[thechat] rationality is not enough (was: New Year's Resolution)

Joe Crawford joe at artlung.com
Fri Jan 3 15:48:01 CST 2003


On Fri, 3 Jan 2003, javier velasco wrote:
> Yes and on that course with Maturana (Biologist) that I've mentioned
> many times. He explained us how he had reaserched on the nervous system,
> how vision operates, and in this work he learned that he had to modyfiy
> his complete approach to science, he even questions the scientifical
> method because it was too manipulative and had to clean some parts of
> it. He discivered that the scientist (unconsciously) fixes things in
> order to get a pre-concieved answer in the moment of defining the
> question. He modified the process a bit to assume complete
> responsability for his work, I don't remember many details now.

I don't know the work of Maturana. I'll google.
http://www.google.com/search?q=Maturana+scientific+method

And yes, scientists, as do all humans, can fall into the trap of presuming
to know the outcome. But the scientific method *itself* is designed to be
a check on preconceptions - independent sources, ideally with less agenda
than the original scientist in question. So it sounds as though you're
describing *good* scientific method, not something apart from the
scientific method.

> Later in his studies of vision, he discovered that the things we see
> cannot exist independently either in the outer world nor inside our
> brains, perception ocurrs in special cells (in our sensory organs) that
> involve both the outer world and our nervous systems. He concluded from
> this that the observed object and the observed thing are mutually
> dependent, and we all see different things, what led him to discard the
> concept of OBJECTIVITY and placed it in between parenthesis marks. I'ts
> a very interesting work, and his book is also published in english, let
> me know if you're interested.

Whenever I hear that objectivity is impossible I get bored. Of course
objectivity is impossible. We all have our own point of view. The thing
we're talking about in science is to attempt to remove bias as much as is
feasible in understanding the world.

To do otherwise is to give up responsibility for being rational.

	Joe
--
Joe "ArtLung" Crawford
San Diego California USA: http://artlung.com/





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