Pluralistic synthesis SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

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PHILOSOPHY
of SCIENCE

• Pluralistic synthesis SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

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Against Universal Objectivismor Scientific
Realism

• A scientific account is universally valid.
  Therefore, if scientific theory, T, is true, it
  is true everywhere and always. The denial of this
  is relativism. It implies that reality may vary
  across space at any given time.
• A scientific account is valid independently of
  what people think and do. Therefore if T is true,
  it is true even if nobody believes it. The denial
  of this is constructivism. It implies that, for a
  given place, reality may change over time.

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Gilles Deleuze(1925-1995)

• Deleuze refers to his philosophy as a
  transcendental empiricism
• experience is always presenting novelty exceeds
  our concepts
• this raw experience of difference actualizes an
  idea, unfettered by our prior categories, forcing
  us to invent new ways of thinking

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Philosophy, Art and Science

• Deleuze sharply distinguishes art, philosophy,
  and science as three distinct disciplines,
• philosophy creates concepts,
• the arts create percepts (novel qualitative
  combinations of sensation and feeling
• the sciences create quantitative theories based
  on "functives (fixed points of reference)
• They are"separate melodic lines in constant
  interplay with one another."

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Reason , Thinking Thought

• Reason is always a region carved out of the
  irrationalnot sheltered from the irrational at
  all,
• Reason is traversed by unreason and only defined
  by a particular kind of relationship among
  irrational factors.

• genuine thinking is a violent confrontation with
  reality, an involuntary rupture of established
  categories
• a thought always determined by problems rather
  than solving them

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Values

• standards of value are internal or immanent
• to live well is to fully express one's power,
• to go to the limits of one's potential,
• not to judge what exists by non-empirical,
  transcendent standards.

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Jean-Francois Lyotard

• Jean-François Lyotard (10 August 1924 21 April
  1998) was a French philosopher and literary
  theorist. He is well-known for his articulation
  of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the
  analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the
  human condition in La Condition Postmoderne
  Rapport sur le Savoir (1979).

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Collapse of Grand Narrartives

• meta-narratives - sometimes 'grand narratives' -
  are grand, large-scale theories and philosophies
  of the world, such as the progress of history,
  the knowability of everything by science.
• postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of
  micronarratives.

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Science as Language Games

• 'language games', denotes
• the multiplicity of communities of meaning,
• the innumerable and incommensurable separate
  systems
• in which
• meanings are produced and
• rules for their circulation are created.

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Bruno Latour

• Bruno Latour (born 22 June 1947, Beaune,
  Côte-d'Or) is a French Anthropologist1 and an
  influential theorist in the field of Science and
  Technology Studies (STS)2. After teaching at
  the École des Mines de Paris (Centre de
  Sociologie de l'Innovation) from 1982 to 2006, he
  is now Professor and vice-president for research
  at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris
  (2007)3, where he is associated with the Centre
  de sociologie des organisations (CSO).

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Science as Culture

• The objects of science are
• socially constructed within the laboratory
• Objects of science cannot be attributed with an
  existence outside of
• the instruments that measure them and
• the minds that interpret them.
• Scientific activity is
• a system of beliefs, oral traditions and
  culturally specific practices
• science is reconstructed
• not as a procedure
• or as a set of principles
• but as a culture.

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• naïve descriptions of the scientific method, in
  which theories stand or fall on the outcome of a
  single experiment,
• are inconsistent with actual laboratory practice.
  
• In the laboratory,
• a typical experiment produces only inconclusive
  data that is attributed to failure of the
  apparatus or experimental method, and that
• a large part of scientific training involves
  learning how to make the subjective decision of
  what data to keep and what data to throw out,
• a process that, to an untrained outsider, looks
  like a mechanism for ignoring data that
  contradicts scientific orthodoxy.

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Actor Network Theory

• Actor Network theory maps relations that are
  simultaneously material (between things) and
  semiotic (between conceptswhich are potentially
  transient, existing in a constant making and
  re-making.
• The networks of relations are not intrinsically
  coherent, and may indeed contain conflicts.
• The networks use explicit strategies for relating
  different elements together so that they form an
  apparently coherent whole.
• This means that relations need to be repeatedly
  performed or the network will dissolve.