28 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2024
    1. This position has been adopted by Karl R. Popper, Rudolf Carnap and other leading figures in (broadly) empiricist philosophy of science. Many philosophers have argued that the relation between observation and theory is way more complex and that influences can actually run both ways (e.g., Duhem 1906 [1954]; Wittgenstein 1953 [2001]). The most lasting criticism, however, was delivered by Thomas S. Kuhn (1962 [1970]) in his book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”.

      Competing views about the relation between observations reality and truth. Popper argues that observations help us distinguish which theories are true or not plus bringing us always closer to a more true scientific theory. Wittgenstein argues this can go both ways. Kuhn argues that these are observations are couched in the language of our paradigm and so everything is relative to that.

  2. Feb 2024
    1. It was Nietzsche who warned us, at the end of the 19th century, notonly that God is dead but that “faith in science, which after all existsundeniably, cannot owe its origin to a calculus of utility; it must haveoriginated in spite of the fact that the disutility and dangerousness ofthe ‘will to truth,’ of ‘truth at any price’ is proved to it constantly.”

      Joy quoting Nietzsche

  3. May 2022
    1. When chatting with my father about the proton research he summed it up nicely, that two possible responses to hearing that how we measure something seems to change its nature, throwing the reliability of empirical testing into question, are: “Science has been disproved!” or “Great!  Another thing to figure out using the Scientific Method!” The latter reaction is everyday to those who are versed in and comfortable with the fact that science is not a set of doctrines but a process of discovery, hypothesis, disproof and replacement.  Yet the former reaction, “X is wrong therefore the system which yielded X is wrong!” is, in fact, the historical norm.
  4. Apr 2022
    1. ☠️ Duygu Uygun-Tunc ☠️. (2020, October 24). A bit cliché but ppl will always find it cooler to point out that a given proposal is not the only one/has shortcomings/is not the Truth itself etc. Than making or improving a proposal. I keep being reminded of this every single day, esp on twitter. [Tweet]. @uygun_tunc. https://twitter.com/uygun_tunc/status/1319923563248353281

  5. Dec 2021
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  11. Apr 2021
    1. όταν ακούμε τους πολιτικούς να λένε ότι για την αντιμετώπιση της επιδημίας «ακολουθούν πιστά τις οδηγίες της επιστήμης», δεν εννοούν παρά μόνο ότι «ακολουθούν τις οδηγίες κάποιων συγκεκριμένων ειδικών», οι οποίοι έχουν επιλεγεί να συμμετέχουν στις ειδικές κρατικές επιτροπές ειδικών όχι μόνο με επιστημονικά αλλά και με πολιτικά κριτήρια.

      Αυτές οι ρησεις των πολιτικων αρχηγών παιζονται στην λαϊκή αγνοια περί της επιστημης, των δυνατοτήτων (διαψευσιμότητα) και των αδυναμιών της (peer-review).

    2. Οταν δεν συμβαίνει αυτό, όταν δηλαδή οι επιστήμονες αθετούν ή, έστω, παραβλέπουν την αναγκαία μεθοδολογική και διαφωτιστική λειτουργία τους, τότε από ερευνητές της πραγματικότητας μετατρέπονται σε «ειδικούς», που αναλαμβάνουν τον ρόλο -αλλά όχι και την ευθύνη- της επίλυσης διάφορων προβλημάτων τα οποία, ενώ σχετίζονται με την επιστημονική τους αρμοδιότητα, ταυτόχρονα την υπερβαίνουν, λόγω των επιπτώσεων που θα έχουν στη ζωή των ανθρώπων οι «λύσεις» που εισηγούνται.

      "Ειδικοι" != Επιστημονες

  12. Feb 2021
    1. the “replication crisis,” the realization that supposed scientific truths are often just plain wrong.

      A book on why science is not what it used to be (and workarounds, but not listed in the opening, but many review beneath).

  13. Nov 2020
    1. The Trump team (and much of the GOP) is working backwards, desperately trying to find something, anything to support the president’s aggrieved feelings, rather than objectively considering the evidence and reacting as warranted.

      What do you expect after they've spent four years doing the same thing day in and day out?

  14. Oct 2020
  15. Sep 2020
    1. ReconfigBehSci on Twitter: “having spent a few days looking at ‘debate’ about COVID policy on lay twitter (not the conspiracy stuff, just the ‘we should all be Sweden’ discussions), the single most jarring (and worrying) thing I noticed is that posters seem completely undeterred by self contradiction 1/3” / Twitter. (n.d.). Retrieved September 23, 2020, from https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1308340430170456064

  16. Jan 2019
    1. Value-free language and the possibility of a self-contained discipline make possible both modern sci-ence and that mapping of humanistic inquiry onto a scientific model which has created modern social science as well.

      And yet, any mapping of humanistic inquiry onto a scientific model would lead to the creation of incomplete maps, of certain lies. One of those lies? If you can't use the scientific method to come to know something, then that something isn't knowledge/true/truth/fact.

  17. Oct 2018
    1. Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science

      Latour on science and truth.

    2. At a meeting between French industrialists and a climatologist a few years ago, Latour was struck when he heard the scientist defend his results not on the basis of the unimpeachable authority of science but by laying out to his audience his manufacturing secrets: “the large number of researchers involved in climate analysis, the complex system for verifying data, the articles and reports, the principle of peer evaluation, the vast network of weather stations, floating weather buoys, satellites and computers that ensure the flow of information.” The climate denialists, by contrast, the scientist said, had none of this institutional architecture. Latour realized he was witnessing the beginnings a seismic rhetorical shift: from scientists appealing to transcendent, capital-T Truth to touting the robust networks through which truth is, and has always been, established.

      A paradigm shift in the rhetoric of science, from metanarratives of truth to the mechanics of truth manufacture.

  18. Feb 2017
    1. And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he secs on all sides the eyes of the universe tele-scopically focused upon his action and thought. It is remarkable that this was brought about by the intellect, which was certainly allotted to these most unfortunate, delicate, and ephemeral beings merely as a device for detaining them a minute within existence.

      There’s a really interesting link to be made with Willard here. Nietzsche is taking on the philosopher (as well as Enlightenment thinking), as philosophers tend to position themselves at the center of universe because they are on the search for truth. He challenges the science of it, saying that the telescopic (read: narrow) inquiry is futile as they are on a search for something that is not there. In other words, the more a philosopher tries to focus in on “the truth,” the more a philosopher loses sight of the purpose of the inquiry.

      Likewise, Willard takes on patriarchal exegesis as though it, too, is a science. By using the telescopic metaphor (similar to Nietzsche), she makes it clear that a search for truth in such a narrow sense is useless to the human endeavor. From “The Letter Killeth”:

      “We need women commentators to bring out the women’s side of the book; we need the stereoscopic view of truth in general, which can only be had when a woman’s eye and man’s together shall discern the perspective of the Bible’s full-orbed revelation…while they turn their linguistic telescopes on truth, I may be allowed to make a correction for the “personal equation” in the results which they espy” (1126).

      Although Willard does suggest that the truth can be reached (a “full orbed revelation”), it is not until both halves — the woman’s and the man’s — is taken into account. Again, the more a male preacher tries to focus in on "the truth," the more he loses sight of the purpose of the inquiry. Really, all of humanity is a stake for Willard.

      I don't know. There’s something going on with eyes and telescopes and science and philosophy and exegesis, but I’m not quite sure how to articulate it…