It can’t really be over yet, can it? I’ve been at work and running a kid to tumbling, and this discussion is over before it really began?
Riffing on Jay’s OP and comments from mitchellmekain, Markd, Glipsnort, rsewell, t_aquaticus, and Vanengelen, I think, I hoped to hear more from scientists here about their understanding of postmodern critiques (not stereotyped but the real critiques of real PoMo) of science, scientific practice, etc, etc. I’m aware the critiques exist, but haven’t got a firm grip on them.
What are they?
Do they have any affect on your practices, thinking, etc? If so, how; if not why?
As scientists, what are YOUR critiques of a postmodern understanding of science, at least your area of practice?
jay313, and MarkD, maybe there’s hope for this thread?
Going forward, please stick to the topic, posters. And if someone is out of line, please feel free to flag them, as often topics may not be followed closely by the moderators.
There are a lot of things to understand about quantum physics including why Feynman said “If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” Clearly it does not mean nobody can understand ANYTHING about quantum physics. BUT the claim that you understand EVERYTHING on a subject is really rather foolish no matter what the subject is. So, frankly, I think the vast majority of people who quote or refer to this statement of Feynman don’t really understand the statement at all.
The reason Feynman says this is because of a very real cognitive dissonance the greatest physicists experience when confronted with the findings of quantum physics because it seems contradict some of the basic premises of inquiry in the science of physics. The more someone is immersed in a physics worldview the more disturbing these findings are going to be to them. But frankly those with a broader spectrum understanding of reality are not as likely to experience this. Most people will find it only natural to discover that physics cannot explain everything. And those in philosophy (and mathematics) have already encountered something similar in the discoveries of Kurt Gödel. The real foolishness here is not thinking you understand a subject but rather thinking that the narrow approach to reality in your field of study is a greater grasp on the whole of reality than it really is.
Absolutely. People who do understand it well enough to solve real world problems at least. Whether that translates as understanding the fabric of reality, I don’t think anyone can say. It seems we corporately keep understanding more and more.
Yes.
Very well said. How post modern of you. Or maybe it is a matter of the manner in which you hold your religious faith. Both promote humility - when done correctly.
Just to jump in here with the friendly neighbourhood mod hat on. Please don’t forget the flag function has an ‘Off-Topic’ option. If you feel a post is significantly off-topic based on the OP or the Froum Guidelines please feel free to flag it and we (the Mods) will review, respond to offenders, and delete posts where appropriate.
Some neutral drift in a forum conversation is to be expected, but folks pushing a conversation towards personal hobby-horses topics is not OK. So please make use of the flagging system, it is designed to do the heavy lifting in situations just like this. But only works if people use it.
Here’s a reminder of how to flag something for those who’d like a refresher:
I don’t think you understand what that agnosticism entails. Either the object, like the moon, exists as a quantifiable reality or it’s an illusion of the one or oneness. It matters very little how you say it, because once you see what the question means, words are far less consequential.
Edit: This post was flagged as off topic. Would whoever flagged it write me publicly or privately so I can explain why it is at the very heart of the topic? I promise not to to disclose any details of a private thread.
Feel free to ask me about it even if you didn’t flag it. It’s a conversation worth having here or in another thread as it is so very relevant to the conversation about faith, science, and postmodernism.
Making that a new topic would be a good idea, Dale - please do that; since at least one forum member has already voted in that direction also with a flag. Let me know if you can’t still access it.
Postmodernism, by its very nature, is hard to pin down. Also, the popular versions of all such movements are rather selective and often incoherent, like what Paul was accused of in Acts 17:18 - picking up random scraps of philosophy that sound appealing. The point that there is subjectivity in all human effort is important, but so is the point that there are definite limits to the associated uncertainty; certain things are unquestionably wrong. Reading a text does has a subjective component, for example. But if you read the previous sentence by making up your own definition for each word, without regard for prevailing usage, then your “reading” doesn’t really have anything to do with the text.
Modernism is largely an outgrowth of Enlightenment thought, often ignoring Enlightenment critiques (e.g., Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason or Hume’s articulation of the is-ought problem). Like the Enlightenment, it tends towards the error of “sounds good to me=truth”, and thus has a similar popular version in practice to pop postmodernism.
Both logical positivism and postmodernism are illustrated in The Porcine History of Philosophy and Religion, though unsurprisingly the cartoons are illustrating particular versions of each.
Instead of modernist or postmodernist self-justification, we need an accurate recognition that our own judgements are fallible and need to be checked as best we can against the available evidence.
Michael Polanyi wrote about the value of following and dedicating resources to an intuition before the data fully supported it. I’m not so sure how his ideas are received today.
Thanks for the tag Kendel. After reading a bit of actual work considered “Postmodern critiques of science,” Like Feyerabend’s Against Method, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is some scientists’ reaction and misunderstanding of postmodernism rather than postmodernism itself that is the problem. I’ve often heard it said that Postmodernism rejects the idea of of truth existing (and thus is self-refuting, because this itself is a truth claim), however I haven’t ready many postmodernists make a claim this strong. Instead, here are a few examples of the kinds of claims I believe many postmodernists make:
People are biased (true)
Our beliefs are a product our environment and upbringing (often true)
Language colors how we see the world (I agree with this to a certain extent)
We should be skeptical of grand metanarratives (I agree)
We gain knowledge through experience, so our “stories” are important (I’d agree to an extent, but I’d argue there are other ways to find knowledge too)
In my (perhaps biased) opinion, many of the reactions to postmodern critiques of science come from people who have a cult-like devotion to Science (and not just the scientific method). Just as postmodernism takes aim at narratives like Christianity (which is used to criticism), it also takes aim at other metanarratives views like rationalism or naturalism (often epistemically and not ontologically, an important distinction). The knee-jerk reaction to criticism of their prized worldview is a tantrum which seeks to discredit, not always understand.
@T_aquaticus mentioned a quote in another thread by Steven Weinberg that explains the philosophical views of many scientists. PoMo often trusts the results of the scientific method but is skeptical of those claiming this is the “only” truth (it would, for instance, be skeptical of the philosophical claims Weinberg describes). Note it is not necessarily claiming there are “multiple” truths, rather there could be other ways of understanding the same truth, or there could be more to truth than we understand.
I never thought I’d actually be “defending” postmodernism, but I do feel it gets unfairly targeted by science worshippers. From another article, “Postmodern criticism of modern science was not without merit. Where science was granted grotesquely inflated and unconditional power, postmodernists pointed to its limits. Where science was used as a guise for value judgments, they pulled the veil off and exposed the hypocrisy”
Bouncing bullets mean somebody’s shooting. If you want a bullet-free world, don’t say Absolute Space, Absolute Time, or that an infinite, eternal cosmos is rational albeit not fully known, much less explicable.
As others have mentioned, PM is kind of hard to nail down. More to the point, I’m not all that interested diving into the particulars of PM or Modernism. I think I am like a lot of other scientists in being more of a pragmatist than an ideologue. At the same time, a good scientist will be aware of their own foibles, inherent biases, and limitations. For me, one of the first things I do when critically reading a scientific paper is to look for potential biases and methodological errors. I suspect that nearly all scientists do this. Scientists are also human beings from all walks of life, so there is a diversity of beliefs and subjective human experience as well.
@Paulm12 mentioned a Steven Weinberg piece that I have quoted from on occassion. In it, Weinberg talks about how philosophy in general is not much use to him. Rather, he is more of a pragmatist or realist:
I am drawn to what Weinberg wrote because it matches a lot of my own curmudgeonly attitude towards philosophy, so I am a bit biased in that sense. However, I do think this is a common critique of philosophy in scientific circles, that philosophy just isn’t that helpful.
Or maybe it is a matter of the manner in which you hold your religious faith. Both promote humility - when done correctly.
