The Opening Phase of the Science Wars

2021 ◽  
pp. 209-225
Author(s):  
Steven L. Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Rhetorical Devices ◽  
Book Of Nature ◽  
Paul Feyerabend ◽  
Science Wars ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Polar Opposite ◽  
Opening Phase

Kuhn’s monograph fed into the broad antiestablishment spirit of the 1960s and elicited polar-opposite responses, from the defense of objectivity and realism within scientific knowledge to an enthusiastic embrace of the view of scientific knowledge as ineluctably subjective interpretations of experience. The philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend aggressively attacked the rationality of scientific reasoning and eventually rationality itself. Kuhn’s new image of science fed into the emerging postmodernist critique of reason and truth as rhetorical devices wielded for political ends. Jacques Derrida’s “deconstruction” swept the humanities and social sciences, concluding that there could not be a single correct meaning of any text, including scientists’ “reading” of the “book” of nature. Concurrently, philosophers of science, among them Israel Scheffler, Imre Lakatos, and Karl Popper, began a counterattack against Kuhn, defending the rationality and objectivity of scientific knowledge and reason generally.

Science Wars

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven L. Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Fourth Century Bce ◽  
Science Wars ◽  
History Of ◽  
Effective Science

What do scientists actually know and what do they know about? Answers to these questions are crucial not only for our understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge, but also for the formulation of effective science-based public policies, from global warming and energy to biotechnology and nanoscience. There is a lack of convincing answers to these questions because of an illogical conflation within modern science of epistemology and ontology, seeking to transcend experience and produce knowledge of reality using experience itself. Attempts at explaining the nature of scientific knowledge from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries reveal that scientific reasoning has selectively employed deduction and induction, rationalism and empiricism, the universal and the particular, and necessity and contingency as if these opposites were compatible. As Thomas Kuhn showed, the history of science belies the definitive truth of ontological claims deduced from theories and, as a corollary, the definitive truth of theories themselves. Science Wars reviews the competing conceptions of scientific knowledge from Plato and Aristotle in the fourth century BCE to the “science wars” of the 1990s and provides thought-provoking analyses for understanding scientific thought in the twenty-first century.

Contesting Aristotle: Science, Theology and the Resurrection of the Body in Methodius of Olympus’ De Resurrectione and the Dialogue of Adamantius

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Dawn LaValle Norman
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Reasoning ◽  
The Body ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Scientific Authority ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
Entire Text

Abstract The contest over the resurrection of the body used the scientific authority of Aristotle as ammunition on both sides. Past scholars have read Methodius of Olympus as displaying an anti-Aristotelian bias. In contrast, through close reading of the entire text with attention to characterization and development of argument, I prove that Methodius of Olympus’ dialogue the De Resurrectione utilizes Aristotelian biology as a morally neutral tool. To put this into higher relief, I compare Methodius’ dialogue with the anonymous Dialogue of Adamantius, a text directly dependent upon the Methodius’ De Resurrectione, but which rejects arguments based on scientific reasoning. Reading Methodius’ De Resurrectione with greater attention to the whole and putting it in the context of its nearest parallel text retells the traditional story of early Christian resistance to Aristotle. Methodius of Olympus’ characters, although they view scientific knowledge as subordinate to philosophy, see it as neutral in and of itself.

Reasoning, Representing, and Modeling in Babylonian Astronomy

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 131-147
Author(s):  
Francesca Rochberg
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Reasoning

AbstractThis paper considers Babylonian astronomical predictive schemes as a source for the study of reasoning and representing via modeling. Two principal questions are addressed: first, whether Babylonian astronomical modeling can be usefully included in the conversation about scientific reasoning with models, and second, how and what the representational value of the practice of astronomical modeling was in ancient Babylonia. It is found that the Babylonian astronomical schemes demonstrate the adaptability and various capabilities of the process of modeling as a powerful tool of representation for scientific knowledge and theorizing.

scholarly journals Writing in Science

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 128
Author(s):  
Ana Isabel Santos ◽  
Carlos Miguel Ferreira ◽  
Sandro Serpa
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Scientific Publication ◽  
Scientific Area ◽  
Academic Scientist ◽  
Writing In Science ◽  
Current Context ◽  
And Control

Scientific knowledge entails rigour and control, both as a process of creating a reasoned view of reality and also as the product of results that shape the dissemination of science. The publication is critical for the development of science and the career of the academic/scientist. This article discusses some aspects of writing in science, in a stance that starts from the authors’ scientific area – Sociology/Social Sciences –, using the scientific publication in specialized journals as a paradigmatic case. The results allow concluding that writing in science does not provide the indication of principles to be pursued and that it is shaped as more than rigid self-sufficient rules for the production of a scientific-type text. This topic is particularly relevant in the current context, in which the process of scientific publication is undergoing a profound reformulation.

scholarly journals Argentine Concordat as an International Agreement Regulating the Law of Patronage

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-109
Author(s):  
Marta Zuzanna Osuchowska
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
International Agreement ◽  
Holy See ◽  
Bilateral Relations ◽  
Legal Method ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right

In the history of relations between the Argentinean government and the Holy See, two ideas are permanently intertwined: signing the Concordat and defending national patronage. The changes that occurred in the 1960s indicated that exercising the right of patronage, based on the principles outlined in the Constitution, was impossible, and the peaceful establishment of the principles of bilateral relations could only be indicated through an international agreement. The Concordat signed by Argentina in 1966 removed the national patronage, but the changes to the content of the Constitution were introduced only in 1994. The aim of the study is to show the concordat agreement concluded in 1966 by Argentina with the Holy See as an example of an international agreement. The main focus is the presentation of concordat standards for the institution of patronage. Due to the subject and purpose of the study, the work uses methods typical of social sciences in the legal science discipline. The dogmatic-legal method is the basis for consideration of the Concordat as a source of Argentine law, and as an auxiliary method, the historical-legal method was used to show the historical background of the presented issue.

scholarly journals Political Disagreement and Minimal Epistocracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam F. Gibbons
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Political Disagreement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Crucial Assumption

Despite their many virtues, democracies suffer from well-known problems with high levels of voter ignorance. Such ignorance, one might think, leads democracies to occasionally produce bad outcomes. Proponents of epistocracy claim that allocating comparatively greater amounts of political power to citizens who possess more politically relevant knowledge may help us to mitigate the bad effects of voter ignorance. In a recent paper, Julian Reiss challenges a crucial assumption underlying the case for epistocracy. Central to any defence of epistocracy is the conviction that we can identify a body of political knowledge which, when possessed in greater amounts by voters, leads to substantively better outcomes than when voters lack such knowledge. But it is not possible to identify such a body of knowledge. There is simply far too much controversy in the social sciences, and this controversy prevents us from definitively saying of some citizens that they possess more politically relevant knowledge than others. Call this the Argument from Political Disagreement. In this paper I respond to the Argument from Political Disagreement. First, I argue that Reiss conflates social-scientific knowledge with politically relevant knowledge. Even if there were no uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge, there is much uncontroversial politically relevant knowledge. Second, I argue that there is some uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge. While Reiss correctly notes that there is much controversy in the social sciences, not every issue is controversial. The non-social-scientific politically relevant knowledge and the uncontroversial social-scientific knowledge together constitute the minimal body of knowledge which epistocrats need to make their case. 

Czechoslovakia’s Discreet Behavioral Revolution in the 1960s

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 196-212
Author(s):  
Martin Štefek
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Political ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Prague Spring ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Behavioral Reasoning

This article deals with the thus far unnoticed “intellectual origin” of the so-called Prague Spring. It summarizes tenets of behavioral revolution in the field of social sciences and documents its considerable influence on Czechoslovak scholars. From the mid-1960s, behavioral reasoning coexisted with other (mutually conflicting) perspectives. Literature on Czechoslovak reform has given evidence of the impact of Marxian revisionism, the Frankfurt school, and theories of industrial societies. This article stresses the significance of behavioral meta-theory not only in academia but also in the political arena. However, the process of normalization after 1968/1969 signified the inevitable end for this paradigm.

Area Studies and the Disciplines: A Rejoinder

1997 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-31
Author(s):  
John W. Harbeson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Scientific Knowledge ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
The Social ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

Robert Bates’ letter entitled “Area Studies and the Discipline” (American Political Science Association, Comparative Politics 1, Winter 1996, pp. 1-2) uses the occasion of the SSRC’s abolishing of area committees to announce that “within the academy, the consensus has formed that area studies has failed to generate scientific knowledge.” As someone who has done some of his most important work on African development issues, Bates deplores declining investment in area studies as a “loss to the social sciences, as well as to the academy,” at an inopportune moment, “just when our [political science] discipline is becoming equipped to handle area knowledge in a rigorous fashion.”

Forging New Futures for the Study of Religion in Canada: A Review of Hughes’s From Seminary to University

2021 ◽  
pp. 000842982110416
Author(s):  
Jennifer A Selby
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Convincing Argument ◽  
National Values ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Religion In Canada ◽  
Archival Work

Aaron W. Hughes’s monograph, From Seminary to University: An Institutional History of the Study of Religion in Canada, argues that, unlike other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the study of religion in Canada is imbricated with nation-state politics. The creation of Canada’s initial seminaries post-Confederation served to establish Christianity as normative. By the 1960s, these seminaries were largely replaced with departments that aimed to promote national values of multiculturalism and diversity. In her critique, Selby commends the book’s convincing argument and impressive historical archival work, and critiques the book’s limited engagement with the politics of settler colonialism and scholarly contributions in the province of Québec.

Data and model operations in computational sciences. The examples of computational embryology and epidemiology

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
Fabricio Li Vigni
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Political Decision ◽  
Computational Epidemiology ◽  
Computational Sciences ◽  
Energy Consuming ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Time And Energy ◽  
Political Decision Making

Abstract Computer models and simulations have become, since the 1960s, an essential instrument for scientific inquiry and political decision making in several fields, from climate to life and social sciences. Philosophical reflection has mainly focused on the ontological status of the computational modeling, on its epistemological validity and on the research practices it entails. But in computational sciences, the work on models and simulations are only two steps of a longer and richer process where operations on data are as important as, and even more time and energy-consuming than modeling itself. Drawing on two study cases – computational embryology and computational epidemiology –, this article contributes to fill the gap by focusing on the operations of producing and re-using data in computational sciences. The different phases of the scientific and artisanal work of modelers include data collection, aggregation, homogenization, assemblage, analysis and visualization. The article contributes to deconstruct the ideas that data are self-evident informational aggregates and that data-driven approaches are exempted from theoretical work. More importantly, the paper stresses the fact that data are constructed and theory-laden not only in their fabrication, but also in their reusing.

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