POSTMODERN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE: Some sources of...
April, 1998
A few days ago, I received a post on internet commenting on the postmodern philosophy of science out of which I have been working for some 25 or 30 years...the question was:
...Could you explain what is meant by the statement "sociology research is political in nature by virtue of the fact that the findings can potentially benefit some populations, while working against the interests of others?"
Can you elaborate with some examples on this? Thanks, A.J.
The answer is that I am pleased to do so. The answer is far more complex than the question as posed but, below, are some reasons why the normal, 'objective' science taught in grad programs around the country are inadequate to the knowledge process and, not incidently, to democratic policy making.
******* A. Quantification: The first place to begin to think about the political nature of all social science is in the very process of quantification.
Quantification is, in postmodern terms, a process by which the incredible complexity of nature and society is reduced to informationally deficient numbering systems.
As you may know there are four such systems in use in quantification; the most informationally rich of which is 'rational' numbering systems.
As rich as it is when compared to the other three, it is a very weak informational flow system in which to encode even the most basic social event. One could count the information bits and bytes of an equation; compare them to the informational content of a set of words which describe the same event; compare the information content of the words to the information content of a dynamical graphic which [say a moving picture] and begin to get some idea of the vast amount of information lost in the process of transforming events to words, words to numbers; numbers to statistics and statistics to equations.
And, in terms of information theory [after Shannon], a moving picture contains but a small fraction of the totality of information contained in a film of a given social event.
Then too, beyond the filming, there is a vast field of assumptions impossible to record, brought to every social event...including this essay on politically correct sociology. They too, contribute to the incredible complexity of social realities.
The political nature of quantification is found in the kind and amount of information discarded in the process. In general, complexity, variation, difference and non-linearity are lost as numbers replace words and words replace deeds.
B. The Research Design. The research design is, in modernist science, set up to control variables...and thus the interactions of a larger field are lost to the knowledge process.
The results from such excluding research processes, while valid on their own terms, greatly distort the larger complexities of change and variations of a way to do family, church, work, game or science itself.
C. The Language Game. There have been some 3 or 4000 languages on the face of the human genome over the thousands of centuries of human existence. There are still many hundred languages; dozens in China; dozens in India; dozens in S. America; dozens in N. American; dozens and dozens in Africa.
Each language system is a special way of encoding...and creating social reality. The use of one language system as a human reporting system thereby excludes all other encodings of the same kind of event.
D. Non-linearity. Most research events are set up to privilege linearity; a tight-fisted causality which then can be used to control the regimes of the systems studied.
The new sciences of chaos and complexity inform us that most complex systems can exhibit a wide variety of dynamics; some of which are indeed linear but most of which are non-linear.
Any research process oriented to linearity thereby excludes most of the results of actually existing dynamical systems.
The political value of control is a human value...not an objective impersonal, pre-existing attribute of science itself. Indeed, non-linearity may be greatly preferable for a number of human reasons...control is valuable to bosses, wardens, bankers, dictators, engineers, pilots, doctors, and to parents of truculent children.
There is nothing wrong in the quest for control per se...just that it is a special human quest and should not be taken as a attribute of all natural, normal, healthy, human systems.
E. Finally, all humans work out of a socio-cultural complex which itself while encompassing language, is far more complex and far more political than is language alone.
Every culture is, in the final analysis, a human process in which some events and relationships are sanctified and other human events and human relationships are demonized.
Every scientist takes into the research process; into the knowledge process; into the human project, a great heritage of cultural encodings. One cannot be human without some set of cultural values.
Every research event is 'contaminated' by such culture; no one can raise above being a Catholic/Protestant/Muslim/Buddhist; no one can raise about the sexism, the racism, the economic strata and or the gender strata into which one is born, raised and in which one continues to live and function.
There is nothing particularly wrong with being 'contaminated.'
Jonas Salk was 'contaminated' with a great desire to end polio.
Louis Pasteur wanted to help vintners make better wine.
The early statisticians wanted to help brewers make better beer.
Newton wanted to find God in his equations.
Comte wanted to squash pre-modern knowledge processes [big mistake].
Prince Henry gave prizes to scientists for better navigational aides...he wanted the treasures of the new world brought safely to him.
The English Crown wanted clocks, compasses and astrolabes for the same purpose...
Marx had a vision of social science enlarging human agency in the collective creative of democratic social institutions...as opposed to those ancient structures of oppression which alienated human beings even as they used their own genius to create wealth. Racism, sexism, nationalism and class inequality continue to combine to reduce human beings to less than they could be; to more violence than need be.
Nobel wanted explosives to help build things...or destroy things.
Einstein wanted nuclear bombs to blast away Nazism.
Conclusion: Science is still possible; knowledge is still possible; prediction is still possible; control is still possible.
Having said all the things above, still I insist that every research act is a political act.
Again, there is nothing wrong with political acts per se...it only wants to know who benefits and who suffers from such acts.
The best thing to do in the face of all this is to make more modest claims for science per se and for one's own findings in particular. Truths are fractal; theses are time/space dependent; causality fades and fails; control is a sometime thing.
And there is much which is desirable in surprise, change, twists, skips, jumps, leaps as well as resistance to change and control.
The only respectable, responsible solution to the political nature of knowledge is to accept and admit one's political agenda.
Then one can't blame God or Nature for what one finds, teaches, urges and claims. That is the affirmative postmodern positions on the 'contamination' of scientific endeavor.
TRYoung