[-empyre-] Re:sceince

[Erika Lincoln]

Hi List
Here is a quick resource for everyone. CBC Radio did a series called "How to Think About Science" consisting of 24 one hour interviews with the likes of Bruno Latour, Margret Lock, Sajay Samuel, and others.

website for the podcasts.

http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html

Here is the blurb from the website. 

"If science is neither cookery, nor angelic virtuosity, then what is it?
Modern societies have tended to take science for granted as a way of knowing, ordering and controlling the world. Everything was subject to science, but science itself largely escaped scrutiny. This situation has changed dramatically in recent years. Historians, sociologists, philosophers and sometimes scientists themselves have begun to ask fundamental questions about how the institution of science is structured and how it knows what it knows. David Cayley talks to some of the leading lights of this new field of study."

For me it was a great introduction to the field of the philosopy of science.

Erika Lincoln
Electronic Media Artist
Winnipeg/Manitoba/Canada
http://www.lincolnlab.net


--- On Wed, 9/10/08, B. Bogart <ben at ekran.org> wrote:

> From: B. Bogart <ben at ekran.org>
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Re:sceince
> To: misterwarwick at yahoo.com, "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Received: Wednesday, September 10, 2008, 12:49 PM
> I see science as a rigorous practise of measurement. These
> measurements
> are then correlated using mathematical models.
> 
> The act of measurement is by definition, the selection of
> some signal
> over noise. In order to measure something, much must be
> ignored. The
> measurement is then as much as choice as it is the result
> of physical
> reality.
> 
> The reality -> measurement -> model process is then
> an abstraction of
> reality, as it always must be a reduction. The model itself
> is informed
> and designed in the light of measurement, but is certainly
> a
> construction based on an abstraction, further abstracting
> scientific
> truth from reality.
> 
> If we take metaphor as a mapping of one domain to another.
> Data from one
> domain is being considered in light of another.
> 
> Measurements are considered in light of the
> reality/phenomenon they
> attempt to measure. Models are considered in light of the
> measurements
> they are meant to make meaningful.
> 
> At its very basis, what is science other than an attempt to
> construct
> new meaning from the world that is not available directly
> by our senses?
> 
> To take your cloud example:
> 
> The very hard to measure fuzzy shape of a cloud is measured
> (by our
> visual sensors & perception).
> 
> These visual measurements are processed by the
> mind/body/brain and
> remind the viewer of a bunny. This bunny is a model, a way
> of
> understanding the relations between the measurements. Is
> the cloud/bunny
> really so different than a scientific model?
> 
> Of course the cloud is not REALLY a bunny.
> 
> But a weather model is not REALLY the weather either. (if
> it was the
> forecast would always be accurate and precise)
> 
> B. Bogart
> 
> 
> h w wrote:
> > It's only metaphoric, because much of it is
> mathematical, and unless you can wrap your head around the
> math, any description will, by necessity, be metaphorical
> and filled with images you can understand. Otherwise, 
> communication gets very difficult.
> >
> > Science CAN be seen as a fiction, as much as a cloud
> can be seen to be a bunny. It's not really a bunny. You
> just think it looks like one.
> > 
> > Science CAN also be seen as a process and an
> organisation of behaviour along specific lines of
> testability, repeatability, and (sometimes) falsifiability
> combined with Ockham's Razor. Which, while
> "sharp", is actually a statement regarding
> evidence and not a real razor.
> > 
> > HW
> > _______________________________________________
> > empyre forum
> > empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> > 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre


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