loonpond.blogspot.com/2011/03/nick-minchin-christopher-pearson-and.html
My word:
For the general public, sure, it’s the goverment’s job (arguably) to explain the scientific basis of the need for action on climate change.
But Pearson is a paid commentator in a major media outlet. If he is going to opine on a scientific issue, it’s his responsibility to understand the science.
@31 – GregM, it is certainly true that I have never worn a woolen swimsuit, and now that you mention it, it does sound a tad unpleasant.
@27 and @28 – Silkworm, tigtog is right. I think it is interesting that Pearson is using a concept which originated in the sociology of religion, partly because, as Mercurius correctly observed, I think Pearson falsely sees acceptance of climate science as akin to religious belief. Given your well known anti-religious views, I’m surprised you haven’t informed yourself on the secularisation thesis, which would give you some comfort with its claims that public religion was bound to wither away. Of course, it’s been rather discredited as a result of contact with empirical fact, and as a social scientist, naturally I think that’s a good thing, even if you might not think that religion having a lot of persistence is. But it’s best to accept the truth, rather than a false and ideological set of beliefs, I’m sure you’d agree.
The specific reference was as tigtog rightly pointed out – there’s an incongruity in using a concept premised on a clash between normative scientific rationality and religious belief to argue against – scientific rationality. Anyway, it just doesn’t fit – Pearson does not have this right.
And I’m certainly not endorsing Berger. A more careful reading might have noticed I go on to criticise a concept with which he had a lot to do in rather hyperbolic terms! Having said that, if Berger’s concepts were to the point, I wouldn’t shy away from saying so whatever his politics are. But, as always, mention and endorsement are not the same thing.
@15, 19, 24 and 25 – Actually, I can only see one other post on the front page which refers to an op/ed piece in the Australian – Kim’s posting of a screenshot of Paul Kelly’s risible disdain for democracy. I do think, though, there is some worth in contesting this stuff – because any reasonable analysis of the politics of the last few years shows that it does unfortunately have a lot to do with shaping and misshaping public debate for the worst.
But the real reason I wanted to write this post was that it’s not often that sociology gets a guernsey in an op/ed, and while it might be linkbait, as a blogging sociologist I wanted to respond. Also, I enjoyed writing it, which surely should be reason enough.
Anita @33
Loonpond says:
Is CP really that entertaining? Maybe I should read him.
No, I&U, he isn’t entertaining at all. The last time I ride anything of his, it aroused a howl of despair rather than gaiety.
I still find it hard to understand how someone as well-educated as Pearson is (or should be – after all, he had the possibility, at least, of attending Brian Medlin’s lectures), and who once wrote so well, is capable of producing something like his most recent effort.
Bugger! That’s “read”, not “ride”.
Oh Mark, much, much, much more than a tad unpleasant.
I could explain the experience in vivid detail including the words chafing and sagging (a particular quality of wool when soaked with water).
But since you have been spared that in and since your childhood I will spare you the details.
Regarding the likes of Pearson and comedy – has anyone actually read a Quadrant article lately? These guys are geniuses (sic?).
In his article, Pearson said:
As Mark has told us, the term “plausibility structure” is not commonly used in the sociology of knowledge. It is a term that was invented by some guy called Peter Berger. However, from Mark’s post, it is still not clear what “plausibility structure” means. Even the Wikipedia entry for this term is of little help in understanding it. Further googling of the term indicates it means something like “religious beliefs,” so we have to ask why Pearson would use an obscure term like “plausibility structure” instead of the more direct “religious beliefs.”
Mercurius @ 13 is right to regard Pearson’s use of the term as related to the claim that the AGW hypothesis is a “religion;” for in his next sentence, Pearson states that very thing:
Leaving aside the fact that five commissions have cleared the so-called “climategate” scientists of any wrong-doing, and that the computer modelling is not at all flawed, Pearson still has the affrontery to use his pseudo-knowledge of sociology to attack the Royal Society!
To understand the type of game that Pearson is playing, it is worthwhile to check on the man he uses as his authority on sociology, Peter Berger. A little googling on Berger reveals him to be a conservative Catholic, and that he developed the term “plausibility structure” as part of a project of defending religious belief, Christianity in particular.
Pearson, as a conservative Catholic himself, is thus using the term “plausibility structure” as a way of attacking climate change advocates, because he sees them and the science of climate change as a secular force opposing his own Catholic conservatism. This position is just as stupid as the creationists who oppose the science of evolution because it is a threat to their religious beliefs. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pearson were a creationist.
“we have to ask why Pearson would use an obscure term like ‘plausibility structure’ instead of the more direct ‘religious beliefs.’”
Maybe he was trying to write like a sociologist.
)
Spare me the patronising, Robert Merkel.
Informed, accurate content and honest argument is the responsibility of every paid media commentator – on every damned topic. The list who prefer fudge, spite and sneer is long indeed, and not confined to News Ltd.
It isn’t just the government’s job to present the case for climate science and carbon abatement.
The scientific community must take on a more visible, accessible part too, as must the mainstream media.
The task needs people with the knowledge and presenting skills of a Sagan, a Suzuki, an Attenborough, across the science and the economics.
Mark, thanks for the post. It effectively skewers Pearson’s plausibility for anyone with a modicum of rationality.
Thanks also for pricking the “social construction” balloon. It’s a concept I picked up in the 70s and have been using uncritically ever since. We live and learn!
@44 – No worries, Brian!
@41 – Let me try again, silkworm.
The idea of a “plausibility structure” is that a particular form of belief will be reinforced if it is accepted (either generally or within a particular community) as compatible with what appears to be a common sense view of the world. So it’s reinforced through contact with others – ie through social validation. Now, in modernity, one would anticipate religious believers increasingly finding their views explicitly or implicitly challenged by other sorts of norms – perhaps, for instance, through a secular education system. Over time, this will make maintaining those views more difficult, and/or will make religious believers more prone to build walls between themselves and the surrounding society – ie retreating into a more self contained universe, perhaps providing its own schooling, with its own media, with opportunities for social action and interaction largely confined to those holding the same beliefs, etc.
Anyway, as an explanatory theory in the sociology of religion, there’s a fair bit of contestation about its worth. But I don’t think it’s got much to do with Berger’s own belief system. It’s a hypothesis about the strength of belief being mediated by the thickness of social ties and their tension or acceptance by different sized groups. It could be advanced by someone without any particular religious belief themselves.
Pearson may find Berger attractive because there’s something in common in their own beliefs. I don’t know. But it has nothing much to do with the validity or otherwise of Berger’s sociological work. And Berger’s sociology has nothing much to do with climate change – the analogy is quite faulty, for reasons I’ve explained. That really pretty much exhausts my interest in Berger for the present purpose.
@45
Given your explanation of the term, “plausibility structures” would appear to have been undergoing some reinforcement over the past twenty years.
“believers more prone to build walls between themselves and the surrounding society – ie retreating into a more self contained universe, perhaps providing its own schooling, with its own media, with opportunities for social action and interaction largely confined to those holding the same beliefs”
Isn’t this what has in fact happened?
Patrickb, yes, and no. As well as drawing on some fundamentally phenomenological ideas, Berger’s thesis also harks back to the Weber/Troeltsch idea of church, sect and cult. Here we have three ideal types of religion where, respectively:
(a) Religious belief is co-extensive with the boundary of a society;
(b) Religious belief is fractured along various lines, sometimes where status or class or other things mask or supplement apparently theological differences; and also through a less stable authority structure within the religious institution;
(c) Religious belief is held by a small minority at great odds with more prevalent social norms – the idea of “social distance” is often invoked here.
Secularisation theory tends to posit a shift, over time, from (a) to (b). (C) can also occur when the prevalent social norms are themselves “churchly” – ie a cult manifesting itself as a heretical grouping, or a group with excessive religious fervour (often something very much discouraged in societies where (a) is the prevalent model).
I don’t think all this has as much explanatory value as it once had.
We can observe some religious groups increasingly trying to erect less porous boundaries between themselves and their perception of the wider society.
But:
1. That’s often accompanied by a fantasy of a past age when religion was the sole determinant of social norms – in fact that never existed, and positing that fantasy is actually a very postmodern project;
2. These groups are much less stable in membership than older churches or sects – more people move between them, enter and then leave them, go from indifference to fervid belief back to indifference. The standard of group membership is much more demanding than traditional social obligations pertaining to being a parishioner or nominal believer, and voluntary associations of all sorts are more fluid in their identity and ability to sustain themselves over time;
3. There is in fact a constant reference to broader social norms – either they should immediately be brought back into conformity with religious mores (but see 1) or various rhetorics which are extra-religious and evocative of different norms and identities (for instance nationalism and ethnicity) are constantly deployed to legitimise an actually absent role for religion as central to value judgements and life practices.
So it’s a lot more complex than the idea of “plausibility structures” easily captures – in a sense, it’s an idea more suitable to a period of transition from pre-modernity, and has an odd postmodern ring when applied now.
Over and above all that, the notion really cannot be applied to views on climate science because it has an idea of the institution as its central reference point – there is no such institution when it comes to acceptance of climate science (“science” – as something institutionally embodied, is a set of relatively scarce expert practices and knowledges, not a theocracy at the heart of a broad social phenomenon).
Anyway, yes, to a degree that sort of thing is happening, but not, I think, in the way the idea of “plausibility structures” would indicate. I don’t think some of the older sociological concepts actually provide a particularly strong or enlightening explanation of the developing picture in social scientific terms.
You are using your authority as a social scientist to tell us that religious belief is good for society? How beneficent of you! Perhaps you can give us the authoritative word on which particular form of religious belief is the correct one. It wouldn’t happen to be Catholicism, would it?
Just very quickly, there are big debates between those following a broadly Kantian heritage in philosophy of science and those following Latour and Deleuze on the materiality, ‘actants’, and events of science.
Mark’s drawing on those firmly in the former category. Kuhn, Popper, Adorno and even to the extent that he’s doing critique, Hacking, share the predisposition that we can’t know the world outside our cultural and epistemic ‘grids’. For Popper, most famously, this meant the importance of putting scientific propositions at risk of being ‘falsified.’ This Kantian tradition is also helpful to understanding how achieving closure in scientific experimentation and debate has been so difficult – what Jerry Ravetz has called ‘post-normal’ science refers to the dismantling of boundaries between those considered experts (and thus qualified to speak on the veracity of a truth claim [eg. the earth is round, or that a doubling of atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will lead to a 1.5-3.5 deg increase in global temperatures]). The bottom line – upon which the entire SSK research programme was formulated – was: no scientific truth without social validation.
But I think the key is understanding the sociality of scientific truth battles together with an appreciation for the materiality of its practice. This is where the science wars were a fucking disaster. Cultural studies idiots forgot the latter.
When ice core data, tree rings, Landsat data, and all the other things amazing things that scientists do are processed, analyzed carefully in their own peer groups, it just makes accusations of conspiracy seem ridiculous. To say science is reducible to social interests is a huge part of the problem and it’s also why Alan Jones and Nick Minchin denying the proposition that the earth is warming is exactly the same sort of things as denying the earth is round. Melting ice caps, migrating species, dying coral all attest to the mendacity of the conservative Right just as the use of GPS testifies to the power of Galileo, Newtown and Einstein’s (very different) truth claims.
@48 – silkworm, do please try to read more carefully. I am saying that it’s a good thing if sociological theories/concepts which have a poor fit with empirical facts are discarded. I said precisely nothing about whether “religious belief is good for society”, and I don’t, as a matter of fact even really understand what that statement might mean.
Brian’s brilliant and exhaustive posts on the climate science show the huge number and variety of non-human actors that can attest to the veracity of the climate science.
ps. good post, Mark!
Yep, agree with that, dk.au, even in my clunky post-Kantian way!
Another way of saying that might be that science and truth claims have to be accountable to the world qua object.
@51 – cheers, dk.au!
Again, this is why sociology is needed. SSK scholars argued that this sort of ‘falsification’ (eg. the famous ‘black swan’ problem) is just as problematic and socially negotiated as ‘verification’.
What scientists tell the public about what they do is very different to ‘science in action.’
Moreover, the idea that the sciences follow a hypothetico-deductive model is itself an historical construct developed in the post-WWII period to serve a particular social settlement (who has the right to speak, who decides on the boundary between fact and fiction). This construct has been repeatedly analyzed from different angles by science studies scholars (eg. Jasanoff). This doesn’t take anything away from the awesome power and inventiveness of science, but to lament some time when Science Was Really Trusted is problematic
@54 – for sure, dk.au, and we do need to keep in mind the sociality of social science here too. But there’s a salient difference between competing monocausal theories or paradigms (and here again Pearson really goes wrong with his vulgar sociological Marxism) and adequation of concept to object, the latter not implying either monocausality or unidirectional causality, or, ideally, an unproblematic understanding of causality itself as concept.
Oh indeed. And that making accountable is why science is so powerful and should be respected
In furious agreement!
It could still be that Julia Gillard needs a good sociologist on staff. Would that make Christopher Pearson right after all?
From the OP, Terry:
Mark and dk.au,
Great discussion!! Thanks.
–
I’m going to repeat my usual mantra:
The public needs to recognise and not underestimate the self-interest of corporate elements — and I mean this in an inclusive way (for example, journalists in major newspapers) — and consider the likliehood that these elements are trying to protect their investments and their profits.
More and more we are seeing a debate between theory and a nominal theology. Theory based on “the world qua object” and theology (or whatever it should be called) based on simple explainations and a faith-based certitude.
There’s a hell of a discussion going on here. I like it. The shameful thing is that CP hasn’t dropped by to give his own 2c on Mark’s objections. He has been known to visit.
Btw Mark, it is good to see you back. I miss your posts!
+1 !
Down and Out, I think CP only drives by when he feels sure of his ground. (That’s a bit of an indication of Dunning-Kruger, but I digress.) Mark’s critique was pretty devastating.
If Gillard needs a sociologist on staff, it’s even more imperative that the Smuggles Set desperately needs a St Augustine type to offer instruction on morality, honesty and integrity, all completely foreign concepts at LIEberal HQ.
I think even he would be hard pressed to convince Smuggles that giant porkies are still giant porkies even if they’re only verbal.
The Right caught out lying again today on Insiders. Andrew Bolt claimed only 800 people turned up to the pro-carbon tax when in reality it was 8,000 vs the 400 that turned up for the anti-carbon tax rally that was ballooned by the CEC lunatics.
Me thinks The Australian might have to start bumping up those freebies to boost their woeful circulation numbers.
@62 and @63 – Thanks, folks! Hope to be in a position to be writing more from now on.
May I add my voice to that? I feel out of my depth here sometimes, as your writing is challenging to me – but that’s the reason I began reading this blog. That and the joy of reading something intended to enrich rather than polarise. Thank you.
@68 – Thanks so much!
I must confess there was also an element of light hearted provocation vis a vis CP in that post, which might explain some of the socio-jargon
???
silkworm, I can assure you he’s only got one barrel loaded in this post and comments. Read it once, read it twice, have some sleeps and then read it again, is my advice.
It’s when the dictionary fails completely you start to feel really at sea:)
Yikes, yes, that’s a tad obscure!
My point is that:
(a) Some people see social science as akin to a particular way of looking at natural science: that is, there are hypotheses which can be tested which can reduce the complexity of why people do the stuff they do and what patterns we can find in that to one independent variable which has most causal weight;
(b) I don’t think that’s so; things are too messy. But we still need to ensure that social scientific concepts and particular propositions about causality have some accountability to the facts of the world;
(c) Often there are all sorts of assumptions involved in (a); ie Marxism – the economy determines everything “in the last instance” – whatever that might mean.
I’m sorry not to have entered the lists to defend myself earlier. I’ve been in Sydney (as it happens, attending Cardinal Burke’s Old Rite pontifical mass at the throne for the Australian Catholic Students) and have only just visited LP and discovered Mark’s post.
It may help if I repeat something I wrote a few years ago : that Peter Berger was one of the few American sociologists that everyone still reads. My earliest encounters were with A Rumour of Angels and his collaboration with Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality. For more recent contributions his most accessible pieces are for First Things Journal.BTW, Mark is right about his having largely abandoned his secularisation/modernity theory in the light of the evidence.
There’s nothing mysterious, let alone quasi-Marxist, about my use of Berger’s plausibility structures in analysing what I described as the current equivalent of a state religion, as it founders. I just don’t share Mark’s boundless confidence in the empirically demonstrated validity of much of the supposedly settled science.
The hockey stick is only the most clearcut example of the dodgy science which invites the label “confidence trick”. No doubt most LP readers will think I’ve gone out on a limb to assert that AGW is a collapsing paradigm but I’m happy to do so. Time will tell.
CP, by the time you admit you’re wrong, it will be far too late to do anything useful about climate change. I wish you and your fellow-travellers would stop calling it dodgy science, btw – the only scientific theories with better support are evolution and natural selection.
Christopher, being such an authority on the science that you are able to pass judgements such as “confidence trick”, you must know that there are many hockey sticks.
Which particular hockey stick did you have in mind and why is it “dodgy science”?
And what about all the other hockey sticks?
CP said-
An intriguing aspect of this statement is that the contested part of the data—the part that defines the upward inflection of the ‘hockey stick’—ironically constitutes the part of the time series that has been measured to the greatest precision and with the highest accuracy.
In seeking to undermine the veracity of this part of the dataset, denialists and their fellow travellers elevate temperature data estimated post hoc via proxy measures to a level equal to — and arguably above — contemporaneous direct measurements of temperature.
So Christopher Pearson, what do you mean when you speak of a ‘statistical artefact’? And what, to your mind, is the error in Mann et al‘s analysis of these data?
Good on CP for having the guts to engage in a hostile environment – it’s a mark to his credit (really, people, slogans like “LIEberal HQ” discredit the sloganeer more than the sloganee). OTOH his readiness to believe bad faith crap about “hockey sticks” because they accord with the beliefs of his tribe over on the Right is to his discredit .
The damning thing for the denialists is that, as pointed out earlier, even if they temporarily succeed in making the uninformed believe the seas are not rising, those actually looking at the sea – ie the climate scientists – are more convinced than ever that it is. Social construction of reality can only go so far; eventually people notice that their feet are wet.
What construction will they then put on the motives of Canute’s courtier’s? If I was CP I’d be worried that once again religious beliefs are ending up on the wrong side of readily verifiable reality – eppur si muove and all that – to the discredit of the whole belief system.
Say what you like, but the history has been that when comfortable certainties get into a fight with old fashioned Popperian natural science, the science eventually wins. Yes, its only induction to say that’s what will happen again, and the fact that induction works is itself a matter of induction, and all that shit – but I wish my home rugby team had that sort of track record.