Yeah, a lot of my friends are mathematicians, and I've always enjoyed their, usually admitted, use of trivial as a handwave for a lot of things. Of course, Historians, and really all Humanistic Social Scientists, do the same thing with "common sense" pretty often as well.
The scientific method is essentially something agreed upon, following certain epistemological assumptions on how knowledge can be gathered, or at the very least ignorance reduced.Sorry, but the idea of science being a social construct is actual garbage.
I doubt I used that word.
Feel free to disagree with anything I posted and we can have a discussion.
Physicist Lawrence M. Krauss responded to the picture in the OP:
I'm a bit surprised to find that the statement on the slide is viewed as so contentious. History of science is a well established field, and examining the practice of scientific research as a social endeavour can be carried out with exactly the same tools social scientists use to examine, say, religion.
"Ah," I hear the cry, "but scientific facts have objective reality." No, science doesn't work in terms of objective reality, but with measurements, reasoning and consensus. Choosing which measurements to make, how to interpret them, and how to resolve contradictory evidence, are examples of social processes.
As an example of the changeability of scientific facts, let's look at the gravitational constant G. We assume G is a constant everywhere in the universe because it makes a lot of sense of all the measurements we can make. But even supposing this assumption is correct, G is notoriously difficult to measure because it is not coupled to other forces, and gravity is very weak indeed so it's difficult to account for all possible confounding variables in any measurement. As a result, the accuracy with which we can measure G hasn't improved much since Cavendish published his results over 200 years ago. Yet adjustments to the international standard for the value of G are frequent, as are adjustments to the uncertainty of that value.
So it is likely to remain until another revolution in thinking occurs. Perhaps the new LIGO gravity wave detectors will provide the spark. And remember that, like the Large Hadron Collider, those detectors are massive international collaborations.
So while we can agree that this particular social endeavour, science, is very productive, having brought us very effective medicine, rapid automatic calculation, powerful and safe means of transport and many other benefits, that in no way contradicts the validity of the social sciences approach. We can understand that science is not an abstract mine from which facts are extracted in the manner of workers chipping at a coalface. Rather, it's a human collaboration made up of institutions and consensus. This helps us to understand science better.
You might not have said idiot, but in the last thread you certainly said I didn't know anything about science and told people to ignore me. You also said I was just arguing semantics when you were engaged in a semantic discussion with me which IO always find funny. This was a year or two ago, I think it was about Ricky Gervais.
There's not much to disagree with you about in that post because you didn't really say anything, but unless you've changed your mind from that thread then you certainly don't believe that science is social.
A classic example of how common it is for many scientists to not think through what historians, sociologists, and anthropologists, are saying. No one is saying they don't believe in gravity.
The scientific method is essentially something agreed upon, following certain epistemological assumptions on how knowledge can be gathered, or at the very least ignorance reduced.
As such, I would argue that within this framework everything can be disproven, if an experiment shows it to be false, but nothing positively proven. As such, while supreme facts might exist, we have no clear way in making sure of them. Maybe Evolution is false, and in reality it is even more complicated. The evidence so far doesn't bear this out, but with more work, it might.
There are no absolutes.
Of course, that doesn't mean that stuff changes from one moment to the next, nilly-willy. It's just that things taken to be probably true now, can be shown to be false in the future.
Uh, what do you mean? I can't speak for all social scientists but in general I don't think 'common sense' would be something you could say that really existed at all, unless you were referring to the the naturalised beliefs of whomever you were studying.
This premise is laughably false. The scientific method proves itself through the success of falsification and confirmation. It's not something people just agree to because it sounds like it makes sense. And using evolution, which has tons of demonstrable, verifiable evidence, to make your argument? Lololol
This premise is laughably false. The scientific method proves itself through the success of falsification and confirmation. It's not something people just agree to because it sounds like it makes sense. And using evolution, which has tons of demonstrable, verifiable evidence, to make your argument? Lololol
why does this sentai have two greens?u guys should read this cause its really good
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/190
remember at one point women and black people weren't allowed to vote due to some flawed racial science, anything can be upended
"Science is social" is too broad to of a statement. You have to be more specific.. :/
except as philosophical wankery (which I'm down for, don't get me wrong)
this sort of thing was widely accepted by scientific consensus for centuries and taken as absolute fact, don't dismiss the social constructs argument so quickly
There's a bit of muddy discussion here.
Science tries to make models about objective reality.
Science is definitely influenced by social and human issues. When people use "social construct" it implies arbitrary. I think the muddying is what people are using as science, current scientific consensus, science as an institution, as an endeavor, scientific facts, etc
I think this is the problem, one of definitions.
There is rarely anything 'arbitrary' about social constructs. Language, government, law, ethics, economics etc etc. Virtually everything we do is systemic, and subject to analysis and understanding. Social scientists wouldn't be fascinated if all this was 'arbitrary'.
Saying a social construct is arbitrary, 'just a construct', is like saying evolution is 'just a theory'. These words mean a lot more in the fields they pertain to.
I dislike that trying to understand something better is often reduced to "philosophical wankery". Why should we dismiss trying to better understand what science is?
I'm sure it been said, but no, facts are not constructs. The laws of the universe remain whether or not they are measured by man.
Stories change and will likely not be repeated exactly as-is if destroyed, but 1+1 is 2 and will be found to be so by another intelligence if all our knowledge of maths were wiped out.
Also when was the problem of induction dealt with?
Socially, it is assumed that when one states "1+1=2" that one is working with ZFC (if not, one typically specifies the framework) and is shorthand. Is the statement "With the following axioms and the definitions of 1, +, 2, = [technically one must actually explicitly define everything one needs and verification that this is allowed, but that is a lot for this post], 1+1=2" not a fact? It is undeniably true that with that framework and how those statements are defined that it is true. It doesn't matter if you use different symbols, it's a consequence of the framework you are taking, and with that framework it can never not be true. To say it might not be true with different axioms is to ignore that the statement itself is a statement on the consequences of a certain framework.You ironically picked one of the best examples to pick apart. 1 + 1 = 2 relies on some axioms we've selected for their usefulness, there are many mathematical systems where it isn't true. How do you physically determine if two things are "the same" for the purposes of addition?
Physicist Lawrence M. Krauss responded to the picture in the OP:
You ironically picked one of the best examples to pick apart. 1 + 1 = 2 relies on some axioms we've selected for their usefulness, there are many mathematical systems where it isn't true. How do you physically determine if two things are "the same" for the purposes of addition?
In a mathematical sense alone, ignoring anything in the physical world.
Okay that was meant to be flippant in order to be a bit disarming of people who are dismissive of the very idea, I just mean that being skeptical of if the results from particle accelerators are meaningful or if all of physics is based on fundamentally limited human perspectives comes from a different and largely less material place than being skeptical of the intrinsic truth of medical biology because of its long history with eugenics
Replace "Who is Gabbo" with "Scientific Facts are Social Constructs."
Do we even know if it's being argued for or against?
Could you clarify?
I'm sure it been said, but no, facts are not constructs. The laws of the universe remain whether or not they are measured by man.
Stories change and will likely not be repeated exactly as-is if destroyed, but 1+1 is 2 and will be found to be so by another intelligence if all our knowledge of maths were wiped out.
Geocentrism, humors, phrenology, etc., at one point were believed to be scientific fact; these truths were molded by measurements and observation and the current understanding and perspective of the world and its workings. Perception and our tools to measure and define our observations have defined what is considered fact for all of human history. Consensus based on continually refined theories and repeatable results decides what is fact. It is through accepted truths and norms that consensus is reached about theories and results, and what is accepted is molded by the social underpinnings of the time.Hysteria is a real thing, and its caused by female fragility was considered a settled fact in early psychiatry for the most part.
This obviously wasnt true. What was called hysteria was a mishmash of genuine psychiatric diagnosis such as depression, anxiety, borderline disorder and several more - combined with somewhat of a fad among smaller groups of upper-class women to act hysterical - as filtered through the underlying social context of the time. Simply put, the psychiatric community observed something they didnt quite understand (but which fit their prejudices) and decided to label it as a fact.
Thats the problem. Facts arent some magical thing floating around in the world. Theyre whatever we decide is true, and a lot of the time were wrong.
I can't really tell what the professor was trying to say, as it was a single slide in a lecture. I'd have to see the context of his/her arguments to determine accurately what argument was being made.
I think a lot of people get confused when discussing science, because. well, it's confusing. The philosophy of science, for instance, is still studied and highly debated to this day. Are the philosophy of science and the scientific method social constructs? Sure, how could they not be. The scientific method grew up with humanity, and was made rigid in the 17th century. That doesn't make the scientific method any less amazing in how it's able to determine scientific results, but it is still routinely challenged and changed.
Are scientific theories social constructs? Debatable. They're, in the strictest definition, a consensus of evidence pointing towards a model that describes reality. They're not social constructs in that they depend on facts and information alone, and may only be replaced when a more accurate model exists. Theories are also not dependent on your worldview, and may be described by someone in a different society than you.They are social constructs in that people made them, they are only the best model, and not some objective truth, and that they change over time. It's certainly debatable either way.
Are scientific facts social constructs? Nope. It's a fact that the charge of an electron is 1.602*^-19 coulombs. It's a fact that the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. It's a fact that genetic information in all life as we know it exists in a self replicating structure we refer to as either DNA or RNA, depending on how it's bound. It's a fact that (pure) water is made of two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom bound by chemical forces. These are not something that is dependent on understanding a society and they are not subject to change, save for a better experiment being developed.
Scientific facts form theories, and the method they are used to form the theories is known as the scientific method. Only the scientific method is objectively a social construct. Scientific facts cannot possibly be.
Need more context than one slide. I hate shit like this.
There's a bit of muddy discussion here.
Science tries to make models about objective reality.
Science is definitely influenced by social and human issues. When people use "social construct" it implies arbitrary. I think the muddying is what people are using as science, current scientific consensus, science as an institution, as an endeavor, scientific facts, etc
"Science is social" is too broad to of a statement. You have to be more specific.. :/
Common sense absolutely exists. I'm surprised anyone would disagree. I mean isn't one of the fundamental techniques of anthropologists to try and find what things a society takes for granted and unpack them? That doesn't mean common sense isn't social, it absolutely is, and that's why it's funny when Humanistic Social Scientists fall back on it.
What are the differences between the different sciences? Does SSK (sociology of scientific knowledge, I'm presuming, from a quick search) differ from "scientific facts of biology?" Is there a name for "scientific facts" that are based on evidence? Like the sun's position relative to the Earth's? I'm having an incredibly difficult time parsing through the discourse because the terminology and overall nuance of "this science" versus "this science" are confusing. Also, are all types of sciences socially constructed in the same level? Or are other types of sciences truer than others?This is a pretty poor understanding of theories. Theories aren't just a body of facts, they are a a specific way to interpret the fact. The part where you said "may be replaced" should clue you into that.
It's interesting that you're focusing on theories, because the realization that theories are socially constructed, i.e. Kuhn, was the basis from which the rest of the SSK derives. It's essentially the most obviously socially constructed part of scientific knowledge.
I'm sure it has been said, but no, facts are not constructs. The laws of the universe remain whether or not they are measured by man.
Stories change and will likely not be repeated exactly as-is if destroyed, but 1+1 is 2 and will be found to be so by another intelligence if all our knowledge of maths were wiped out.
Geocentrism, humors, phrenology, etc., at one point were believed to be scientific fact; these truths were molded by measurements and observation and the current understanding and perspective of the world and its workings. Perception and our tools to measure and define our observations have defined what is considered fact for all of human history. Consensus based on continually refined theories and repeatable results decides what is fact. It is through accepted truths and norms that consensus is reached about theories and results, and what is accepted is molded by the social underpinings of the time.
This is a pretty poor understanding of theories. Theories aren't just a body of facts, they are a a specific framework in which we interpret facts. The part where you said "may be replaced" should clue you into that. If things can be replaced, then clearly something is going on beyond it floating around on some platonic plane.
It's interesting that you're focusing on theories, because the realization that theories are socially constructed, i.e. Kuhn, was the basis from which the rest of the SSK derives. It's essentially the most obviously socially constructed part of scientific knowledge.
which is true. Theories can be replaced, but only by a model that better describes reality. Indeed, most replacements in theories are not because society deemed it so, but because they fit the evidence better. General relativity as a theory would be no more or less true whether or not we had discovered it. In that way, it could be argued that it is or is not a social construct, just as with Newtonian gravity, or evolution.They're, in the strictest definition, a consensus of evidence pointing towards a model that describes reality.
I don't really know what you're trying to say tbh.
Who's 'falling back on it' and in what context?
But that 'unpacking' process tends to upend notions common-sense more than anything else.
It might be somewhere you 'start from', but it wouldn't be somewhere you'd 'fall back' to.
It stands more as a notion or preconception to be challenged than as an explanation of anything.