Received: from mx02.globecomm.net (mx02.globecomm.net [206.253.129.31]) by email.mcmail.com (9.9.9/8.8.8) with ESMTP id OAA04039 for ; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 14:49:48 +0100 (BST) Received: from maelstrom.stjohns.edu (maelstrom.stjohns.edu [149.68.1.24]) by mx02.globecomm.net (8.8.8/8.8.0) with ESMTP id JAA02333 for ; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 09:49:43 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199808101349.JAA02333@mx02.globecomm.net> Received: from maelstrom.stjohns.edu by maelstrom.stjohns.edu (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <9.73528AE6@maelstrom.stjohns.edu>; Mon, 10 Aug 1998 8:22:17 -1300 Date: Mon, 10 Aug 1998 08:22:17 -0400 From: "L-Soft list server at St. John's University (1.8c)" Subject: File: "SCI-CULT LOG9804" To: Ian Pitchford X-UIDL: f254d04dea0dd83bcc9d6451fa906ae0 X-PMFLAGS: 33554560 0 ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 13:24:08 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: sci-therapeutic-touch.html (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >From today's NY Times: April 1, 1998 11-Year-Old's Experiment Challenges Therapeutic Touch [LINK] By GINA KOLATA T wo years ago, Emily Rosa of Loveland, Colo., designed and carried out an experiment that challenges a leading treatment in alternative medicine. Her study, reported Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has thrown the field into tumult. Emily is 11. She did the experiment for her fourth grade science fair. The technique she challenges is therapeutic touch, in which healers manipulate what they call the "human energy field" by passing their hands over a patient's body without actually touching the patient. The method is practiced in healing centers and medical centers throughout the world, and is taught at prominent universities and schools of nursing. Tens of thousands of people have been trained to treat patients through the use of therapeutic touch. Its practitioners insist that the human energy field is real and that anyone can be trained to feel it. But Emily asked a sort of "emperor's new clothes" type of question. Could therapeutic touch practitioners actually detect a human energy field? Her method was devilishly simple. It was a question critics of alternative medicine had asked before. But only one practitioner agreed to submit to a test, said James Randi, a magician who conducted the test. Emily, however, was able to recruit 21 practitioners. Her mother, Linda Rosa, a nurse who is among the critics of therapeutic touch, said she believed Emily succeeded because practitioners were not threatened by a 9-year-old girl. Mrs. Rosa said Emily originally was designing a science fair experiment involving different colored M&M's candy. Then she glanced at the television screen in her home where her mother was watching a videotape about therapeutic touch. Suddenly, Emily piped up, saying she had a way to test the premise of therapeutic touch, her mother said. Emily designed an experiment in which the healer and Emily were separated by a screen. Then Emily decided, by flipping a coin, whether to put her hand over the healer's left hand or the right hand. The healer was asked to decide where Emily's hand was hovering. If the healer could detect Emily's human energy field, he or she should be able to discern where Emily's hand was. In 280 tests involving the 21 practitioners, the healers did no better than chance. They identified the correct location of Emily's hand just 44 percent of the time; if they guessed at random, they would have been right about half the time. Emily wrote her study with her mother, a member of the National Therapeutic Touch Study Group, a group based in Loveland that question the method. The study's authors included Larry Sarner of the Therapeutic Touch Study Group and Dr. Stephen Barrett, board chairman of Quackwatch in Allentown, Pa., a nonprofit group that is putting information about questionable medical practices on the Internet. The report on the study is accompanied by a note from Dr. George Lundberg, the journal's editor. In it, Lundberg says that "practitioners should disclose these results to patients, third-party payers should question whether they should pay for this procedure, and patients should save their money unless or until additional honest experimentation demonstrates an actual effect." Lundberg said the journal's statisticians thought the study was well done. "They were amazed by its simplicity and by the clarity of its results," he said. Practitioners hardly agree. "I do hope it's an April Fool's joke," said Dr. Dolores Krieger, an emeritus professor of nursing at New York University who is a developer of therapeutic touch. Dr. Kreiger and other therapeutic touch practitioners insist that they and anyone else who is trained can easily feel human energy fields. In her book, "Accepting Your Power to Heal" (Bear & Co. Publishing, Santa Fe. N.M., 1993) Dr. Krieger said the field feels like "warm Jell-O or warm foam." Practitioners of therapeutic touch say that patients who are ill have hot spots or cold spots in their fields or areas that feel tingly. By "rebalancing" a person's field, practitioners say they can calm colicky babies, relieve symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, treat cancer and more. Dr. Krieger says that since she developed therapeutic touch 26 years ago, she has trained more than 47,000 practitioners. Her acolytes have gone on to train thousands more. The method has also been the subject of numerous doctoral dissertations and postdoctoral studies. Dr. Krieger said it is taught in nursing schools and colleges in 70 countries and is used in hospitals around the world. "It works," she said, adding that Emily Rosa "completely misunderstood what the nature of basic research is." Another practitioner of therapeutic touch, Marilee Tolin, who teaches the method at colleges and universities throughout the country and who treats patients at the Healing Center in Cherry Hill, N.J., said Emily's study was poorly conceived. Practitioners, Ms. Tolin said, rely on more than just touch to sense the human energy field. They also use "the sense of intuition and even a sense of sight," she said. But other researchers say there is no reliable evidence that practitioners of therapeutic touch can heal patients. Dr. Donal O'Mathuna, a professor of bioethics and chemistry at the Mount Carmel School of Nursing in Columbus, Ohio, said he had reviewed more than 100 papers and doctoral dissertations on therapeutic touch but found no convincing data that the method worked. The studies, O'Mathuna said, were poorly designed -- and even then not all showed an effect. He said proponents cited the positive studies and ignored the negative ones. Linda Rosa said she became interested in therapeutic touch when she noticed it becoming "the cause celebre of nursing." She went to her local board of nursing, asking for evidence that it worked and got, she said, about 200 articles, most of which came from women's magazines or tabloid newspapers. She then demanded a review of the therapeutic touch program at the University of Colorado Health Science Center in Denver's school of nursing. In response, the university put together a committee headed by Dr. Henry Claman, a professor of medicine and immunology at the university. Claman said the group concluded that the method had no scientific basis and that there was no evidence that patients were helped. He said the committee decided that no one even knew how to test the basic assumptions behind therapeutic touch. But he added that university officials believed that removing the subject from the curriculum would violate the academic freedom of the nursing school's faculty. Claman said he expects therapeutic touch practitioners to take issue with Emily's study. "Proponents will argue that the study was done by people who were openly skeptical," he said. But, he added, "Of course it was -- those are the people who want to put therapeutic touch to the test." Lundberg said he had no ax to grind involving alternative medicine. In fact, he said, his journal is solicting articles on alternative medicine and recently published one indicating that a herb, ginko biloba, might help improve the memories of patients with Alzheimer's disease. At least one skeptic was amazed that Emily could do the study at all. Randi, the magician and director of the James Randi Educational Foundation in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said he had been trying to test therapeutic touch for years, and even offered $1.1 million to any practitioner who could pass a test in detecting a human energy field. He advertised in nursing journals and elsewhere, seeking subjects, he said. But only one person answered the advertisement. She told Randi that she was a spiritualist who could feel human energy fields. But, in a test similar to Emily's, the woman succeeded in only 11 out of 20 attempts, which is no better than chance. "We said, 'Do you want to continue?' " Randi said. "She got up in a huff and muttered something about negative vibrations," and then left, he added. Randi said he thinks Emily persuaded therapeutic touch practitioners to cooperate with her because she was a guileless child doing a study for her science fair. He said that he, in contrast, is "the Devil incarnate, 666 and all that." Dr. Krieger said no one would cooperate with Randi because his experiment was "stupid and ill advised," and added: "This man is a magician. I hate to be mean, but a magician is a manipulator." As for Emily, she is on a roll. She recently got a letter from the Guiness Book of World Records, saying she may be the youngest person ever to publish a paper in a major scientific journal. And she is now planning her next experiments to test assumptions of alternative medicine. "I'm going to do one on scientology and one on magnets," she said. ______________________________________________________________ Other Places of Interest on The Web Journal of the American Medical Association. ______________________________________________________________ @Backup - Safe, Secure, Automatic Internet Backups 30-day FREE trial. Click here! Home | Sections | Contents | Search | Forums | Help Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 13:24:41 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: sci-research-gifts.html (fwd) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII >From today's NY Times: April 1, 1998 Corporations Swap Gifts for Influence Over Scholars By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG W ASHINGTON -- It is an axiom of politics that money buys influence, and gifts come with strings attached. The same is not supposed to be true of academic medical research, but a new study finds that in science, as in the rest of life, money expects to talk. In an anonymous survey, more than half of all university scientists who received gifts from drug or biotech companies admitted that the donors expected to exert influence over their work, ranging from prior review of published academic papers to patent rights for commercial discoveries. "That is very serious," said Sheldon Krimsky, a professor of urban and environmental policy at Tufts University who studies the relationship between industry and academia. "It suggests that somebody who gave a drug or a cell culture or a piece of equipment should have some oversight, and that is a very serious problem for the independence of the researcher." The study, conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the University of Minnesota, and published in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, is the first to examine the murky relationship between corporations that give gifts and the scholars who receive them. It is based on the anonymous responses of 2,167 scientists who work at 50 of the nation's most research-intensive universities. Among those surveyed, 43 percent had received a gift -- typically biomaterials, such as cell lines or snippets of DNA, lab equipment, trips or money -- in the three years prior to the survey. Of the recipients, two-thirds reported that the gift was either important or very important to their work -- a finding that the authors said revealed how much some academics depend on industry help. The study did not assess the gifts' worth. But the strings attached ran the gamut, from requests that the scientist test the company's products to stipulations that donated materials or equipment not be shared. One-third of the 920 scientists who received them said their corporate benefactors expected to review their academic papers prior to publication. And, in one particularly troubling finding, 19 percent said the donors wanted to own patent rights to any commercial discoveries stemming from use of the gift -- even though most universities have rules that prevent faculty members from giving away such intellectual property. "All of this is extremely worrisome," said Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, a monitoring organization in Washington. "It tells me that there is almost no sphere of our health care research and delivery system that is immune from the infecting properties of money. It is ultimately dangerous to the patient, for whom biomedical research is done." Unlike research grants and contracts, gifts are largely unregulated by universities, and have typically been dismissed as insignificant. David Blumenthal, associate professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School and one of the study's authors, said: "We have devoted a lot of time and attention to trying to sort out the formal written arrangements that occur between universities and industry, but we have missed a part of the issue that operates beneath the radar. A company can give a gift of almost any amount of money or any type of thing to a faculty member, and it goes unobserved." The study did not ask researchers if they complied with the donors' requests. But it comes at a time of increasing scrutiny of the financial links between university scientists and pharmaceutical or biotech companies. Just last month, the Food and Drug Administration issued new rules requiring doctors who test new drugs and devices to disclose whether they have received stock, consulting fees or other financial support from the manufacturers. Such ties are growing ever more common; in a 1996 analysis of 789 scientific journal articles, Krimsky found that for 34 percent of the articles, one or more authors had a financial interest -- most frequently a patent pending -- in the subject matter being studied. How much, if any, control a corporation should have over academic research is a touchy subject at many universities. In one controversy that spawned widespread news coverage last year, Betty Dong, a pharmacy professor at the University of California at San Francisco, signed an agreement giving a drug company control over publication of a study involving one of its thyroid medications. When the study found the drug worked no better than less costly generics, the company, which paid for Dong's work, suppressed the findings, then reversed itself amid public outcry. While most instances of corporate interference in academia are not so clear-cut, there are frequent clashes that never make the news. "The whole nature of industry and academic relations is changing," said Christopher Scott, director of research development for the Stanford University Medical Center. Scott's job is to negotiate contracts with companies that offer Stanford researchers grants for scientific research, while at the same time protecting the university's scientists from signing away too much academic freedom. It is not uncommon, Scott said, for a company to ask to review the contents of an academic article prior to publication; he typically insists that the review take no longer than 60 to 90 days, in keeping with a guideline set forth by the National Institutes of Health. But if a company wants patent rights to a discovery, the answer is a flat-out no. "That is one thing Stanford is dead set against," he said, although the university will grant a corporate sponsor exclusive rights to market commercial discoveries. While Stanford has a policy that gifts must come with no strings attached, donations to individual scientists come outside Scott's purview and, he said, are more difficult to monitor. "There has been, in essence, a gray market of research based on gifts for many, many years," he said, adding that universities should draft clear policies about gifts. That is a recommendation Blumenthal and his co-authors make in this week's study. But even when universities do have policies, conflicts arise. At the University of California at San Francisco, where the controversy over the thyroid drug occurred, a policy has been in place for the past 24 years requiring faculty members to file disclosure forms that reveal their financial relationships with industry. But the policy only covers cash, not other gifts, such as equipment, trips or biomaterials. And in an editorial accompanying the Journal of the American Medical Association study, Lisa Bero of the university's Institute for Health Policy Studies complained that some scholars who had "clearly defined and substantial financial conflicts of interest" had described their relationships to their corporate sponsors as trivial. Others, she wrote, err on the side of caution: "Some even report the receipt of free coffee cups." ______________________________________________________________ Other Places of Interest on The Web Journal of the American Medical Association. ______________________________________________________________ Energy Deregulation The power to choose. Click here Home | Sections | Contents | Search | Forums | Help Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 03:33:12 -0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Patrick OBrien Subject: Re: "The Ascent of Science" In-Reply-To: <199803231255.MAA27020@mesa5.mesa.colorado.edu> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII the industrial revolution had little influence on science? tsk! tsk! ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 12:22:11 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: Re: Call for Papers: Theoretical Psychology (ISTP) X-To: psa-public-sphere@sheffield.ac.uk In-Reply-To: <891507761.1125157.0@maelstrom.stjohns.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Call for Symposia, Papers, Roundtables, and Multimedia Presentations > > >INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THEORETICAL PSYCHOLOGY >SYDNEY CONFERENCE, APRIL 25-29 1999 > >Deadline for proposals: November 1, 1998 >Notification of acceptance by December 1, 1998 >Deadline for early registration: February 1, 1999 > >ABOUT THE CONFERENCE: Psychological theorizing is >incredibly diverse and is performed by many who work in >disciplines other than psychology. The Sydney ISTP >Conference will definitely exemplify this diversity. We >invite proposals representing these and other approaches: >feminist, poststructuralist, critical theory, artificial >intelligence, organization studies, cognitive science, >psychoanalysis, organization theory, aesthetics, cultural >studies, technology and subjectivity, ideology critique, >historical studies, political psychology, multiculturalism, >ethics and policy studies, evolutionary psychology, social >constructionism, etc. The conference is not a forum for the >presentation of empirical research findings or practical >applications but we do invite submissions that examine >general theoretical and metatheoretical issues that arise >in conjunction with various methods or practices, >including, for example, experimentation, qualitative >research, action research, discourse analysis, >ethnomethodology, phenomenology, psychotherapy, >organizational consultation, etc. > >The Program Committee is especially interested in >considering proposals related to the following special >themes: > >The Relation of Practice to Theory: Theory tends to inform >practice quite extensively, but one hears less about how >practice, in turn, shapes theory. How has this occurred >historically and how might we reconceptualize the practice- >theory relationship? How might such considerations affect >teaching and training in psychology? We are happy to >receive proposals which relate to all forms of practice, be >they clinical, psychoanalytic, organizational, educational >etc. > >Feminist Theory meets Psychological Theory: How might we >specify this relationship? In what ways can it be >productively developed? > >Globalization and Postcolonialism: How do the macrosocial >processes of our times impinge upon psychological >theorizing, upon our views of human subjectivity and >society? > >Interdisciplinarity: The use of psychological theory in >numerous other disciplines raises many questions about >interdisciplinarity. What have we learned from the >experience of interdisciplinarity? What are its >possibilities, its pitfalls? How has psychology been >appropriated and/or excluded by or from other fields and >disciplines, e.g., sociology, evolutionary biology, >neuroscience, organizational and cultural studies? > >Last Lectures of the 20th Century (or the First of the >21st): A chance to discuss the big picture in theoretical >psychology, to look back and look forward, chart projects, >motivate a new generation to work in theoretical >psychology. > >ABOUT THE ISTP: International Society for Theoretical >Psychology is composed of members from around the world who >meet every other year to share ideas and discuss ways to >enhance theorizing in psychology. The ISTP publishes >Theory and Psychology, one of the few journals in the world >that is dedicated solely to articles dealing specifically >with issues in psychological theory. Selected proceedings >from ISTP conferences are routinely published in book form. >Check out the ISTP Webpage at >http://www.york.ca/dept/psych/orgs/istp/istp.htm. > > >ABOUT THE CONFERENCE SITE AND COSTS: >The conference is to be held at a most unique and >beautiful venue--the Quarantine Station at North Head, >Manly, Australia. Only a half-hour ferry ride and a >five-minute taxi ride from downtown Sydney, >the Quarantine Station sits in a national park >boasting two private beaches and spectacular views of >Sydney Harbour, as well as nature trails and landing stage >for fishing or boating. A group of rustic buildings, >which formerly served as a quarantine >area for new immigrants, has been stocked with all the >necessary conference equipment. Conference catering is >reported to be excellent. There will be a social program, >including swimming, surfing lessons, yoga and tai chi on >the beach, volleyball and a talent show/karaoke! Full room >and board on site is expected to run between US$70 and $90 >per day. There are also options for lodging in the nearby >town of Manly, ranging from backpacker hostels to luxury >hotels. The registration fee for the four day conference >will be approximately US$140, hopefully less. Airfares to >Australia in late April 1999 will be at low-season rates. > >FOR MORE INFORMATION: Questions about program content, >proposals, etc., should be addressed to Tod Sloan at tod- >sloan@utulsa.edu. Questions about logistics of conference >attendance (travel, lodging, meals, etc.) should be >addressed to Valerie Walkerdine at >v.walkerdine@nepean.uws.edu.au. The Program Committee will >do all it can to help students and the unemployed make >affordable alternative arrangements (backpacking, low-cost >accommodations nearby, etc.) and to accommodate persons >with special needs. > >The Program Co-Chairs for the ISTP Sydney 1999 Conference >are Tod Sloan, University of Tulsa, and Valerie Walkerdine, >University of Western Sydney. > > >FORMAT OPTIONS FOR PRESENTATIONS > >1. SYMPOSIUM >Symposia are allotted 110 minutes, allowing time for >multiple presentations around a theme. Symposium panels >must reflect diversity of, for example, disciplines, >nationalities, paradigms, etc. Symposium organizers might >consider having participants respond to a common text, >transcript, video, etc., in order to exemplify implications >of different approaches. They may also choose to have a >designated discussant, but they should also leave ample >time for discussion by attendees. > > >2. PAPER >Papers of 20-25 minutes are invited (followed by 5-10 >minutes of discussion). Presented should consider >summarizing their basic argument during their presentation >and offering a longer written version to interested >persons. > > >3. ROUNDTABLE >A 90-minute session for open discussion, debate, >networking, etc. around themes or issues raised by the >organizer/chair of the roundtable (examples: theoretical >issues in qualitative research, William James, critical >psychoanalysis, developments in artificial intelligence, >cyborgs, emotion theory, Foucault). Roundtables are held >in small rooms holding up to 10 people. Feel free to >submit a roundtable proposal as well as a symposium or >paper proposal. > > >4. MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION, ARTISTIC PRODUCTION, ETC >Submit details to program chair for consideration. > > >To submit your proposal(s), please fill out the form below, >attach additional sheets as necessary, and send by email, >file attachment (MS Word), fax, or regular mail to: >Tod Sloan, Department of Psychology, University of Tulsa, >Tulsa, Oklahoma, 74104 USA. >Fax 918-631-2833. Email: tod-sloan@utulsa.edu > >----------------------------------------------------------- > >ISTP SYDNEY 1999 PROPOSAL > >Name >Institution >Mailing Address > > >Email >Fax >Phone number > > >Which presentation format would you prefer? Check all that >apply. > >___ SYMPOSIUM (on separate page, provide title and 100-200 >word overview plus title and 100-200 word summary for each >participant's presentation; also include names, >institutional affiliations, and email, fax, and addresses of all >participants) > >___ PAPER (on separate page, provide title and 100-200 word >summary) > >___ ROUNDTABLE (on separate page, provide title and 100 >words describing general issues to be raised for >discussion) > >___ MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION, ARTISTIC PRODUCTION, ETC. >(Attach description) > > >If you would also be willing to meet with students for an >informal discussion of your work, please check here:______ >What general topics would you discuss? > > > >In order to schedule meeting rooms according to levels of >interest in particular topics, what sorts of sessions are >you most interested in attending? > > > >Is there a particular person whose work in theoretical >psychology you would particularly like to learn more about >if s/he were able to attend? > >----- End of forwarded message from Bernardo Ferdman ----- __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk, 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837 Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 03:53:34 +1200 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Alfred Harris Subject: Re: sci-therapeutic-touch.html (fwd) MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit I found this article extraordinarily interesting. Let me be transparent about my interest. I am a structural biologist educated in the best that a liberal scientific education offered in New Zealand in the 60's and 70's. I now head a regenerative food programme in a Government Funded research organization. I become involved with an Holistic Healing group during a period of severe depression some 4 years ago. The group largely practices what may be described as " energy healing" . At an experiential level I know that when "healed" in this way I feel better. Now a person of my training can simply say that is an irrational and non-quantifiable response, which of course, at that level, is absolutely (in a manner of speaking) correct. Now my counter is that science is an essentially abstractive imaginative human activity. The abstraction is from what can loosely be called human experience, which, in my view is the primary datum of all human activity. With due respect to what appears to be an extraordinarily incisive question, there is, in fact, another question that needs to be asked. If I feel better after "energy work", and it is not due to energy fields, then why is it that I feel better? I have been critical for a long time of the theoretical basis of "energy work". However over this time I have been effectively healed of my depression. What is called energy healing has been an important component of my experience of healing. An historical perspective (is history also an imaginative human activity?) suggests that the notion that the method is an energetic one somewhat post-dates (by several thousand years!) the, possibly false, analysis of how it works. The energetic concept seems to have developed as an analytical validation in the face of an increasingly reductive western view of healing which developed early this century. In order to validate a method of healing that was and is effective at an experential level, it borrowed, in an analogical way, from the best of modern science, which happened to be in the energy area (remember machines, joules etc etc.) Those of you who are interested in the history of science may care to recall that, at about the same time, the scientific advisers to the US government recommended that the calorific value of food was all the knowledge that was necessary to set dietary intake guidelines!!! We can all make mistakes. The issue, of course, is that there are people whose agenda is the discrediting of therapeutic touch. While they may well be right about the theoretical basis of the method it begs the larger question of its efficacy as a healing method. An analogy can be drawn with acupunture which, from my limited understanding, has a traditional explanation very different from that of western science, yet the bottom line is that, in many cases, the person experiences healing. The book Spontaneous Healing is an excellent summary of the limitations of current, analytically driven, notions of healing and their associated therapies. Healing is, after all, a human activity which occurs in a specific cultural context. Analysis is about asking reductive questions about that experience. Let the questioning continue and may our experience be enriched, dare I say healed? I look forward to further debate on this issue. Alfred Harris ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 2 Apr 1998 12:03:38 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Harvey Shepard Subject: Re: sci-therapeutic-touch.html (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I think there is much in the world that we do not know how to describe, and that especially is true in regard to relationships between individuals. It is not easy to say how the healing occurs in a therapeutic relationship. Part of the goal of the arts is to say the unsayable. It is unfortunate, but very natural, that people (even Freud) try to use the "prestige" of physical concepts (like energy) to support their beliefs and intuition, even their experience. Harvey Shepard ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 06:49:57 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: VAN PRAAGH BUSTED MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: MORE ON VAN PRAAGH BUSTED SKEPTIC MAG HOTLINE PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PASS THIS ALONG TO WHOMEVER YOU LIKE To subscribe: just send an e-mail to: join-skeptics@lyris.net (to unsubscribe, send an e-mail to: leave-skeptics@lyris.net) Those of you who saw 20/20 Friday night saw James Van Praagh busted for cheating and caught in a bald-faced lie. Here is my report, lifted from two sections from my next essay in Skeptic magazine, entitled "TALKING TWADDLE WITH THE DEAD." There is additional information I got from a producer at NBC's THE OTHER SIDE, of how Van Praagh cheated on that show as well. It follows some biographical material on Van Praagh. Michael Shermer How to Talk to the Dead Watching James Van Praagh work a crowd or do a one-on-one reading is an educational experience in human psychology. Make no mistake about it, this is one clever man. We skeptics may see him as morally reprehensible at best, but we should not underestimate his talents at understanding what touches off human emotions. He employs three basic techniques to "talk" to the dead: 1. Cold Reading. Most of what Van Praagh does is what is known in the mentalism trade as cold reading, where you literally "read" someone "cold,"--knowing nothing about them. He asks lots of questions and makes numerous statements, some general and some specific, and sees what sticks. Most of the time he is wrong. His subjects visibly nod their heads "no." But, as noted above, he only needs an occasional hit to convince his clientele he is genuine. Sometimes he gets lucky, and as mentalists note, you always take credit for lucky hits. 2. Warm Reading. This is utilizing known principles of psychology that apply to nearly everyone. For example, most grieving women will wear a piece of jewelry that has a connection to their loved one. Katie Curic on The Today Show, for example, after her husband died wore his ring on a necklace when she returned to the show. Van Praagh knows this about mouning people and will say something like "do you have a ring or a piece of jewelry on you, please?" His subject cannot believe her ears and nods enthusiastically in the affirmative. He says "thank you," and moves on like he just divined this from heaven. Most people also keep a photograph of their loved one either on them or near their bed, and Van Praagh will take credit for this specific hit that actually applies to most people. He is clever at determining the cause of death by focusing either on the chest or head areas, and then exploring whether it was a slow or sudden end. Like a computer flow chart, he moves through the possibilities, then fills in the blanks. "I'm feeling a pain in the chest." If he gets a positive nod, he continues. "Did he have cancer, please? Because I'm seeing a slow death here." If he gets the nod, he takes the hit. If the subject hesitates at all, he will quickly shift to heart attack. If it is the head, he goes for stroke or head injury from an automobile accident or fall. Statistically speaking there are only half a dozen ways 90% of us die, so with just a little probing, and the verbal and nonverbal cues of his subject, he can appear to get far more hits here than he is really getting. 3. Hot Reading. Mentalist Max Maven clarified for me that some mentalists and psychics also do "hot" readings, where they obtain information on a subject ahead of time. I do not know if Van Praagh uses private detectives to get information on people, but I have discovered from numerous television producers who were less than impressed by the medium, that Van Praagh consciously and deliberately pumps them for information about his subjects ahead of time, then uses that information to deceive the viewing public that he got it from the spirit world. Leah Haines, for example, a producer and researcher for NBC's The Other Side, explained to me how Van Praagh used her during his numerous appearances on the show in 1994 (in an interview on April 3, 1998): I can't say I think James Van Praagh is a total fraud, because he came up with things I hadn't told him, but there were moments on the show when he appeared to coming up with fresh information that he got from myself and other researchers. For example, I recall him asking about the profession of the deceased loved one of one of our guests, and I told him he was a fireman. Then, when the show began, he said something to the effect, "I see a uniform. Was he a policeman or fireman please?" Everyone was stunned at his psychic powers, but he got that directly from me. Haines also noted that any notion of Van Praagh not doing it for the money were quickly erased as his fame grew. "We had him on the show a bunch of times that first year. At the beginning he would drive himself to the studio and we just paid him a token fee like all the other guests. But in time he wanted us to send over a limo and he kept cranking up his appearance fee. It really irked us because we knew that we were the ones who made him." Caught Cheating Even for seasoned observers it is remarkable how Van Praagh appears to get hits, even when he doesn't. When we were filming the 20/20 piece, I was told that he had not done all that well the night before, but that he got a couple of startling hits--including the name of a woman's family dog. But when we reviewed the videotape, here is what actually happened. Van Praagh was bombing in his reading of a gentleman named Peter, who was poker-faced and obviously skeptical (without feedback Van Praagh's hit rate drops by half). After dozens of misses, Van Praagh queried, "Who is Charlie?" Peter sat there dumbfounded, unable to connect to anyone named Charlie, when suddenly the woman sitting next to Peter (and a complete stranger), blurted out "Charlie was our family dog." Van Praagh seized the moment and proclaimed that he could see Charlie and Dad taking walks in heaven together. The highlight of the 20/20 piece, however, was the blatant exposure of Van Praagh cheating, and then caught in a bald-faced lie. On a break, with the video camera rolling, he turned to a woman named Mary Jo and asked: "Did your mother pass on?" Mary Jo nodded in the negative and said "Grandmother." A full 54 minutes later Van Praagh turned to her and said: "I want to tell you, there is a lady sitting behind you. She feels like a grandmother to me. He was caught cheating red-handed but when confronted by the 20/20 correspondent Bill Ritter, he lied, insisting that he got the grandmother without cheating. When they showed him the video clip, he proclaimed: "I don't cheat. I don't have to prove... I don't cheat. I don't cheat. I mean, come on." As if repeating it enough times would make it go away. Yet, even after we busted Van Praagh for both cheating and lying, Barbara Walters concluded in the wrap-up discussion: I was skeptical. I still am But I met James Van Praagh. He didn't expect to meet me. He knew that my father's name was Lew--Lewis he said and he knew that my father had a glass eye. People don't know that. Ritter, doing his homework on this piece to the bitter end, replied: You told me the story yesterday and I told you I would look and see what I could find out. Within a few minutes I found out that your father' name wasn't Lew and that he was very well known in show business. And this morning I was looking in a book and found a passage that says he was blind in one eye--accidental--and he had a glass eye. If I found that out, then he could have. While Walters flustered in frustration, seemingly groping for some vestige of hope, Hugh Downs declared without qualification: "I don't believe him." Where have we heard all this before? A hundred years ago, when mediums, seances, and spiritualism were all the rage in England and America, Thomas Henry Huxley concluded, as only he could in his biting wit, that as nonsensical as it was, spiritual manifestations might at least reduce suicides: "Better live a crossing-sweeper than die and be made to talk twaddle by a 'medium' hired at a guinea a seance." Strange that this phenomenon would repeat a century later. Perhaps Marx was right when he wrote in the Eighteenth Brumaire that "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." In this case, death is the tragedy, Van Praagh is the farce. --- ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 4 Apr 1998 11:33:29 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Richard Sclove Subject: Loka Institute seeks Exec. Director (Job Announcement) X-To: Listservs to get Loka Alerts , AFRITECH@LISTS.WAYNE.EDU, civic-values@civic.net, nonprofit@rain.org, PCST-L@cornell.edu, risks@csl.sri.com, scishops-l@listserv.ncsu.edu, sts@kant.ch.umkc.edu, StudentLawTech@listserv.law.cornell.edu, tech+society@igc.apc.org, tech-society@ieee.org MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII 4 April 1998 Friends and Colleagues: Please accept my apologies if you receive more than one copy of this announcement owing to posting to multiple lists. --Dick Sclove The Loka Institute ***************************************************************** Job Announcement Application deadline: 15 May 1998 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR The Loka Institute seeks a stellar executive director with experience and innovative capabilities mainly in fundraising and administrative management, but also in strategic planning, organizational development, writing, and project development. Loka is a small, cutting-edge nonprofit organization dedicated to making science and technology more responsive to democratically decided social and environmental concerns (see us on the Web at ). Collaborative skills are essential; state or national organizing experience is preferred. Our methods include research and public education, animating and providing technical assistance to social change efforts, and testing and creating new institutions. Idyllically situated on a college campus in the beautiful, culturally vibrant Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, our work is national and international in scope. Salary negotiable starting at $30,000. Cover letter and C.V. to The Loka Institute, P.O. Box 355, Amherst, MA 01004, USA. Application deadline 15 May 1998. Equal Opportunity Employer. ### ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 03:00:32 -0500 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: MR JON J BENNETT Subject: JUMP START Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII I'd like to try to jump start the discussion of last month. The fact that we've been debating the question of reality is in itself an indication that we've entered into a new paradigm, with a big P. All paradigms ask questions of reality, but when the foundations are questioned, we're into something new-radically new. I'd like to propose something of a compromise on the constructionist questions. Does the essence of reality depend upon interpretation? That is, what is the relationship of mind to reality? Or put another way, to what extent do we see what we are? Can we know without limiting, restricting reality? Can we focus on part of reality without losing focus of other parts, (or other wholes)? Can we "know" without "constructing", reality? I believe the answer to most of these question is yes and no. Reality is so complex that we can only see certain aspects of it at one time. Therefore each paradigm can show realities not seen by a previous one.The problem is that each paradigm can show "unrealities", or false realities as well-each has its light and shadow. But this view itself is a new view. Someone commented last month that Newton's laws still sufficed in most cases, as if this was evidence that there had been no paradigm shift. But look at the underlying archetypes, and look at them in a broader perspective. For Newton, acceleration of an object due to gravity was uniform; an object dropped from a certain height would accelerate at a uniform velocity, until reaching free fall. But Einstein showed us that this acceleration can depend upon gravitation fields. Therefore any falling object would not accelerate at a uniform rate, because the gravitational forces would change as it got closer and closer to the earth. Admittedly these changes are small and can be ignored for many purposes. The point is that we see here a fundamental change in the idea of uniformity. We can further see how this archetype has been embedded in reality, or projected into reality, by the mechanistic paradigm. Not only in astronomy, but in all of science, and in other disciplines and compartments of culture. Consider how Hubble just naturally assumed that the mass of the universe was distributed uniformly. A "fact" undisputed until the Cobie background explorer showed otherwise. Furthermore, we can see that uniformity fits a logical scheme, is logically related to many other ideas, that also have been imputed to reality,(in all areas of thought, in all manifestations of culture) and which are also being overturned. In fact this new paradigm could be traced back to the mid 19th cent. with the questioning of the uniformity of space-by the re-examination of Euclid's parallel postulate which assumed that space was uniform. The results of these efforts left us with a universe without the uniform geometrical structure which previously was assumed. And this of course had profound repercussions in philosophy, and all other disciplines. I'm not sure that this makes me a social constructionist. But those who deny the existence of paradigms, archetypes, and how we use them to interpret and discover reality, have a view that is not only too narrow, but too short, and too shallow. Jon Bennett ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 15:55:17 +0200 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Arie Dirkzwager Subject: Re: JUMP START Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 03:00 AM 4/14/98 -0500, Jon Bennett wrote: >Does the essence of >reality depend upon interpretation? That is, what >is the relationship of mind to reality? Mind is part of reality, it's that part in which reality is known, becomes conscious, and in which the essence, the meaning of reality is discovered ("unfolded") and brought into the open.As "mind" is a function of man embedded in reality whatever it "discovers" and "produces" is subjective, that is to say it might be true ("right") and it might be false ("wrong"). When some produced knowledge or assigned (=discovered) meaning is true it fits the whole of reality, if false it doesn't. Of course the judgement (opinion) on something being treu or false is subjective too, but as it is formed by the interaction of the mind with reality (o.a. with other minds) and as such based upon empirical testing of acquired knowledge and meaning it makes sense to form such judgements and discuss them in the process of clearing the mind from error. The essence of reality is its meaning or purpose to which it was created and is preserved. Assuming it was not created makes it quite difficult to define (find) *any* essence or meaning of reality. When it was created and is preserved by God (be it only that reality's ability to preserve itself is preserved), as it is, the purpose of course is serving this God and glorifying Him. Here comes man and his mind in the picture as the main part of reality to do so, not in the least by making reality known and discovering its meaning in all aspects studied by scientists and other scholars. >Or put another way, >to what extent do we see what we are? To the extent that we are able to recognise our place and meaningful function (task) in this reality (see above). Of course this implies discovering the way we function as biological organisms, as social individuals, as rational beings knowing how to use logic, etc. etc.. But when we think we are just that is a mistake that makes it impossible to "see what we are". >Can we know without >limiting, restricting reality? Can we focus on part of >reality without losing focus of other parts, (or other >wholes)? Can we "know" without "constructing", reality? We are constructing *knowledge*, the *knowledge*-part of reality, no other parts, not "the" reality. But may be when you don't believe God created it (not necessary inthose seven days the way described in Genesis!) you are forced to believe it is created ("constructed") by man? Like in systems theory we may take any part of reality as a whole and distinguish parts and their relations within it and focus on them in the context of the abstracted whole. It is a set of recursive procedures that starts with the whole of reality as a whole (and the knowledge and recognition that this whole is a created one which has meaning, see above) > I believe the answer to most of these question is >yes and no. Reality is so complex that we can only see >certain aspects of it at one time. "yes and no" means we have to go on with our critical thinking to find the right questions and their proper answers building our knowledge and disclosing its meaning. To a naieve, non-scientific, person who knows (about) God reality isn't complex at all and he has he necessary faith to do what has to be done - no need to do science to find sufficient faith that what one is doing makes sense - of course science helps to do things right, especially regarding technological developments, but when those developments are not steered and motivated by such fundamental "naieve" insight into the meaning of reality - which includes also our technological development - there is a large probability that we do things *wrong* how perfect our (restricted) scientific knowledge might be. Arie Prof.Dr.A.Dirkzwager, Educational Instrumentation Technology, Computers in Education. Huizerweg 62, 1402 AE Bussum, The Netherlands. voice: x31-35-6933258 FAX: x31-35-6930762 E-mail: aried@xs4all.nl {========================================================================} When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them." T. S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension (1977). =========================================================================== Accept that some days you are the statue, and some days you are the bird. ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 23:26:46 +0930 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Bill Palmer Subject: HENRY EDWARD ARMSTRONG (1848 - 1937) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" This e-mail is directed to those involved in science education on different listservers in different countries in the hopes that it will enable science educators to have wider perspectives on the history of science education. I apologise for any cross-posting. ******************************************************************* HENRY EDWARD ARMSTRONG (1848 - 1937) Henry Edward Armstrong was born in London on 6 May 1848 and died (also in London) on 13 July 1937. In about 4 weeks time we celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. Why should we remember his life? Briefly his achievements chemical and educational are listed below i. The chemistry of the naphthalenes ii. The chemistry of camphor iii. The mechanism of chemical change. iv. He doubted the existence of ions v. He championed the heuristic method vi. He was a pioneer of technical education vii. He published extensively on a variety of topics, was often intemperate in his views, but was a tireless advocate for science education. A seven point summary, does less than justice, but I have a dual aim in this e-mail. a. To promote a knowledge of the life and work of Henry Edward Armstrong. b. To attempt to use several listservers (based in different countries) as a way of finding out about national views of the development of science education. I include at the end of this e-mail a short questionnaire (more a straw-poll than research). The simple thesis is that those educated in the US, interested in science education and its history, will only vaguely have heard of Armstrong and on a 3 point scale of his influence in science education (not influential: influential: very influential) will give him a low rating, whereas those with educated in the UK will tend to rate him highly. In Australia, both a British and an American tradition exist, so teaching about science education historically can be very different in different institutions. A variety of references follow and after that a short questionnaire. The references are to help anyone else interested in Armstrong's life. I would also appreciate any additional references. Please send the questionnaire to me directly by e-mail. However if you have any general comment that could go to the list. If anything interesting results from the survey I will try to keep you informed. References WWW At URL http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~eww6n/bios/ArmstrongHenry.html http://www.eb.com/cgibin/g?keywords=Armstrong%2c%20Henry%20Edward Biographical works Brock, W. H (Ed)., H. E. Armstrong and the Teaching of Science 1880-1930, Cambridge at the University Press. Brown, C. E.1954 Henry Edward Armstrong: Educational work. London: Private. Eyre, J. V. 1958 Henry Edward Armstrong, 1848 -1937, Butterworths Scientific Publications, London, UK. Van Praagh, G. 1973 H.E. Armstrong and Science Education, John Murray, London, UK. Also some works on the science education curriculum Argles, M 1964 South Kensington to Robins, Longmans, London, UK. Jenkins, E. W. 1979 From Armstrong to Nuffield: Studies in Twentieth-Century Science Education in England and Wales. London: John Murray. Roderick, G. & Stephens, M. Scientific and Technical education in 19th century England, Barnes & Noble, UK. Some other relevant books and articles Brock, W. H., 1975, From Liebig to Nuffield. A bibliography of the history of science education, 1839-1974, Studies in Science Education, Vol. 2, p.67-99 Dolby, R. G. A. 1976 Debates over the Theory of Solution: A Study in Dissent in Physical Chemistry in the English-Speaking World in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries , Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences (7), (Edited Russell, McCormmack) Princeton University Press, Princeton, USA, pp.297-404. Hansen, M. P., 1924, General Science in Secondary Schools, Australian Association of Advanced Sci Rpt, Vol.17, p.628-638 Hartley, H. 1961 Henry Edward Armstrong 1848-1937, in Great Chemists (Edited Eduard Farber). New York & London: Interscience Publishers, pp. 875-906. Jenkins, E. W., 1976, H. E. Armstrong, Heurism and the Common Sense of Science, The Durham Research Review, No. 37, p.21-26 Manuel, D. E., 1973, Review Article: H. E. Armstrong: A Pioneer of Reform in Science Teaching, Durham Research Review, Vol.7, No.33, p.949-953 Nightingale, E. 1962 The Teaching of Science in Britain- A Historical Retrospect, School Science Review, Vol 43, No 150, pp. 320-329 Rodd, E. H. 1947 Henry Edward Armstrong, in British chemists (edited Alexander Findlay & William Hobson Mills). London: The Chemical Society, pp. 58-95 Selleck, R. J. W., 1968, The New Education: The English Background 1870-1914, Sir Isaac Pitman, Melbourne. ********************************************************************* QUESTIONNAIRE (Science as Culture-14/4/98) 1 In which country were you educated? 2 In which country do you now work? 3. In your own science education (at university) did you learn about Henry Edward Armstrong? Yes/ No Comment 4. If you now teach about science education do you mention Henry Edward Armstrong and the heuristic method in your course? Yes/ No Comment: 5. How influential do you consider that Henry Edward Armstrong was in influencing the development of science education. Not influential: influential: very influential Comment: 6. Is a knowledge of the historical development of science education important for new science teachers. Yes/ No Comment: 7. Do you have any other thoughts or comments about Henry Edward Armstrong and the development of science education? Comment: 8. Do you know of any other URLs or references about Henry Edward Armstrong? Comment: Name: W. P. Palmer, (Bill Palmer) University Address :- Faculty of Education, Northern Territory University, DARWIN, NT, 0909, Australia. Work Tel :- 08 89 466 148 Fax Number (Education) :- 08 89 466 151 E-Mail number wpalmer@darwin.ntu.edu.au URL at http://www.ntu.edu.au/education/blhmpg.htm ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 18:57:13 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: JUMP START MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Arie Dirkzwager wrote: > > At 03:00 AM 4/14/98 -0500, Jon Bennett wrote: > >Does the essence of > >reality depend upon interpretation? That is, what > >is the relationship of mind to reality? [snip] I like what I take to be the Kantian notion that we can have knowledge of reality --> but only as it answers the questions we put to it. If we ask about the time-series function of falling bodies, the bodies will fall (or not, as their nature may be...) at the rate they fall, and we can know that. But we cannot know what things are in themselves, which would, presumably mean something like their telling us something dissociated from our orientation to them(*&^%$#). > The essence of reality is its meaning or purpose to which it was > created and is preserved. Assuming it was not created makes it quite > difficult to define (find) *any* essence or meaning of reality. When it was > created and is preserved by God (be it only that reality's ability to > preserve itself is preserved), as it is, the purpose of course is serving > this God and glorifying Him. [snip] Well, if God has some notion of what the purpose of the world is, why do *we* need to buy into it? Can't we, like a certain group of inmates in Auschwitz, hold a trial of God (Y-w-h, etc./et al.) and find the accused *guilty* of crimes against humanity? Might does not make right, even in some super-lunary (or super-sensible) realm, or where the criminal is Omnipotent, and therefore, presumably, must be tried in absentia. [snip] > > I believe the answer to most of these question is > >yes and no. Reality is so complex that we can only see > >certain aspects of it at one time. > > "yes and no" means we have to go on with our critical thinking to > find the right questions and their proper answers building our knowledge and > disclosing its meaning. [snip] The foregoing question and answer already, in a way, encompass *all* this complexity -- perhaps in a way somewhat like the way we can find the value of a mathematical integral directly rather than only continuing to approach it by adding together more and more endless little parts? > {========================================================================} > When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the > apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person > could have written them." T. S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension (1977). > ============================================================================ [snip] Hermeneutics in action! I'm currently reading a book about Husserl's work which I would suggest, to those who may not know it, looks so far (after 80 pages) like it will be useful as well as "satisfying" (pleasing, etc. -- insofar as insight into "reality", and well-crafted discourse are joys for us): _The Idea of Phenomenology: Husserlian Exemplarism_, Andre de Murault (Northwestern Univ. Press, 1974 / orig. French edition: 1958) \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 23:55:47 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Hank Bromley Subject: new Langdon Winner column MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; BOUNDARY=------------6A72D505C2D448273BE7F3D1 This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text, while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools. Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info. --------------6A72D505C2D448273BE7F3D1 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=us-ascii Content-ID: Langdon asked me to pass along this announcement of a column he'll be writing for the online publication "NETFUTURE: Technology and Human Responsibility." -- Hank Bromley ---------- Forwarded message ---------- NETFUTURE Technology and Human Responsibility -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Issue #69 Copyright 1998 Bridge Communications April 14, 1998 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Editor: Stephen L. Talbott (stevet@oreilly.com) On the Web: http://www.oreilly.com/people/staff/stevet/netfuture/ You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes. [...] *** Editor's Note (24 lines) I'm extremely pleased to announce that we will be graced in the future by contributions from Langdon Winner. Currently Professor of Political Science in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Winner has been praised as "the leading academic on the politics of technology" (*Wall Street Journal*). Two of his books are now recognized classics: *Autonomous Technology*, a study of the technology-out-of-control theme in modern social thought, and *The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology*. He has over a hundred scholarly articles to his name. A sometime rock critic (nobody, after all, is perfect), Winner was contributing editor at *Rolling Stone* in the late 1960s and early 1970s and has contributed articles on rock and roll to *The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians* and *The Encylopaedia Britannica*. He is currently working on a book about the politics of design in the contexts of engineering, architecture and political society. You will find an introductory letter from Winner below. Please consider forwarding this issue, or Winner's letter (along with the concluding subscription information) to those who might have an interest in his work. SLT [...] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- *** Langdon Winner Introduces His New Column (62 lines) Dear Friends, Beginning this May my commentaries will appear in NETFUTURE in a regular series entitled "Tech Knowledge Revue". This is a wholly new enterprise for me, not a re-creation of anything I've done anywhere else. My hope is to write brief reports, essays, interviews, and musings that cover technology, social issues and politics on a very broad scale. While the frequency of the pieces will vary, I hope to contribute one every two months or so. My reasons for setting up shop here (and not in a pulp and paper venue) have to do with the kinds of freedom, immediacy, flexibility, and good will that Steve Talbott's newsletter makes available. In its relatively brief existence, NETFUTURE has attracted a broadly based, thoughtful readership, a group of people I greatly respect. The publication offers a refreshing range of ideas and viewpoints, ones not commonly found on-line or elsewhere. I want to thank Steve for his kind invitation to join him in stirring the pot! According to the dictionary, a "revue" is a show "consisting of skits, songs, and dances, often satirizing current events, trends and personalities". That seems about right. If nothing else, "Tech Knowledge Revue" will provide occasional relief from the sterile, self-serving puffery that passes for "technology journalism" nowadays. At least that's my hope. Upcoming commentaries will likely include: * Report from the "Digital Diploma Mills" conference at Harvey Mudd College * The political promise of Net radio * Techno-boosters, Techno-realists and Neo-Luddites * The global vision of Manuel Castells For those who want to read something in the meantime, several recent pieces can be found on my Web page including: "Cyberlibertarian Myths and Prospects for Community" "The Automatic Professor Machine" (an interview with entrepreneur L.C. Winner, C.E.O. of Educational Smart Hardware Alma Mater, Inc., and inventor of the APM, "most important breakthrough in educational technology since the syllogism") The URL for these is: http://www.rpi.edu/~winner. It turns out that Steve Talbott and I are neighbors in the Hudson River Valley, home to a long tradition of technology critics from Melville to Mumford and several contemporary writers and activists. More frequently now than before, we'll be getting together at the local bagel cafe to scope out the ideas, issues, movements, latest atrocities, and hopeful developments we find noteworthy. I hope you'll enjoy your seat at the table. Yours truly, Langdon Winner [...] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- *** About this newsletter (36 lines) NETFUTURE is a newsletter and forwarding service dealing with technology and human responsibility. It is hosted by the UDT Core Programme of the International Federation of Library Associations. Postings occur roughly once every week or two. The editor is Steve Talbott, author of "The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst". You may redistribute this newsletter for noncommercial purposes. You may also redistribute individual articles in their entirety, provided the NETFUTURE url and this paragraph are attached. Current and past issues of NETFUTURE are available on the Web: http://www.oreilly.com/~stevet/netfuture/ http://www.ifla.org/udt/netfuture/ (mirror site) http://ifla.inist.fr/VI/5/nf/ (mirror site) To subscribe to NETFUTURE, send an email message like this: To: listserv@infoserv.nlc-bnc.ca subscribe netfuture yourfirstname yourlastname No Subject: line is needed. To unsubscribe, the second line shown above should read instead: signoff netfuture Send comments or material for publication to: Steve Talbott If you have problems subscribing or unsubscribing, send mail to: netfuture-request@infoserv.nlc-bnc.ca --------------6A72D505C2D448273BE7F3D1-- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 17:59:25 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: "The Last Book" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" List members may be interested to see Christopher Lehmann-Haupt's piece in this morning's New York Times on MIT's "Last Book" project. The Media Laboratory at MIT is working to create a portable computer that will closely resemble a book, complete with leather binding. It will contain the text of thousands of books. The online version of Lehmann-Haupt's article is at: http://www.nytimes.com/library/arts/040898book.html -- Roy Johnson | roy@mantex.demon.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------------- Thanks for using EBOOK-List, Discussion on Electronic Books Post Message: ebook-list@aros.net Get Commands: majordomo@aros.net "help" Administrator: noring@netcom.com Unsubscribe: majordomo@aros.net "unsubscribe ebook-list" __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk, 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837 Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 09:33:10 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@Scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Latour-Jakob Disease MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT The following letter by Harry J. Lipkin (Weizmann Inst., Israel) has just been published in APS NEWS, a publication of the American Physical Society, April 1998 issue, p. 4 THE REAL ANSWER TO POST-MODERN MULTICULTURALISM Social Biologists working at the National Institute of Sociobiological Health Therapy (NISHT) have discovered a link between postmodernism and the Latour-Jakob syndrome, also known as madkow disease. The research began by noting the resemblance between the spongy texture of postmodern thought and the spongy texture of brains of animals infected with madkow disease. This conjecture was confirmed by an experiment in which parrots that had been taught to speak normally were fed food infected with the carriers of the Latour-Jakob syndrome. In a very short time they had forgotten normal speech completely and were capable only of dictating articles suitable for publication in "Social Text." A new method of noninvasive testing using extra-sensory perception has revealed that infection with the postmodern-thought virus produces holes in the language instincts of infected educators and makes them insist that Holistic Language or Hole Language is the only way to teach reading. The madkow virus is now also believed to be the source of a number of Sokalled Wars. The war between the Lunatic Left and the Righteous Right is also attributed to infection of the Lunatic Left by madkow virus and of the Righteous Right by a related strain. Although there is so far no known cure for postmodernism, evidence is already accumulating that the natural immunity to the disease has been recovered by European humanists, where the disease started. NISHT is of course not to be confused with the National Institute and Center for Holistic Thought (NICHT). In the German literature it is emphasized that "NISHT ist nicht NICHT und NICHT ist nicht NISHT". In Yiddish this becomes "NISHT iz nisht NICHT und NICHT iz nisht NISHT". --------------- Replies to the above may be sent to Editor, APS News One Physics Ellipse College Park, MD 20749-3844 USA e-mail: letters@aps.org ------------------------------------- **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 09:33:10 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@Scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Freud at Yale MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Unconscious Deeps and Empirical Shallows Panel presentation at the symposium "Whose Freud? The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture," Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, April 3, 1998 1 Frederick Crews [Note: This paper has been revised to reflect the experience of the symposium itself. No words have been changed, but added passages, all of which can be found in the endnotes, are indicated by brackets.] To the question posed in our conference title, "Whose Freud?", I can offer a simple reply: he's all yours. Take my Freud-please! But do you really want him-the fanatical, self-inflated, ruthless, myopic, yet intricately devious Freud who has been unearthed by the independent scholarship of the past generation-or would you prefer the Freud of self-created legend, whose name can still conjure the illusion that "psychoanalytic truth" is authenticated by the sheer genius of its discoverer? Let me put this issue concretely by reminding you of the evocative passage in Freud's History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement in which he describes the hostility of his Viennese colleagues when he first lectured them on May 2, 1896, about "the part played by sexuality in the aetiology of the neuroses." Who among us hasn't been moved by the story of Freud's sudden realization on that day that he was "one of those who had 'disturbed the sleep of the world'"? It dawned on him, he recalls, that he would never be able to expect "objectivity and tolerance" from straw authorities who lacked his own "moral courage"; thenceforth he would have to pursue the hard path of scientific discovery in "splendid isolation." 2 That persecuted but dauntless figure is the Promethan hero commended to us not only by Freud himself but also by the house mythographer of psychoanalysis, Ernest Jones, and by subsequent partisans to this day. And it is just the Freud whose borrowed glory can improve the likelihood that one's own broadly psychoanalytic speculations will be deemed valiant and canny rather than, say, politically and academically conformist. If, however, we approach Freud not as our great forebear and patron but as a historical agent like any other, we cannot avoid noticing that the thesis he proposed to that doubting audience in 1896 was the very "seduction theory" that he would privately repudiate sixteen months later. Privately but not publicly, for in that case he would have had to own up not only to his mistake about the causation of hysteria but also to the nonexistence of his boasted cures and, still more damagingly, to the unreliability of both the investigative method and the psychodynamic premises that he would continue to employ for the remainder of his career. Mental inertia and a reluctance to admit error may help to explain why academic humanists give no heed to such deflationary facts. 3 But by shielding Freud's "insight" from normal skepticism, they also grant themselves the luxury of playing the knowledge game with the net down. The most fundamental rule of that game is that a given theory or hypothesis cannot be validated by invoking "evidence" manufactured by that same supposition. 4 The question-begging traits of psychoanalysis-the treatment of tendentious interpretations as raw data; the reflex negation of appearances in favor of reduction to the selfish, the sexual, and the infantile; the ample menus of symbolic meanings and "defense mechanisms" upon which the interpreter can draw to adorn prearranged conclusions; the ever handy wild cards of "the unconscious" and "overdetermination"-all of these constitute a scandal for anyone who subscribes to community standards of rational and empirical inquiry. Yet the very liberties that mark Freudianism as a pseudoscience render it irresistibly charming to humanists in search of instant "depth." (I ought to know; I used to be one of them!) And if, emulating Freud's tactic of pathologizing his critics, Freudian humanists can brand dissenters as suffering from resistance, repression, and denial-in short, from the obsessive-compulsive disorder of "Freud bashing"-then their hermeneutic freedom would appear to be absolute. Of course, academic Freudians would prefer not to think of themselves as having resigned from the wider intellectual enterprise. More typically, they invoke psychoanalytic notions to address cultural and historical problems and then infer from the very ingenuity of their handiwork, just as Freud did, that the doctrine has thereby proved its fruitfulness. 5 Or, if they have an activist bent, they recast Freudianism to purge it of its patriarchal and conservative implications and then "discover" psychoanalytically that society needs to be realigned in accordance with their ideology. 6 A bright high school senior could easily detect the fallaciousness of such maneuvers. Unfortunately, however, a bright graduate student in literature, imbued with what now passes for theoretical sophistication, would find nothing to complain about. Such is the intellectually corrupting effect of a self-validating and parochial system of thought. But it is not the antiquated doctrine per se that deserves reproach; the fault lies with professors who not only refrain from teaching standards of empirical adequacy but actively or implicitly denigrate them. As the first scheduled panelist in this conference and, I gather, the only one who shares the wholly negative view of psychoanalytic theory that is now all but consensual in American psychology departments, I am poorly situated to rebut the more sanguine judgments that will be voiced by others. But at least I can ask uncommitted members of this audience to keep some questions in mind. I will close by briefly commenting on three lines of argument that cannot fail to be broached before our adjournment tomorrow. 7 1. You will be told that evidence-based objections to Freudianism are beside the point, since psychoanalysis isn't a body of propositions but merely a subtle dialogue that weaves a fictive story, thus honoring the sheer ambiguity of experience while enhancing self-awareness of an ineffable but precious kind. This would have come as a surprise to the author of the Oedipus and castration complexes, the ego, id, and superego, penis envy, the vaginal orgasm, the death instinct, the primal scene and the primal crime, and on and on. Psychoanalysis does traffic in subtly guided and indoctrinating dialogue, but its theory has been, and remains, largely a causal account of mental functioning and development. As such, it cannot dodge the criteria of assessment that apply to every such theory. And, of course, it doesn't begin to satisfy those criteria; hence the retreat of latter-day Freudians into the absurd pretense of nonpropositionality. 2. Subsequent panelists will assure you that while Freud made some mistakes, modern psychoanalysis has long since corrected them. When you hear this, please raise your hand and ask which of the ever-proliferating schools of analysis the speaker has in mind and why those schools cannot agree on a single point of doctrine or interpretation. The answer is that the epistemic circularity of Freud's tradition, guaranteeing abundant "confirmation" of every proposed idea, has not been remedied in any degree. Analysts of every stripe still adhere to Freud's illusion that reliable knowledge of a patient's repressed complexes can be gleaned from studying free associations and the transference-even though such study is well known to produce only those revelations favored by the therapist's sect or local institute. 8 3. You will doubtless hear that objections to psychoanalytic theory stem from a shallow and outmoded positivism that insists on impossible standards of proof. Wrong again. No philosophy of science, positivist or antipositivist, is entailed in the elementary demand that a theory refrain from justifying itself by appeal to its own contested postulates. That is just everyday rational sense, intuitively grasped by fair-minded researchers in every field though not by the pundits of postmodernism. It is precisely because such rationality continues to be exercised with vigor that Freud's ideas, as Edward Shorter observes in his recent History of Psychiatry, "are now vanishing like the last snows of winter." 9 How ironic it is that well-traveled academics, like bunkered troops on a remote island who haven't heard that the war is over, should be the last to get the news! And now that the point is finally sinking in, how sad it is-and how symptomatic of all that is feeble and dismissible about the humanities today-that humanists can look upon the collapse of a would-be science within its proper domain as a fine opportunity to turn that same doctrine to their own hermeneutic ends! NOTES 1 [The panelists and session chairs were, in order of presentation, Peter Brooks, Frederick Crews, Robert Michels, Judith Butler, Juliet Mitchell, Esther da Costa Meyer, Toril Moi, Hubert Damisch, Peter Lowenberg, Mary Jacobus, Katherine Kearns, Paul Robinson, Kaja Silverman, Leo Bersani, Kevis Goodman, Dominick LaCapra, Eric Santner, Meredith Skura, Robert J. Lifton, Elise Snyder, Morton Reiser, David Forrest, Robert Shulman, Arnold Cooper, Peter Gay, Richard Wollheim, Jonathan Lear, Donald Davidson, and John Forrester.] 2 Standard Edition, 14: 21-22. 3 [As if to illustrate this point, our conference members overlooked it, making confident occasional reference to the great breakthrough of Freud's etiological shift from sexual abuse to oedipal fantasy.] 4 [No one who spoke at our symposium, from either the podium or the floor, conceded this basic point. When it was mentioned at all, it was dismissed as naive; and it was repeatedly flouted in our panel presentations, most of which took for granted Freud's maxim that "applications of analysis are always confirmations of it as well" (SE, 22: 146). Richard Wollheim finally declared that my point had been immediately "refuted" by Robert Michels; but Wollheim proved unable even to state it correctly. According to him, what I had said was that ideas derived from a theory's postulates cannot be tested at all. Only in Wollheim's presentation was any attempt made to address the problem of validation; other speakers evidently considered psychoanalytic propositions (their favorite ones, anyway) too self-evidently justified to require defending. Wollheim began by criticizing those Freudians who hold back from strong truth claims; in his view, it is quite possible to demonstrate the cogency of theoretical tenets within a clinical context. As an example, he cited the recalcitrant behavior of a training analyst's patient-behavior that the analyst's colleagues successfully traced to the patient's early relations with her mother. For Wollheim, the emergence of that interpretation from careful discussion vouched for its plausibility; and since, in this case, "a small piece of psychoanalytic thinking helps us to comprehend the situation," the theory behind that thinking has received strong support. To evaluate this claim, we must first sort out the point being supported from the evidence that favors it. (We are on our own here, as Wollheim provided no further enlightenment.) In Wollheim's eyes, I gather, the group of analytic discussants had succeeded in locating the source of the patient's present conduct in her early relations with her mother; this success then validated the Freudian idea that noncooperation with an analyst is always transferential, i.e., rooted in a childhood attitude that is being reenacted in the consulting room. Obviously, however, the "evidence" here is itself a Freudian interpretation, and one that preempts a more plausible explanation that never occurs to psychoanalysts: that the patient was reacting negatively to here-and-now irritants supplied by the therapist. The theory of transference regularly acts to exculpate therapists in just this manner.] 5 [Meredith Skura's presentation deserves notice in this connection. She told us that in her historical studies she generally eschews theory, preferring instead to conceive of psychoanalysis simply as a way of thinking and an attitude toward life. Theory enters her work, she said, only in the form of hypotheses that are to be tested by the "so what?" criterion. If, for example, a particular Freudian tenet helps to "pull details together" in an illuminating way, she knows that she was on the right track. Alas, any theory whatsoever-astrological, phrenological, ufological-will "confirm" itself in just this specious manner. One must also ask whether the global psychoanalytic "attitude toward life" doesn't amount to a partiality toward Freudian theory. To eschew explicit theory while applying such an attitude is simply to disguise one's premises from oneself, a retrogressive move in any field.] 6 [Judith Butler and Leo Bersani both implied that, for them, the uppermost consideration in assessing a theoretical tenet should be its bearing on gay liberation. In commenting on my own reference to community standards of empiricism, Butler indicated that "community standards" sounded homophobic to her. Bersani, for his part, distanced himself from the literary critic's typical ideal of "fidelity to the text," since that fidelity, like Butler's "community," struck him as sexually normative. Neither of these remarks precisely illustrated my point above, yet both showed how an ideological imperative can override empirical concern, even covering the very idea of evidence with suspicion of being socially oppressive.] 7 [In making this prediction, which was only partly fulfilled, I overestimated the extent to which symposium participants would care about justifying their claims. As the lone dissenter, I failed to attract more than momentary and dismissive attention (as explained in note 4 above) to the issue of validation.] 8 [Arnold Cooper, a past president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, assured us that the hypothesis of a dynamic unconscious is "now evidentially well founded" and that Freud's basic method of "free association and analytic listening" has amply proven its worth. Using those tools, he added, "we have moved very far" from Freud's single model of the mind. Yes: we now have an ever-expanding number of conflicting models and no agreed-upon way of choosing among them. Is that progress, or does it constitute an indictment of the very tools that Cooper regards as having been vindicated?] 9 Edward Shorter, *A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac* (New York: John Wiley, 1996), p. vii. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 11:10:04 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Failure of Social Constructivism MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT The following excerpts from Cole, S. (1996). Voodoo Sociology: Recent Developments in the Sociology of Science discuss the complete failure of the social constructivist program and its perpetuation by a power elite. Stephen Cole is Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland. Up until the 1970s, sociologists of science did not examine the actual cognitive content of scientific ideas, as they believed that these were ultimately determined by nature and not a product of social processes and variables. Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a group of European sociologists, adopting a relativist epistemoloigcal position began to challenge this view. At first they called themselves "relativist-constructivists" and later, more simply, "social constructivists". Their numbers were few, but within a short time span of roughly one decade, this group has come to completely dominate the sociology of science and the interdisciplinary field called the social studies of science. Although some like to deny this dominance because ideologically they do not like to see themselves as the power elite, their control of all the major associations and speciality journals is clear to anyone participating in the field. This dominance may easily be seen in the recently published *Handbook of Science and Technology Studies*, published by the Society for the Social Study of Science. Virtually all of the contributors are either constructivists or political allies of the constructivists. [p.278] I argue in my book that there is not one single example in the *entire constructivist literature* that supports this [social constructivist] view of science. In order to demonstrate the credibility of their view, one must show how a specific social variable influences a specific cognitive content. In all of their work they illustrate well how social processes influence the doing of science; but they fail to show how they have had a significant effect on what I call a knowledge outcome or a piece of science that has come to be accepted as true by the scientific community and thereby entered the core knowledge of that discipline. [279] As a general rule, readers of the work of social constructivists should always ask (1) have they identified a real social independent variable? and (2) have they shown that it has influenced the actual cognitive content of some piece of science rather than the foci of attention or the rate of advance? [280-1] My book is full of many examples, based upon detailed readings of other constructivist texts, that show how in each and every case they fail to do what they claim. An examination of what happened to this book is good evidence of how the constructivists treat criticism. First, all reviews by constructivists were harshly negative including one by Shapin in *Science* and one by Pickering in the *Times Literary Supplement*. Fuller actually wrote two negative reviews in two different journals. All the reviews of the book in the mainstream American sociology journals that I have seen were moderately to strongly positive, including an extremely positive review by Mary Frank Fox in *Contemporary Sociology*.But the most noticeable aspect of the constructivists' reaction to the book was to ignore it. Where they have to review it, they will give it a good bashing, but where they have any control, they feel the best course of action is to keep the book unknown. Thus the book has gone unreviewed in the two leading speciality journals in the field, the *Social Studies of Science* and *Science, Technology, and Human Values*. It is quite probable that considerably more than half of the members of the Society for the Social Studies of Science do not even know of the book's existence. [284-5] My work in the sociology of science has led me to strongly reject the conclusion that the natural sciences are entirely socially constructed; but my life in the social sciences has made me more amenable to the possibility that these sciences may indeed be entirely socially constructed. Ideology, power, and network ties seem to determine what social scientists believe; evidence is frequently entirely ignored... That social science is completely or almost completely socially constructed helps explain how the social constructivist view of science could have become so powerful in the absence of any good supporting evidence and in the face of such devastating empirical critiques as those found in books like Peter Galison's *How Experiments End*. References Cole, S. (1996). Voodoo Sociology: Recent Developments in the Sociology of Science. In P.R. Gross, N. Levitt, & M.W. Lewis (Eds.), The Flight From Science and Reason. New York: New York Academy of Sciences and Johns Hopkins University Press. Cole, S. (1994). Why Sociology Doesn't Make Progress Like the Natural Sciences. Sociological Forum, 9, 133-154. Cole, S. (1992). Making Science: Between Nature and Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Galison, P. (1987). How Experiments End. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Jasonoff, S., Markle, G.D., Peterson, J.C., & Pinch, T. (1995). Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 13:24:03 +0200 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Arie Dirkzwager Subject: Re: JUMP START Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 06:57 PM 4/14/98 -0400, Brad McCormick wrote: >I like what I take to be the Kantian notion that we can have knowledge >of reality --> but only as it answers the questions we put to it. Right you are - it means hat our questions are the starting point. Then it is crucial to ask the "right" questions and to ask them to the "right" realm of reality. In my opinion with any question it is critical to ask *why* you ask that question and to question the presupposition of that question, for instance the meanings you assign to the words used in formulating that question. >> The essence of reality is its meaning or purpose to which it was >> created and is preserved. Assuming it was not created makes it quite >> difficult to define (find) *any* essence or meaning of reality. When it was >> created and is preserved by God (be it only that reality's ability to >> preserve itself is preserved), as it is, the purpose of course is serving >> this God and glorifying Him. >[snip] > >Well, if God has some notion of what the purpose of the world >is, why do *we* need to buy into it? Sorry, wrong question: God isn't someone who has "some notion" of what the purpose is like we have such notion or may "buy" someone elses notion. God *set* the purpose of the world and we try to get ome notion of it. >Can't we, like a certain group >of inmates in Auschwitz, hold a trial of God (Y-w-h, etc./et al.) and >find the accused *guilty* of crimes against humanity? Might does not >make right, even in some super-lunary (or super-sensible) realm, or >where the criminal is Omnipotent, and therefore, presumably, must be >tried in absentia. Tough question - although it is obvious we could - the real question is: should we? (Would it fit the "purpose of the world"?). Without belittling the horror of those misery and crimes and the mystery of God allowing them (I think it has to do with the purpose of man having freedom to do well on his own will, which freedom entails the possiblity to choose for doing such awfull crimes and make innocent fellow human beings suffer thus offending God's commandment to "love thy neighbour". The Bible enlightens us on what to do in such a case with the story of Job - he surved the "purpose of the world" quite well in a way not many people are able to. >> > I believe the answer to most of these question is >> >yes and no. Reality is so complex that we can only see >> >certain aspects of it at one time. >> >> "yes and no" means we have to go on with our critical thinking to >> find the right questions and their proper answers building our knowledge and >> disclosing its meaning. >[snip] > >The foregoing question and answer already, in a way, encompass *all* >this >complexity -- perhaps in a way somewhat like the way we can find the >value of a mathematical integral directly rather than only continuing to >approach it >by adding together more and more endless little parts? Good methaphor! Discovering (figuring out) the way how to find that value directly was a major extension of our knowledge. As an aside: was it based upon answers reality gave to our questions? Arie PS. I don't mean to quibble about religion on this list and try to restrict myself to contributions that are on topic - sometimes religion is (at least in my understanding) and I think in that case it is appropriate to give my opinion such that others can understand and take it into account while forming their own opinions. >> When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the >> apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person >> could have written them." T. S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension (1977). >Hermeneutics in action! I'm glad you like the quote in my signature - hope you think me a sensible person and discovered some "absurdities" in my text (-; ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 21:20:25 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Failure of Social Constructivism X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > The following excerpts from Cole, S. (1996). Voodoo Sociology: > Recent Developments in the Sociology of Science discuss the complete > failure of the social constructivist program and its perpetuation by > a power elite. Stephen Cole is Professor of Sociology at the > University of Queensland. > > Up until the 1970s, sociologists of science did not examine the > actual cognitive content of scientific ideas, as they believed that > these were ultimately determined by nature and not a product of > social processes and variables. [snip] I suppose 1929 comes after 1970? Karl Mannheim's _Ideology and Utopia_ was published in 1929 (the English translation is 1936). I have confidence that persons more familiar with this area than myself could push that date back farther. Also: There are different realizations of "social constructivism", and possibly some of them are analogous in the domain of the "Geisteswissenschaften" to what Phrenology and certain discredited research into racial differences in intelligence (etc.) are in the Galilean exact mathematical/empirical sciences of nature. \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 21:37:25 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Freud at Yale X-To: Ian.Pitchford@Scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > Unconscious Deeps and Empirical Shallows > > Panel presentation at the symposium "Whose Freud? > The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Culture," > Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, April 3, 1998 1 > > Frederick Crews > > [Note: This paper has been revised to reflect the experience of the > symposium itself. No words have been changed, but added passages, all of > which can be found in the endnotes, are indicated by brackets.] [snip] > It is precisely because such rationality continues to be exercised > with vigor that Freud's ideas, as Edward Shorter observes in his recent > History of Psychiatry, "are now vanishing like the last snows of winter." > 9 How ironic it is that well-traveled academics, like bunkered troops on a > remote island who haven't heard that the war is over, should be the last > to get the news! [snip] Dear Mr. Pitchford: You continue to tell us what's wrong with the current state of scholarship (or lack thereof...) in various areas. What, I am curious to know, is your *constructive program*? Where would you like us to be trying to get to? Perhaps if you will tell us this, we (or at least myself) can learn something. Thank you. \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 09:47:31 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Teaching evolution MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Teachers Gain Aid For Evolutionary Struggle Nature (1998) 392:p.639 [WASHINGTON] The National Academy of Sciences, alarmed by what it says is continuing hostility to the teaching of evolution in many school districts in the United States, has produced a glossy guide to advise teachers on how the subject can best be taught. The guide is designed to help teachers in parts of the country, primarily in the south, where Christian groups have tried to ensure that 'creation science' is taught alongside evolution. It says that the Supreme Court rejected that idea in 1987, when it held that Louisiana decreee calling for the "balanced treatment" of the two was unconstitutional. "We're not saying that teachers can flaunt their state rules," says Maxine Singer, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and one of the guide's authors. "But they could challenge them legally" on the basis of the Supreme Court ruling, she says. The guide says that the emergence of genetics has made the theory of evolution a central tenet of biology, which teachers cannot choose to ignore. Many teachers mistakenly assume that evolution has little to do with science as it is practised today, says Singer. "A few years ago, evolution was not of major interest to molecular biologists," she says, "But now it is". According to academy officials, a few states have education policies that require the teaching of creationism. Schools are usually administered, however, by counties and problems arise in all regions of the United States. Donald Kennedy of Stanford University, who chaired the group of 13 authors, declines to estimate how many teachers are intimidated by such policies. "If you listen to enough teachers you become persuaded that this is a serious problem," Kennedy says. C.M. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 13:50:35 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: evolving the human mind X-To: psa-public-sphere@sheffield.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable With appologies to those on multiple lists -- Herewith draft programme for the *Evolving the human mind* conference here in Sheffield this June. At the end of the programme is a registration form -- if you want to attend, please snip, print, and send with payment to the address shown. All e-mail communications concerning the conference should go to: evolution.conference@sheffield.ac.uk ------------------------------------------------------------- Evolving the human mind an interdisplinary conference organised by The Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies University of Sheffield Stephenson Hall of Residence, Oakholm Road, University of Sheffield 24-27 June 1998 DRAFT PROGRAMME Wednesday 24 June 11-1.50 Arrival and registration Lunch is available for purchase in nearby pubs and restaurants 1.50-4 Session 1: Chair: Peter Carruthers (a) Welcoming statement by Peter Carruthers (b) Pascal Boyer (Anthropology, Lyon) =91Evolved minds and their susceptibility to religious representations=92 (c) Steven Mithen (Archaeology, Reading) =91Language, thought and material culture: evolutionary relationships=92 4-4.30 tea 4.30-6.30 Session 2: Chair: (a) David Papineau (Philosophy, King=92s London) =91The evolution of knowledge=92 (b) George Botterill (Philosophy, Sheffield) =91How can memes combine with modules?=92 6.30-7.45 dinner 7.45-9.15 Session 3: Chair: Derek Bickerton (Linguistics, Hawaii) 'The language-driven mind' 9.15-11 bar Thursday 25 June 7.30-9 breakfast 9.15-11.15 Session 4: Chair: (a) Adam Morton (Philosophy, Bristol) 'The evolution of strategic thinking'. (b) Peter K Smith (Psychology, Goldsmith=92s London) =91The social origins of theory of mind' 11.15-11.45 coffee 11.45-1.15 Session 5: Chair: Bill McGrew (Anthropology, Ohio) =91Non-human culture and the animal mind=92 1.15-2.30 lunch 2.30-4.30 Session 6: Chair: (a) Jim Hopkins (Philosophy, King=92s London) 'Evolution, consciousness, and the internality of the mind' (b) Peter Carruthers (Philosophy, Sheffield) =91The evolution of consciousness=92 4.30-5 tea in the dining room 5-7 Session 7: Chair: (a) Patty Cowell (Human Communication Science, Sheffield) =91The evolution of sex differences=92 (b) Andrew Mayes (Clinical Neurology, Sheffield) =91Evolution of the human brain since the common ancestor: modular or general capacity development?=92 7-8 reception in the bar or garden, according to weather courtesy of HANG SENG CENTRE FOR COGNITIVE STUDIES 8-9.30 Conference Dinner 9.30-11 bar =46riday 26 June 7.30-9 breakfast 9.15-11.15 Session 8: Chair: (a) Robin Dunbar (Psychology, Liverpool) title to be announced (b) Richard Byrne (Psychology, St.Andrews) title to be announced 11.15-11.45 coffee in the dining room 11.45-1.15 Session 9: Chair: Thomas Wynn (Anthropology, Colorado) title to be announced 1.15-2 lunch (packed lunch for all, whether going to Peaks or not) 2-3.15 Session 10: Poster sessions >From 1.15-3.15 pm a short coach trip into the Derbyshire Peak District is available, to feast eyes and clear heads. Please indicate when registering whether or not you intend to take this option. 3.15-3.45 tea 3.45-5.45 Session 11: Chair: (a) Kate Robson Brown (Archaeology, Bristol) title to be announced (b) Andrew Chamberlain (Archaeology, Sheffield) title to be announced 5.45-7 dinner 7-9 Session 12: Chair: (a) Fiona Cowie (Philosophy, Caltech) =91Evolution of language=92 (b) Dan Sperber (Anthropology, CREA, Paris) and Gloria Origgi (Philosophy, Milan) =91Issues in the evolution of human language and communication=92 9-11 bar Saturday 27 June 7.30-9 breakfast 9.15-11.15 Session 13: Chair: (b) Jim Hurford (Linguistics, Edinburgh) title to be announced (b) John Locke (Human Communication Science, Sheffield) title to be announced 11.15-11.45 coffee in the dining room 11.45-1.15 Session 14: Chair: Peter Carruthers Stephen Stich and Dominic Murphy (Philosophy, Rutgers) =91Darwin in the madhouse: evolutionary psychology and the classification of mental disorders=92 1.15-2.30 lunch 2.30-4 Session 15: Postgraduate Presentations Parallel Session 15(a): Chair: (a) to be announced (b) to be announced (c) to be announced Parallel Session 15(b): Chair: (a) to be announced (b) to be announced (c) to be announced 4-- depart ---------------------------------------------------------------------- REGISTRATION FORM -- Evolving the human mind conference, 24-7 June 1998 Please print and complete this form, and send it TOGETHER WITH PAYMENT to: Evolution Conference, Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN UK. Note that there is a fee for those registering after 1 June, and that pressures on space mean that those attempting to register late may not be accepted. There are three registration categories. Please tick one of the following: (1) Non-resident, not requiring meals -- conference fee of: STERLING 30 (staff) STERLING 10 (student) (this covers tea and coffee; e-mailed conference abstracts; and generic conference costs; the conference reception is open to all those attending) (2) Non-resident, requiring meals -- total cost of: STERLING 90 (staff) STERLING 70 (student) (this includes the conference fee, and covers all meals except breakfast; it includes the reception) (3) Resident, full board -- total cost of: STERLING 150 (staff) STERLING 130 (student) (this includes all of the above, together with single bedroom for the nights of 24, 25 and 26 June, and three breakfasts) ADDITIONAL COST for EN SUITE single room: STERLING 30 ADDITIONAL COST for LATE REGISTRATION (received after 1 June 1998): STERLING 15 ADDITIONAL COST for clearance of cheques, where payment is NOT made by cheque drawn on a UK bank or by Eurocheque: STERLING 10 TOTAL COST / CHEQUE ENCLOSED: (pounds sterling) (cheques should be made payable to =91THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD=92) I do / do not intend to take the coach trip in to the Derbyshire Peaks on Friday 26 June (delete as appropriate). I am / am not a vegetarian / vegan (delete as appropriate) NAME: E-MAIL ADDRESS (please write legibly): SIGNED: __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Youn= g Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk, 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837 Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 23:48:39 -0700 Reply-To: wderzko@pathcom.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Walter Derzko Subject: It's Official, We're in the Quantum Age X-To: List COMPLEX-M digests X-cc: List Discovery , List -Creativity MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Quantum leap by Charles Seife "The era of quantum computing has begun in earnest, scientists say. For the first time, they have made a quantum computer that can carry out a task in a way that is impossible with supercomputers. The bits of a conventional computer can only exist in two states, 0 or 1. In quantum computers, the bits (or "qubits") can be the spin states of a proton, for instance, which exist as a "superposition" of both 0 and 1 until a measurement is made ("Wake up to quantum coffee", New Scientist, 15 March 1997, p 28). This allows quantum computers to explore different routes through a mathematical problem simultaneously. In theory, they can quickly perform some tasks, such as factoring huge numbers and cracking ingenious cryptographic codes, that would take a conventional supercomputer years. Lov Grover, a physicist at AT&T Bell Labs in New Jersey, showed last year how a quantum computer could "guess" a chosen number in a certain range. The task is similar to a game of "higher/lower"--homing in on a number by repeatedly asking if the one you guess is too high or too low. Repeated questioning would be all a classical computer could do. But Grover showed that a quantum computer could divine the number in one attempt, just like packing all the questions into the states of a qubit. "It's interesting and kind of surprising that you can somehow do it when you get only one bit out of the computer," says Norm Margolus, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Now Isaac Chuang of IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose and Neil Gershenfeld of MIT have made a quantum computer that works through another of Grover's algorithms, answering two questions about one of four numbers. The problem is similar to asking which of the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4 is odd and greater than 2. In the current issue of Physical Review Letters (vol 80, p 3408), the researchers describe how they used the nuclei of a carbon atom and a hydrogen atom in a chloroform molecule as two qubits. Both nuclei had spin 0 and spin 1 states, giving four combinations which existed simultaneously: 00, 01, 11 and 10. Using magnetic fields and radio waves, the researchers manipulated the atoms' spins, making them dance a nuclear jig corresponding to the algorithm's logic. The correct answer to the calculation came when a measurement of the spin states "snuffed out" those that did not match the target state. Chuang and his colleagues have since been working on other quantum algorithms, such as the "Deutsch-Jozsa" algorithm, which spots some properties of a mathematical function far faster than a classical computer. Although cracking codes is still years away, Grover says the new work proves quantum computers are no longer just an idea. "It's a remarkable achievement," he says. "They've demonstrated that quantum computing works, not just with pencil and paper, but in the lab." >From New Scientist, 18 April 1998 Walter Derzko Director Brain Space (formerly the Idea Lab at the Design Exchange) Toronto (416) 588-1122 wderzko@pathcom.com ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 10:25:08 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Nagel/Freud at Yale In-Reply-To: <3536B255.114D@cloud9.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Brad McCormick wrote: You continue to tell us what's wrong with the current state of scholarship (or lack thereof...) in various areas. What, I am curious to know, is your *constructive program*? Where would you like us to be trying to get to? ============ REPLY: I was reading Thomas Nagel's latest book *The Last Word* last night, and his closing paragraph seems apt here: "Once we enter the world for our temporary stay in it, there is no alternative but to try to decide what to believe and how to live, and the only way to do that is by tring to decide what is the case and what is right. Even if we distance ourselves from some of our thoughts and impulses, and regard them from outside, the process of trying to place ourselves in the world leads eventually to thoughts that we cannot think of as merely "ours". If we think at all, we must think of ourselves, individually and collectively, as submitting to the order of reasons rather than creating it". Best wishes Ian **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 10:29:41 +0000 Reply-To: Discussion of Fraud in Science Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is Comments: Resent-From: "Ian Pitchford" Comments: Originally-From: Ted Hermary From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Re: Failure of Social Constructivism In-Reply-To: In reply to your message of Fri, 17 Apr 1998 05:47:31 EDT IMO Stephen Cole is a fine sociologist of science, though not a comparably fine sociologist of scientific knowledge. If I didn't know better, I'd think he was sorely pissed for having his area left out of a book which pretends to be an overview of Science Technology Studies. I think he has a fairly legitimate complaint on that matterm though to be fair I also know of pretentions "overviews" of sociology of science which barely mention current sociology of science. In short, there's always a selective view of the "field" in these things. The main problem is that Cole is under the impression that social constructionism is a science-like enterprise, explanatory in aim. It is possible to read the 1970s strong programme (and some scholars) in this way, though neither *social* constructivism nor *explanatory* arguments fit many others social constructionists. I suspect Cole knows the difference between these things, but wants to argue that sociology of scientific knowledge should be a science. More relevant is whether the person posting the Cole quotes understands important distinctions well enough to declare social constructionism a fraud -- something which even Cole doesn't say. My guess is "no", but I could be wrong. With the proper distinctions in mind, social constructionism has provided mountains of illustrations of how what scientists conider knowledge at any given point had at least partly social origins. To my mind, it is incumbent upon Cole to show that there was ever an instance in which none of the social constructionists arguments about the practice and/or culture of science applies. I doubt he can, though even scientists come up with examples in which what counted as knowledge were not determined by the data. While I defend social constructionists against facile attacks like Cole's, I spend another part of my time attacking social constructionists, always on other grounds, and never because they committed fraud. (At worst because of silly arguments.) Ted Martin (Ted) Hermary (ABD) Department of Sociology McGill University 855 Shebrooke Street West Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3A 2T7 e-mail: czth@musica.mcgill.ca ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 10:31:45 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: (Fwd) The Poverty versus eugenic choice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Forwarded message: Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 16:54:26 -0600 (CST) From: "Edward M. Miller, University of New Orleans" To: hbe-l@a3.com Subject: The Poverty versus eugenic choice Ed Miller here: Perhaps the strongest argument for eugenics is that without it a welfare state will eventually self-destruct. The reason is the the less able, and those with less self control (less conscientiousness) will have more offspring than the more able, and better controlled, partially because these people are better at birth control. Eventually the economy becomes too poor to support the welfare state. The only viable (i.e. able to continue for the long run) alternative to this is a system by which people basically support their own children. The less successful probably have more children, but they live in such poverty that they leave the same number of descendants as the more prosperous. Given that humans can increase in population even in the most grinding poverty, the alternative of enough poverty among the less able to prevent steady deterioration in ability and character among the poorer classes is not very attractive. I make this point and others in a recently pbulished paper of mine: Miller, Edward M, "Eugenics: Economics for the Long Run." In Research in Biopolitics, Vol. 5, Steven A. Peterson, Al Somit, Eds. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1997, 391-416. I can E-mail or snail mail copies to any one interested who does not have a copy. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 06:51:37 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Nagel/Freud at Yale ("Wozu Denker?") X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > Brad McCormick wrote: > > You continue to tell us what's wrong with the current state of > scholarship (or lack thereof...) in various areas. What, I am > curious to know, is your *constructive program*? Where would > you like us to be trying to get to? > ============ > REPLY: I was reading Thomas Nagel's latest book *The Last Word* last > night, and his closing paragraph seems apt here: > > "Once we enter the world for our temporary stay in it, there is no > alternative but to try to decide what to believe and how to live, and > the only way to do that is by tring to decide what is the case and > what is right. Even if we distance ourselves from some of our > thoughts and impulses, and regard them from outside, the process of > trying to place ourselves in the world leads eventually to thoughts > that we cannot think of as merely "ours". If we think at all, we must > think of ourselves, individually and collectively, as submitting to > the order of reasons rather than creating it". > > Best wishes Well, what does this order look like? What role do we play in it? How do we know we *should* submit to it, e.g., that it is not a projection of Descartes' *Great Deceiver*? --> which reflection always leads me to the hypothesis that even "following" is a [transcendental] form of leading (albeit in the [empirical] mode of *willing* to "obey"). Th accept a judgment is to judge, etc. What is you response to changing: > If we think at all, we must > think of ourselves, individually and collectively, as submitting to ------------- > the order of reasons rather than creating it". to: > If we think at all, we must > think of ourselves, individually and collectively, as building upon ------------- > the order of reasons rather than creating it". > > **************************************************************** > Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com > Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology How fair Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, R.W.D. Fairbairn, Harry Guntrip, Masud Khan and other such of your predecessor compatriots? > Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies > University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent > SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. [snip] Yours in the discourse by which [as I see it] we preserve and ever again [[re-]/[co-]]constitute the world that is given to us as always already in some [factical] way as pre-constituted.... Best wishes! \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 07:21:50 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: (Fwd) The Poverty versus eugenic choice MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 16:54:26 -0600 (CST) > From: "Edward M. Miller, University of New Orleans" > To: hbe-l@a3.com > Subject: The Poverty versus eugenic choice > > Ed Miller here: > > Perhaps the strongest argument for eugenics is that without it a > welfare state will eventually self-destruct. The reason is the the less > able, and those with less self control (less conscientiousness) will have > more offspring than the more able, and better controlled, partially because > these people are better at birth control. Eventually the economy becomes > too poor to support the welfare state. [snip] I am certainly not an aspirant to "political correctness", and I certainly think the world is already overpopulated (although even a single instance of the "many all too many" would be one too many...), but I find the use of the word "eugenics" in the above paragraph unsettling. For some of the least "fit" (by such standards as intelligence, healthy genes, good character traits, etc.) are among the more wealthy, whereas some of the best are among the poor. Surely the health of our social biosphere will not be enhanced by Kudzu(sp? -- ref is to an extremely virulent weed that is eating up parts of the Southeastern United States) Capitalists metastasizing. Then there is the further question (to which I do not know the answer) of the degree of correlation between the attributes (by whatever measure) of parents and their children (e.g., we know, as a recent New York Times Magazine article described, that mentally retarded persons generally tend to have mentally normal children. I think that even a zillionaire should "stop at two", in part, to set an example of moderation for others, and in part because even the person who has total leisure has only 24 hours in each day, and, if they *personally* raise their children (as opposed to farming them out to contract labor), I think two will keep them pretty well occupied (especially if they also have some social/cultural interests to cultivate). I have always thought that all persons who attain any degree of intellectual, cultural or craft skill should be "internationalized", and protected as supra-national living cultural assets, beyond the petty exploitative purposes of nation states and other parochial social formations (tribes, families, etc.). All persons with anything to contribute to humanity should have some kind of "diplomatic status". Let those who have no higher aspiration in life than the hypertrophic schizmogenic exascerbation of small differences (Arabs versus Isrealis, our team versus theirs, gaining greater market share, machoism or coquetry....) duke it out in an arena stripped of all industrial and cultural infrastructure (factories and books...) and natural resources. Let them all, like the tigers in the nursery rhyme, be turned into butter in a centrifuge of their involution. "Less is more." "Nothing to excess." (including population, chastity, competition, patriotism, etc.) \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 20:02:41 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Science studies studies MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT >From "Technoscience," the on-line journal of the Society for the Socialstudy of Science. ----------------------------------------------------------- JOURNALS A Ph.D. student in France has applied all the latest postmodern theories and more than a hint of positivist methodology to understand STS discourse -- specifically, the internet debate that began in Fall 1994 on the sci-tech-studies listserv at the start of the Science Wars. Where were you when the first reviews of Higher Superstition came out? What did you think of Harry Collins' refusal to share a stage with Lewis Wolpert at British Association for the Advancement of Science meetings? Did you show up to the Durham conference that first brought together scientists with their sociological despisers? And what about Sharon Traweek's deconstruction of one of Steve Fuller's messages? You can now relive those memories in the latest issue of the journal, The Information Society (vol. 13, no. 4: October-December 1997). The article in question is 'Social dynamics of an online scholarly dispute', by Philippe Hert. You can find out more about the journal and its contents at [http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS]. Even if science studies never establishes proper objects of inquiry, its practitioners can at least rest assured that they themselves are such objects for the inquiries of others. ========================================================================= Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 12:41:56 -0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Michael Gregory, NEXA/H-NEXA" Subject: Re: Miller "The Poverty versus eugenic choice" (fwd) Pritchford Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/enriched; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable For a wonderfully vicious and supremely elegant attack on Eugenics (Francis= Galton, Spencer and Malthus) Thomas Henry Huxley's 'Prolegomena' to= "Evolution and Ethics" (1894) should provide a salubrious dose of salts to= Messrs. Miller and Pritchford. In part: "I have further shown cause for the belief that direct selection, after the= fashion of the horticulturalist and the breeder, neither has played, nor= can play, any part of the evolution of society, apart from other reasons,= because I cannot see how such selection could be practiced without a= serious weakening, it may be the destruction, of the bonds which hold= society together. It strikes me that men who are accustomed to contemplate= the active or passive extirpation of the unfit, the unfortunate, and the= superfluous; who justify that conduct on the ground that it has the= sanction of the cosmic process, and is the only way of ensuring the= progress of the race; who, if they are consistent, must rank medicine among= the black arts and count the physician a mischievous preserver of the= unfit; on whose matrimonial undertakings the principles of the stud must= have the chief influence; whose whole lives, therefore, are an education in= the noble art of suppressing natural selection and sympathy, are not likely= to have any large stock of these commodities left. But without them, there= is no conscience, nor any restraint on the conduct of men, except the= calculation of self-interest. . . .=20 "I sometimes wonder whether people, who talk so freely about extirpating the= unfit, ever dispassionately consider their own history. Surely, one must= be very "fit" indeed, not to know of an occasion, or perhaps two, in one's= life, when it would have been only too easy to qualify for a place among= the 'unfit.' "In the struggle for the means of enjoyment, the qualities which ensure= success are energy, industry, intellectual capacity, tenacity of purpose,= and, at least, as much sympathy as is necessary to make a man understand= the feelings of his fellows. Were there none of those artificial= arrangements by which fools and knaves are kept at the top of society= instead of sinking to their natural place at the bottom, the struggle for= the means of enjoyment would ensure a constant circulation of the human= units of the social compound, from the bottom to the top and from the top= to the bottom. . . ." Michael Gregory SFSU/NEXA =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Forwarded message: Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 16:54:26 -0600 (CST) From: "Edward M. Miller, University of New Orleans" < To: hbe-l@a3.com Subject: The Poverty versus eugenic choice Ed Miller here: Perhaps the strongest argument for eugenics is that without it a welfare state will eventually self-destruct. The reason is the the less able, and those with less self control (less conscientiousness) will have more offspring than the more able, and better controlled, partially because these people are better at birth control. Eventually the economy becomes too poor to support the welfare state. The only viable (i.e. able to continue for the long run) alternative to this is a system by which people basically support their own children. The less successful probably have more children, but they live in such poverty that they leave the same number of descendants as the more prosperous. Given that humans can increase in population even in the most grinding poverty, the alternative of enough poverty among the less able to prevent steady deterioration in ability and character among the poorer classes is not very attractive. I make this point and others in a recently pbulished paper of mine: Miller, Edward M, "Eugenics: Economics for the Long Run." In Research in Biopolitics, Vol. 5, Steven A. Peterson, Al Somit, Eds. Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press, 1997, 391-416. I can E-mail or snail mail copies to any one interested who does not have a copy. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** Michael Gregory, Professor of English=09 out,outDirector, NEXA Program =20 Editor, H-NEXA (H-Net Forum Series) San Francisco State University =20 1600 Holloway Avenue =09 San Francisco, CA 94132 =09 (415)338-1302 =09 < =09 < =09 ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1998 07:24:24 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Science studies studies X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: > > >From "Technoscience," the on-line journal of the Society for the > Socialstudy of Science. > > ----------------------------------------------------------- > > JOURNALS > > A Ph.D. student in France has applied all the latest postmodern > theories and more than a hint of positivist methodology to understand > STS discourse.... [snip] > Even if > science studies never establishes proper objects of inquiry, its > practitioners can at least rest assured that they themselves are such > objects for the inquiries of others. Which is as it should be. And/But, of course, the practitioners of hermeneutical disciplines which successfully target scientific praxis (which should not be difficult, since science *is* a human *activity*), should also include studying those who study them in their studies. They should also study any social praxes which *call* themselves "science studies" but are more analogous to new-agey than to philosophical "metaphysics" (Why should they do this? (1 )for its intrinsic intellectual interest, and (2) for disciplinary self-preservation in a world permeated with [in the well-known play on a Freudian idiom:] "physics envy"). "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." (1 Thes 5:21) \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 09:15:43 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Re: Miller "The Poverty versus eugenic choice" In-Reply-To: <199804181942.PAA09586@mx04.globecomm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Michael Gregory wrote: For a wonderfully vicious and supremely elegant attack on Eugenics (Francis Galton, Spencer and Malthus) Thomas Henry Huxley's 'Prolegomena' to "Evolution and Ethics" (1894) should provide a salubrious dose of salts to Messrs. Miller and Pitchford. ======= REPLY: I don't favour eugenics. It is ill considered and as inapproporiate a technique for social engineering as it's possible to imagine. Our aspirations for personal and social advancement should be a matter for democratic discourse and decision making in the public sphere, in the full knowledge that this sphere has been colonized by various powerful interest groups. I've been trying to emphasise for some months that an appreciation of science isn't incompatible with the possession of a social conscience, or with the desire to unmask the social embededness of the scientific enterprise. I fully accept the validity and the autonomy of psychology and the social sciences, and of the validity of the hermeneutic approach. What I don't acept is that there is some sort of fundamental divide between scientifc enquiry and hermeneutics. Both are rational endeavours intent on building models based on the available data. It is also evident to me that some "hermeneutic dsiciplines" implicitly employ the scientific method because they seek causal explanations which are on occasion based on human universals. Psychoanalysis and interpretative phenomenological analysis certainly fall into this category. If there is some alternative to the rational consideration of evidence in reaching conclusions about nature and our place within it perhaps someone could tell us about it in detail. The constant reference to various hermeneutic scholars and psychoanalytic theorists as though this makes it perfectly obvious that there are other modes of enquiry is extremely tiresome. Ian **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 10:23:26 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: seminars and Mary Douglas lecture Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable SOUTH KENSINGTON INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY A collaborative enterprise of the Science Museum and the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Imperial College Summer 1998 Seminars in the History of Science and Technology 6 May Geoff Bunn, The Science Museum The lie detector: 13 May David Nye, University of Odense Narrating Energy 20 May Christiane Sinding, INSERM, Paris Molecular Utopias and Ideal Drugs 3 June Chris Hamlin, Notre Dame University? Sewage, nature and death 17 June Illana L=F6wy, INSERM, Paris The First Scandal of Contaminated Blood: Yellow Fever Vaccination 1937 42 1 July Richard Noakes, London Victorian Scientists and Psychical Research All are welcome. If you are not at the Science Museum or Imperial College but would like to attend please telephone in advance so that we can advise you should there be any last minute change to the programme. =46or further details please contact Dr Robert Bud,The Science Museum, Exhibition Road, London SW7 2DD; tel 0171 938 8041; e mail r.bud@ic.ac.uk Conference The distinguished anthropologist, Mary Douglas willl deliver a lecture `'"Thou shalt not stand upon thy neighbour's blood", Leviticus 19. 16' on 14 May at the Science Museum. The lecture will begin at 6:45 outside the 'Health Matters' exhibition (please enter at the North Entrance of the Science Museum). A reception will follow. 'Consuming Blood' an day-long Symposium on blood and its transfusion, will take place the next day. If you wish to attend Mary Douglas's lecture alone, there is no charge but you must register. Please contact Dr Kim Pelis at the Wellcome Institute. Tel 0171 611 8647; Fax: 0171 611 8862; Email K.Pelis@wellcome.ac.uk. =46or the conference as a whole please contact Frieda Houser at the Wellcome Institute, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2B (tel: 0171 611 8619; fax: 0171 611 8862). Robert Bud Head of Research (Collections) The Science Museum, London SW7 2DD, UK Tel: (+44) (0) 171 938 8041 =46ax: (+44) (0) 171 938 8050 http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/collections/staff/r_bud.html __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Youn= g Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk, 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837 Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 06:15:07 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Miller "The Poverty versus eugenic choice" X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Ian Pitchford wrote: [snip] > I've been trying to emphasise for some months that an appreciation of > science isn't incompatible with the possession of a social > conscience, Might one go farther on this point, and say that it is not really possible to have a social conscience without some appreciation of science, since, presumably, social conscience aims to *do good* rather than just "having good intentions"? And how can one do *good* unless one is reasonably well oriented to what exists? "You ruined everything!" "But I *meant* well..." > or with the desire to unmask the social embededness of > the scientific enterprise. I fully accept the validity and the > autonomy of psychology and the social sciences, and of the validity > of the hermeneutic approach. What exactly do you mean by the "autonomy" of psychology and the social sciences? Foucault sets out one possible interpretation here, in _Discipline and Punish_ --> but it's not any kind of autonomous being which I, for one, have any desire to see elaborate itself any further than it already has, and, to borrow a phrase from Sophocles, with a change of orientation: "best [for it] never to have been born; second best [for it] to have seen the light and gone back swiftly whence it came." I would propose that the Panopticon has an eye too many! Isn't anything "autonomous" really something *out of control*? As D.W. Winnicott pointed out, the proper telos of human life is to move from total dependence (infancy) to *relative independence* --> the kind of maturity in which one contributes to others as well as being contributed to by them. And, beyond hermeneutics needing to interpret itself, and the endeavors of reason needing always to subject themselves to reasonability checks, both need to [to borrow John Wild's phrase:] keep themselves "open to otherness" -- open to possible news and critique from "elsewhere". > What I don't acept is that there is some > sort of fundamental divide between scientifc enquiry and > hermeneutics. Are efficient causes formal or final causes? I would argue that to find a nomological ["scientific"] explanation for something perforce destroys its noetic [hermeneutic] force. Would a bio-physicist who "succeeded" in getting someone to "give him or her a gift" by applying electric stimulation to the "donor"'s brain consider that he or she had been given a gift thereby? But one does not even need to descend to the less-than-world of cranial mechanics to encounter a similar problem: A gives B a gift. B is touched by having received a gift. Then B learns that A "gave the gift" in an effort to gain some favorable treatment from B. B no longer interprets the original interchange as an instance of "gift giving", not the object passed as a "gift". Explanation destroys meaning. Q: "Why do you love me?" A: [try to answer this one without putting your foot in your mouth] > Both are rational endeavours intent on building models How are empathy and model building related to each other? > based on the available data. It is also evident to me that some > "hermeneutic dsiciplines" implicitly employ the scientific method > because they seek causal explanations which are on occasion based on > human universals. Psychoanalysis and interpretative phenomenological > analysis certainly fall into this category. Isn't pshcyoanalysis, in this regard, a "plural"? Yes, there are some psychoanalysts [and there is a lot of citable material in that frustrated invertebrate neurologist, Freud] who would reduce all human expressivity to instances of "psychical laws" ("universals"). But then there are others who seek to understand the individual in his or her individuality, for whom the only universal is the meta-universal of the meaningfulness of discourse. [eidetic] Narratives are not [empirical] laws. Insofar as persons and their behavior "fall into a category", it seems to me they are either brain-damaged or in need of cultural cultivation ("Bildung", including, perhaps, empathic psycho- analysis), so that they may become instead individualities, and, thereby, cease to be instances of anything but rather become sources of *wonder*. > > If there is some alternative to the rational consideration of > evidence in reaching conclusions about nature and our place within it > perhaps someone could tell us about it in detail. Habermas, for one, differentiates three kinds of reason: (1) Instrumental reason: How to cause things (and persons-as- things, e.g.: employees, students, children, patients...) to do what we want them to do. (2) Social/practical reason: The kind of meaningful human interaction which effects social cohesion and the viability of human life, within the unreflected conditions of the pre-given social regime. This is the world of factical **human* *nature**, where the Good is sought, but not because it has been examined and found to be good, but because one was raised to believe it was good. (3) Emancipatory reason: Human activity aimed thematically at thematizing its given conditions, with the aim of criticizing and reconstructing them to not just claim to be good, but to really be so (this is, of course, as Husserl would say, an *infinite* task). > The constant > reference to various hermeneutic scholars and psychoanalytic > theorists as though this makes it perfectly obvious that there are > other modes of enquiry is extremely tiresome. Hummmh.... Different persons find different things tiresome. I find unreflected empiricism (actually: any and all unreflected forms of life!) extremely tiresome, but that does not help remove it from the world in which I live. I continue to think the key to understanding the issues involved here is the notion that: explanation destroys meaning (As the police said to K. in _The Trial_: "You don't have to accept everything as true, only as necessary."). If I cn *explain* why someone does (or, worse!!!: *believes*) something, that destroys the thing's meaning (its *truth value*). If I can explain why you believe that F=MA (in terms of neurological processes, social conditioning, etc.), then your assertion that F=MA ceases to have truth value, and becomes (is reduced to...) merely "something that somebody believed was true". Of course, in a certain sense, everything *past* is subject to being viewed that way, which is why the ultimate issue with empiricism is that the person doing it does not see it for what it is: not itself something empirical, but rather the event of making something be empirical. Only the living event of being-in-conversation is immune from the possibility of being explained, because it is the event of explaining. in which everything to be explained (every explicandum and explicatum finds its place): "For the spirit alone lives; all else dies." This is perhaps tiresome, but if it constitutes a step in a process of increasing clarification (the [re-]construction of the human world), then it will have had some value. \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 20 Apr 1998 14:44:59 +0100 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Richard Hull, CRIC Research Fellow" Organization: Centre for Research in Innovation & Competition, Manchester Subject: Science studies, Jump Start, etc MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In response to recent discussions about 'studies of science studies', 'social constructionism', and Jon Bennett's interesting call for a 'jump start'. Firstly, work in the Sociology of Sceintific Knowledge has, since the early 1980's, attempted to grapple with questions of 'symmetry' and 'reflexivity'; or in other words, with questions about the intellectual and political of its own enterprise. I would urge those attempting to critique 'social constructionism' (what a horrendous phrase) to re-read those debates, or at least read Andy Pickering's summary in , and to read the Special Issue of the journal , May 1996, on The Politics of SSK. The terms and depth of those debates are ten times more sophisticated than some of the current contributions on this list. In particular, Malcolm Ashmore's paper in SSS calls for a recognition of, and a reconcilliation between, "epistemological radicalism" and "political radicalism". Secondly however, I don't personally think that those debates have been satisfactorily resolved within the STS/SSK community, let alone amongst practicing scientists, engineers, technologists, etc. Jon Bennett inadvertently puts his finger on the nub when he called for some sort of "compromise" between, essentially, "realism vs. relativism", and Brad McCormick also has finger on the nub when he harks back to Kant. Because of course it is Kant who gave us this impossible choice - between "questions of fact" and "questions of judgement" - and he recognised that in The Critique of Judgement-Power, where he scrutinises and questions his own use of Judgement. Howard Caygill, in , and Jay Bernstein, in , have both cast new and interesting light on what we - in Western philosophy/metaphysics - have inherited from Kant. It is the various works of Gillian Rose, however, which really succeed in freeing us from the impossible bind between, on the one hand, "realism/rationalism/enlightened modernity" (whether radical, as in Marxism, or otherwise); and on the other hand "relativism/postmodernism/social constructionsim". She spells this out in , and in , and more briefly but very powerfully in her autobiographical work, . Her thesis, to summarise very brutally, is that it is possible to work within the 'broken middle', to acknowledge that realism and relativism are both valid and not quite valid enough, but that it is difficult, that we don't yet have the resources, language, and range of concepts required for that task. To pretend that we do is to be blind to the history of philosophy, and to pretend that we must invent 'new ethics' (with Baumann, Levinas, Derrida and others) is to be blind to the truths spelt out by Hegel so long ago, truths about laws of property relations, laws of tradition, laws of cultural judgement and hence representation (both in language and in politics). Sorry, I can't begin really to properly convey what Gillian Rose works at, except to say that she would - if she were still alive - have little time for incessant "either/or" debates. Regards, Richard -- ____________________________________________________________________ Richard Hull CRIC (ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation & Competition) Tom Lupton Suite, University Precinct Centre University of Manchester Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9QH Tel: +44 (0)161 275 7364 Fax: 7361 email: Richard.Hull@umist.ac.uk http://les.man.ac.uk/cric/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 22 Apr 1998 21:51:02 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Grading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------------------------------- Subject: Announcing The Intelligent Essay Assessor O brave new world, That has such people [no longer] in't! _________________________________________________________ >From the April 16, 1998, Colorado Daily, an independent newspaper serving Boulder and the University of Colorado http://bcn.boulder.co.us/media/colodaily/ --------------------------------------------------------- MEET THE INTELLIGENT ESSAY ASSESSOR By EILEEN LAMBERT Colorado Daily Staff Writer Developers of new computer software claim the system can grade essay exams as well as people do, but in a shorter period of time with better accuracy and objectivity. "The reliability of the system is as high as the reliability between two humans," said Darrell Laham, a CU doctoral student who helped develop the software. "It certainly will allow for more objective grading and more consistent grading." But critics of the idea fear the technology will stifle students' creativity and ambition and will further separate students from teachers. "The last thing we need is to be one more step removed from personal interaction with the professor," said Adam Batliner, a senior English and fine arts major at CU. "It's informal enough in a 400-person class." The software is called the Intelligent Essay Assessor. It uses mathematical analysis to measure the quality of knowledge expressed in essays, according to the developers. The system requires a computer 20 times faster than an ordinary personal computer, and it attempts to mimic the human brain, Laham said. Laham, Thomas Landauer, a CU psychology professor, and Peter Foltz, an assistant professor of psychology at New Mexico State University, developed the software and will present it today at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego. Educators often favor essay exams because they provide a better assessment of students' knowledge than other types of tests. But essays are time-consuming and difficult to grade fairly, the developers said. "The program has perfect consistency in grading -- an attribute that human graders almost never have," Laham said. "The system does not get bored, rushed, sleepy, impatient or forgetful." The grading system can provide feedback to students, telling them what was missing from their papers almost instantly, Laham said. "We're not saying the system can say how to write more stylistically, but it can tell students how to improve content," Laham said. "In a lot of ways, the whole goal of the system is to help students as much as it is to help teachers." Educators will feed the software program up to 10 million words from on-line textbooks and sources about the topic, so the system can learn from the text and analyze students' essays. The software's designers envision several ways the system can be used. First, teachers can grade enough essays to provide the program with a statistical sample of good and bad essays, and then allow the software to grade the remaining papers. In an experiment of the software, the Intelligent Essay Assessor and faculty members graded essays from 500 psychology students at CU. "The correlation between the two scores was very high -- it was the same correlation as if two humans were reading them," Landauer said. Second, teachers can use the system to compare all the student essays to a "gold standard" provided by the teacher. The third variation is for the software to tell students what content was missing from their papers and where to find it in a specific textbook so they can improve their papers. Because the software will allow teachers to assign more essays, it will help students strengthen their writing skills, Laham said. But many people are skeptical. Paul Levitt, a professor with the university writing program at CU, said the development of the software treats the symptoms, not the problems many schools are facing. "This is being done because we don't have enough teachers and teachers are overburdened," Levitt said. "We need to vitally increase the number of teachers and lower the class sizes." Carrie Messner, a junior biology major at CU, said he does not agree that students can learn as much from a computer's feedback as they can from a teacher's feedback. "I can't ask a computer, 'Why did you write this on my paper,' and I wouldn't be able to ask the teacher either," Messner said. Many times, teachers will give partial credit when students are close, but do not have the perfect answer. Messner said she is concerned the computer program would take away this benefit of having a human read the papers. Tilak Mandal, a senior chemistry and economics major, said he would support the use of the program with standardized tests with specific right answers to questions, but he does not want to see it "creep into the classroom." "We pay professors for their wealth of knowledge, and for them to analyze our thoughts and ideas," Mandal said. "For professors to question their own judgment when compared to a bunch of algorithms is a bit silly. "If a teacher questions their judgment after 200 essays, then they shouldn't be a teacher." Jason Robbie, a sophomore information systems major, said he supports the idea for short specific essays, but thinks there should be a limit to how the program is used. If he knew the program would be used to grade his papers, he said, "I probably wouldn't be as creative as I am. I would try to write an essay based on what I think the computer is looking for. It seems like you'd be taking the life out of writing if you used a computer 100 percent of the time." Laham said it is well-documented that teachers are not always consistent when grading essays. His own experience as a teacher verifies this theory. The system will "live or die depending on what the public thinks," Laham said. "It's proven itself in our labs. "It's certainly ready for a big trial. I would love to see it out very soon -- especially the side of it where it helps students improve their essays." Laham said the next step will be widespread testing of the software's accuracy, possibly by working with a large testing service on a nationalized test as a secondary grading system. ------------------------------------------------------- (c) 1998, Front Range Publishing Co. Inc., dba Colorado Daily ------------------------------------------------------- ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 10:54:49 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: All the world's on-line newspapers and journals X-To: psa-public-sphere@sheffield.ac.uk Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The US Library of Congress has put links the world's online newspapers and journals in one place: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/news/othint.html There are also links to many publishers and various meta-search facilities. __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk, 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837 Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 06:20:06 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Grading (the Foucaultian self-constitution of the "Social Sciences") X-cc: njlevitt@IDT.NET MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Norman Levitt wrote: > > ---------------------------------- > Subject: Announcing The Intelligent Essay Assessor > > O brave new world, > That has such people [no longer] in't! > > _________________________________________________________ > >From the April 16, 1998, Colorado Daily, an independent > newspaper serving Boulder and the University of Colorado > http://bcn.boulder.co.us/media/colodaily/ > --------------------------------------------------------- > > MEET THE INTELLIGENT ESSAY ASSESSOR > > By EILEEN LAMBERT > Colorado Daily Staff Writer > > Developers of new computer software claim the system can grade essay exams > as well as people do, but in a shorter period of time with better accuracy > and objectivity. [snip] I would like to propose some empirical testing of this innovation. The first test I would like to propose is that Prof. Sokal's famous "Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity" article be processed through it. Subsequent tests could include such things as Godel's peper on Incompleteness, something Logical Positivist, something Hermeneutical (something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue...).... Any hope here? \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 11:49:53 +1000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: melanie lazarow Subject: Re: Grading In-Reply-To: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" There is a simpler solution. Get rid of the grading system. It is almost self evident that there would be discrepancies between markers. Examples can be given where discrepancies exist. Unless any critical component is taken out of an exercise human intervention is necessary. A computer program could only "look" for key terms, or complexity of language (how often is an unusual rather than a usual word used).A computer could not be more objective, merely more programmed to look for programers instructions. The computer programer then becomes a secondary marker. The argument about any grading is complex. In the present system where scholarships and funding rest on achievement, students desire to attain As or 1sts or High Distinctions is great for material reasons. But if the aim of learning is genuine understanding of the subject matter, then not are only a variety of arguments admissible as worthy of high grades, but also mastering the subject, or creating new avenues of thought, become paramount. Computer graded exercises could never achieve this aim, except where the basics are needed to be learnt and the exercise is repeatable until mastered. Computer Aided Instruction programs are more and more designed to help students repeat, go back and understand than to grade. Grades should become a thing of the past, and all learning should be rewarded. At 01:51 24/04/98 +0000, you wrote: >---------------------------------- >Subject: Announcing The Intelligent Essay Assessor > > > > O brave new world, > That has such people [no longer] in't! > > >_________________________________________________________ >>From the April 16, 1998, Colorado Daily, an independent >newspaper serving Boulder and the University of Colorado >http://bcn.boulder.co.us/media/colodaily/ >--------------------------------------------------------- > > MEET THE INTELLIGENT ESSAY ASSESSOR > > By EILEEN LAMBERT > Colorado Daily Staff Writer > >Developers of new computer software claim the system can grade essay exams >as well as people do, but in a shorter period of time with better accuracy >and objectivity. > >"The reliability of the system is as high as the reliability between two >humans," said Darrell Laham, a CU doctoral student who helped develop the >software. "It certainly will allow for more objective grading and more >consistent grading." > >But critics of the idea fear the technology will stifle students' >creativity and ambition and will further separate students from teachers. > >"The last thing we need is to be one more step removed from personal >interaction with the professor," said Adam Batliner, a senior English and >fine arts major at CU. "It's informal enough in a 400-person class." > >The software is called the Intelligent Essay Assessor. It uses >mathematical analysis to measure the quality of knowledge expressed in >essays, according to the developers. The system requires a computer 20 >times faster than an ordinary personal computer, and it attempts to mimic >the human brain, Laham said. > >Laham, Thomas Landauer, a CU psychology professor, and Peter Foltz, an >assistant professor of psychology at New Mexico State University, >developed the software and will present it today at the annual meeting of >the American Educational Research Association in San Diego. > >Educators often favor essay exams because they provide a better assessment >of students' knowledge than other types of tests. But essays are >time-consuming and difficult to grade fairly, the developers said. > >"The program has perfect consistency in grading -- an attribute that human >graders almost never have," Laham said. "The system does not get bored, >rushed, sleepy, impatient or forgetful." > >The grading system can provide feedback to students, telling them what was >missing from their papers almost instantly, Laham said. > >"We're not saying the system can say how to write more stylistically, but >it can tell students how to improve content," Laham said. "In a lot of >ways, the whole goal of the system is to help students as much as it is to >help teachers." > >Educators will feed the software program up to 10 million words from >on-line textbooks and sources about the topic, so the system can learn >from the text and analyze students' essays. > >The software's designers envision several ways the system can be used. > >First, teachers can grade enough essays to provide the program with a >statistical sample of good and bad essays, and then allow the software to >grade the remaining papers. > >In an experiment of the software, the Intelligent Essay Assessor and >faculty members graded essays from 500 psychology students at CU. "The >correlation between the two scores was very high -- it was the same >correlation as if two humans were reading them," Landauer said. > >Second, teachers can use the system to compare all the student essays to a >"gold standard" provided by the teacher. > >The third variation is for the software to tell students what content was >missing from their papers and where to find it in a specific textbook so >they can improve their papers. > >Because the software will allow teachers to assign more essays, it will >help students strengthen their writing skills, Laham said. > >But many people are skeptical. > >Paul Levitt, a professor with the university writing program at CU, said >the development of the software treats the symptoms, not the problems many >schools are facing. > >"This is being done because we don't have enough teachers and teachers are >overburdened," Levitt said. "We need to vitally increase the number of >teachers and lower the class sizes." > >Carrie Messner, a junior biology major at CU, said he does not agree that >students can learn as much from a computer's feedback as they can from a >teacher's feedback. > >"I can't ask a computer, 'Why did you write this on my paper,' and I >wouldn't be able to ask the teacher either," Messner said. > >Many times, teachers will give partial credit when students are close, but >do not have the perfect answer. Messner said she is concerned the >computer program would take away this benefit of having a human read the >papers. > >Tilak Mandal, a senior chemistry and economics major, said he would >support the use of the program with standardized tests with specific right >answers to questions, but he does not want to see it "creep into the >classroom." > >"We pay professors for their wealth of knowledge, and for them to analyze >our thoughts and ideas," Mandal said. "For professors to question their >own judgment when compared to a bunch of algorithms is a bit silly. > >"If a teacher questions their judgment after 200 essays, then they >shouldn't be a teacher." > >Jason Robbie, a sophomore information systems major, said he supports the >idea for short specific essays, but thinks there should be a limit to how >the program is used. > >If he knew the program would be used to grade his papers, he said, "I >probably wouldn't be as creative as I am. I would try to write an essay >based on what I think the computer is looking for. It seems like you'd be >taking the life out of writing if you used a computer 100 percent of the >time." > >Laham said it is well-documented that teachers are not always consistent >when grading essays. His own experience as a teacher verifies this theory. > >The system will "live or die depending on what the public thinks," Laham >said. "It's proven itself in our labs. > >"It's certainly ready for a big trial. I would love to see it out very >soon -- especially the side of it where it helps students improve their >essays." > >Laham said the next step will be widespread testing of the software's >accuracy, possibly by working with a large testing service on a >nationalized test as a secondary grading system. > >------------------------------------------------------- > (c) 1998, Front Range Publishing Co. Inc., > dba Colorado Daily >------------------------------------------------------- > > > Melanie Lazarow Information Literacy Librarian University of Melbourne Parkville Victoria 3052 Australia ****************************************** Phone 61 3 9344 5373 Fax 61 3 9348 1142 Email: m.lazarow@lib.unimelb.edu.au ========================================================================= Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 11:53:25 +1000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: melanie lazarow Subject: Re: Grading In-Reply-To: <01IW7HPUPCVK001C9F@muwayb.ucs.unimelb.edu.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" There is a simpler solution. Get rid of the grading system. It is almost self evident that there would be discrepancies between markers. Examples can be given where discrepancies exist. Unless any critical component is taken out of an exercise human intervention is necessary. A computer program could only "look" for key terms, or complexity of language (how often is an unusual rather than a usual word used).A computer could not be more objective, merely more programmed to look for programers instructions. The computer programer then becomes a secondary marker. The argument about any grading is complex. In the present system where scholarships and funding rest on achievement, students desire to attain As or 1sts or High Distinctions is great for material reasons. But if the aim of learning is genuine understanding of the subject matter, then are a variety of arguments are admissible as worthy of high grades, also mastering the subject, or creating new avenues of thought, become paramount. Computer graded exercises could never achieve this aim, except where the basics are needed to be learnt and the exercise is repeatable until mastered. Computer Aided Instruction programs are more and more designed to help students repeat, go back and understand than to grade. Grades should become a thing of the past, and all learning should be rewarded. At 21:51 22/04/98 -0400, you wrote: >---------------------------------- >Subject: Announcing The Intelligent Essay Assessor > > > > O brave new world, > That has such people [no longer] in't! > > >_________________________________________________________ >>From the April 16, 1998, Colorado Daily, an independent >newspaper serving Boulder and the University of Colorado >http://bcn.boulder.co.us/media/colodaily/ >--------------------------------------------------------- > > MEET THE INTELLIGENT ESSAY ASSESSOR > > By EILEEN LAMBERT > Colorado Daily Staff Writer > >Developers of new computer software claim the system can grade essay exams >as well as people do, but in a shorter period of time with better accuracy >and objectivity. > >"The reliability of the system is as high as the reliability between two >humans," said Darrell Laham, a CU doctoral student who helped develop the >software. "It certainly will allow for more objective grading and more >consistent grading." > >But critics of the idea fear the technology will stifle students' >creativity and ambition and will further separate students from teachers. > >"The last thing we need is to be one more step removed from personal >interaction with the professor," said Adam Batliner, a senior English and >fine arts major at CU. "It's informal enough in a 400-person class." > >The software is called the Intelligent Essay Assessor. It uses >mathematical analysis to measure the quality of knowledge expressed in >essays, according to the developers. The system requires a computer 20 >times faster than an ordinary personal computer, and it attempts to mimic >the human brain, Laham said. > >Laham, Thomas Landauer, a CU psychology professor, and Peter Foltz, an >assistant professor of psychology at New Mexico State University, >developed the software and will present it today at the annual meeting of >the American Educational Research Association in San Diego. > >Educators often favor essay exams because they provide a better assessment >of students' knowledge than other types of tests. But essays are >time-consuming and difficult to grade fairly, the developers said. > >"The program has perfect consistency in grading -- an attribute that human >graders almost never have," Laham said. "The system does not get bored, >rushed, sleepy, impatient or forgetful." > >The grading system can provide feedback to students, telling them what was >missing from their papers almost instantly, Laham said. > >"We're not saying the system can say how to write more stylistically, but >it can tell students how to improve content," Laham said. "In a lot of >ways, the whole goal of the system is to help students as much as it is to >help teachers." > >Educators will feed the software program up to 10 million words from >on-line textbooks and sources about the topic, so the system can learn >from the text and analyze students' essays. > >The software's designers envision several ways the system can be used. > >First, teachers can grade enough essays to provide the program with a >statistical sample of good and bad essays, and then allow the software to >grade the remaining papers. > >In an experiment of the software, the Intelligent Essay Assessor and >faculty members graded essays from 500 psychology students at CU. "The >correlation between the two scores was very high -- it was the same >correlation as if two humans were reading them," Landauer said. > >Second, teachers can use the system to compare all the student essays to a >"gold standard" provided by the teacher. > >The third variation is for the software to tell students what content was >missing from their papers and where to find it in a specific textbook so >they can improve their papers. > >Because the software will allow teachers to assign more essays, it will >help students strengthen their writing skills, Laham said. > >But many people are skeptical. > >Paul Levitt, a professor with the university writing program at CU, said >the development of the software treats the symptoms, not the problems many >schools are facing. > >"This is being done because we don't have enough teachers and teachers are >overburdened," Levitt said. "We need to vitally increase the number of >teachers and lower the class sizes." > >Carrie Messner, a junior biology major at CU, said he does not agree that >students can learn as much from a computer's feedback as they can from a >teacher's feedback. > >"I can't ask a computer, 'Why did you write this on my paper,' and I >wouldn't be able to ask the teacher either," Messner said. > >Many times, teachers will give partial credit when students are close, but >do not have the perfect answer. Messner said she is concerned the >computer program would take away this benefit of having a human read the >papers. > >Tilak Mandal, a senior chemistry and economics major, said he would >support the use of the program with standardized tests with specific right >answers to questions, but he does not want to see it "creep into the >classroom." > >"We pay professors for their wealth of knowledge, and for them to analyze >our thoughts and ideas," Mandal said. "For professors to question their >own judgment when compared to a bunch of algorithms is a bit silly. > >"If a teacher questions their judgment after 200 essays, then they >shouldn't be a teacher." > >Jason Robbie, a sophomore information systems major, said he supports the >idea for short specific essays, but thinks there should be a limit to how >the program is used. > >If he knew the program would be used to grade his papers, he said, "I >probably wouldn't be as creative as I am. I would try to write an essay >based on what I think the computer is looking for. It seems like you'd be >taking the life out of writing if you used a computer 100 percent of the >time." > >Laham said it is well-documented that teachers are not always consistent >when grading essays. His own experience as a teacher verifies this theory. > >The system will "live or die depending on what the public thinks," Laham >said. "It's proven itself in our labs. > >"It's certainly ready for a big trial. I would love to see it out very >soon -- especially the side of it where it helps students improve their >essays." > >Laham said the next step will be widespread testing of the software's >accuracy, possibly by working with a large testing service on a >nationalized test as a secondary grading system. > >------------------------------------------------------- > (c) 1998, Front Range Publishing Co. Inc., > dba Colorado Daily >------------------------------------------------------- > > Melanie Lazarow Information Literacy Librarian University of Melbourne Parkville Victoria 3052 Australia ****************************************** Phone 61 3 9344 5373 Fax 61 3 9348 1142 Email: m.lazarow@lib.unimelb.edu.au ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 23:05:55 -0700 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Charles E. Moore" Subject: Re: Grading MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit "all learning should be rewarded" Do you mean to include that non-learning should be rewarded? If not, we're back to the problem of how to determine whether there was learning. -Charles Moore, PE ---------------------------- melanie lazarow wrote: > > There is a simpler solution. Get rid of the grading system. It is almost > self evident that there would be discrepancies between markers. Examples > can be given where discrepancies exist. Unless any critical component is > taken out of an exercise human intervention is necessary. A computer > program could only "look" for key terms, or complexity of language (how > often is an unusual rather than a usual word used).A computer could not be > more objective, merely more programmed to look for programers instructions. > The computer programer then becomes a secondary marker. > > The argument about any grading is complex. In the present system where > scholarships and funding rest on achievement, students desire to attain As > or 1sts or High Distinctions is great for material reasons. > > But if the aim of learning is genuine understanding of the subject matter, > then are a variety of arguments are admissible as worthy of high grades, > also mastering the subject, or creating new avenues of thought, become > paramount. Computer graded exercises could never achieve this aim, except > where the basics are needed to be learnt and the exercise is repeatable > until mastered. Computer Aided Instruction programs are more and more > designed to help students repeat, go back and understand than to grade. > > Grades should become a thing of the past, and all learning should be rewarded. > > At 21:51 22/04/98 -0400, you wrote: > >---------------------------------- > >Subject: Announcing The Intelligent Essay Assessor > > > > > > > > O brave new world, > > That has such people [no longer] in't! > > > > > >_________________________________________________________ > >>From the April 16, 1998, Colorado Daily, an independent > >newspaper serving Boulder and the University of Colorado > >http://bcn.boulder.co.us/media/colodaily/ > >--------------------------------------------------------- > > > > MEET THE INTELLIGENT ESSAY ASSESSOR > > > > By EILEEN LAMBERT > > Colorado Daily Staff Writer > > > >Developers of new computer software claim the system can grade essay exams > >as well as people do, but in a shorter period of time with better accuracy . . . > > > >Laham said the next step will be widespread testing of the software's > >accuracy, possibly by working with a large testing service on a > >nationalized test as a secondary grading system. > > > >------------------------------------------------------- > > (c) 1998, Front Range Publishing Co. Inc., > > dba Colorado Daily > >------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > Melanie Lazarow > Information Literacy Librarian > University of Melbourne > Parkville Victoria 3052 Australia > ****************************************** > Phone 61 3 9344 5373 > Fax 61 3 9348 1142 > Email: m.lazarow@lib.unimelb.edu.au ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 16:50:19 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Ziman REview of "Flight" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII This is John Ziman's review of "The Flight from Science and Reason," Times Higher Education Supplement, 4/24/98. I pass it along without comment. Deep thanks to Ian Pitchford for relaying it. Norm Levitt ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 21:01:40 +0000 From: Ian Pitchford To: njlevitt@IDT.NET Subject: THES Review A Limited Excalibur by John Ziman Review of *The Flight From Science and Reason* Edited by Paul R. Gross, Norman Levitt and Martin W. Lewis (New York Academy of Sciences and Johns Hopkins University Press, 593pp, stlg16.50 ISBN 0 8018 5676 0) This is an important book, requiring serious review. But I cannot say whether it is a good one. There are short chapters about everything - quantum theory, Shakespeare's folios, the drug laetrile, post-colonial feminism, you name it. Who knows enough to assess such a hotch-potch? It was compiled by rounding up 40 authors of well-known works condemning certain developments in their respective disciplines - and asking them to present their well-rehearsed arguments. Not surprisingly, some of these read very persuasively. One would have to be a genuine expert on each subject to decide fairly between the arguments presented here and what is apparently being attacked. What then might be the verdict of a grand jury of requisite specialists? My guess is that each would report that what is presented here is already common knowledge in his or her field. So I doubt whether this work adds anything to the sum of human understanding. What makes this huge tome worth review, however, is its proclaimed coherence. Paul Gross and Norman Levitt are already well known for their polemic against Higher Superstition - their characterisation of "the quarrels with science" of "the academic left" that they published in 1994. Now they are trying to turn this into the manifesto of a movement, in which they have enlisted these many bonny fighters for "the truth". In spite of its heterogeneity, their cause is united in its belief that intellectual life needs to be defended against systematic treachery - against a new manifestation of the trahison des clercs. The threat is often described as "postmodernism", although this evidently takes different forms on the many different fronts where is has to be combated. So what is at stake? What is the priceless treasure left unguarded in the central citadel? This is what I sought in this book, and its predecessor, but with little success. Here, briefly, is what I found. First, according to the title, this treasure includes "reason". Now there's an intellectual Crown Jewel not to be abandoned lightly. Is this really what a great proportion of our academic colleagues have done? The metaphor needs deconstruction. "Reason" is only used as a noun amongst consenting metaphysicians. In ordinary usage, it mainly occurs in the second person of the negative form of the verb "to agree": "I disagree, you are being unreasonable, she is talking nonsense". This book amply demonstrates that academia is overflowing with unreasonable notions, and that each of them is unreasonable in its own way: it does not tell us in what respects all reasonable notions resemble each other, so that we could be sure to find and hold on to them. In practice, the best we can do is to argue boldly against views that seem to us to be false. That is often futile, especially against people who cling to downright nonsense, such as that Noah's ark could have carried specimens of all life form, or that Aristotle's teachings were cribbed from the, as yet, unbuilt library of Alexandria. To fight for truth we have to share with our opponents a modicum of respect for logic and fact, not only quite generally but as they happen to frame the chosen arena of conflict. In each such arena, "reason" is our skilful use of such mental weapons as we have to hand: it is not an all-purpose shield or sword. Of course, the other word in the title - "science" - is deemed to be just such a weapon. It is spoken of with awe, as a cognitive Excalibur that can always ensure victory for anyone strong and pure enough to wield it. Now let it be quite clear that I do not in the least deny the cognitive power of science or the reliability of the knowledge that it produces. But is is not all-conquering, and cannot be used under all circumstances. Not all the supporters of this campaign seem to believe in science as if it were an omnicompetent religion - although here are still many such. But the weakness of their manifesto is that they convey no indications of how or why its powers are limited. Indeed, no coherent image of "science" emerges from these pages. Mostly it is referred to as a familiar activity, like shopping, that surely does not require definition. But science as practised does not completely exclude unreason. Remember that Rutherford condemned the idea of nuclear power as "moonshine", and that perfectly good evidence for continental drift was rubbished by the geological establishment for half a century. And when the purveyors of "creation science", or "paranormal science" apply for membership of the practitioners' guild, we have to give plausible reasons for blackballing them. So I trawled what sociologists call the "boundary work" in this volume on the lookout for philosophical "demarcation criteria" that might provide such reasons. The catch was very meagre. Mathematical modelling is mentioned at times, on the naive assumption that all science might be reducible to physics. "Scientific method" is duly invoked without explanation, as if its nature and efficacy were beyond questioning. A term that occurs frequently is "empiricism", which would ground scientific knowledge in observation, experiment, and other forms of direct experience. Unfortunately science is also irredeemably "theoretical"; and most of the authors must be aware that philosophers have conspicuously failed to prove that hypothetical scientific entities such as quarks and genes can be inferred logically from even the most contrived of "sense data". Some more up-to-date contributors still put their faith in Popperism, glossing over such difficulties as the impossibility of refuting conjectures about the past. Apart from two rather weak chapters by essentially like-minded metascientists, this whole work thus lacks any serious analysis of its own central doctrine. It is held together by little more that the traditional practical realism of the working physicist or chemist, laced with half-sincere professions of modesty and corrigibility. And yet philosophers have known for thirty years or more that this mixture of pragmatism and positivism has significant logical defects. For active researchers in the natural sciences this is seldom a handicap. But most of the views attacked in this volume relate to behavioural, social and other human phenomena, where severe epistemological questions cannot be avoided. They simply cannot be dealt with by the methods that work well enough for quarks, genes, tectonic plates and weather systems. Indeed, it was just this weakness that attracted the sociological attack on the traditional philosophy of science. Unfortunately, this attack has been pressed to such lengths of scepticism, cynicism and relativism that it threatens to destroy the very activity that it claims to be reforming. This is sad, because I believe - along with quite a number of excellent philosophers and sociologists who get no mention in this book - that the epistemological challenge could be met by a revised understanding of the nature of science. I would describe it, for example, as a peculiar type of social institution, devoted to the production of public, communally acceptable knowledge about the natural and social worlds through a delicately balanced tension between originality and criticism. And that is why I believe that this book is essentially wrong-headed, and that its editors and authors should be deploying their collective eloquence against more sinister enemies. In fact, at several points they do recognize that the vital issue is the maintenance of a free and open polity where disputatious communities and pluralistic intellectual institutions - like genuine universities, for example - can continue to flourish. That is the banner under which all the friends of "science and reason" should be uniting. John Ziman is emeritus professor of physics, University of Bristol. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:01:35 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: The Science Wars Flare at the Institute for Advanced Study MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Liz McMillen, "The Science Wars Flare at the Institute for Advanced Study: The rejection of a Princeton professor divides scholars at the center that was once Einstein's intellectual home. Chronicle of Higher Ed, May 16, 1997. Six years ago, the sociologist Bruno Latour was on the verge of an appointment in the field of science studies at the Institute for Advanced Study. But when scientists and mathematicians at the institute became upset about his work on life in the laboratory, he withdrew his candidacy. Now another attempt to appoint a scholar to the same post has met a similar fate, leaving a residue of bitterness and anger on the institute's stately campus in Princeton, N.J., and opening a new chapter in what has become known as the science wars. This month, the institute's director vetoed the appointment of M. Norton Wise, a historian of science at Princeton University. The director overrode recommendations from scholars at the institute and elsewhere. Several faculty members close to the proceedings say people at the institute who are hostile to science studies had succeeded in blocking the appointment. Dr. Wise, who directs the history-of-science program at Princeton, is the co-author, with Crosbie Smith, of an award-winning study of Lord Kelvin, the 19th-century British mathematical physicist. Dr. Wise has doctoral degrees in physics and history and is widely seen as a mediating figure between the increasingly divided camps of scientists and those who study science from cultural, sociological, and historical perspectives. According to faculty members in the institute's School of Social Science, who nominated Dr. Wise for the appointment, he received positive evaluations and his work was cited as significant and original. But when his case came before a six-member committee of institute faculty members and outside scholars, someone at the institute -- it's not clear who -- requested more letters of evaluation. Some of these letters reportedly came from people outside the field or from scholars who are known to be critical of it. The committee voted 4 to 2 in Dr. Wise's favor, with both of the dissenting votes cast by institute scholars: Edward Witten, a mathematical physicist in the School of Natural Sciences, and Glen W. Bowersock, a historian in the School of Historical Studies. And at that point, Phillip Griffiths, the institute's director, decided not to proceed with the appointment. "The sad part is that this very vibrant, engaging area of intellectual inquiry, with real factual and interpretive breakthroughs, won't be done at an institute which is supposed to be on the cutting edge," said Joan Scott, a professor at the social-science school. "We're just going to give up." A faculty position at the institute is a plum. It offers freedom to pursue research without teaching duties, higher salaries than those at many universities, and a heady intellectual atmosphere on a campus with a grand scientific lineage. But the home of Albert Einstein and the mathematicians Kurt Godel and John von Neumann has become a staging area in the war over the study of science -- battles over whether someone who is not a scientist is qualified to study it, and whether science should be regarded as purely objective. Clifford Geertz, another faculty member in the social-science school, said a small clique of scholars in the natural sciences object to science studies and to the social sciences generally. "They have worked against us for years," he said. "The letters in this case were overwhelmingly positive. Then they went on a fishing expedition." The Henry Luce Foundation has provided more than $500,000 in grant support for the professorship, but Dr. Scott and Dr. Geertz say they have offered to return the money. "The scientists have succeeded in preventing this kind of work from being done here," said Dr. Scott. Reached last week, Dr. Wise said he was very disappointed by the decision but more worried about what it may mean for science studies. "My whole career has been built on bridging physics and the humanities," he said. "I was looking forward to the opportunity to act as a mediator between the two. "From everything I can tell, it was a pretty shabby business. There apparently were letters from physicists who don't know anything about my work. The lack of professionalism: it's not only disappointing, it's scandalous, one might say." Dr. Griffiths, the director, said that he could not discuss the specifics of the case, but that an executive committee had reviewed and approved the proceedings. "When there is division on the committee and considerable division among the faculty, the director meets in consultation with faculty and others outside the institute to try to bring the matter to resolution in as fair and objective a way as possible," he said. "That's what I did." Asked whether there was hostility to science studies at the institute, he said, "That's not true, as best as I can tell." He cited the case of another historian of science, Peter Galison of Harvard University, who was named to the professorship in 1994, after Dr. Latour's appointment did not go through. Dr. Galison ended up staying at Harvard because there wasn't an academic position for his wife nearby. Dr. Witten did not return phone calls last week. Dr. Bowersock said he agreed that there there wasn't resistance to science studies at the institute. As to his vote against Dr. Wise, he said that it represented "an estimate of quality. I'd rather not go further into it than that. It certainly has nothing to do with the field." One scholar who voted for Dr. Wise, Nancy Cartwright, a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics, said she didn't think any "procedural illegalities" had taken place, "though I suspect the decision was influenced by opinions of people who are not experts, or who don't think the field has much merit." The decision, which came as the social-science school was preparing to mark its 25th anniversary last weekend, appears to have left wounds at the school, the smallest of four at the institute. It has only three permanent faculty members. Michael Walzer, a political theorist, who said he was as upset as his colleagues about the decision, is the third one. Smarting from two unsuccessful attempts to fill the professorship, the faculty members said they felt their autonomy and judgment had been undermined. "I've been here for 25 years trying to build this damn school," said Dr. Geertz. "Other appointments at the institute have no trouble. Ours, we always have to fight over them." He said that after attempts to meet with the institute's Board of Trustees had been rebuffed, the school's faculty members had decided to make their complaints known. "With the Latour appointment, I agreed not to say anything, to call Bruno and ask him to withdraw, and we were promised that this wouldn't happen again. It's now happened again, and we can't agree to remain silent. I don't think we should roll over with our paws in the air one more time." While Dr. Latour's studies on the workings of scientific laboratories have been controversial -- he is known for approaching scientists as members of a primitive tribe -- Dr. Wise's work is seen as more mainstream. His book on Lord Kelvin, Energy and Empire: William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, 1824-1907, won the Pfizer Prize of the History of Science Society in 1990. "We thought this was the leading book on what's called the second scientific revolution of the 19th century," said Dr. Scott. Dr. Wise is now working on a study of the dominant modes of explanation in the history of science during three eras. Last summer, he had an exchange with the Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg in The New York Review of Books over a piece that Dr. Weinberg had written about Alan Sokal's hoax in the cultural-studies journal Social Text. Dr. Sokal had attempted to show the intellectual bankruptcy of much of the thinking that goes into the cultural study of science. Dr. Weinberg praised Dr. Sokal for doing a "a great service" in raising the issue. Dr. Wise, in a letter to the editor, questioned whether Dr. Weinberg was promoting his own cultural agenda. Had it not been for this exchange, said Dr. Scott, Dr. Wise's appointment might not have been contested. Dr. Wise said he was concerned about what the decision may mean for scholars in less secure positions than his own. "If the rumors about what happened at the institute are correct, it would seem to indicate some of the most intimidating aspects of the science wars -- a call for what Mario Bunge has called a truth squad, to expel the charlatans from the university," he said. "There is a very specific aspect to the science wars, and it has to do with relativism. It's always read as radical relativism -- any account is the same as another. Very few people actually believe this. "Relativism has become the great bugaboo. It's almost like Communism. It has the same damning association, whether you're a party member or not." **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:01:35 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Science Wars Blamed for Loss of Post MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Macilwain, Colin. "'Science Wars' Blamed for Loss of Post," Nature 387 (22 May 1997), p. 325. [WASHINGTON] Social scientists at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, have decided to stop trying to build up a research capability in 'science studies' after failing to secure the appointment of a historian of science from Princeton University to a faculty position. The decision has been taken against a background of intense dispute with natural scientists at the institute, who had opposed the appointment of the historian -- Norton Wise -- because, the social scientists allege, of their hostility to science studies as an academic discipline. The Institute for Advanced Study is a small but distinguished research school, unconnected to the adjacent Princeton University. Wise's appointment was halted by the institute director, Phillip Grifffiths, after a specially appointed panel had split 4:2 in Wise's favour. The panel consisted of three outside experts in science studies and representatives of each of the institute's other three schools -- history, mathematics and natural sciences. It was set up after a similar row six years ago, when the French sociologist Bruno Latour was rejected for the same slot. In the interim, the institute had agreed to appoint Peter Galison, a historian of science at Harvard University. But Galison eventually turned down the offer because his wife was unable to find a suitable job nearby. The school of social science will now return a $500,000 grant, intended to fund the position, to the Henry Luce Foundation. After the panel vote, Grifffiths asked for outside advice from, among others, the physicists Steven Weinberg and Gerald Holton. Weinberg had publicly clashed with Wise in the increasingly acrimonious series of arguments about the study of science, sometimes known as the 'Science Wars' ... Social scientists at the institute describe this exercise as 'a fishing expedition' deliberately mounted to gather criticism of Wise. Officials at the institute say that the final decision, first reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education, was based purely on Wise's merits as a scholar. Grifffiths says: "This was simply an issue of the appointment of an individual -- it was not a 'Science Wars' issue at all." Grifffiths declines to discuss these merits specifically, and Ed Witten, the string theorist and one of the panel members who voted against Wise, refuses to comment on the decision. Glen Bowersock, a classical historian and the second 'no, says that it was "a judgement call based on quality", not on Wise's field of study. According to one outside academic, Wise's publishing record was felt to be weak, both qualitatively and quantitatively. "The scientists are not stupid and they are not ill-willed," the academic says. "What they'd like to have is quality." But Joan Scott, one of the three current faculty members in the social science school, accuses Wise's detractors of "taking a McCarthyist approach" in the run-up to the decision, and calls Grifffiths' dental "absurd" She argues that Wise was excluded because of his position in the Science Wars debate. "We are now abandoning our attempt to represent science studies at the institute," she says. "We know who the top people are in the field, and we don't see how we can come up with somebody that will be acceptable on all of the grounds that the institute requires. We've exhausted all the possibilities." Clifford Geertz, an anthropologist and member of the social science faculty, also refuses to believe that the decision about Wise was based solely on merit. "Wise is a figure of great standing in history of science, as letters from his peers demonstrated," he says, adding that a group of "very determined people" on the natural science faculty had worked to block the appointment. Wise admits that he has not published much in recent years, saying he has been preoccupied with improving the history of science programme at Princeton University. He says his main concern is that his non-appointment will discourage young historians of science who are already alarmed by what he terms "direct threats" that have been made by some scientists to regain control over science studies. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:01:34 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Science Wars and the Need for Respect and Rigour MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Editor, "Science Wars and the Need for Respect and Rigour," Nature 385 (30 January 1997), p.373. Ever since the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, scientists have been challenged with a disturbing question: do the fruits of their work provide them with privileged access to 'reality'? Initially, the most persistent questioning came from those who felt that their religious beliefs were under threat. More recently, the baton has passed to sociologists and philosophers who seek to study science as a belief system, using a range of techniques shared by anthropologists and social scientists alike. The outcomes of these new analyses have not always coincided with the traditional self-image of scientists. This has been particularly true of the conclusions of so-called 'social constructivists' who claim that science is as much the product of a continuous dialogue between scientists as it is of controlled, isolated experimentation. While such views remained contained within relatively limited intellectual and political groups, little attention was paid to them by the mainstream scientific community. But, over the past few years, their influence has appeared to flourish not only in the academic world - including school-teaching - but also in the wider community, where it no longer appears so heretical to equate 'scientific truth' with 'the truth as seen by scientists'. The backlash has, perhaps, been inevitable' Nor is it surprising that it started in the United States, where 'Science studies' has, despite its intellectual roots in Europe, taken on a more institutionalized role through the growth of university departments. Initially the backlash had a strong and admitted political component. The achievement of Alan Sokal, the physicist at New York University who brought the issue to wide public attention with his celebrated hoax last summer in the journal Social Text, has been to highlight the extent to which the issues transcend simple political ideologies or motivations and reach to the heart of contemporary ideas about science, truth and reality. The debates triggered by Sokal's hoax have revealed to a wider audience that there is indeed some shoddy thinking, not to say blatant misrepresentation of the results of scientific research, to be found under the banners of constructivism and postmodernism. This lack of rigour is wholly at odds not only with the intellectual standards of the natural sciences but also with those of scholarship in the humanities. Some non-scientific writers, for example, have appealed to scientific concepts, ranging from relativity theory to natural evolution, to illustrate or legitimize their ideas with a crassness guaranteed to embarrass or anger most readers of this journal. It is only too easy to pick out isolated statements that lack appreciation of scientific realities, such as the extent to which experimental data provide both a framework for and constraint on debate about their significance. And it is hard to find clear evidence that insights from science studies have had a positive effect on thedevelopment of scientific knowledge itself. But it would be wrong to tar all of science studies with the same dismissive brush, or to perceive them as wholly irrelevant to scientific progress. Many working researchers would accept much of what the constructivists say about the importance of social processes in science, ranging from the influence the design of experiments to the negotiations that take place through the peer-review process. The intellectual world of the scientist is not a clinical, passionless void, but personal and interpersonal feelings. That as often have little impact on what eventually becomes accepted as scientific truth. But, as is implied by those who continually urge journalists to write about the 'human face' of science, it remains an essential ingredient of scientific progress. Increasing public understanding More significantly those who have been developing our knowledge of science from this perspective are playing an increasingly important role in mediating the relationship between science and society. In France, many of those engaged in what others call science studies identify themselves as sociologists of innovation, and often participate actively in the painful process of managing tech change. In both Britain and the United States, such individuals are coming to play a key role in debates about the public perception of science-related risks. Similarly, the results of their research have become an integral part of the intellectual pool to which those seeking to assuage public fears of the new genetics are turning for and guidance. Indeed, one of the ironies of the present debate is that the goal of the so-called constructivists is one that, in principle, many of their critics avidly endorse: the increased public understanding of science. It is in nobody's long-term interests that such understand be uncritical: propagating an idealistic image of science is, in many ways, as dangerous as the purely relativistic image that some (but only some) constructivists seek to impose. In a welcome development, the public debate sparked by Sokal last summer in the United States appears to have ignited a similar conflagration in Western Europe (see below). Equally welcome is the fact that the debate has, perhaps by virtue fascination with embarrassment and ridicule, escaped the confines of relatively isolated corners of the academic world and the left. The stakes on both sides are high. On the one hand, some scientists believe that they are fighting for the intellectual credibility of an enterprise that remains essential for human well-being. On the other, many social scientists argue equally convincingly that only a deep understanding of science as a social (as well as intellectual) process will enable us to strengthen the bridge between the worlds of science and politics that is essential if this well-being is to be achieved. Where public perceptions of science are undermined by slipshod scholarship and misrepresentation, let battle continue. But scientists who reflect at all about the wider significance of work stand to benefit from a sharpened awareness of the genuine insights that science studies can offer. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:13:12 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: [2] Science as a Cultural Construct MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT [PART 2] Methodology applied too widely How did he reach this remarkable conclusion? A due is provided by the methodological tenets of the Edinburgh school's strong programme and, in particular, the requirement of impartiality "with respect to truth and falsity, rationality or irrationality, success or failure"(3). Another Edinburgh rule is not to write "Whig history" historians' jargon for accounts that allow subsequently accepted knowledge to distort the story, or that assume that progress is inevitable. At this point, we wish to note an important distinction: 'science-as-practice' as compared to 'science-as-knowledge, to use Pickering's terms. The border between these topics is neither sharp nor stationary, but there are times when a clear separation is essential. The strong programme defines a sound methodology for the sociology of scientific practice, for it should not prejudice the case against endeavours that ultimately fail but whose validity and significance are still unknown or ambiguous at the time. Pickering and others of the Edinburgh persuasion have, with this methodology, produced useful studies of science-as-practice (for example, ref. 4) and are helping to fill an important gap because historians of modern physics have, until recently (5,6) paid little attention to experiment while exploring theory in great detail. But Pickering's conclusions quoted above, and similar statements by others in the Edinburgh mould, emerge because the strong programme's methodology is applied by them to scientific knowledge itself, and not just to practice. To turn to the Standard Model, its acceptance in the mid-1970s was a revolution in the sense of Thomas Kuhn's 1962 classic Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The 'old' physics was a set of loosely connected and partially ambiguous paradigms: quantum electrodynamics (QED), the firmly established theory of the electromagnetic interaction; the 'S-matrix' theory of collisions between strongly interacting particles (called hadrons, such as the proton); disconnected therefrom, an ill-defined quark model of the hadron spectrum that violated the principle of relativity; and a manifestly inconsistent theory of the weak interaction with vague hints of kinship to electrodynamics. It was not known how to define this 'old' physics unambiguously by a set of consistent equations involving a finite set of parameters accessible to clear-cut measurement. The 'new' physics arose from various sources: experiments that showed that the proton has a granular substructure; the invention of generalizations of Maxwell's electromagnetic theory that offered the first mathematically sound formulations of the weak interaction and incorporated QED; experiments that revealed a new type of weak-interaction phenomenon predicted by the simplest of these electroweak unification schemes; the discovery of the new family of 'charmed' hadrons with the properties called for by that very scheme; and the proposal of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), according to which hadrons are composites of quarks interacting through a field which is also governed by a similar generalization of Maxwell's equations. Initially, only QCD had no direct empirical evidence in its favour. In contrast to the old physics, the new is a dear-cut paradigm -- a firm set of equations that conforms to the requirements of relativity and contains a strictly limited set of unambiguous parameters. Unfortunately, this quite elegant structure, which incorporates not only QED but also atomic and nuclear physics, has been named a 'model' instead of a 'theory'. That the new paradigm was far more constrained and comprehensive was dear from the start: it was widely seen as a congenial representation of reality, whereas the old one was not. Of greater importance, a stream of new experimental results improved the precision of the evidence in support of the new theory, and confirmed several crucial predictions. The most striking came in 1983, before Constructing Quarks went to press, but is barely mentioned in that book: the discovery of the W and Z particles -- according to the theory, the mediators of the weak interaction and cousins of the massless photon, yet predicted to have very specific and gargantuan masses, as confirmed by experiment. The transition from the 'old' to the 'new' physics is covered in Constructing Quarks, much of it very well indeed, but nonetheless with distortions on which the preposterous conclusions hinge. The most important is Pickering's contention that the shift of focus from the copious phenomena amenable to S-matrix theory to the rare processes of the 'new' experimental physics was a cultural bandwagon, because the 'old' physics was already a "congenial representation of reality" It is true that bandwagons tend to plague high-energy physics because so many work on so small a set of phenomena, but this does not prove that in this case people jumped to the wrong conclusion. The S-matrix Anschauang had its own bandwagon for a time, but it could not say anything about the proton's substructure or the weak interaction of hadrons, electrons and neutrinos. There was little ground for hope that another decade of 'old' physics experiments would have led to an understanding of these topics, all of which are encompassed by the Standard Model. Pickering's statement about the irrelevance of twentieth-century science stems in part from a recurring misunderstanding in sociological studies -- that what scientists see as progress often entails abandoning familiar but perplexing phenomena, in this instance the more commonplace phenomena that dominated the 'old' physics supposedly abandoned in favour of more esoteric phenomena in the stampede to the 'new'. But they were not abandoned, they were set aside, as has often been fruitful in physics. Galileo set aside friction. Bohr's demonstration that the hydrogen spectrum holds the key to atomic physics led to a shift of interest towards spectroscopy, but after the development of quantum mechanics the 'abandoned' phenomena (for example, in solids) returned to centre stage. The 'new' particle physics was, in large part, born of the recognition that the 'old' phenomenology was less accessible than that on which the 'new' physics concentrated. This venerable strategy is being vindicated now with lattice QCD, a numerical approach that is yielding the first fundamental understanding of hadronic spectra'. [CONTINUED] **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:13:12 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: [3] Science as a Cultural Construct MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT [PART 3] Science as myth Other insights into the sociology of scientific knowledge can be found in The Golem: What Everyone should know about sciences. We like the title of this book, which was taken from Yiddish mythology, because science is indeed something of an uncontrollable monster created by man. On the other hand, "everyone" cannot assess the book's validity except by resort to common sense. That may suffice, for the authors conclude that "we have shown that scientists at the research front cannot settle their disagreements through better experiments, more knowledge, more advanced theories, or dearer thinking... [but transmute] wildly varying results... into neat and tidy scientific myth. There is nothing wrong with this. The only sin is not knowing it is always thus." The authors cite several case histories in support of this thesis, and here we take those on relativity as examples of this type of argument. The account in The Golem of empirical tests of special relativity is based entirely on the Michelson-Morley experiment, because Einstein's special theory of 1905 is based on the axiom that the speed of light does not depend on the motion of the observer relative to the source. Long before 1905, Michelson and Morley found no effect on the velocity of light from the Earth's motion through the hypothetical ether. In 1925, however, and again in 1933, Dayton Miller announced a positive observation, which contradicts relativity, but was ignored. The authors of The Golem see this as proof that what matters is not the quality an experiment but "what people are ready believe" because "the culture of life in It physics community meant that Miller's results were irrelevant" When the word 'culture' is replaced by 'facts', this sentence is r longer misleading, for in the decade following 1909 half a dozen independent laboratory experiments had confirmed the relativistic relation between velocity at momentum to better than 1 per cent ...; in 1923-24 Compton, Bothe and Geiger experiments confirmed the relativistic conservation laws for momentum and energy; 1926 another type of ether drift experiment designed expressly to check Miller's clad gave a null results (9); and in 1933 pair-creation the most extreme manifestation possible E = mc^2, was discovered. Not one of the facts is mentioned in The Golem. A delectable tale about the culture of science, well recounted in The Golem, is offer by the ambiguous early tests of general relativity, Einstein's 1915 theory of gravitation. But then the authors stop the clock at midcentury, leaving the reader with the clear impression that both special and general relativity stand on an empirical house of cards. With this as backdrop, the account doses follows: "We have no reason to think relativity is anything but the truth. . . but it is a truth which came into being as a result of decisions about how we should live our scientific lives and how we should license our scientific observations; it was a truth brought about an agreement to agree about new thins What 'truth' means here is mysterious. Ihe facts are clear, however, but they cannot found in The Golem: since 1960, a series of observations using technologies undreamt of in 1915 have confirmed Einstein's three original predictions and produced new precision tests verifying general relativity (10) The muddle that can result when practice and knowledge are not distinguished is illustrated by the response of Collins and Pinch (11), the authors of The Golem, to David Mermin's critique of their treatment of relativity' (12). Collins and Pinch write that "in exploring science as a craft, [our] strange sociological approach -- which temporarily sets aside what we all know to be true -- is useful, if uncomfortable', where by 'craft' they refer explicitly to science in the public arena: courtrooms, Chernobyl, and so on. But at issue here is science-as-knowledge in the abstruse case of relativity, not DNA evidence in the 0. J. Simpson trial. Moreover, if relativity is known to be true by all, what precisely is it that this piece of knowledge fails to say about Nature? The interpretation of science exemplified by Constructing Quarks and The Golem has an interesting relation to neighbouring pursuits. Edinburgh is one rather new and small school within the sociology of sciences, which is but a small field within sociology. (13) We do not mean this statement pejoratively: the inventors of quantum mechanics also formed a small school. Furthermore, sociologists who study scientific knowledge do not all adhere to the strong programmed (14) In Kuhn's terminology, the sociology of scientific knowledge as a whole is in a pre-paradigm phase, like mechanics before Newton when there was no consensus on methods, concepts or goals. Again, this is no insult; it took more talent to be a physicist before the Principia than afterwards. Finally, whatever quarrel scientists may have with Edinburgh pales in comparison with the hostilities between Edinburgh and some philosophers of science, a conflict that can make a scientist feel like an Algonquin whose hunting grounds are being fought over by two colonial powers' (15). Another oversimplification The pragmatic physicist, however, finds that the Edinburgh sociologists claiming to be: the bona fide interpreters of scientific knowledge have objectives resembling those of philosophers such as Kuhn. That sociological factors have been important in the development of scientific knowledge was demonstrated by Kuhn, who is recognized as a forebear by the Edinburgh school (16). Both see claims for scientific advances as largely circular arguments because they do not conform to the mythical format in which observation always precedes theory, with logic and rock-solid data always pointing to one, and only one, theory. This impels them to replace 'always' by 'never' in the last sentence, which is yet another oversimplification because the correct word is 'sometimes' Indeed, these sociologists and philosophers thus have a relationship to scientists resembling the one between pure mathematicians and physicists, in that most of the latter are satisfied with a level of rigour unacceptable in pure mathematics. Had that not been so, physics would still be struggling with problems solved generations ago. In terms of this analogy, the Edinburgh position is that of a fictitious mathematician who asserts that the knowledge claimed by physicists is a cultural construct because physicists have a communal agreement to accept standards of mathematical deduction that are patently unsound. Real mathematicians don't make such assertions; they understand that physicists conform to a different but appropriate norm in their practice. [CONTINUED] **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:13:13 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: [4] Science as a Cultural Construct MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT [PART 4] Sociologists as judge Many of the misconceptions in the literature on the sociology of scientific knowledge follow from the strong programme's methodology when applied to science-as-knowledge. The requirement that rationality and irrationality, and the like, be treated symmetrically gives equal credence to contending positions of objectively unequal merit -- the 'old' versus the 'new' physics in Constructing Quarks, and whether cold fusion does or does not exist in The Golem. This leaves only psychoanalysis or social construction as explanations for the scientists' choice. Moreover, the sociologist thinking as a historian (who must not write Whig history), but really acting as the judge of scientific knowledge, assumes the power to stop the clock at an arbitrary point, thereby ignoring subsequent evidence as to whether some bandwagon fell over the differ stayed on track. Those who cannot abide the Whig label should issue periodic updates, as is common in the sciences. Our 1986 paperback edition of Constructing Quarks has no such addendum, even though the empirical support for the Standard Model had strengthened substantially since the first printing. The crucial parameter of the electroweak theory, which must yield the same value when extracted from a host of distinct processes, was found to be 0.25 (+-) 0.05 in l982, followed by 0.223 (+- ) 0.004 (1985) and 0.2236 (+-) 0.0008 (1996). Indeed, the model's resounding success has kindled boredom in many who entered physics for high adventure. Even QCD, whose uncritical and prompt acceptance was justifiably criticized by Pickering, is prospering... Proponents of the Edinburgh school would probably say that this only goes to show how powerfully culture shapes what experimenters measure and theorists calculate, which is half-right -- but, as with other aspects of their position, half-right is wrong. Predictive power, the strongest evidence that the natural sciences have an objective grip on reality, is largely ignored by these commentators. For the question of whether scientific knowledge is contingent on culture, the discovery of phenomena that could not have been foreseen when a theory was invented but which are in accord with that theory are especially germane. There are many examples, of which we choose two here. First, two Centuries after the Principia, Poincare discovered that Newton's equations of motion describe not only the clockwork Universe that had dominated everyone's world view, but also chaotic regimes. A century later, chaotic motion was identified definitively in the Solar System and found to conform to Newton's original equations (17). Second, almost a century after Planck proposed the black-body law that gave birth to quantum theory, that law was found to fit the cosmic background radiation to better than 0.1 per cent. How can such facts be reconciled with the statement that "the science-as-knowledge image of science is so thin that it bears almost no relation to its subject matter"'(18)? Intriguing questions are raised by the complexity of scientific practice, and the Edinburgh school is well-positioned to study theme. But forcing scientific knowledge into the strong programme's doctrinal straitjacket has often produced sophistry, and compromised studies of practice. The Edinburgh school will only arrive at a more insightful perspective on scientific knowledge if it revisits its underlying assumptions, a difficult task that Kuhn did not shy away from when he found that his reflections had failed to reach convincing condusions (20). ============ Kurt Gottfried is in the Laboratory of Nuclear Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA; Kenneth G. Wilson is in the Smith Laboratory, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA. Acknowledgements. We thank Peter Galison, Sorel Gottfried, Henry Kendall, David Mermin, Sam Schweber, George Smith and Scott Tremaine for advice and comments. 1. Pickering A. Constructing Quarks A Sociological History of Particle Physics (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984). 2. Norton I D Synthese 99, 3 (1994). 3. Bloor D Knowledge and Social Imagery, 2nd edn (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991). 4. Pinch T. Confronting Nature The Sociology of Solar- Neutrino Detection (Reidel Dordrecht, 1986). 5. Franklin A The Neglect of Experiment (Cambridge Univ Press, 1986). 6. Galison P. How Experiments End ( Univ. of Chicago Press, 1987). 7 Davies C. T. H. et al. Phys. Lett. 345, 42, (1995). 8. Collins H. & Pinch T. The Golem (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993). 9. Chase C. T. Phys. Rev. 28, 378 ( 1926). 10. Will, C . Science 250, 770 (1990). 11. Collins. H. & Pinch T., Physics Today p. 94. (January 1997). 12. Mermin N.D. Physics Today March p. Il. (1996). 13. Zuckerman H. in Handbook of Sociolology (ed Smelset N. J.) 511-574 (Sage Newbury Park, California 1988). 14. Shapin, S. Annu Rev. Sociol 21, 289-321(1995). I5. Symposium on Deconstructing Quarks Soc Stud Sci. 20, No. 4 (1990). 16. Barnes B. Bloor D. & Henry J.. Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis (Univ of Chicago Press 1996). 17. Wisdom J. Icarus 63, 272 (1985). 18. Pickering A. So Stud Sci. 20, 685, (1990). I9. Pickering A. The Mangle of Practice (Univ. of Chicago Press 1995). 20. Kuhn T. S. The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science (Dept of the History of Science, Harvard Univ., 1992). 21. Phys. Rev. D 54, No. 1, p. 80 (1996). **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:13:12 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: [1] Science as a Cultural Construct MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT [PART 1] Gottfried, Kurt and Wilson, Kenneth G. "Science as a Cultural Construct," Nature 386 (10 April 1997), pp. 545-547. Scientific knowledge is a communal belief system with a dubious grip on reality, according to a widely quoted school of sociologists. But they ignore crucial evidence that contradicts this allegation. The thesis that scientific knowledge is a cultural construct -- that, according to Andrew Pickering, "there is no obligation upon anyone framing a view of the world to take account of what 20th century science has to say" -- is gaining currency. The reaction of scientists to this view of their work received little attention until news of Alan Sokal's notorious hoax article in the journal Social Text hit the front page of The New York Times on 18 May last year. But Sokal's victims are a fringe group, ill-informed about science. We wish to respond to a more sophisticated and troubling view of scientific knowledge as put forward by what we will, for brevity, call the 'Edinburgh' school of sociology. The 'strong-programme' Edinburgh sociologists contend that the knowledge produced by the natural sciences is a cultural construct essentially equivalent in its attributes to the knowledge produced by less tractable pursuits in which reproducible phenomena under carefully controlled conditions either do not exist or are of little interest. In making this case, its proponents dismiss or ignore a large body of concrete evidence that contradicts this contention. No view of the world is sound if it ignores the steadily improving predictions of twentieth century science. An aphorism of Einstein's is a good introduction to this topic: "the scientist... must appear to the systematic epistemologist as an unscrupulous opportunist" Anyone fortunate enough to have been involved in the chaotic outbreak of a scientific revolution will agree. The statement has turned out to have a deeper meaning, however. Scientists eventually settle on one theory on the basis of imperfect data, whereas logicians have shown that a finite body of data cannot uniquely determine a single theory. Among scientists this rarely causes insomnia, but it has tormented many a philosopher (see, for example, ref 2). In 'cultural construction', the Edinburgh school claims to have found the missing epistemological link. The Edinburgh school does not see itself as opposing science, or questioning the integrity of scientists. But it contends that scientific knowledge is only a communal belief system with a dubious grip on reality, and it is this claim that we address from our perspective as physicists. Einstein's aphorism is also the opening sentence of Pickering's book Constructing Quarks, which analyses the birth of the Standard Model of particle physics. Published over a decade ago, it remains the most instructive, ambitious and outrageous Edinburgh study of modern physics. Pickering displays a solid command of the developments that led to the Standard Model. Naturally, he focuses on cultural factors of which scientists are often unaware, and provides many valid insights into their significance. But consider the conclusion Pickering drew: "The quark-gauge theory picture of elementary particles should be seen as a culturally specific product... a communally congenial representation of reality. [G]iven [its] cultural resources, only singular incompetence could have prevented the high energy physics community producing an understandable version of reality at any point in [its] history. . . [T] he preponderance of mathematics in particle physicists' account of reality is no more hard to understand than the fondness of ethnic groups for their native language." [CONTINUED] **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:06:19 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: The Sokal Affair MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Dickson, David. "The 'Sokal Affair' Takes Transatlantic Turn," Nature 385 (30 January 1997), p. 381. [LONDON] A dispute that has been simmering since last summer in the United States over the validity of 'postmodernist' idea,, about the nature of scientific knowledge has finally reached the point where many such ideas originated - the banks of the river Seine in Paris. Over the past month, the newspaper Le Monde has been running a series of articles triggered by an account of the widely publicized hoax perpetrated last year by Alan Sokal, a theoretical physicist at New York University, on the journal Social Text. The hoax took the form of an article submitted to and accepted by the journal. It purported to demonstrate the social and political origins of ideas in quantum mechanics - but in fact was fabricated out of miscellaneous (but accurate) quotations from prominent postmodern writers and dubious statements of scientific 'fact'. Sokal's article has added fuel to a conflict that has been growing in recent years between scientists who argue that science is based on empirical fact, and sociologists of science who argue that much of scientific knowledge is 'constructed' out of debates between researchers (see, for example, Nature 375,439; 1995). In the United States, the hoax article and its implications - namely that sociologists of science have little regard for empirical truth and are more interested in intellectual fashions - has set off a wide debate on university campuses. "The reaction has been a factor of ten bigger than I expected," says Sokal. "And it is not letting up." Until now, the response in Europe has been relatively muted, even though many of the writers quoted tend to be European, usually either British or French. The main reaction has been a defence of European academics whose work and US colleagues have come under attack. Positions, postmadernism and politics. Last October, for example, many of those attending a joint meeting of the US-based Society for Social Studies in Science and the European Association for Studies of Science and Technology, held in Bielefeld in Germany, signed a petition protesting that some of the recent US criticism of work by sociologists of science could, in Europe, be regarded as potentially defamatory. But the recent series of articles in Le Monde, widely regarded as the main public forum for both intellectual and political debate in France, as well as coverage in French publications Liberation and Le Nouvel Observateur, indicate that the issue is now hotting up in Europe too. Further evidence comes from the fact that an article by Paul Boghassian, a philosopher also at New York University, attacking postmodernist views of science, which appeared in the Times Literary Supplement in December, has already been published in Die Zeit, one of Germany's leading newspapers. One of Sokal's strongest supporters is Jean Bricmont,a theoretical physicist at the University of Louvain in Belgium. He is writing a book with Sokal on what both argue is the frequent misuse of scientific concepts by prominent - and mainly French intellectual figures ranging from the psychoanalyst Lacan to Bruno Latour, an influential sociologist of science. When is a fact is not fact? Bricmont wrote in his contribution to the debate in Le Monde that such allusions tended to be "at best totally arbitrary and at worse erroneous". He says he is keen to see a reinstatement of ideas about science based on empiricism and the analytical philosophy of individuals such as the mathematician Bertrand Russell, rather than those of German idealists such as the philosopher Martin Heidegger. He says he is concerned at a growing tendency to see ideas in socially relative terms, criticizing, for example, official guidelines on epistemology used by highschool teachers in Belgium for stating that a fact is not an empirical truth, but "something that everyone agrees upon". Like Sokal, Bricmont says that he has been surprised by the level of interest he has stirred up. "I seem to have put my finger on something bigger than I realized," he says. But some of those under attack, having initially held back from the fray on the grounds that the debate was primarily based on issues internal to the United States, are now fighting back, arguing that it is their critics who have an idealistic - and increasingly outdated - vision of science and its role in contempo- rary culture. Last week, for example, Latour, who teaches the sociology of innovation at the Ecole Supericure des Mines in Paris, one of France's so-called 'grandes ecoles, complained in Le Monde that he and fellow sociologists were being treated as "drug peddlers" who were corrupting the minds of American youth. In fact, says Latour, one of his main concerns has been to demonstrate how modern society - as reflected in the public response to concerns about bovine spongiform encephalopathy ('mad cow disease') is transforming itself from a culture "based on Science, with a capital S", to one based on research more broadly, including the social sciences. He writes: 'In place of an autonomous and detached science, whose absolute knowledge allows us to extinguish the fires of political passions and subjectivity, we are entering a new era in which scientific controversy becomes part of political controversy. The latest salvo in the French debate comes from Sokal himself. In a response due to be published this week, Sokal repeats his claim that every scientist is aware that, although scientific knowledge is always partial and subject to revision, "that does not prevent it from being objective." Sokal eschews charges of chauvinism, saying that his target is not as some have suggested - French intellectuals as such, but "certain intellectuals who happen to live in France." He also dismisses the criticism that his concern about the growing influence of group of 'constructivist' ideas about science reflects worries about a decline in both funding for physics and the social status with the end of the Cold War. Differences in culture and education But Latour, too, who makes both claims, has his supporters - and anot just in France. Simon Shaffer, a lecturer in istory and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge, points to the irony that Latour and others are trying to develop the public understanding of science that, in other contexts, Sokal and others argue is essential if they are to retain respect. Shaffer also points to the different cultural environments, partly a product of different educational traditions, in which French and American scientists operate. "In France, everyone believes that the sciences are self-validating, and that the social science refer to a world that exists outside themselves," he says. In contrast, he argues, the empircism that tends to dominate the Anglo-American approach to science means that "no one in the scientific community sees themselves as an epistemologist or a constructivist." With Europe facing important issues concerning the relationship between science and politics - ranging from the likely science policy of the British Labour party if it wins the imminent general election, to the squeeze by Germany on international spending on particle physics - the public debate set alight by Sokal appears unlikely to die down rapidly. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 10:06:19 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Macilwain, Colin. "Campuses Ring To A Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason," Nature 387 (22 May 1997), pp. 331-333. Universities across the United States are slowly awakening to a rumbling debate about the nature of scientific practice and knowledge, about who is qualified to pronounce on either -- and about the motivation of those who do so. You can call the argument the Science Wars, as some sociologists (and journalists) like to do. Or you can frame it in terms of the "flight from science and reason" that some scientists claim they can detect as the century draws to a close. You can see it as a fundamental clash in perspectives between the sciences and the humanities -- or as a petty squabble between two groups of academics, whose musings have little relevance to the outside world. But for some of those directly involved, particularly in disciplines such as the history and the sociology of science, the stakes are becoming very high indeed, with careers as well as academic credibility on the line .... At the same time, for many of those who have started to follow the debate closely, the bitterness of some of the discussion has been counterbalanced by the sweet discovery that there is intellectual life on the other side of the still-yawning chasm between the two cultures, the sciences and the humanities, which appear to have grown no closer to each other since C. P. Snow identified the problem of their separateness 40 years ago. Snow found his division between science and the arts and classics. Now, the most notable divide lies between science and the social sciences, whose size and importance in the academic community have exploded since Snow's assessment in the late 1950s. "A lot of the shouting that's gone on has been most unfortunate," says Trevor Pinch, of the science studies department at Cornell University, New York, of the recent debate, in which his own work has been one of the main targets of criticism. "But I see this as a great opportunity to address issues that need to be addressed and haven't been." Pinch and Harry Collins of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom are the co-authors of The Golem: What Everyone Should Know about Science (Cambridge University Press, 1993), an influential text on the sociology of science. The book sets out to explain how science works in practice, and to discuss how much faith the public should place in it. A 'constructive dialogue' The Golem has stirred considerable controversy among scientists, especially physicists. For example, the two authors have engaged in a lengthy and lively exchange of views with physicists in the pages of Physics Today, the journal of the American Physical Society. Pinch sees one of the main issues at stake as being whether non-scientists, such as himself and others associated with the so-called 'Edinburgh school' ..., can be accepted as making a valid intellectual contribution to contemporary scholarship in their attempts to study science and pose questions about how it works. He believes he has achieved a constructive dialogue with scientists critical of sociological studies of science, such as Kurt Gottfried and Kenneth G. Wilson (see Nature 386, 545-547; 1997), and David Mermin, a crystallographer at Cornell University, New York, and Physics Today columnist. Gotttried and Mermin are due to join Pinch and Collins at a meeting in Southampton to discuss their differences. The physicist Steven Weinberg, a prominent critic of science studies, will also attend. The serious and measured tone of the debate in Physics Today and elsewhere has raised hopes in the 'science studies' community that it may, in fact, represent the coming of age of their discipline. "The whole timbre of the discussion has become useful and productive," says Collins. But there is little prospect of much mutual respect or understanding between social scientists and the more outspoken group of scientists who kicked off the current debate three years ago, and whose fiery rhetoric has kept it on the boil since. Two prominent members of this latter group are Paul Gross, a former director of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Paul Levitt, professor of mathematics at Rutgers University in New Jersey. The two teamed up to publish a book, Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and its Quarrels with Science (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1994), which set the debate in motion. Gross and Levitt are uncompromising with critics of science. They accuse social scientists of orchestrating an attack on science and reason at many levels not only through science -- studies, but through the influence of feminism, ethnocentrism, alternative medicine and other 'post-modernist' influences. "We believe that there is in the West, among professors and others who are paid, in principle, to think and teach, a new and systematic flight from science and reason," Gross declared at a meeting in 1995 at the New York Academy of Sciences. He added for good measure that this flight had "brought with it a truculent defence in the name of 'democracy' of New Age and traditional sophistry and charlatanism" (see Nature 375, 439; 1997). Such rhetoric may not have done much to bridge the divide between the two cultures. But it certainly convinced some scientists that the best way to defend science was to attack its critics. One such was Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University. Inspired, he says, by Gross and Levitt, Sokal raised the ante of the debate with a now-celebrated hoax, in which he planted a ludicrous article about quantum theory in Social Text, a sociology journal. Defending the hoax later in the New York Review of Books, Weinberg said Sokal had performed "a great service" by raising the profile of the debate. "We will need to confirm and strengthen the vision of a rationally understandable world if we are to protect ourselves from the irrational tendencies that still beset humanity," he thundered. But the Sokal hoax has been decried by many social scientists as going beyond the bounds of fair play. "I don't think discussion is furthered by poking fun at people," says one sociologist. Collins makes a broader comment about the beginnings of the debate. "In the early days, it was as if we were entering this native village, and all the guard dogs came out and started biting our ankles," he says. "It was a mistake to try to have a discussion with the guard dogs." But Sokal's activities have undoubtedly helped to broaden the issue, which has even found its way into the columns of Newsweek magazine. Now, at meetings across the United States, an increasing number of academics are joining in. Earlier this year at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, for example, more than 200 staff and students showed up to hear Sokal defend his unconventional tactic. "I didn't have to invent anything" to produce the hoax, Sokal explains. "I simply quoted the post-modernist masters and showered them with praise." He admits that the success of the hoax proves nothing, except that one journal should more carefully review what it publishes. But Sokal has used the notoriety of the hoax to build a broader case against what he brands "the sloppy thinking and glib relativism that have become prevalent in many parts of science studies" One of the sociologists attacked by Sokal and Gross, Steve Fuller, professor of sociology at the University of Durham in the United Kingdom, went to the Kansas meeting to defend science studies. "I won't deny that some people are in this to bash science -- but only a very few," says Fuller. Fuller argues that the idea of 'progress' in science and technology is a passing fad, which arose with the Enlightenment and is now diminishing as society realises that science and technology will not solve the problems that people used to hope that they would. Converging on truth This is one of the points at which dialogue between science and its critics breaks down. Most scientists do indeed believe that they are making absolute progress towards understanding nature. They think that the scientific method renders their knowledge quite distinct from other bodies of knowledge -- such as the study of history, for example -- where absolute truth is elusive, and the characters of the people involved and their chosen ways of working clearly play a major role in the direction ideas take. Adrian Melott, a physicist at the University of Kansas, points out that scientists see the most important form of progress as being that of "convergence on the truth" He told Fuller: "You seem to view that as a defunct concept. I don't buy that. It is clear that we understand natural reality better than our predecessors did." Sokal joined in on the attack: "Do you think that physics has made any progress in the last 300 years?" Fuller seemed to stall. "From our standpoint, yes; but could you convince these people [of Galileo's era] that you had advanced on what they'd done?" For most of the scientists in the room, the answer was obviously "yes" But if the case for scientific progress remains strong, its presentation -- through Gross, Levitt and Sokal in particular -- has taken a curious form. For a start, as one scientist at the Kansas meeting observed, it is odd that, if it is science that is under attack, nearly all the aggressive language in the debate comes from the scientists' side. This has led some observers to link the debate with cuts in federal funding for science, and especially for physics. "The sciences have different goals from the humanities," says Barry Shank of the American studies department at Kansas University. "That is not the problem. The problem is that funds are dwindling, and that has produced tension." Noticing that much of the criticism of science studies has come from physicists, some have drawn a very sociological conclusion that a weakened physics community has been letting off some of its frustration by lashing out at its perceived enemies in the social sciences. Universities at stake But such arguments irritate Gross, a biologist, who generously suggests that physicists and mathematicians are "maybe more intellectually adventurous" than life scientists. "Is it reasonable to think that people like Weinberg started to make a fuss about this because he was getting his funding cut? It's ridiculous," says Gross. Gross attributes the timing of the argument to an entirely different factor -- the collapse of radicalism on university campuses, and the associated "deep disappointment of intellectuals in the politics they have practised" He believes that a tide of relativism, which holds that no idea is more 'truthful' than any other, is filling the gap left behind. Although their arguments can often sound conservative, Gross says he used to be a leftist, and both Levitt and Sokal still are. So why should busy researchers concern themselves with what might appear to be a minor tiff on the fragmented intellectual left? The view that unitesll the protagonists in this debate is one unfashionable in modern America -- namely, that intellectuals matter. "University life has a powerful and direct influence on the way people think," says Gross. For him, after 40 years in the academic world, most recently as provost of the University of Virginia, the danger lies in "rapid growth of socio-political nonsense" on campuses which, he fears, will permeate the rest of society. Those that Gross criticizes in the social sciences also want to ensure that intellectuals develop an accurate and truthful understanding of the world to convey to the rest of society. But for these social scientists, it is the way that science is practiced and portrayed, as much as the results of experiments, that are in need of exposition. In a world that depends as never before on science, the conflict strikes at the heart of arguments about the role of scholarship in modern society. Battles of this type are seldom short, and often bloody. No one pretends this one is over yet. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 10:45:38 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: Announcement: Charles G. Gross book Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" The following is a book which readers of this list might find of interest. For more information please visit http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/BICPHF97 Brain, Vision, Memory Tales in the History of Neuroscience Charles G. Gross In these stories, which describe the growth of knowledge about the brain from the early Egyptians to the present time, Charles G. Gross attempts to answer the question of how the discipline of neuroscience evolved into its modern incarnation through the twists and turns of history. The first essay tells the story of the visual cortex, from the first written mention of the brain by the Egyptians, to the philosophical and physiological studies by the Greeks, to the Dark Ages and the Renaissance, and finally, to the modern work of Hubel and Wiesel. The second essay focuses on Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical work on the brain and the eye: was Leonardo drawing the body observed, the body remembered, the body read about, or his own dissections? The third essay derives from the question of whether there can be a solely theoretical biology or biologist; it highlights the work of Emanuel Swedenborg, the eighteenth-century Swedish mystic who was two hundred years ahead of his time. The fourth essay entails a mystery: how did the largely ignored brain structure called the "hippocampus minor" come to be, and why was it so important in the controversies that surrounded Darwin's theories? The final essay describes the discovery of the visual functions of the temporal and parietal lobes. The author traces both developments to nineteenth-century observations of the effect of temporal and parietal lesions in monkeys--observations that were forgotten and subsequently rediscovered. Charles G. Gross is Professor of Psychology, Program in Neuroscience, Princeton University. A Bradford Book April 1998 $32.50 7 x 9, 280 pp., 50 illus. ISBN 0-262-07186-X __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk, 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837 Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 12:00:06 +0200 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Stephen P. Rogers" Subject: [Automatic Reply] Re: Announcement: Charles G. Gross book In-Reply-To: <199804290955.LAA21524@tcbru22.cec.be> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Thanks for your message. I'll reply to it on Thursday 30 April. Regards, Steve ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 12:22:00 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: A must read MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT For your amusement ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > The story behind the letter below is that there is this nutball in > Newport, VT named Scott Williams who digs things out of his back yard > and sends the stuff he finds to the Smithsonian Institute, labeling > them with scientific names, insisting that they are actual archaeological finds. This guy really exists and does this in his spare time! Anyway...here's the actual response from the Smithsonian Institution. > > Bear this in mind next time you think you are challenged in your duty > to respond to a difficult situation in writing. > ____________________________________________________ > > > Smithsonian Institute > 207 Pennsylvania Avenue > Washington, DC 20078 > > Dear Mr. Williams: > > Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled 93211-D, layer seven, next to the clothesline post...Hominid skull." > > We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, > and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it > represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston > County two million years ago. > > Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie > doll, of the variety that one of our staff, who has small children, > believes to be "Malibu Barbie." > > It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the > analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those > of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe > to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which > might have tipped you off to its modern origin: > > 1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are > typically fossilized bone. > > 2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic > centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified > proto-homonids. > > 3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent > with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous > man-eating Pliocene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during > that time. > > This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses > you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the > evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into > too much detail, let us say that: > > A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has > chewed on. > B. Clams don't have teeth. > > It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your > request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to > the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly > due to carbon-dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent > geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were > produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon-dating is likely to produce > wildly inaccurate results. > > Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National > Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning > your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiff-arino. > > Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance > of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the > species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like > it might be Latin. > > However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating > specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a Hominid fossil, > it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of > work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know > that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for > the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the > Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will > happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in > your Newport back yard. > > We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you > proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the > Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing > you expand on your theories surrounding the trans-positating > fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench. > > Yours in Science, > > Harvey Rowe > Chief Curator- Antiquities **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 16:45:08 +0000 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Robert Maxwell Young Subject: Paper on 'Sexuality and the Internet' Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I have placed the following text at my web site: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/papers/pap108.html 'Sexuality and the Internet' 59K I was asked to give a talk in the Public Lecture Series of the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield, where I teach. I am doing research for a book on sexuality and object relations and am a so interested in the internet. When I got down to thinking about the talk I was struck by the disjunction between net sexuality, which iis largely exploitative and onanistic, and the intimacy which occurs in email letters and forums. I also discuss IRC, MUDs and MOOs - ways of being in the same space as others and of experimenting with identity, gender and sexuality (as considered in Sherry Turkle's recent book, _Life on the Screen_). All of these matters are considered in terms of psychoanalytic object relations theory. There are also some remarks about the role of the web in the present and future. Comments welcome Bob Young __________________________________________ In making a personal reply, please put in Subject line: Message for Bob Young Robert Maxwell Young: robert@rmy1.demon.co.uk or r.m.young@sheffield.ac.uk, 26 Freegrove Rd., London N7 9RQ, Eng. tel.+44 171 607 8306 fax.+44 171 609 4837 Professor of Psychotherapy and Psychoanalytic Studies, Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, University of Sheffield. Home page and writings: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/psysc/staff/rmyoung/index.html Process Press publications: http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/process_press/index.html 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' - Camus ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 11:48:27 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Re: A must read X-To: Ian Pitchford In-Reply-To: <199804291127.HAA03347@mail-relay3.idt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII "Paleolithic Barbie" has been making the rounds on the Net for several years now. Alas, it is probably a piece of fictional whimsy--would that it were true! One giveaway is the term "Smithsonian Institute" in the heading--it is, of course, "Smithsonian Institution." Still, it might be useful to save for April 1, 1999. It's more plausible than this year's model, which was a make-believe AP story announcing the rejection of the King James Bible by various conservative/Fundamentalist groups owing to the sexual tastes of James I and VI. Norm Levit On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, Ian Pitchford wrote: > For your amusement > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > > > The story behind the letter below is that there is this nutball in > > Newport, VT named Scott Williams who digs things out of his back yard > > and sends the stuff he finds to the Smithsonian Institute, labeling > > them with scientific names, insisting that they are actual archaeological > finds. This guy really exists and does this in his spare time! > Anyway...here's the actual response from the Smithsonian Institution. > > > > Bear this in mind next time you think you are challenged in your duty > > to respond to a difficult situation in writing. > > ____________________________________________________ > > > > > > Smithsonian Institute > > 207 Pennsylvania Avenue > > Washington, DC 20078 > > > > Dear Mr. Williams: > > > > Thank you for your latest submission to the Institute, labeled 93211-D, > layer seven, next to the clothesline post...Hominid skull." > > > > We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, > > and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it > > represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early Man in Charleston > > County two million years ago. > > > > Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie > > doll, of the variety that one of our staff, who has small children, > > believes to be "Malibu Barbie." > > > > It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the > > analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those > > of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe > > to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel > that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which > > might have tipped you off to its modern origin: > > > > 1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are > > typically fossilized bone. > > > > 2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic > > centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified > > proto-homonids. > > > > 3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent > > with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous > > man-eating Pliocene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during > > that time. > > > > This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses > > you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the > > evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into > > too much detail, let us say that: > > > > A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has > > chewed on. > > > B. Clams don't have teeth. > > > > It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your > > request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to > > the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly > > due to carbon-dating's notorious inaccuracy in fossils of recent > > geologic record. To the best of our knowledge, no Barbie dolls were > > produced prior to 1956 AD, and carbon-dating is likely to produce > > wildly inaccurate results. > > > > Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National > > Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning > > your specimen the scientific name Australopithecus spiff-arino. > > > > Speaking personally, I, for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance > > of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the > > species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like > > it might be Latin. > > > > However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating > > specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a Hominid fossil, > > it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of > > work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know > > that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for > > the display of the specimens you have previously submitted to the > > Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will > > happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in > > your Newport back yard. > > > > We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you > > proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the > > Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing > > you expand on your theories surrounding the trans-positating > > fillifitation of ferrous ions in a structural matrix that makes the > excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered > take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman > automotive crescent wrench. > > > > Yours in Science, > > > > Harvey Rowe > > Chief Curator- Antiquities > > **************************************************************** > Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com > Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology > Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies > University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent > SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. > Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 > **************************************************************** > Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ > Online Dictionary of Mental Health > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ > InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet > http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html > **************************************************************** > ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 11:26:08 -0600 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Dewey Dykstra, Jr." Subject: Re: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason In-Reply-To: <199804280924.DAA10056@bsumail.idbsu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Macilwain, Colin. "Campuses Ring To A Stormy Clash Over Truth >and Reason," Nature 387 (22 May 1997), pp. 331-333. > > But if the case for scientific progress remains strong, its >presentation -- through Gross, Levitt and Sokal in particular -- has >taken a curious form. For a start, as one scientist at the Kansas >meeting observed, it is odd that, if it is science that is under >attack, nearly all the aggressive language in the debate comes from >the scientists' side. > This has led some observers to link the debate with cuts in >federal funding for science, and especially for physics. "The >sciences have different goals from the humanities," says Barry >Shank of the American studies department at Kansas University. >"That is not the problem. The problem is that funds are >dwindling, and that has produced tension." > Noticing that much of the criticism of science studies has >come from physicists, some have drawn a very sociological >conclusion that a weakened physics community has been letting off some >of its frustration by lashing out at its perceived enemies in the >social sciences. A short comment on this article submitted by Ian Pitchford... You will notice from my 'signature' that I am a physicist, but I do not defend the actions of my colleagues in this debate. They are responsible for their own actions. What I would like to point out is that this 'battle of the titans,' so to speak, at Kansas and in the pages of numerous journals is underwhelming as an intellectual exercise regardless of the flows of testosterone generated in the process. I see insufficient attention to what might be meant as "progress" or how this "progress" might be related to something called "truth." Simple history of physics sheds light on this and the fact that the physicists have argued the way they have in this debate leaves them open to the obvious, even easy, criticism which Crichton launches at scientists in his book, The Lost World. (Read the book. It was much better than the movie.) Here is Crichton's passage: "[Ian] Malcolm had long been impatient with the arrogance of his scientific colleagues. They maintained that arrogance, he knew, by resolutely ignoring the history of science as a way of thought. Scientists pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. No episode of science history proved it better than the way dinosaurs had been portrayed over the decades." This is just as apt in physics as it is in paleontology. The history of ideas in every topic of physics should only justify great humility with respect to our notions of the nature of the physical world. A look at the sequence of ideas in any topic seems only to suggest that we cannot predict what the next new explanation of that phenomenon will be. How can this be convergence or some sort of asymptotic approach to "truth" unless "truth" is merely a correspondence between the results of calculations and measurements. Not every physicist sees "convergence on the truth" as an active tenet in their work. In reference to the specific paragraphs reproduced above, I would have to say that the issue of funding is merely a symptom of a far deeper factor which is producing the tension. Another symptom is the appearance of unwillingness to critically examine what they do on the part of the scientists. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105 Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775 Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330 Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu 1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper "Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld, 1938. "Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence." --E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958. "Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in There Are No Electrons, 1991. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 16:35:09 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Re: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason In-Reply-To: <199804291728.NAA27163@mail-relay3.idt.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Wed, 29 Apr 1998, Dewey Dykstra, Jr. wrote: First, as to Macilwain > >Macilwain, Colin. "Campuses Ring To A Stormy Clash Over Truth > >and Reason," Nature 387 (22 May 1997), pp. 331-333. > > > > But if the case for scientific progress remains strong, its > >presentation -- through Gross, Levitt and Sokal in particular -- has > >taken a curious form. For a start, as one scientist at the Kansas > >meeting observed, it is odd that, if it is science that is under > >attack, nearly all the aggressive language in the debate comes from > >the scientists' side. This is unmitigated rot--of the sort, be it added, that wouldn't have made it into the pages of "Nature" under the Maddox regime. One needs only look at the nasty, rather slanderous things that have been said about science in, e.g., Latour, Harding, Haraway--said, moreover, without any more hard evidence to back them up than the authors' supreme self--righteousness, and to wild applause from many in the humanities and social "science" community--to realize that "agressive language" has been part of the game since long before any scientist even heard of the "science wars." > > This has led some observers to link the debate with cuts in > >federal funding for science, and especially for physics. "The > >sciences have different goals from the humanities," says Barry > >Shank of the American studies department at Kansas University. > >"That is not the problem. The problem is that funds are > >dwindling, and that has produced tension." Nope. As a founding member of the legion of "science warriors" from over on the science side, I can categorically assure you that considerations of funding had little--from my point of view, virtually no--role in triggering our various counterblasts. Funding has been a problem these past few years, but the source of the problem, largely, is the Republican Party, which has little use for the scholarship of "science studies," good or bad. (Unless someone can convince me that Newt Gingrich reads Sandra Harding!) > > Noticing that much of the criticism of science studies has > >come from physicists, some have drawn a very sociological > >conclusion that a weakened physics community has been letting off some > >of its frustration by lashing out at its perceived enemies in the > >social sciences. > > A short comment on this article submitted by Ian Pitchford... > > You will notice from my 'signature' that I am a physicist, but I do not > defend the actions of my colleagues in this debate. They are responsible > for their own actions. What I would like to point out is that this 'battle > of the titans,' so to speak, at Kansas and in the pages of numerous > journals is underwhelming as an intellectual exercise regardless of the > flows of testosterone generated in the process. > > I see insufficient attention to what might be meant as "progress" or how > this "progress" might be related to something called "truth." Simple > history of physics sheds light on this and the fact that the physicists > have argued the way they have in this debate leaves them open to the > obvious, even easy, criticism which Crichton launches at scientists in his > book, The Lost World. (Read the book. It was much better than the movie.) > Here is Crichton's passage: > > "[Ian] Malcolm had long been impatient with the arrogance of his > scientific colleagues. They maintained that arrogance, he knew, by > resolutely ignoring the history of science as a way of thought. Scientists > pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors of the past were > now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course their forebears had > believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. They had been wrong > then. And modern scientists were wrong now. No episode of science history > proved it better than the way dinosaurs had been portrayed over the > decades." I can give you reasonably good assurance that the scientist-science-warriors are pretty good historians--and a damn sight better than some of the ostensible "historians" among the oppostion. For one thing, you might want to compare the credentials of the sci-stud crew with those of Gerald Holton, for example. As to uncritical, present-minded worship of contemporary scientists--especially physicists!!: I recommend a reading of Shelly Goldstein's paper "Quantum Philosopy: The Flight from Reason in Science." (Also, by the way, Goldstein's 2-part series on QM Without Observers in the current "Physics Today." > > This is just as apt in physics as it is in paleontology. The history of > ideas in every topic of physics should only justify great humility with > respect to our notions of the nature of the physical world. A look at the > sequence of ideas in any topic seems only to suggest that we cannot predict > what the next new explanation of that phenomenon will be. How can this be > convergence or some sort of asymptotic approach to "truth" unless "truth" > is merely a correspondence between the results of calculations and > measurements. Not every physicist sees "convergence on the truth" as an > active tenet in their work. > > In reference to the specific paragraphs reproduced above, I would have to > say that the issue of funding is merely a symptom of a far deeper factor > which is producing the tension. Another symptom is the appearance of > unwillingness to critically examine what they do on the part of the > scientists. > Disdain for nonsense is not equivalent to refusal of critical self-examination; indeed, it is a pre-condition. Norm Levitt ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 18:10:52 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dewey Dykstra, Jr. wrote: [snip] > A short comment on this article submitted by Ian Pitchford... [snip] > I see insufficient attention to what might be meant as "progress" or how > this "progress" might be related to something called "truth." Simple > history of physics sheds light on this and the fact that the physicists > have argued the way they have in this debate leaves them open to the > obvious, even easy, criticism which Crichton launches at scientists in his > book, The Lost World. (Read the book. It was much better than the movie.) > Here is Crichton's passage: > > "[Ian] Malcolm had long been impatient with the arrogance of his > scientific colleagues. They maintained that arrogance, he knew, by > resolutely ignoring the history of science as a way of thought. Scientists > pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors of the past were > now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course their forebears had > believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. They had been wrong > then. And modern scientists were wrong now. [snip] They were wrong then and modern scientists are wrong now. True. In addition, however: They were right then and modern scientists are right now. I believe it was Merleau-ponty who beautifully said: "man is always in the truth". Look at what those old scientists did, "hermeneutically" (i.e., "contextually"), and you will see that they were not simply asserting "X" when their eyes showed them "not-X". I believe it is correct to say that the decision between Tycho's astronomy and the heliocentric alternative was did not weigh convincingly on the side of the latter until the observation of stellar parallax in the 18th (or was it the 19th?) century. Think what a tremendous *advance* ptolemaic astronomy was over the non-mathematical/non-empirical systems that came before (and, yes, they too had their contextual rationality). Hegel also said it: To show that an assertion is false is not just a negative determination, but also a positive contribution to the progress of knowledge, since, in showing the original assertion is false, one has also shown a whole range of things to be true (Hegel called it: "determinate negation"). Hypothesis: The sociology of knowledge (which I should imagine "science studies" *should* be a part of...) is not *anti-scientific*, but rather seeks to determine more clearly exactly what science is, and what its achievements really mean. As such, it is genuinely scientific [a self-critical, disciplined pursuit of truth] (albeit not quantitative/nomological/etc.). \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 09:48:05 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: Physicists seek defintion of "science" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Macilwain, C. (1998). Physicists seek definition of "science". Nature, 392 (30 April, 1998): 849. [WASHINGTON] The governing council of the American Physical Society (APS) has rejected the first draft of a statement defining science for the public, which the society's public affairs panel has been preparing for three years. According to an official familiar with the discussion, some members were concerned by a proposed reference to "other approaches" to understanding nature. Others are said to have been worried about public misunderstanding of the statement's references to "falsifiability". The authors of the draft 200-word statement have been asked to confer with scientific societies and other interested parties before coming back with a new version later this year. The case for such a statement has been recently confirmed by opinion polls showing that public belief in forms of pseudoscience - such as faith healing and astrology - is growing in the United States. But the rejection of the draft, although not unusual for such a policy statement, illustrates the difficulties that scientists face in trying to draw a recognizable line between their own work and pseudoscience. The statement, entitled "What is Science?", defines science as "a disciplined quest to understand nature in all its aspects" and explains that it demands both "open and complete exchange of ideas and data" and "an attitude of scepticism about its own tenets". It stresses that scientific results must be capable of reproduction, modification or falsification by independent observers. And it closes by noting that "scientists value other, complementary approaches to and methods of understanding nature", but that "if the alternatives are to be called scientific, they must adhere to the principles outlined above". Following the drafts rejection by the council at a meeting last week in Columbia, Ohio, the APS may now draw up two statements - one for wide public dissemination and the other a more rigorous explanatory statement for scientists themselves. The society decided to produce the statement in response to the concerns of key members that 'pseudoscience' is not only winning increased public attention but may even be causing confusion among science students. APS members have been active in criticizing this trend not just in cases related to physics - such as the alleged discovery of 'cold fusion' - but also in other fields, such as alternative medicine. **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 09:48:05 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: True/false dichotomy In-Reply-To: <199804292211.SAA29456@mx02.globecomm.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Re: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason == Scientists pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. ======= REPLY: This true/false dichotomy is really overplayed by some in science studies camp. I'm comfortable with the idea of degrees of accuracy, and believe that it is legitimate to view scientific theories as successively more accurate models of reality. Notwithstanding the peculiar observations of the likes of Collins, Pinch, Fuller et al, scientific knowledge clearly is cumulative and progressive.To take some crude examples: Does anyone expect to wake up tomorrow to the revelation that the heart isn't a pump, that oxygen isn't an element, or that the Earth doesn't orbit the Sun? I'm always hesitant to comment on modern physics, but as I understand it quantum mechanics and relativity theory are not compatible, hence the search for a relativistic quantum field theory of gravitation. If we are restricted to the true/false description then I suppose you'd have to say that quantum mechanics and relativity theory are false, something that is obviously fairly ridiculous. It makes better sense to say that these theories represented signifcant advances in our modelling of reality in that they subsumed many disparate facts and observations, and that they impressively predicted many new ones to a high degree of accuracy (something that they continue to do, of course). Any new theory will be built on this foundation and will subsume all of the facts generated by these theories. But, I am sure the many physicists and mathematicians on this list can offer some more sophisticated insights here. Best wishes Ian **************************************************************** Ian Pitchford - Email: Ian.Pitchford@mcmail.com Ph.D. Student in Theoretical Psychopathology Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies University of Sheffield, 16 Claremont Crescent SHEFFIELD, S10 2TA, United Kingdom. Tel: 0114 222 2961 Fax: 0114 270 0619 **************************************************************** Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/ Online Dictionary of Mental Health http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/psychotherapy/ InterPsych: Mental Health Debate on the Internet http://www.shef.ac.uk/~psysc/InterPsych/inter.html **************************************************************** ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 11:45:22 +0200 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Arie Dirkzwager Subject: Re: True/false dichotomy X-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" At 09:48 AM 4/30/98 +0000, you wrote: >This true/false dichotomy is really overplayed by some in >science studies camp. I'm comfortable with the idea of degrees of >accuracy, and believe that it is legitimate to view scientific >theories as successively more accurate models of reality. Quite right - all knowledge (about "facts" in reality) is personal and has a certain probability of being "true", being "accurate". This probability is personal too and may be different for different scientists, zero ("totally impossible") and one ("completely accurate with utmost certainty") are the limits we never reach, although by observation of events (outcomes of experiments) we can be pretty sure of our knowledge about what happened and the personal probability before observing "collapses" to one or zero when the observation is made. I designed a theory and a method for psychological and educational testing based upon this principle which entails much less error of measurement than current assessment procedures. (implemented as an interactive computer program "TestBet" - demo and article with scientific account available upon request). I see a link with quantum physics where all we know (can compute from our theory) are probabilities of (a probability distribution over) expected (predictable, possible) observations - when the relative frequencies of the actual observations match those probabilities the theory is "confirmed", when they differ widely the theory is "falsified" (I'd rather say: becomes more -or less- plausible). In psychological and educational testing this personal probability distribution over the answer options of an item are elicited from the student at testing time and the "confirming" or "falsifying" observation is made at scoring time when it is made clear to the student which option is the right one. I'd love to get comments of list-members on this as a contribution to (or criticism of) my efforts to apply the matematics of quantum theory to cognitive science and knowledge management and decision making. Any suggestions? Best regards, Arie Prof.Dr.A.Dirkzwager, Educational Instrumentation Technology, Computers in Education. Huizerweg 62, 1402 AE Bussum, The Netherlands. voice: x31-35-6933258 FAX: x31-35-6930762 E-mail: aried@xs4all.nl {========================================================================} When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them." T. S. Kuhn, The Essential Tension (1977). =========================================================================== Accept that some days you are the statue, and some days you are the bird. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 11:58:34 +0000 Reply-To: Ian.Pitchford@scientist.com Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Comments: Authenticated sender is From: Ian Pitchford Subject: On-line papers MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Listmembers, I have put together an on-line collection of papers on topics which may be of interest to researchers in the philosophy of mind and political theory. The URL appears in my e-signature below. Philosophical comments are really welcome, but please reply off-list. Best wishes Ted Ted Honderich Grote Professor of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic Department of Philosophy University College London Gower Street LONDON WC1E 6BT Tel: 0171 380 7115/6 http://ucl.ac.uk/philosophy/honderich.htm ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 09:08:59 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: The tyranny of therapeutic culture (part 1) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII I'm posting the following NY Times Story, which some of you may have seen in one form or another, because this list reaches a number of people who are involved with the theory and practice of psychotherapy, from one point of view or another. I should declare my own prejudices here: I have always thought that there is something intellectually debilitating and morally slack about the "therapeutic" culture that plays so prominent a role in our society and structures so much of the way in which we apprehend people and events. The story, as I view it, represents an extreme case of the disordered thinking that characterizes that culture. I should also mention a couple of coincidences although they are not terribly relevant to the story or the reflections it ought to inspire. I am very slightly acquainted with Ms. DeCarlo, whom I have met, through friends, on a couplee of social occasions. I've also seen a few of her performances (she's a caberet artist--and a very talented one). I'm happy to say that I approve of her actions wholeheartedly. Also, I teach at Rutgers, which is also the institutional base of Dr. Rotgers (the co-incidence of names is funny, although the context definitely isn't). If I had anything to say about it--which I emphatically do not--Dr. Rotgers would be instantly removed from his position. Norm Levitt ---------- Forwarded message ---------- April 30, 1998 Online Trail to an Offline Killing ______________________________________________________________ By AMY HARMON B OWMAN, N.D. -- For nearly a year, Elisa DeCarlo had been logging on to the Internet daily to type messages to an online support group about her battle against alcohol. It did not matter that Ms. DeCarlo did not know where most of the 200 or so other members of the group lived, or even their names. All that mattered was that they were there for her, and she for them, in a fight that some days sapped all of her strength and sense of humor. But on a Monday morning, March 23, sitting in her usual bathrobe attire, drinking her usual cup of coffee as she scrolled through the previous day's E-mail, Ms. DeCarlo, a 38-year-old comedian in Manhattan, lost faith in her virtual community, she said in an interview. Along with the typical postings from members about their weekends was a message from a man she knew as Larry. In graphic detail, Larry described how in 1995 he killed his 5-year-old daughter, Amanda, here in the southwestern corner of North Dakota. A Murder Confession on the Internet Excerpts from E-mail posted by Larry Froistad and another member of Moderation Management, a support group for problem drinkers. 'Amanda I Murdered' DATE: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 12:50:22 TO: Moderation Management FROM: Larry Froistad " ... Amanda I murdered because her mother stood between us." 'You Murdered Your Daughter?' "Okay, Larry, what do you mean, you murdered your daughter? Is this emotional hyperbole or cold fact?. . ." 'Listened to Her Scream' "...When I talk about killing my daughter, there's no imaginative subcomponent.... I got wickedly drunk, set our house on fire, went to bed, listened to her scream twice, climbed out the window and set about putting on a show of shock, surprise and grief to remove culpability from myself.... Those last two screams that I tell everyone saved my life--they are wounds on my soul that I can't heal and that I'm sure I'm meant to carry with me...." In the message, posted at 12:50 P.M. on March 22, Larry recounted how, distraught at the end of a bitter custody dispute with his ex-wife, he had set fire to his home and trapped his daughter inside. "The conflict was tearing me apart, and the next night I let her watch the videos she loved all evening, and when she was asleep I got wickedly drunk, set our house on fire, went to bed, listened to her scream twice, climbed out the window and set about putting on a show of shock, surprise and grief to remove culpability from myself," Larry wrote, according to archives of the support group's E-mail, available to any member on the Internet. "Dammit, part of that show was climbing in her window and grabbing her pajamas, then hearing her breathe and dropping her where she was so she could die and rid me of her mother's interferences." Ms. DeCarlo said she was horrified by the E-mail message, but she grew further dismayed over the online debate that followed. While some members of the group were appalled by Larry's account, others rushed to his defense, trying to assure him that he was experiencing a fantasy driven by guilt over his divorce. Others tried to comfort him by telling him the crime was long past. It seemed to Ms. DeCarlo that the nature of online communication -- which creates a psychological as well as physical distance between participants -- was causing her friends to forget their offline responsibilities to bring a confessed murderer to justice. On March 24, amid an E-mail debate known as a flame war, Ms. DeCarlo was one of three members of the support group to notify the authorities. The police here in Bowman said Larry Froistad, a 29-year-old computer programmer living in San Diego, called them on March 27 and confessed. Mr. Froistad has since been extradited to Bowman, a town of about 1,800 people, and he is scheduled to be arraigned on murder charges on Friday. The courthouse is a few blocks from the slab of concrete and rusted plumbing that is all that remains of the house where his daughter died in a 1995 fire that was ruled accidental. Vincent Ross, Mr. Froistad's lawyer, said his client would plead not guilty. Mr. Ross said Mr. Froistad, who worked for the Sony Corporation, might have been taking antidepressants at the time of the March 22 posting on the Internet. Mr. Ross suggested that he might dispute the validity of the E-mail and challenge its use as evidence. "Any statements that Mr. Froistad allegedly made have to be taken in light of his mental condition," Mr. Ross said, "and certainly there is no evidence that Mr. Froistad killed his daughter." ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 09:10:25 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: tyranny (part 2) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII For many of those who knew Mr. Froistad through the ether, his unbidden declaration is testimony to cyberspace's singular capacity to invoke trust among strangers. But the E-mail transcripts in the wake of the confession also provide a glimpse into the interpersonal and moral predicaments raised at a time when an increasing amount of social interaction is taking place in electronic arenas, devoid of cues like tone of voice and facial expression, and structured around their own sets of rules and mores. "My position here is that we, as a list, have two responsibilities here -- to ourselves as members of this list community and to the larger community beyond," read an E-mail on March 26 by Frederick Rotgers, a psychologist who helped found the support group two years ago. "That may sound radical to some, but I believe it is an essential feature of the Internet, and one that we must protect if it is to continue to be a source of great support for people who are in need." Dr. Rotgers said he had not notified the law-enforcement authorities after being informed that someone else in the group already had, because "since the child was already 'dead' no purpose would be served in the form of protecting anyone for rash, emotional and poorly thought-out action." Self-Help Group for Problem Drinkers Dr. Rotgers administers the group, known as the M.M. List, as a volunteer for Moderation Management, a nonprofit self-help organization based in Woodinville, Wash., for people who consider themselves problem drinkers but not alcoholics. He is director of the program for Addictions, Consultation and Treatment at Rutgers University. Rather than turn Larry over to the police, Dr. Rotgers said he had sent private E-mail to him with referrals to therapists near San Diego. "I had no basis for knowing whether it was true or not," he said in an interview. "Neither did anyone else on the list." Many on the M.M. List said they believed that Larry was simply expressing his desire to be punished for surviving a horrible accident. Perhaps, as he himself suggested in later postings and then discounted, he had unconsciously invented a false memory. Others said he might have done it, but that their role as a support group was not to judge. The few who disagreed became the target of often vicious "flame" attacks. On the evening of March 22, a few hours after Larry's initial posting, one participant wrote: "Oh, man, you are really challenging me. It would be O.K. if you would just go away. This is just repulsive stuff and I just can't deal with you. I personally will not read a post by you again. You do not deserve anything!" Someone else quickly responded: "To me, YOUR post is completely unacceptable, especially in this forum. I am repulsed by YOUR post." Jim Shirk, of Bremerton, Wash., said he had notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation. When news of Larry's arrest reached the group, one member called for the informers to come forward. Mr. Shirk, 59, who said he had been sober for 19 years and is a licensed chemical-dependency counselor, sent the member a private E-mail explaining his desire to remain anonymous. Instead, the member posted the E-mail to the whole list, and sent Mr. Shirk private E-mail back: "Just how big a pervert are you? I bet you really get off talking to the F.B.I. Wow. Did you ask them if you could see their guns?" Others accused Mr. Shirk, a proponent of the Alcoholics Anonymous approach to treating addiction, which calls for total abstinence, of using the incident to tarnish the reputation of Moderation Management. "You get a gut feeling for what's real and what isn't and it struck me as very frightening," Mr. Shirk said in a phone interview. "What really scared me was the part after he described everything he did, where he says he wants another family. I felt both professionally ethically and personally ethically that I had to do something." Some members simply wanted to get back to the purpose of the group. "Can we please talk about drinking? I need your help here," read one posting a week into the exchange. Illusory Anonymity Is Seen on Internet Some longtime Internet users have been communing in disembodied form for years, with the ups and downs any real-life communities naturally experience. On-line services like Echo Communications in New York and The WELL in Sausalito, Calif., which serve as gathering places for hundreds of discussion topics have weathered many a flame war, as have Internet news groups. "You do not transform when you log on," said Stacy Horn, author of "Cyberville" (Warner Books, 1998), a book about Echo, which she founded. Ms. Horn recalled that when one veteran member declared that he was a Nazi, and offended many others with his anti-Semitic postings, Ms. Horn required him to start his own topic area. People flocked there, virtually, to argue with him. The Froistad case is not without its offline version. In 1994, Paul Cox was convicted of manslaughter in the murder of a couple in Larchmont, N.Y. Members of an Alcoholics Anonymous group testified that Mr. Cox had told them that he thought he might have killed the couple in an alcohol-induced blackout in 1988. Experts who study the sociology of cyberspace say the intersection of the confidentiality ethic of self-help groups, and the sometimes illusory anonymity of online communion, can make for particularly difficult situations. Among those in the M.M. support group, a frequent source of controversy has been that participants can drink and post simultaneously -- as many believe Larry was doing that Sunday. Spouses have been known to subscribe under a false name to maintain their privacy themselves or, some have said, to keep track of the other. Yet the combination is also what has made the global computer network such a boon to people seeking support on a wide range of issues, from cancer patients to senior citizens to gay teen-agers. "People will reveal more online than they might in person," said Sara Kiesler, a professor at the Institute for Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University. "Psychologically, economically and in every other way, it's cheap talk, people really enjoy it, and it feels safe too. You're just talking to the screen. Sometimes people get oblivious to the dangers and they say things they wouldn't have said otherwise." That may or may not help explain the question that still looms in the minds of many of Larry Froistad's online and offline friends. "What I can't get out of the thing is why would a guy up and write something like that on the Internet?" said Rodney Redetzke, 35, a mechanic in Bowman who helped Mr. Froistad tear down the remains of his house after the fire. While Bowman's police chief, Don Huso, reopened the investigation into the fire after hearing from Ms. DeCarlo, he did not issue an arrest warrant until Mr. Froistad called him directly five days after his disturbing Internet posting. "He said, "Don, I set the fire,'" said Mr. Huso, whose only other contact with Mr. Froistad was several years ago when he had to tell him it was against city ordinances to raise rabbits in his backyard. "The memories I have of this is that I did it to destroy Amanda." According to the E-mail transcripts and the criminal case file, Mr. Froistad called Mr. Huso the day after Dr. Rotgers, the psychologist, posted to the E-mail list that someone had gone to the police. If convicted, Mr. Froistad faces life in prison. Suspect Described as Introspective Residents here remember him as an introspective computer enthusiast smarter than everyone else. In a town where any straying from the norm is regarded with a certain suspicion, neighbors described him as different. "Larry was the kind of guy you could ask him a question and he'd come back and answer you with another question," said Mr. Redetzke, the mechanic. 'My wife would always say, 'Larry, come down to our level!'" The son of a Naval Reserve officer, Mr. Froistad also joined the Reserves after his divorce from his wife, Ann, in 1990. He returned to Bowman two years later and fought and gained custody of Amanda. The thick divorce file contains a report from a psychologist who interviewed Amanda in those years. Reached in Rapid City, S.D., Ann, who has remarried, declined to comment on the case. Among those in the M.M. support group, the furor has largely died down. Its postings are now from people seeking advice on how to get through their 30-day abstinence periods and querying the meaning of alcoholism. Audrey Kishline, the founder of Moderation Management, said the group was considering not maintaining archives of the E-mail conversations, and issuing a more strongly worded notice to new subscribers that their words, once released on to the Internet, can never be considered completely confidential. But Ms. DeCarlo, the comedian, said she now attended only face-to-face meetings of the chapter she leads in New York. "Ultimately, we are alone," she said. "The closeness is for the most part illusory. If Larry walked into a room, I wouldn't know him. On line, they're just words on a screen. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 09:11:29 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: tyranny (part 3) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII April 30, 1998 The Steps in a Confession: Excerpts From E-mail E xcerpts from E-mail between Larry Froistad and fellow members of Moderation Management, a support group for problem drinkers, as obtained from the groups archives. Idiosyncracies of capitalization and spelling are from the originals. LARRY: AMANDA I MURDERED My God, theres something I havent mentioned, but its a very important part of the equation. The people Im mourning the loss of, Ive ejected from my life. Kitty had to endure my going to jail twice and being embarrassed in front of her parents. Amanda I murdered because her mother stood between us. . . . ELISA: 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN?' Okay, Larry, what do you mean, you murdered your daughter? Is this emotional hyperbole or cold fact? And are you getting professional help? Worriedly, Elisa LARRY: 'LISTENED TO HER SCREAM' OK, it seems to me that theres a great deal of risk to this; my email can be traced, Ive been wide open about my identity. But somehow Ive unintentionally left the impression that Im flailing myself for some sort of weird self-gratification. Maybe I do that to some extent. But when I talk about killing my daughter, theres no imaginative subcomponent. I suffered for years trying to get custody of her after her mother divorced me. When I did, I still had to deal with her mothers constant attempts to take her back. I had the upper hand; in fact, her mother gave up her summer custody just before I killed Amanda. But I always felt that I was not in complete control. My mother told me that I was too hard on her, that I expected too much from her. When I brought her home from her mothers, I abandoned the rules I had set and let her do whatever she wantedin fact my mother and grandmother visited the next day and she forgot that she was supposed to get dressed before receiving visitors. :) It really was very cute when she woke up and started to walk into our living room, buck-naked. I loved her for her willingness to be fun in simple ways. I would do anything to have her back; but the conflict was tearing me apart, and the next night I let her watch the videos she loved all evening, and when she was asleep I got wickedly drunk, set our house on fire, went to bed, listened to her scream twice, climbed out the window and set about putting on a show of shock, surprise and grief to remove culpability from myself. Dammit, part of that show was climbing in her window and grabbing her pajamas, then hearing her breathe and dropping her where she was so she could die and rid me of her mothers interferences. Hearing her wheeze in the smoke which I could barely standlooking at her bedroom door burningthese are things I cant forget. Those last two screams that I tell everyone saved my lifethey are wounds on my soul that I cant heal and that Im sure Im meant to carry with me. I am damaged goods, and as much as I feel I need the comfort of someone in my life that I can be good to, someone I can build a new family withthe simple fact is that I dont deserve those things and Im meant to suffer a thousand times longer than my little girl did. I cried like a baby in the emergency room at the hospital; I was very disappointed that I couldnt see her after they pulled her out of our house (where they took her before they carted me off); I was stunned and shocked the whole time they flew me down to Rapid City for observation and such, and Ive been destroyed ever since. . . . KAY: 'WHAT YOU DESCRIBED DOES NOT SOUND RATIONAL' Whew Larry I for one have been thinking about your post just after you wrote it and I happened to be on line. I guess I feel that I should say something even though I am not one that has been corresponding much with you recently but because I am a pediatrician and a mother. I must admit to being a little confused in that Im not sure, other than numbing the situation, what role that alcohol played in this. What you described does not sound rational even in drunkeness and I suspect, from what you said, you dont understand it a well either. obviously, you should have been prosecuted and managed not to be I would assume your ex-wife does not know this which makes your sharing with this group very very weighty I think. But I think you do need something very specific for what has happened and I dont think this group is enough. What a very painful thing, in many many ways. ELISA: 'DO THE POLICE KNOW' Okay, Larry, second question: do the police know you murdered your daughter? FREDERICK: 'THINK ABOUT CONTACTING A THERAPIST' Larry, Several folks have sent me private emails expressing genuine concern over some of the stuff that youve posted very recently. They are concerned, that you might be contemplating suicide or other drastic, harmful and ultimately counterproductive actions aimed at dealing with what seems to have become for you an awful situation. Im writing for all of the folks who wrote me offlist, and I believe for all of the folks on this list, to urge you to seriously think about contacting a therapist and working things through with yourself in a safe manner. Take care of yourself, my friend. And let us all know how things are going. The people here really care about you. LARRY: 'IM SORRY' Im sorry to everyone I hurt by my post. I certainly dont want to drive anyone away from the list, but I was hurting and continue to, and its a BIG part of why I drink as much as I do. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 10:52:02 -0600 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Dewey Dykstra, Jr." Subject: Re: True/false dichotomy Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Re: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason >== >Scientists pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors >of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course >their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. >They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. >======= >REPLY: This true/false dichotomy is really overplayed by some in >science studies camp. I'm comfortable with the idea of degrees of >accuracy, and believe that it is legitimate to view scientific >theories as successively more accurate models of reality. >Notwithstanding the peculiar observations of the likes of Collins, >Pinch, Fuller et al, scientific knowledge clearly is cumulative and >progressive.To take some crude examples: Does anyone expect to wake >up tomorrow to the revelation that the heart isn't a pump, that >oxygen isn't an element, or that the Earth doesn't orbit the Sun? I'm >always hesitant to comment on modern physics, but as I understand it >quantum mechanics and relativity theory are not compatible, hence the >search for a relativistic quantum field theory of gravitation. If we >are restricted to the true/false description then I suppose you'd >have to say that quantum mechanics and relativity theory are false, >something that is obviously fairly ridiculous. It makes better sense >to say that these theories represented signifcant advances in our >modelling of reality in that they subsumed many disparate facts and >observations, and that they impressively predicted many new ones to a >high degree of accuracy (something that they continue to do, of >course). Any new theory will be built on this foundation and will >subsume all of the facts generated by these theories. But, I am sure >the many physicists and mathematicians on this list can offer some >more sophisticated insights here. > >Best wishes > >Ian Many were sure that the liminiferous aether existed. Many were just as certain the phlogiston existed as we are sure of our knowledge now. There were those that were certain that light was rays, later others who were sure it was corpuscles. The point is that history abounds with examples when whatever passed for the established science-as-knowledge included certainties which we no longer hold, some which have been replaced several times over. As Kuhn and others have pointed out, no one could tell what the "new certainty" would be until it actually became the "new certainty". Are we doomed to relive the arrogance of our predecessors; doomed to relive history in a sense? There is at least one other way to view knowledge other than as "truth" about what is. If we do not insist that the result of our efforts generating explanatory schemes about the world as leading to or resulting in the "truth" about what is, then we have a way of avoiding the potential arrogance. Dewey +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105 Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775 Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330 Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu 1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper "Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld, 1938. "Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence." --E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958. "Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in There Are No Electrons, 1991. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 11:53:40 -0600 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Dewey Dykstra, Jr." Subject: Re: True/false dichotomy -- II In-Reply-To: <199804300855.CAA11060@bsumail.idbsu.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >Re: Campuses Ring to a Stormy Clash Over Truth and Reason >== >Scientists pretended that history didn't matter, because the errors >of the past were now corrected by modern discoveries. But of course >their forebears had believed exactly the same thing in the past, too. >They had been wrong then. And modern scientists were wrong now. >======= >REPLY: This true/false dichotomy is really overplayed by some in >science studies camp. I'm comfortable with the idea of degrees of >accuracy, and believe that it is legitimate to view scientific >theories as successively more accurate models of reality... If in fact we are going to be serious about these issues as I assume the establishment of this list indicates, then we must begin to notice when we are not exactly talking about the same thing. To get anywhere in such discussions which have been in existence at one level or another actually for 100's of years in different guises, we must get beyond and deeper than the level on which these debates "live." If you notice the examples I gave in the previous response (Re: True/false dichotomy -- I): >Many were sure that the liminiferous aether existed. Many were just as >certain the phlogiston existed as we are sure of our knowledge now. There >were those that were certain that light was rays, later others who were >sure it was corpuscles. And then compare them with ones given in this discussion: >To take some crude examples: Does anyone expect to wake >up tomorrow to the revelation that the heart isn't a pump, that >oxygen isn't an element, or that the Earth doesn't orbit the Sun?... Or others given classically and still dredged up: 1. Kicking a boulder 2. Jumping out a 10th floor window, etc. you might notice that there are two classes of entities mentioned here. One type of example is reference to shared experience. Why would anybody imagine that they are not going to have a sore toe after kicking a boulder? The other type of example is about entities presumed to exist and which play a role in explaining our shared experiences with phenomena; constructs. My point here is that our explanations which have traditionally been thought to be "what is," we have been certain about over and over in recorded history, but *just as frequently* (well, n - 1, anyway) the nature of our explanations has changed to something new which has little resemblance to the previous ones. (In the case of light, waves do not resemble rays or corpuscles, for example.) To be certain what these new explanations explain often subsumes most, *but not necessarily all*, shared experience that the previous explanation did. BUT, in so much as they are statements about what something IS, the historical sequence of explanations does not reveal any sort of asymptotic approach to anything. Take for example light. A rough historical sequence of the ideas is: an emanation from the eyes, ray-like things from the eyes, rays from sources which reflect into the eyes, corpuscles, waves of luminiferous aether, waves of electromagnetic fields, chunks of energy, something which behaves according computations from quantum mechanics, something which behaves according to Feynman diagrams, etc. This sequence allows an ever more exacting and precise ability to calculate and make predictions about light, but it does not appear to be settling in on what light actually "is". Could people "in" any one of those explanatory schemes have predicted from the sequence of the previous ones what the next thing people would say light is would be? I don't think so. In fact people *did not* always see the function of the heart as a pump, nor did they know oxygen as an element, nor the Earth to orbit the Sun. They were certain then, just as we are certain now. But, notice these particular "certanties" were explanatory in nature; constructs. The lesson that Crichton is pointing to is that *constructs change* and that it is in the end a kind of arrogance and unproductive to maintain that we know the "final" constructs now. He is not arguing that what was known before recorded history: If I kick a boulder very hard with my bare foot, my foot will hurt. (A shared experience: feeling of pain after a particular action, which is reproduceable, but it is not the same thing as a construct.) would not still be the case. It is a capitol mistake to assume that Crichton, or others making the argument he does, would lump both reproduceable shared experience and explanatory constructs together as having the same status and properties. We're both talking about subsumption of previous knowledge ("facts" was the term Ian used, I believe), but a careful look will reveal that what is subsumed/kept is most (but not necessarily all) of the reproduceable shared experience and NOT in general the exact, same constructs which were part of the previous "explanation." I think even the staunchest defenders of science in these "wars" like Gerald Holton would agree on this issue of subsumption and the distinction I am making here where the historical record is concerned. Kuhn and Westfall, too, I expect. Is scientific knowledge so "clearly" cumulative and progressive? Only with respect to the amount of shared experience that science can explain, but not with respect to science's representations of what phenomena "are." Another example: Do forces exist? Most people would initially say, "Yes, of course, forces do exist." Why is it then forces are not measured directly, only by their alleged effects? Why is it that General Relativity provides an explanation for motion and other effects traditionally associated with force, but this explanation is devoid of forces? So, are forces constructs or shared experiences? If we are not able to make such distinctions or others, then we might as well all go home. This ground has been plowed far more by people far better than us. (Speaking for myself anyway...) If we merely stopped insisting that our explanations tell us what "really is," and instead thought our explanations as useful, plausible, satisfying explanatory stories which fit our experience and which enable us to accomplish goals and meet needs as we see them now, then the present "debate" might not even occur to us. Maybe the debate is not really about progress or the superiority of scientific knowledge or any of the ways it has been put, but at the bottom is it is *really* about different views of the nature of these explanations/constructs and their relationship to what we imagine causes our experiences. Respectfully, Dewey +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105 Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775 Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)385-4330 Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu 1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper "Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld, 1938. "Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence." --E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958. "Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in There Are No Electrons, 1991. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 19:20:53 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: The tyranny of therapeutic culture (part 1) X-cc: njlevitt@IDT.NET MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Norman Levitt wrote: [snip] > Also, I teach at Rutgers, which is also the institutional base of Dr. > Rotgers (the co-incidence of names is funny, although the context > definitely isn't). If I had anything to say about it--which I > emphatically do not--Dr. Rotgers would be instantly removed from his > position. > > Norm Levitt [snip] I sincerely hope I'm just too tired, but I cannot find any references to any Rotgers in this posting. If Dr. Rotgers, whoever he is, has committed any felony or serious a breach of professional ethics, I certainly hope appropriate action will be initiated vis-a-vis him. But I find disturbing the phrase: "If I had anything to say about it--which I emphatically do not--Dr. Rotgers would be instantly removed from his position." Instantly presumably means: without due process (which takes time). The reason this hits me so hard is that I once had a friend who, when I sent said person a copy of one of my dissertation proposals (not the final one, although said person would probably have felt the same about it...), said person replied that if they had the power, they would see to it that I never got a degree for doing it. Fortunately for myself, this person did not have the power, but it ended the friendship. The life of the mind (and even simple human community) cannot flourish under a pall of intimidation. So, if this Dr. Rotgers has done something seriously wrong, someone should go to the approprite law enforcement agency or Professional Society (the APA? AMA?) and present their evidence, and get on with *due process*. -- Permit me to attach the URL of Galileo's recantation, in case it has any relevance (which, since I cannot find any reference to Dr. Rotgers, obviously, I can make no judgment about): http://galileo.imss.firenze.it/museo/a/eabiura.html \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 19:29:30 -0400 Reply-To: bradmcc@cloud9.net Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." Organization: AbiCo. Subject: Re: tyranny (part 2) X-cc: njlevitt@IDT.NET MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Norman Levitt wrote: [snip] > larger community beyond," read an E-mail on March 26 by Frederick > Rotgers, a psychologist who helped found the support group two > years ago. [snip] My apologies. I see that Dr. Rotgers does exist in a subsequent installment of the posting. But I think the rest of what I wrote stands, and I would certainly agree that it sounds like Dr. Rotgers' alledged actions (or lack of same...) deserve scrutiny by the APA (and perhaps other authorities). I apologize for not catching the multi-part structure of Prof. Levitt's posting. \brad mccormick -- Mankind is not the master of all the stuff that exists, but Everyman (woman, child) is a judge of the world. Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc@cloud9.net 914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua, NY 10514-3403 USA ------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 21:44:20 -0400 Reply-To: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture Sender: Sci-Cult Science-as-Culture From: Norman Levitt Subject: Suspension MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Perhaps I should clarify my remarks anent the unfortunate Dr. Rotgers (of Rutgers!!). If it were a question of purely academic duties--e.g., lecturing, supervising of students, etc., "due process" would be very much in order. What I am refering to in terms of "suspension" is the doctor's right to conduct an ongoing "Therapy" marathon on the Net for dozens of souls in varous degrees of distress (or self-obsession). Clearly, that is not just an academic matter and clearly, Dr. Rotgers behavior raises severe questions of maturity and judgment (as well as institutional liability). So, what I said stands. Contrast this, if you will, with the case of Chris Brand at University of Edinburgh who wass suspended instantly--and then sacked formally--for the mere expression of opinions that affronted some prevailing pieties. N. Levitt -- End --