Month: February 2016

Science, Objectivity and the Passion for Explaining

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In this essay Maturana negotiates several complex philosophical questions in a surprisingly accessible way. In it he answers three questions: What characterises cognitive constructivism? Why, under this view, is it not possible for science to achieve true objectivity? If this is so, why does science not slip into relativism? As ever, the term ‘science’ encompasses the social sciences as well. Maturana sees no justification for a cleavage between the two – certainly not the old distinction between quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Throughout, he considers these issues not as a philosopher but as a biologist reflecting on science as ‘a cognitive domain generated as a human biological activity’.   First, what kind of person is the scientist? What is the motivating force not only of the scientist, but the domain of science itself? For Maturana, the fundamental emotion that enlivens science, that determines it as a domain in which science takes place as a human activity, is curiosity; curiosity which emerges as a desire or passion for explaining. In this domain explanations are adequate – they …

Paradox of the Word

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Literature devoted to the medieval paradox is a fount of creativity and wit. This short piece considers two paradoxes of religious orthodoxy that have inspired writers through the ages, from medieval theologians, to seventeenth century Englishmen, to modern poets like Eliot interested in the metaphysical tradition. Both examples show the enjoyment their authors derived from the paradoxical nature of much religious dogma. Both dramatise the Incarnation, the teaching that ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’. St Thomas Acquinas presents this core doctrine of Christianity as a couplet in the vesper humn Pange Lingua: ‘Verbum caro panem verum Verbo carnem effict’ [Word became flesh and bread, Word made flesh] With this conceit we are presented with the self-referential autopoiesis at the heart of Christian teaching: the paradox of the Incarnation of the Word of God. Here we do not speak of God the Father or God the Holy Spirit, but the ‘second person’ God the Word. The Catholic mass still employs the words of God the Word (the reported speech of Christ from St …

Constructivism

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Cognitive constructivism of operationally closed systems is explained succinctly by Knorr Cetina: ‘Closed systems are systems which operate entirely within their own medium and machineries of world construction. An example is the brain, which the biology of cognition sees as informationally closed towards its environment. Perception, for example, is accomplished by the brain, not the eye, and the brain can only construe what it sees from signals of light intensity which arrive at the retina. In order to form a picutre of the nature of the source of these signals, the brain makes reference to its own previous knowledge and uses its own electro-chemical reactions. Phrased differently, in perception the brain only interacts with itself and not with an external environment. The brain reconstructs the external world in terms of internal states, and in order to accomplish this the brain ‘observes’ itself (Maturana and Varela, 1980). … Closed systems cannot build, with the environment of interest to them, a shared life-world. They lack the possibility of co-presence postulated by Schütz (1970) as an important feature …

Knowledge and Power

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In their book The Power of Scientific Knowledge Grundmann and Stehr ask two important questions: How does scientific knowledge become powerful in practice? What counts as knowledge for this purpose? This post presents some of the key points they highlight. The authors are not aiming to produce a general theory of knowledge application, but rather to provide ‘some historical-analytical tools and data for such an endeavour’. [It should be noted that they employ the more inclusive German understanding of the word ‘science’ which encompasses knowledge produced by the social sciences] What Counts as Scientific Knowledge? Harold Kroto, a British chemist and Nobel laureate, presents a simple answer to the question ‘what counts as knowledge’. Kroto argued that there are many theories but only a few that are true. True theories are facts that have been found to work in practice through experimental work. This explanation is not sufficient to explain how some knowledge becomes powerful while other knowledge is largely ignored. It presents only an ex post facto response to the question, taking no account …

Why do Theory?

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“Why do theory? You have to put so much into it and you get so little out of it.” Given the increasing drift towards empiricism and clinical studies, and the associated de-emphasising of theoretical research across the disciplines, this becomes an important question to consider (and what follows constitutes only a first attempt to provide some explanation) . Doubtless the first half of the equation is true. ‘Doing’ theory has always placed considerable burdens on the researcher. What is less often acknowledged, however, is the many additional burdens placed on the contemporary scholar – and not by the complexities inherent in a particular theory, but by the academy. What do I mean by this? Firstly, of course, any theory capable of describing all or some aspects of the very complex dynamics of modern society demands a great deal of our time and attention. This is perhaps particularly true of the kind of theory I am drawn to; theory that abandons the a priori. It always seems to me that the a priori maps out, prematurely, …