Sunday, March 1, 2015

Engaging Science through Cultural Studies

Bridget DuRuz

Rouse, J. (1994). Engaging science through cultural studies. Philosophy of Science Association, 2, 396-401

In this article Rouse discusses philosophical issues that help contrast the standard approach to science to an alternative approach to interdisciplinary science through a cultural studies perspective. A cultural studies perspective is necessary to see how the philosophy of science has been narrow – exclusively directed to elite, academic, and prestigious fields (i.e. quantum mechanics, general relativity, evolutionary biology, molecular genetics), and has “promised to secure unity and autonomy of scientific work.” But a philosophical perspective on science should acknowledge practices linked to other fields (i.e. medicine, agriculture, industry), which proves how interesting, complicated and dynamic science really is.
The dynamics of science practices encourage deflationary thinking – that which is opposed to views that claim scientific knowledge as a whole is true and rational. It recognizes a wide range of knowledge but doesn’t see the coherence. It permits more heterogeneity to ordinary knowledge in particular contexts. It questions what historically counts as knowledge seeing there are more informative ways of interconnecting what people do. The dynamic and deflationary approach questions power and knowledge.
Alternative Approach: A more adequate picture of science can be obtained by viewing it as a continuously transforming pattern of situated activities through Cultural Studies. Sciences are ongoing and dynamic practices – we make sense of what scientists do as a response to past research and an anticipation of future developments and continually reconstruct the science narrative to accommodate new people and things, and to tap into new possibilities.
Standard approach: scientific knowledge foregrounds, limits and justifies science by means of global, a priori principles. Traditional philosophy addresses epistemological problems and questions of significance asking, are truths are irrelevant? Who decides:
  • Which projects are significant and worth engaging
  • What skills, equipment, procedures are important or necessary
  • Which results are worth publishing
  • Which developments are important
  • How any claim is important
Rouse offers the “Legitimization Project” as a way to question standard science:
  • Rationality of scientific methods: The project objects to wholesale legitimization of rationality, production of scientific knowledge and methods
  • Success of scientific theories: The project rejects a single aim best makes sense of scientific practices or achievements. The project denies the object of philosophical interpretation or sociological explanation is the content of scientific knowledge, or the internal history of sciences (philosophical truths of science)
  • Social construction of scientific knowledge: The project objects to scientific communities embody a consensus on basic beliefs, methods, values (because it leaves room for considerable differences over time)

Reflection:       Sciences are ongoing and dynamic practices. People’s understanding is reconfigured through scientific practices. If we focus on how and why science matters to multiple participants and encourage interpretive differences we can get a more adequate picture of science as a continuously transforming pattern of situated activities through Cultural Studies. Sense-making is continually reconfigured by each subsequent course of research where scientists have a shared situation which then can be understood in divergent ways.
“ ‘The recent is the result of something which did not happen,
[while] the past is the trace of something which will not have occurred’
(Hans-Jorg Rheinberger, 1994, 67).”

Question:         What constitutes Science knowledge? How can we allow for multiple interpretations in science as a social construction of scientific knowledge when historically what counts as knowledge comes from scientific communities? How can we value a consensus of rationality, scientific methods, and scientific theories, or philosophical truths of science?

Joseph Rouse
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/192951


Philosophical Terms
Deflationary theory: asserts that the predicate truth (Links to an external site.) of a statement does not attribute a property called truth to such a statement
Epistemology:  the study of knowledge that questions what knowledge is and how it can be acquired
Epistemological Eliminativists:  believe the existence of mental phenomena is analogous to the ancient belief in obsolete theories such as the geocentric model (Links to an external site.) of the universe Epistemological eliminativists – ordinary talk about knowledge should be replaced with more informative vocabulary - proposed replacement theories
Metaphysics: explaining the fundamental nature of being (Links to an external site.) and the world (Links to an external site.) broadly in two basic questions: What is there? and What is it like?
Verificationism:  to ensure truth or falseness and meaning of philosophical statements. Verifiability principle:  only statements about the world that are empirically verifiable or logically necessary are cognitively meaningful—theology (Links to an external site.)metaphysics (Links to an external site.), and evaluative judgments, such as ethics (Links to an external site.) and aesthetics (Links to an external site.) are cognitively meaningless. 

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