padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
well you know how it is tea, never a dull moment at Dissensus. one day it's being accused of being an apologist for Stalinism, the next it's of a being a "mono-cultural" hegemon. the fun never ends...
a few cultural differences
- Thread starter zhao
- Start date
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droid
Guest
lol. You've got it easy. 
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
oh, I'm not complaining. bit like shooting fish in a barrel, tho. not all opponents in the cybertussle can be of your caliber, droid.
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droid
Guest
Hold your horses, cowboy. What I wrote may be too dense, but it has nothing to do with navel-gazing or with bashing hard science. Neither did I say that hard science can't discover paradoxes. What I said was that hard science can't cope with its own contingency. Same holds for most social science, hence the apparently silly difference with "good" theory. What I meant was simply that most science won't openly acknowledge the fact that what they claim, is just the outcome of a specific methodology and that any results therefore are purely contingent.
It doesn't even have to be about what science gets funded, it's much more basic. What I meant was that the basic activity of operationalizing variables, making measurable concepts brings forth a specific reality. Science doesn't describe reality, but enacts it. I was reading at that moment about how EU-census are modeling a specific type of collectivity. I probably should have mentioned that.
Anyway, have fun shooting fish.
hmm... i haven't looked too deeply into Derrida, I do like Borges' stuff though which is apparently where a lot of it came from. just out of interest what do you think about Latour?
well I'm doing a science and technology masters and the hot topic at the moment seems to be how to integrate positivist and constructivist perspectives into a workable framework, not dismiss one or the other outright. by the way i dont think i came across aggressively or defensively enough to warrant such an emotional tirade. some of the certainty which you guys exhibit smacks of fundamentalism to me.
sorry for the lazy turn of phrase but i didnt want to offend anyone. I never said i was an expert, I just have enough experience in cultural misinterpretation to wonder about the legitimacy of such an exercise...
scottdisco
rip this joint please
surely Padraig's hypothetical thermodynamics experiment (point taken about specific methodologies) is, yes, obviously enacting reality, but at the same time describing it, since he is down to brass tacks there.
though i'm not sure about claiming that most science won't acknowledge its own contingencies. i'm no scientist but that sounds a bit straw mannish to me.
what would you say is a good example of demonstrably 'good social theory', this sort that can explain its own function? thanks.
what's this about the EU-census and a "specific type of collectivity"? is this anything to do w the difficulties about corralling all member states w their different ways of collecting data together into something more user-friendly from a single EU statistical pov, etc, w an eye on the next Europe-wide survey?
hope i don't sound rather dense here, fear i do, but if you don't ask, you don't get... ...@gyto, there's quite a lot of Latour around here! maybe not on this specific thread, but if you have a poke around w the search function
hope i don't sound rather dense here, fear i do, but if you don't ask, you don't get... ...@gyto, there's quite a lot of Latour around here! maybe not on this specific thread, but if you have a poke around w the search function
clearly im the dense one, quick search reveals how i just walked right into this one i barely look at anything outside the music section, i will from now on
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
yeah, well, good luck with that. It's not something, or pretty much anyone I know or have known in the sciences, cares much about, except perhaps as an intellectual diversion, but you're welcome to it. let's be honest, it's pretty much a one way dialogue most of the time. aside from the occasional Sokal lashing out, it's mostly crit theorists playing their word games & scientists shrugging & getting on with the practice of actual science. which, hey, people have to make their academic careers somehow, so whatever.
no one's emotional - cool as a cucumber on my end, bro. but don't say something if you're not ready to back it up. and don't expect people to take condescending bullshit like "monocultural" & "fundamentalism" lying down.
we can agree on Borges, at least.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
says you. describing vs. enacting = (more or less) semantics. which is, of course, theory's raison d'être.
the whole point is that you don't operationalize variables in the hard sciences. they don't need to be operationalized, because you can measure them directly (or sometimes, through the construction of a mathematical model, tho still one based on actual measurements of things). which is where it differs from the social sciences. of course, everything is -ultimately- contingent, because no one is omnipotent, but this the kind of staggeringly obvious thing that only critical theorists feel the need to literally state, inevitably in the most unnecessarily complicated terms.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I just want to note - serious argument with crit theory people is nearly impossible - every answer you give is but one more statement to be deconstructed into yet another layer of the feedback loop of metanarrative. it's like trying to nail jelly to a tree.
vimothy
yurp
Looks interesting. Cheers!
vimothy
yurp
Be interested in your opinions of Latour and ANT if you ever get a chance to read him padraig. You may be pleasantly surprised.
One of the things Latour complains about at great length is the way his research was misunderstood by other academics in the humanities (and also, it is worth underlining, by scientists themselves) during the "science wars" as saying that because scientific facts are "constructed" they must therefore be false.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
My sentiments exactly. Everytime someone's brought up a hard social constructivist argument recently I just think, "1994 called and it wants its shitty academic rhetoric back". I can't even believe that people are still talking about this shit, I really can't.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
That actually made me laugh a little.
As far as I'm concerned, the social sciences can keep their semantic arguments and baseless claims that are unfalsifiable, rarely replicated and almost never stand up to actual data.
We'll take splitting atoms and airplanes and organ transplants and molecular genetics.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Is this a joke that I'm too dense to get?
Edit: Ok, I'll deign to reply to this. Scientists (but not "science", since "science" is not some disembodied entity that makes decisions and has cognitive faculties like a human) absolutely do acknolwedge the fact that what they claim is the outcome of a specific methodology- it's called [wait for it] the scientific method. Everything scientists do is, in fact, measured against its standards. It's actually *scientists* who acknowledge more readily that everything is contingent than anyone else in academia- they're the ones who study cause and effect down to incontrovertible physical laws of the universe, ffs.
All of this bluster about "contingency" is a red herring used to distract people from the paucity of your own axiomatic system. Absolutely everything is contingent. A butterfly flaps it's wings and 10 days later in Peru somebody's coca plants die of blight. Whatever. Everything's contingent to the point where there's no point in making some arbitrary argument against a constructive, positive enterprise (e.g. science) based on the fact that it is contingent. That's like saying, 'omg, you can't talk about what happens at McDonald's with any certainty, since what happens at McDonald's is totally contingent on a bunch of outside factors, maaan.' It's an utterly asinine non-point to make and it's only ever made to shut down discussion and avoid giving quantitative analysis the edge it already obviously has over qualitative, feelings-based analyses. It's of a piece with the idea that it's too devastating to young Jimmy's feelings to give out As to people who do better work than others in school. The effect that not giving As has isn't to make the struggling kids smarter and better students, but to drag down the performance of people who are performing exceptionally. And some people like that idea, I'm sure: it has a sort of superficially collectivist ring to it. But if we're at all interested in making life better for as many people as possible, we'd do better to dispense with these stupid arguments about "contingency" forthwith.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Somebody's sarcasm detector needs recalibrating.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
It was calibrated fine, but he clearly wasn't aware of the contingency of sarcasm measurement.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Yes, imagine- a human being calibrated the detector in the first place, so who's to say that they weren't completely biased and prejudicial in their application of technique that's been honed through years of data analysis and careful mechanical engineering?