Transgressing the Boundaries

[ygolo]

Disclaimer:For those of you informed enough to understand where I am coming from regarding this topic, I ask that you let things be. Or, at least provide facts to further the discussion.

I am not out to embarrass anyone. I don't approve of how the author originally did things. Still, there is a certain emotional response based on the structure how this was done in the past that I want to explore explicitly. I do understand his motivations.

Perhaps, it will expose my own arrogance. I am exploring new strategies regarding how to deal with things I find ridiculous.
------------------------------------

The article I want to discuss is a little bit of philosophy regarding how modern physics is upsetting the social order imposed by older physics:
Transgressing the Boundaries:Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity

It starts off....

There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism. Rather, they cling to the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Western intellectual outlook, which can be summarized briefly as follows: that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in ``eternal'' physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the ``objective'' procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method.

But deep conceptual shifts within twentieth-century science have undermined this Cartesian-Newtonian metaphysics1; revisionist studies in the history and philosophy of science have cast further doubt on its credibility2; and, most recently, feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of ``objectivity''.3 It has thus become increasingly apparent that physical ``reality'', no less than social ``reality'', is at bottom a social and linguistic construct; that scientific ``knowledge", far from being objective, reflects and encodes the dominant ideologies and power relations of the culture that produced it; that the truth claims of science are inherently theory-laden and self-referential; and consequently, that the discourse of the scientific community, for all its undeniable value, cannot assert a privileged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic narratives emanating from dissident or marginalized communities. These themes can be traced, despite some differences of emphasis, in Aronowitz's analysis of the cultural fabric that produced quantum mechanics4; in Ross' discussion of oppositional discourses in post-quantum science5; in Irigaray's and Hayles' exegeses of gender encoding in fluid mechanics6; and in Harding's comprehensive critique of the gender ideology underlying the natural sciences in general and physics in particular.7

What? What does feminism have to do with objectivity? This seems ridiculous to me. Science cannot assert a priviledged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic naratives? What?

I know that I only put in bold a section of this, as things I find explicitly ridiculous, but a lot of it reads like it says nothing, or more like nothing that can be made sense of. The whole piece is littered with non-statements and nonsense from my perspective.

There are so many excerpts that I find ridiculous. Here is a little ridiculousness on relativity(in bold):

It is in Einstein's general theory of relativity (1915) that the radical conceptual break occurs: the space-time geometry becomes contingent and dynamical, encoding in itself the gravitational field. Mathematically, Einstein breaks with the tradition dating back to Euclid (and which is inflicted on high-school students even today!), and employs instead the non-Euclidean geometry developed by Riemann. Einstein's equations are highly nonlinear, which is why traditionally-trained mathematicians find them so difficult to solve.33 Newton's gravitational theory corresponds to the crude (and conceptually misleading) truncation of Einstein's equations in which the nonlinearity is simply ignored. Einstein's general relativity therefore subsumes all the putative successes of Newton's theory, while going beyond Newton to predict radically new phenomena that arise directly from the nonlinearity: the bending of starlight by the sun, the precession of the perihelion of Mercury, and the gravitational collapse of stars into black holes.

Again, what? This was written in 1995, long after Einstein and Minkowski did their work, do people really believe that "traditionally" trained mathematicians have trouble because of the "nonlinearity"? What?

The article just goes on and on in this form in this form of ridiculousness. But I am willing to see the light if people are willing to explain things to me.

I made another thread on what I should do in the face of ridiculous statements. This particular article represents a whole litany of ridiculous statements. So if you need an example that will likely not touch on something you hold dear, this article is great.

I know many of the facts behind how and why this was published, but I will hold off on bringing them into the discussion, till the merits of the actual article are being discussed.

 

[kyuuei]

Honestly, reading this sounded like a bunch of gibberish and nonsense. Everyone wants to believe that important ideas are important to everything--they aren't.

I could definitely see scientific progress stopped/halted/regressed because of a disbelief in women being intelligent beings, and that's been proven in the past and present time and time again. However. This issue is not very articulate or concise in creating... whatever point it's trying to create. Which just sounds like a thesaurus university paper right now.

The math isn't all messed up because the dude's personal beliefs are x or y about women. The math itself is fine. Progressing the math faster or quicker by teaching women but choosing actively not to based on personal opinion? Yeah, I can see that back in the day especially, and to a far far lesser extent in developed countries now a days. But this reminds me of the Onion article my boyfriend always brings up.

Bigoted Asshole Makes The Best Barbecue | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

"Friends of local man Charles Wyatt, an intolerant asshole who unrepentantly despises all non-Caucasians, confirmed Tuesday that the deeply bigoted man makes the best barbecue around. "

The math is still math whether the person doing it is a feminist or not. I agree there needs to be some boundaries torn down in this department still.. But honestly, the BEST way to do that is for female STEMs to take more active interests and effort into it. I hope that the male STEMs would too.. but female STEMs need to show little girls that they can and are capable of developing the STEM fields, and getting them out there. The schools need to encourage that more too. It's like when people cry that more video game developers aren't female.. they aren't female because they don't want to be video game developers. The ones who do? Are. Nothing is stopping anyone from doing it now a days. If you don't want to really press the subject and fight for something, male or female, chances are you won't get it.

Seriously, I have no clue wtf this article is talking about. It doesn't make any sense to me, and I read just the quoted parts twice.

 

[Amalie Muller]

Disclaimer:For those of you informed enough to understand where I am coming from regarding this topic, I ask that you let things be. Or, at least provide facts to further the discussion.

I am not out to embarrass anyone. I don't approve of how the author originally did things. Still, there is a certain emotional response based on the structure how this was done in the past that I want to explore explicitly. I do understand his motivations.

Perhaps, it will expose my own arrogance. I am exploring new strategies regarding how to deal with things I find ridiculous.
------------------------------------

The article I want to discuss is a little bit of philosophy regarding how modern physics is upsetting the social order imposed by older physics:
Transgressing the Boundaries:Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity

It starts off....

What? What does feminism have to do with objectivity? This seems ridiculous to me. Science cannot assert a priviledged epistemological status with respect to counter-hegemonic naratives? What?

I know that I only put in bold a section of this, as things I find explicitly ridiculous, but a lot of it reads like it says nothing, or more like nothing that can be made sense of. The whole piece is littered with non-statements and nonsense from my perspective.

There are so many excerpts that I find ridiculous. Here is a little ridiculousness on relativity(in bold):

Again, what? This was written in 1995, long after Einstein and Minkowski did their work, do people really believe that "traditionally" trained mathematicians have trouble because of the "nonlinearity"? What?

The article just goes on and on in this form in this form of ridiculousness. But I am willing to see the light if people are willing to explain things to me.

I made another thread on what I should do in the face of ridiculous statements. This particular article represents a whole litany of ridiculous statements. So if you need an example that will likely not touch on something you hold dear, this article is great.

I know many of the facts behind how and why this was published, but I will hold off on bringing them into the discussion, till the merits of the actual article are being discussed.

The article made a lot of sense to me. I wouldn't say I agreed with everything it says, but there are some good points in there.

Guess it just comes down to personal taste as to whether you enjoy reading this kind of material or not.

 

[ygolo]

The article made a lot of sense to me. I wouldn't say I agreed with everything it says, but there are some good points in there.

Guess it just comes down to personal taste as to whether you enjoy reading this kind of material or not.

The article at the link made sense to you? If you could, can you explain it to me?

 

[ygolo]

Seriously, I have no clue wtf this article is talking about. It doesn't make any sense to me, and I read just the quoted parts twice.

This is about where I am on this article also. It's too incoherent to make sense of, and the parts that did make sense seemed just untrue.

Also, I agree with you. As far as STEM and gender bias, I think that is going away. But this trend is a reflection of society as a whole, not because the scientific method has been revised.

 

[FDG]

ygolo, I also don't honestly understand the scientific point of that kind of writing style, which indeed I have met (from time to time) in newspapers or scientific publications. My personal impression was that its aim is "creating an emotional/social impact", rather than furthering our understanding of the world. Thus, my reaction was not to take it seriously.

I'm talking about scientific point, because we're not dealing with the marketing department of a big company here - in that case, I'd easily understand the need for an emotional appeal.

 

[Amalie Muller]

The article at the link made sense to you? If you could, can you explain it to me?

Um, no. I'd sound like the article writer did haha! XD

But it's pretty self-explanatory really. (But then, I'm a science/math/philosophy nerd so maybe I'm just more used to these kinds of ideas.) There isn't anything very "new" or "radical" in this, as far as I can see...

 

[Amalie Muller]

ygolo, I also don't honestly understand the scientific point of that kind of writing style, which indeed I have met (from time to time) in newspapers or scientific publications. My personal impression was that its aim is "creating an emotional/social impact", rather than furthering our understanding of the world. Thus, my reaction was not to take it seriously.

I'm talking about scientific point, because we're not dealing with the marketing department of a big company here - in that case, I'd easily understand the need for an emotional appeal.

I think one of the points of the article was that there is no reason to believe there IS an external world to "further our understanding of" -- no objective truth or falsehood.

So it's in some ways an attack on traditional scientific dogma. It's a "philosophy of science" article really, not strictly a science one.

 

[FDG]

I think one of the points of the article was that there is no reason to believe there IS an external world to "further our understanding of" -- no objective truth or falsehood.

So it's in some ways an attack on traditional scientific dogma. It's a "philosophy of science" article really, not strictly a science one.

Allright - that's an old debate then.

 

[Amalie Muller]

Allright - that's an old debate then.

Exactly.

Good old fashioned epistemological scepticism with a quantum twist and social tug, standing on a springboard to post-modernism.

 

[ygolo]

Um, no. I'd sound like the article writer did haha! XD

But it's pretty self-explanatory really. (But then, I'm a science/math/philosophy nerd so maybe I'm just more used to these kinds of ideas.) There isn't anything very "new" or "radical" in this, as far as I can see...

To be honest, I am really surprised at this positive of a response to the article, and it makes me feel like bit of an asshole. I am hoping things don't end badly here.

I was expecting everyone who looked at this to find it pretty ridiculous themselves. I have also not divulged the circumstances of it's publication because I wanted to see what points of minor merit people would find in it.

So again, I feel like I have to apologize in advance, because I was expecting everyone to be on the same side, and critiquing a ridiculous argument.

My intention was not to embarass anyone, or to pit one person against everyone else. I ask that we all remain respectful through this discussion.

With that said, I think you can see that more than one person finds a lot of these claims ridiculous.

I realize that this is a philosophy of science article and not a science article, but many of us, including myself, have spent a lot of time thinking about this. I found Popper's demarcation of science to have the highest fidelity.

Edit:I guess, to make my objections themselves more clear. I know he is claiming many of the same things that Derrida and others did. But he is feigning to use an understanding of the actual science to do it. Also, there is no coherence in his argument, and even outright factual errors.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

So, basically, I agree with this:

There are many natural scientists, and especially physicists, who continue to reject the notion that the disciplines concerned with social and cultural criticism can have anything to contribute, except perhaps peripherally, to their research. Still less are they receptive to the idea that the very foundations of their worldview must be revised or rebuilt in the light of such criticism.

I agree because I think there is an excessive amount of positivism going on amongst a lot of scientists today, along with a general element of conflict between fields that always seems to exist.

But everything else the author says I cannot agree with. The author is presenting a form of complete, subjective relativism, which I never agree with. I tend to be of the position that there must be something that can qualify as a reality, but human beings are equipped with terrible tools for ascertaining it, and thus we must be constantly vigilant against our own errors. However, I don't feel like going into the always exhausting arguments for why there is a reality right now.

This segment:

feminist and poststructuralist critiques have demystified the substantive content of mainstream Western scientific practice, revealing the ideology of domination concealed behind the façade of ``objectivity''.

I might be inclined to agree with this if we were specifically talking about the field of biology in regards to humans, as I think to some extent there have been actions amongst biologists (mainly evolutionary psychologists) that attempt to basically preserve stereotypical understandings of gender in often dubious ways. But instead the author references physics. I wish there were an elaboration on this. I cannot fathom what role feminism has to play in the subject of theoretical physics, because I cannot think of a single way that theoretical physics advanced the domination of men over women. Again, I'd like an elaboration.


This stuff about Einstein's work is odd for the reason you've already mentioned. What is the difficulty that mathematicians are facing? Why, after all this time, have these problems not destroyed or completely remade mathematics if they are so problematic?

Overall, between these sorts of statements and the frequent lack of elaboration exactly where they are most needed, I don't think this person knows what they are talking about.

Out of curiosity, how and why did you come upon this text, ygolo?

EDIT: I searched the entire piece for "feminist" and"feminism" and while there is reference to their influence, there is no explanation of how, exactly, physics concerns them or they concern it. It is only asserted that they do.

I think asking the author to define terms would be the easiest route to critiquing this piece.

 

[Amalie Muller]

So, basically, I agree with this:



I agree because I think there is an excessive amount of positivism going on amongst a lot of scientists today, along with a general element of conflict between fields that always seems to exist.

But everything else the author says I cannot agree with. The author is presenting a form of complete, subjective relativism, which I never agree with. I tend to be of the position that there must be something that can qualify as a reality, but human beings are equipped with terrible tools for ascertaining it, and thus we must be constantly vigilant against our own errors. However, I don't feel like going into the always exhausting arguments for why there is a reality right now.

This segment:



I might be inclined to agree with this if we were specifically talking about the field of biology in regards to humans, as I think to some extent there have been actions amongst biologists (mainly evolutionary psychologists) that attempt to basically preserve stereotypical understandings of gender in often dubious ways. But instead the author references physics. I wish there were an elaboration on this. I cannot fathom what role feminism has to play in the subject of theoretical physics, because I cannot think of a single way that theoretical physics advanced the domination of men over women. Again, I'd like an elaboration.


This stuff about Einstein's work is odd for the reason you've already mentioned. What is the difficulty that mathematicians are facing? Why, after all this time, have these problems not destroyed or completely remade mathematics if they are so problematic?

Overall, between these sorts of statements and the frequent lack of elaboration exactly where they are most needed, I don't think this person knows what they are talking about.

Out of curiosity, how and why did you come upon this text, ygolo?

There aren't any good arguments for the existence of "reality". In fact, I don't think an argument for reality is possible. All attempts end up in the realm of Descartes.

And the purpose of the text isn't relevant -- only it's content is.

Feminism is important for everything, right?

 

[Magic Poriferan]

If anyone is interested in a summary, allow me to attempt providing one.

__________
Objective reality does not exist, there is only perception. Thus, the aim of science should not be to be true, but to be strategically useful for the good of man. Scientists, traditionally, have adhered to a standard of truth, and thus have held back science from liberation and the service of its true use. Because nothing is objectively true and everything is perceived, so called objective truth is only established through social authority. As such, so long as science is entrusted to an elite class like scientists, it will continue to be confined to the fallacy of objective truth. As such, the only way to liberate science is to take it from scientists and allow it to become an entirely public thing, professed and judged by anyone and everyone, no longer held to one authority's fictitious idea of the truth.
______________________

I find this idea both insane and dangerous.

 

[ygolo]

So, basically, I agree with this:



I agree because I think there is an excessive amount of positivism going on amongst a lot of scientists today, along with a general element of conflict between fields that always seems to exist.

But everything else the author says I cannot agree with. The author is presenting a form of complete, subjective relativism, which I never agree with. I tend to be of the position that there must be something that can qualify as a reality, but human beings are equipped with terrible tools for ascertaining it, and thus we must be constantly vigilant against our own errors. However, I don't feel like going into the always exhausting arguments for why there is a reality right now.

Yeah, I was thinking there may still be some parts that have merit in the incoherent mess. I am so distracted by the ridiculousness that it is difficult to read.

Can you expand on the notion of too much positivism in science?

I might be inclined to agree with this if we were specifically talking about the field of biology in regards to humans, as I think to some extent there have been actions amongst biologists (mainly evolutionary psychologists) that attempt to basically preserve stereotypical understandings of gender in often dubious ways. But instead the author references physics. I wish there were an elaboration on this. I cannot fathom what role feminism has to play in the subject of theoretical physics, because I cannot think of a single way that theoretical physics advanced the domination of men over women. Again, I'd like an elaboration.


This stuff about Einstein's work is odd for the reason you've already mentioned. What is the difficulty that mathematicians are facing? Why, after all this time, have these problems not destroyed or completely remade mathematics if they are so problematic?

Overall, between these sorts of statements and the frequent lack of elaboration exactly where they are most needed, I don't think this person knows what they are talking about.

Out of curiosity, how and why did you come upon this text, ygolo?

EDIT: I searched the entire piece for "feminist" and"feminism" and while there is reference to their influence, there is no explanation of how, exactly, physics concerns them or they concern it. It is only asserted that they do.

I think asking the author to define terms would be the easiest route to critiquing this piece.

Yeah. A lot of claims, a lot of them factually wrong, and little in the way of structuring the arguments based on evidence.

I think there is a case to be made that the history of science has had many times shown gender bias among the people doing it. But this has mainly taken the form of women not getting credit for being as good at science or as big a contributor to science as they actually were. There is nothing inherently male about the process of science itself.

Hypatia of Alexandria, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Annie Jump Cannon, Rosalind Franklin, and many others may have not gotten their due credit, but they nevertheless did good science in the way scientists do good science. The lack of credit attributed to them is a societal flaw, not one that blinds the scientific method from the truth.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

Feminism is important for everything, right?

No.

Feminism is not important for math, for example, because I cannot imagine how math, as it is, in any reinforces a position of male dominance. What would be a feminist revision of mathematics? Just as with math, so it is the case with some of science.

To be clear, the nearest I can understand how the author is connecting feminism to science, is that science is insufficiently feminist because there are parts of it that are not expressly useful for the purpose of furthering a feminist agenda, and the author believe that science should only be useful to agendas, not attempt to determine the truth.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

Can you expand on the notion of too much positivism in science?

Well, actually, I don't think my problem is with actual positivism, but a certain error prone attitude that is often cloaked in positivism.

Basically, the fact that something could theoretically be understood and even predicted in logical ways, does not yet mean we have sufficient information to do so, but I see a lot of scientists sort of jump the gun, leaping from the theoretically possibility of knowing something to assuming we can already act like we know it, and I believe I see this a lot because I deal with sociology. Sociology is an extremely high order field, and essentially has to be treated in a probabilistic way because the information is so incomplete, and I'd advise people to be very conservative in any sociological estimations one makes. But it appears to me that whenever someone from one of the so-called hard or natural sciences transitions into making commentary on sociologiecal matters, they have a habit of making deterministic and overly simplistic analyses. I don't which comes first, if working in the hard sciences facilitates this mindset or if this mindset attracts people to the hard sciences, it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but it's what I observe. Being a generalization about the attitudes of certain people, I can't really verify it a whole lot, admittedly.

I think there is a case to be made that the history of science has had many times shown gender bias among the people doing it. But this has mainly taken the form of women not getting credit for being as good at science or as big a contributor to science as they actually were. There is nothing inherently male about the process of science itself.

Hypatia of Alexandria, Ada Lovelace, Marie Curie, Annie Jump Cannon, Rosalind Franklin, and many others may have not gotten their due credit, but they nevertheless did good science in the way scientists do good science. The lack of credit attributed to them is a societal flaw, not one that blinds the scientific method from the truth.

Right, I agree. Science even has be utilized in ways that furthered racism or sexism and so forth, but we can look back and see those were the errors of the scientists but not particularly good science. The scientific method itself is not disgraced by these parts of history.

It gets even more ridiculous that the author seems to cast doubt on areas that are essentially deductive in nature.

 

[Amalie Muller]

No.

Feminism is not important for math, for example, because I cannot imagine how math, as it is, in any reinforces a position of male dominance. What would be a feminist revision of mathematics? Just as with math, so it is the case with some of science.

To be clear, the nearest I can understand how the author is connecting feminism to science, is that science is insufficiently feminist because there are parts of it that are not expressly useful for the purpose of furthering a feminist agenda, and the author believe that science should only be useful to agendas, not attempt to determine the truth.

Well a possible feminist revision of mathematics could take into account the male/female divide in MBTI typology on the Thinking/Feeling area.

Men are more inclined towards use of logic, and so mathematics is quite a "masculine" discipline.

We could take this into account, and make mathematics less reliant on logic. Perhaps we could build a new system of mathematics, that is based on emotional evaluations as well as logic.

Why should 2+4=6 if we don't want it to? No reason at all, other than social dogma.

 

[Magic Poriferan]

Well a possible feminist revision of mathematics could take into account the male/female divide in MBTI typology on the Thinking/Feeling area.

Men are more inclined towards use of logic, and so mathematics is quite a "masculine" discipline.

We could take this into account, and make mathematics less reliant on logic. Perhaps we could build a new system of mathematics, that is based on emotional evaluations as well as logic.

1: How do we know that assertion about men and women is true?

2: I don't believe that assertion about men and women is true myself, and find it somewhat insulting to suggest women can't do math as it currently is as well as men.

3: I'd still really need to know how this more emotional math would work, and what purpose it could serve.

Why should 2+4=6 if we don't want it to? No reason at all, other than social dogma.

2 + 4 = 6 due to internal consistency. That's how math works altogether. Deduction.

Math actually isn't quite the same as any field based on observations and inductive reasoning. Science, in general, will combine both induction as well as deduction (not just because it uses math, but because there is a form of deduction in hypothetical reasoning).

Both, however, are very consistent and have well demonstrated their utility.

 

[Amalie Muller]

1: How do we know that assertion about men and women is true?

2: I don't believe that assertion about men and women is true myself, and find it somewhat insulting to suggest women can't do math as it currently is as well as men.

3: I'd still really need to know how this more emotional math would work, and what purpose it could serve.



2 + 4 = 6 due to internal consistency. That's how math works altogether. Deduction.

Math actually isn't quite the same as any field based on observations and inductive reasoning. Science, in general, will combine both induction as well as deduction (not just because it uses math, but because there is a form of deduction in hypothetical reasoning).

Both, however, are very consistent and have well demonstrated their utility.

1. Because all the books say so.

2. It means generally men will be more interested in math than women. Not that men are "better".

3. Well, thats what we need to figure out.

--

So you defend 2+4=6 because of "internal consistency".

But isn't the view you summarized above (that if there are no objective truths the job of science is to help mankind achieve our goals) internally consistent too? Why not defend that also? It definitely has a certain "utility", don't you think.