Posted by
Eric Charles on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-comm-was-Re-FW-Re-Emergence-Seminar-BritishEmergence-tp3654051p3663276.html
Trying to reply in a single inquiry to all emails in the
thread:
Actually, I thought I was defending the real! Miles had
suggested that scientists should know better than to believe in the real, and I
was saying "quite the opposite".
I argued that it serves scientists
well to believe that what they are studying is real (hence the reference to
faith). For example: People who study personality believe that the word
"personality" refers to a real phenomenon, a real happening in the world. At
the least, they routinely convince me that they think it is real. This is the
standard, lay use of the word "real", which conforms reasonably well to many
(but not all) philosophical specifications of the term.
Now I do not
believe in "personality", at least not in the way those researchers do, but
most of them don't believe in "perception" the way I think perception works.
What goes on at the higher levels is a war over what is "real". In Science
(with a capital S), we like to think that will be decided on the merits of
empirical evidence (which again necessitates belief in the real). I get the
impression that if any researchers, in psychology, chemistry, physics, art,
history of Europe, etc., stopped believing they were studying something real,
the whole enterprise would fall apart. Given that many of these endeavors do,
in the long run, produce useful things, it would be sad to see them go. Thus,
there is good reason for scientists to have faith in the reality of what they
are studying.
I remember old-timers (heh, heh, heh) telling me stories
about the initial release of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. My
understanding is that a reasonable percentage (say 5-15%) of scientists simply
could not go about their business after reading Kuhn. This because the book, on
some level, shattered their ability to believe what they were doing was real.
Eric
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