Whence the Philospher of Science?
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Can anybody besides me get a kick out of this? This is the definition of ‘science’ in my Cultural Anthropology textbook. I have a feeling somewhere Thomas Kuhn is stirring in his grave. "Science, a carefully honed way of producing objective knowledge, aims to reveal and explain the underlying logic, the structural processes, that make the world "tick." It is a creative endeavor that seeks testable explainations for observed phenomena, ideally in terms of the workings of hidden but universal and unchanging principles or laws." It seems the war with Modernity is not only being fought amongst Theologians. |
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Re: Whence the Philospher of Science?
Paradigm shifts are messy. When I was doing my undergrad in English Lit. We talked about a Classic era, and a Romantic era etc. But these periods all blur into eachother in our day to day experience. Some people rush ahead before an era is over, other people hang back long after one has ended. There is never a clean break. Those whose work makes use of scientific methodology may have more difficult time than others reframing the goal of their disciplines or and renouncing the Holy Grail of “objective knowledge”.
I do believe in the value of systematic or methodological inquiry. The replicability of experimentation is an indicator that we have made contact with some dimension of objective reality. But objective knowledge I do not believe in. We do not all ask the same questions. So there are an infinite number of valid perspectives on anything. To be sure there are invalid perspectives as well, but many people still cannot tell the difference between a different perspective of the real, and an invalid one.
Re: Whence the Philospher of Science?
For sure, the war is being waged at multiple levels of interaction. College departments are just one venue for the clashes, churches are another.
From my experience, some anthropologists would deny the claim that they are even doing science. Others that think they are doing science see science not in transcendental terms—but as the application of a systematic set of analytical commitments.
Either way, whoever assigned that text book should also assign Clifford Geertz as a counter example of how anthropology can be conducted. Also see Marc Auge.