Some people, after seeing the recent Dover documentary (now available online), have been wondering who the heck this Steve Fuller wanker is, and why he’s defending Intelligent Design. Here’s a philosopher to explain Fuller to you. You’ll wish you hadn’t asked.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The things Fuller said in the documentary didn’t make any sense to me at all. Supernatural causes leading the way to naturalistic explanations? As if you need to know the exact cause of a phenomenon in order to make predictions based on past observations. Gravity, anyone?
Butter fingers. Replace “Supernatural causes” with “supernatural explanations”.
So, essentially it’s a form of group solipsism.
These people are officially insane.
“Well, It seems to me that whats happening is a semiotic social powerstruggle of “knowledge” where the weaker party, ID, is being constructed as wrong by the power/”knowledge” field that is “biology” and thus is excluded and marginalised. That is enough of a reason to support it as the weaker party and is being suppressed, its a matter of honor”
“But…but….That is madness”
“Madness?? THIS IS THE SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT!!!!”
Tastes like some flavor of medieval theology to me.
“I also think that the American educational system would be a lot better if students learned some philosophy in high school.”
They can wait to read Deluze, Heidegger, etc until they’re in college, just like I did. If they want to be philosophers, perhaps getting better instruction in things like science and the arts at the high school level will allow them to come up with better philosophies than the Franco-bullshit ones now so en vogue.
That wasn’t much of an explanation of Fuller, social constructivism, or sociology and philosophy of science in general. If you really want to know where Fuller’s coming from, read his early stuff, e.g., Social Epistemology (the book he wrote, not the journal he once edited), and more recent, like The New Sociological Imagination.
Like it or not, knowledge is socially constructed. It may be based on actual facts, but the facts that get accepted in any science are the ones that the gatekeepers in science are willing to recognize as fact. History of science is replete with theories and explanations that were rejected when first proposed and only later recognized as valid. Fuller may take social constructivism a little farther than many scientists are willing to go, but rejecting his arguments out of hand because he’s not a scientist is equivalent to saying only criminals are competent to study delinquency.
Bullcrap. There is an objective reality. The goal of science is to understand it as well as possible.
This is why your car starts up and drives. Why your computer connects to the internet. Why modern medicine gives US citizens a life span of 78, 30 more years than a decade ago.
None of this has to do with social construction or opinions on what a fact is or isn’t. It has everything to do with being correct in describing the real world.
Some people compare philosophy with theology or astrology. Elaborate towering intellectual edifices that are unconnected to anything real and basically worthless. I won’t go that far, but some of it is exactly that
“learning philosophy in high school” (as suggested by Philosoraptor) does not necessarily entail “reading Deluze, Heidegger, etc” as stated by Dahan.
How about a bit of history of philosophy, a touch of epistemology (irresistible to most thinking teens), and some solid information on logic and logical fallacies. Learning basic philosophy is not important only for the tiny minority of students who want to be philosophers, any more than learning basic science should only be for the (somewhat less tiny) minority of those intending to be scientists.
I’m just getting to watch now.
BILL BUCKINGHAM: In looking at the, uh, biology book the teachers wanted, I noticed that it was laced with Darwinism. I think I listed somewhere between 12 and 15 instances where it talked about Darwin’s theory of evolution. It wasn’t on every page of the book but like every couple of chapters there was Darwin in your face again. And it was to the exclusion of any other theory.
It’s laced with Darwin because it’s a biology textbook, you fooking moron!
“Like it or not, knowledge is socially constructed. It may be based on actual facts, but the facts that get accepted in any science are the ones that the gatekeepers in science are willing to recognize as fact.”
So there are gatekeepers who decide what facts are recognized and which are ignored? Do the gatekeepers have tenure? Are they a secret society with a password and secret handshake? These are questions I need answered.
Are you sure your not talking about religion instead of science? I think the religious do pick and choose their facts.
Please point to anyone who has rejected his arguments “because he’s not a scientist”, rather than, say, because they’re crazy. If you can’t, I call “straw man”.
I don’t think Steve Fuller is doing much more than stringing words together to make meaningless sentences. That is on a good day. On a bad day when he says something interpretable as a thought, he is just flat out wrong.
A cross post of mine from PT, where I actually managed to get the secret decoder ring to work and figure out what Steve Fuller was saying. Won’t waste the time again.
“STEVE FULLER–At the very beginning of genetics– the idea of there being a hereditary factor that somehow was responsible for the traits that we have, but one couldn’t quite identify what the factor was. That was also initially regarded as supernatural as well. So, it’s not that supernaturalism hasn’t been part of science. In fact, it has been. And it’s often led to very fruitful results. And it seems the evolutionists want to in a way– ignore or marginalize that very important part of the history.”
I don’t believe this is the least bit true. As far as I know, Mendel and those before and after him assumed that there was some physical explanation for heredity. And, in fact, there is, called DNA, genes, chromosomes etc..
His claim that supernaturalism has been a part of science also sounds like sheer nonsense. The history of science has been replacing supernatural explanations with physical ones. We no longer believe that Apollo drags the sun across the sky every day or angels push the planets around.
The whole “John loves Mary” thing.
The whole “Life is too complex to have happened at random” thing.
So stupid!
What is too complex? Who decides?
Who in their right mind would insist that the ultimate explanation for the origins of life should swing on our entirely subjective perception of how simple or complicated things are? And yet that’s what they do.
I could say: life is too simple to have happened by design.
That’s kooky too! It’s meaningless drivel!
Crazy people!
Fuller studied HPS (History and Philosophy of Science)as an undergrad at about the same place and time that I did. There was one particular lecturer, who has since become something of a TV don, who was full of this kind of shit (his speciality was to dismiss any interpretation that allowed for the possibility of objective reality, or of genuine scientific progress, as “Whig history”, which, if you don’t know, is historian code for “reading history through a lens of modern bias”).
Now, as a historian it is at least a little bit legit. Whig readings of History mean we generally study Newton (for example) for the famous stuff – gravity and optics – and ignore his alchemical bletherings. This is fine if we are looking at science but, if we are studying him as a historical figure, we have to look at both – indeed, his alchemy was possibly more important to him at the time. AS historians of science we want to get round the selection bias of only looking at the stuff which panned out. But, of course, this is at odds with science, which pretty much by definition, only looks at the stuff which panned out.
The opposite of Whig history – the historian’s bias, if you like – is to assume that because gravity and alchemical blether are equally important if you want to study Newton, they are also equally important if you want to study science. In other words, that the historian’s way of looking at things is the only way. Stir in some 6th form Marxist assumptions that everything is the outcome of a power struggle, sprinkle with Thomas Kuhn, and you get Fuller’s position as far as I can see.
PS it wasn’t the whole department that felt like this, just the one guy. Most of the others were interested in more interesting topics such as what counts as knowledge and why, and how science actually plays out in practice.
Steve Fuller is exactly the reason why I tend to ungraciously think of philosophy as mere mental doodling. (I know, not all of it is, and I do like this Winston Smith at Philosoraptor). Listening to him on the show was irritating in the extreme. There are people who delight in constructing elaborate little contrarian arguments–at the expense of being logically consistent–and he is one of them.
His quote from the show, encapsulated in Raven’s comment above, was the one thing that made my head spin.
He’s blatantly saying that the fact that the supernatural has been shown not to be a part of the science, isn’t of the least importance.
He is the reason the word “WANKER” was invented.
Okay, a stronger warning on the link next time please. That was the biggest pile of ^&%$% I have ever read. Worse, I couldn’t just stop after the first bit, I had to keep reading…
I will take days to fully recover.
This makes me think that philosophy is the enduring contemplation of questions that have no answers, or at least no dominant answers. As soon as investigation progresses to the point that a question does have an answer or a method for finding one, it stops being philosophy and becomes a kind of science. Consequently arguments, not facts, are the currency of philosophers. Fuller is clinging touchingly to the notion that arguments can substitute for a relationship to reality, in a rather pathetic plea for relevance. He’s bound to be disappointed.
Nan wrote:
In what sense?
If you mean knowledge is a repository of observations, explanations and justified beliefs accumulated by human beings acting in social groups, then, yes, it’s true. Trivial but true.
If you mean that science is no more accurate or reliable a means of understanding the natural world than theology or political theory or literary criticism then show me a pomo Boeing 747.
What facts has science denied – as distinct from novel theories, for example?
In other words, science is adaptive and self-correcting. If it gets things wrong, it has the means to uncover the errors and put them right. What’s wrong with that? It doesn’t claim to get things right first time, every time.
I didn’t see anyone rejecting Fuller’s arguments out of hand.
I did see them being taken apart in some detail and then rejected.
Of Pandas and People = Of Poo-Poo and Woo-woo.
Tim (#15) – that was a helpful summary, thanks. I especially appreciated The opposite of Whig history – the historian’s bias, if you like – is to assume that because gravity and alchemical blether are equally important if you want to study Newton, they are also equally important if you want to study science.
And now I appreciate even more why Helena Cronin unabashedly proclaimed, in the preface to her very good history of modern evolution THE ANT AND THE PEACOK, that she’d written a “Whig” history.
Um, if that lecturer is now a TV don, is it OK to name names?
Ten years ago, Taner Edis wrote a prescient essay titled “Relativist Apologetics: The Future of Creationism?” It’s online at
http://www2.truman.edu/~edis/writings/articles/relativism.html
In it, he points out that in universities some extreme versions of cultural relativism have been applied to the scientific process — science as “only one way of knowing” specific to a culture and enforced by power, blah, blah, blah. It’s considered intellectually sophisticated and respectable in some circles (and it looks like Fuller is coming from this angle).
Then he points out that “Protestant theology is already full of presuppositional apologetics and leaps of faith between worldviews—much like paradigms.” He then predicts a marriage, based on convenience. The Creationists get a veneer of sophistication, and the Pomos get another marginalized group of victims.
If you think about it, it’s not just Calvinist presupp arguments which talk about incommensurate world views. Remember that opening video for the Creationist museum which so disgusted John Scalzi. The avuncular paleontologist informed folks that hey, the scientist with the Biblical world view and the scientist without it will of course look at the same bones and come to different conclusions, because of where they start out. You’re not supposed to even try to ignore biasing assumptions — you embrace them. They’re your respectable starting point. Everyone’s got a starting point.
At any rate, Edis’ essay is worth a read.
(Er, Cronin’s title is actually THE ANT AND THE PEACOCK … totem species for the evolutionary themes of altruism and sexual selection.)
Historical perspective is always useful. Remember the Clarence Darrow defense of Leopold and Loeb? He had them plead guilty, and then argue that their sentences should be mitigated or reduced because they had been led astray by reading philosophy.
(No, I don’t really believe it would be a bad idea for high school students to get a better introduction to philosophy than they do now, through world history and world geography; but if they got philosophy, the religionists would complain about that, too.)
If you want to learn about worldview in Christian thought see David Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept.
And Ohio philosopher-logician Neil Tennant’s online article no. 7 is relevant to these debates.
I’m a Calvinist, by the way.
Sorry, that was terribly lazy of me. The artice is called “What might logic and methodology have offered the Dover School Board, had they been willing to listen?” It mentions Fuller.
I should also add that, ironically enough, a lot of worldview type Calvinists don’t like natural theology, hence are (at least) suspicious of ID.
All the best,
Paul
Group solipsism!?! You made me curious! I’ll read it! (Philosoraptor being well known from the Dinosaur Mailing List and all.)
You forget one thing: Science is not about truth, it’s about reality — and reality is that in which argumenta ad lapidem work. That’s right: the argumentum ad lapidem is not a logical fallacy in science, even though it is in philosophy.
This makes it very easy to determine what is and is not a fact. That is the gatekeeper.
Yes, and?
“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.”
— Thomas Henry Huxley
The point is that a less complete dataset can lead to a different abyss than a more complete one. As our datasets grow, so change our hypotheses.
You have it backwards: “scientist” is defined as “someone who does science”, not the other way around.
I think comment 18 is spot-on.
Incidentally, I had two hours per week of philosophy in the last year of the non-equivalent of highschool.
Group solipsism!?! You made me curious! I’ll read it! (Philosoraptor being well known from the Dinosaur Mailing List and all.)
You forget one thing: Science is not about truth, it’s about reality — and reality is that in which argumenta ad lapidem work. That’s right: the argumentum ad lapidem is not a logical fallacy in science, even though it is in philosophy.
This makes it very easy to determine what is and is not a fact. That is the gatekeeper.
Yes, and?
“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.”
— Thomas Henry Huxley
The point is that a less complete dataset can lead to a different abyss than a more complete one. As our datasets grow, so change our hypotheses.
You have it backwards: “scientist” is defined as “someone who does science”, not the other way around.
I think comment 18 is spot-on.
Incidentally, I had two hours per week of philosophy in the last year of the non-equivalent of highschool.
I might add that most philosophers would disown Fuller. I personally don’t care what instituional label anyone wants to apply to him; he’s a buffoon regardless.
I took several classes in medical anthropology as an undergraduate, not entirely by choice, but ended up really enjoying them and feeling that they contributed positively to my worldview as a scientist.
I think it is important for us as scientists to realize that some of what we pursue, and some of the ways that we pursue it, has some basis in our social milieu. These sociologists seem to think that this means we can’t discover anything real, and that any scientific discovery is a popularity contest. I don’t think that’s true. In contrast, I think that considering the social background of a field helps me as a scientist — I can take my blinders off and make sure I’m asking the right questions and pursuing results in useful ways.
We are scientists, but we are also social apes, and we can’t get around that. That doesn’t mean, however, that all theories are equally true, or that there’s no objective reality for us to discover. It just means we have to be careful about interpreting our results.
There is an objective reality only to the degree that we can recognize it, and there are obvious physical AND social limits on that recognition. Scientists or, and the older term is the better one here, natural philosophers are able to uncover larger amounts of reality through their work, but it still takes genrations for all but a very few, even of scientists, to absorb it as members of the culture in which they live.
I’ll give what is perhaps a too-simple example for the flaming anti-pomo tribes that inhabit the science blogs (and there is plenty to despise about post-modernism – Fuller is a classic example of everything I find disgusting in it, and in philosophy in general [but there are plenty of shitty people who are scientists as well, pray not forget – remember Watson?]): in English and other languages we still say “the Sun rises…” although we “know” it does no such thing. Since the fact does not cause us any trouble, the language AND the thought behind it are taken as true, unless pressed. We still live, in our daily culture, on a flat earth: it becomes a sphere only when we are put into a situation that demands recognizing the fact.
Dawkins suggested somewhere that poetry, etc. will (or should), if placed in a society that teaches science properly, begin to move away from the imagery of religion and mysticism and toward the celebration of our current scientific reality, and without losing any of its power. That is an idea I believe he is absolutely correct in predicting.
Less stupid hate for philosophy, please, however stupid the philosopher, or pseudo-philo, may be. I find a few of the comments here silly at times: unreasonable middle-class American truisms turned into universal truths.
Reality is, like, kompulcated.
[#8]”Why modern medicine gives US citizens a life span of 78, 30 more years than a decade ago.”
…presumably a century, though it doesn’t invalidate your point.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus06.pdf#027
First, I have no idea why some of you are blaming philosophy for this. The guy is a sociologist, not a philosopher. Philosophers (at least of the kind who are usually found in English-language philosophy departments) are usually the first to be critical of this sort of nonsense that emerges from the darker shadows of the social sciences and from the loonier practitioners in humanities areas such as “cultural studies”.
Second, in the spirit of shameless self-advertising, I already have an interesting thread going on a related subject (I just made a reference to the philosoraptor post … so, thanks to PZ):
Over here, if anyone is interested:
http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/2007/11/science-and-those-pesky-other-ways-of.html
Those parts we can consistently recognize — repeatability, falsifiability — are, by definition, objective reality. That’s the distinction I like to make between truth and reality; science is not about truth, it’s about reality; in science, unlike in philosophy, the argumentum ad lapidem is not a logical fallacy.
Note that my silent assumption that there is anything we can consistently recognize is itself a falsifiable hypothesis.
No, it is never better. Philosophers don’t do experiments.
In his book Unweaving the Rainbow.
Sociology is the science that investigates society, isn’t it? Pomo isn’t science. It does seem to be philosophy — bad philosophy, but still.
Those parts we can consistently recognize — repeatability, falsifiability — are, by definition, objective reality. That’s the distinction I like to make between truth and reality; science is not about truth, it’s about reality; in science, unlike in philosophy, the argumentum ad lapidem is not a logical fallacy.
Note that my silent assumption that there is anything we can consistently recognize is itself a falsifiable hypothesis.
No, it is never better. Philosophers don’t do experiments.
In his book Unweaving the Rainbow.
Sociology is the science that investigates society, isn’t it? Pomo isn’t science. It does seem to be philosophy — bad philosophy, but still.
Wow, David, talk about “No true Scotsman!” You’re suggesting that if it’s not scientific in its approach it can’t be real sociology?
Sorry, but the guy is trained as a sociologist, holds himself out as being a sociologist, and is employed as a sociologist. He does things that sociologists commonly do. He espouses a theory that is popular among sociologists. You can’t blame philosophy for him, and if some sociology is, as a matter of fact, not scientific, you can’t just define it as being something other than sociology.
….
(Emphasis mine)
Posted too soon. By way of analogy, the statemen “No true Scotsman exists such that neither he nor any known ancestor of his was born in, or has ever resided in, Scotland” is not fallacious.
@thwaite – OK, I’ll name names…the lecturer in question is the occasional TV don Simon Schaffer.
Schaffer, by the way, has learned to tone down his act, or has genuinely changed his views, and seems much more reasonable on TV than he did when I was an undergrad.
“First, I have no idea why some of you are blaming philosophy for this. The guy is a sociologist, not a philosopher.”
I think the problem here is that although Fuller is by title a sociologist, much of what he says seems saturated with bad philosophy. (Perhaps because he’s not a real philosopher?)
His arguments seem philosophically derived, not science derived, and that reflects badly on the study of philosophy.
Maybe I need to get out more, but in my limited experience with philosophy, a certain percentage of it seems nothing more than blowing intellectual bubbles and watching the pretty colors. In extreme cases you have people like Fuller, a guy who seems bent on thinking himself into a state of confusion, and ends up not even making sense. As a sociologist, he gives philosophy a bad name.
This Winston Smith, on the other hand, seems like a guy you could have an interesting discussion with without feeling like you’re talking to a dishonest wanker.
Yes, I would say that all this is irrelevant. “Sociologist” is defined as “someone who does sociology”, not the other way around, right?
(“True Scotsman” does not have a definition. That’s the difference.)
Then sociology is not a science, and its name is misleading like that of astrology is.
I want to be wrong about this point…
Yes, I would say that all this is irrelevant. “Sociologist” is defined as “someone who does sociology”, not the other way around, right?
(“True Scotsman” does not have a definition. That’s the difference.)
Then sociology is not a science, and its name is misleading like that of astrology is.
I want to be wrong about this point…
David M has now determined what is science and what is not by looking at a dictionary (many, many factors less ridiculous than a bible, I must admit), so he wins!
I HATE these post-Mod threads, where otherwise relaxed, funny and intelligent comrades get out their tape measures and compare sizes in the locker room of More Science High.
“Hell, no! I’m gonna cut the soles off my shoes. sit in a tree and learn to play the flute!” — P. Tirebiter
Given:
1. A “P” is defined as “one who does Q”
2. “Q” is defined as “the scientific study of R”
3. S studies R, but does so unscientifically (and thus does not engage in “the scientific study of R”)
Conclusion:
S is not a P.
Explain the error in the above, Mr. Finch?
David, I think it is more accurate to say that “sociology” is whatever those people who can get away with calling themselves “sociologists” actually do. After all, if you sign up to study something called “sociology” at your local uni or college, that is what you will actually encounter and be trained in. I don’t really care if those people have managed to convince lexicographers to define it as a “science”.
(Actually, I see that my old edition of the Heritage just says “study” and my old edition of the Macquarie hedges its bets by saying “science or study”. In quite recent times, lexicographers have been uncertain.)
Some of what those people do may be “scientific” in some meaningful sense; much of it may not be.
it seems that Fuller has completely overlooked a large part of the history of biology in his statement that scientists thought the genetic material was supernatural…and, thus, supernaturalism lead to “fruitful results.”
even in my undergraduate molecular genetics course years ago we learned that scientists didn’t initially know what the genetic material was but they were trying to figure out what it could be (ie. protein, dna, etc). just look up Griffith’s experiment, Avery, McLeod and McCarty’s experiment and the Hershey-Chase experiment. You didn’t see them and the research they built their experiments on chasing unicorns!
And this idea of knowledge being a social construct? Wow. Yes, the way we know the world is a social construct…however, the way the world actually works is not. And using objective methods to describe this world is the best way to know it.
I agree that other societies should be able to hold their own beliefs about why the sun rises or that animals are the spirits of their ancestors or whatever (and I also agree that fields like ethnobotany are very useful for modern science). However, that doesn’t make them right…and it doesn’t make their ideas about the world equal to scientific theories. The extreme cultural relativism found in much postmodernist thought needs to go away. It only limits social sciences. I though that it was being shown the door years ago!
On another note, Fuller appears in the Dawkins’ ‘Enemies of Reason’ and sounds like a complete wanker there as well.
No. Azkyroth, not me, posted the dictionary entry. A few days ago I posted “Never, I repeat, never look up a technical term in a general dictionary”…
In that case, sociology is not a science.
No. Azkyroth, not me, posted the dictionary entry. A few days ago I posted “Never, I repeat, never look up a technical term in a general dictionary”…
In that case, sociology is not a science.
Also, Azkyroth wasn’t using the dictionary to define what is and is not scientific, Azkyroth was using the dictionary to support the contention that a category for which “scientific” is a necessary prerequisite cannot include something which is admitted to be unscientific.
Heh, late to the party as usual. But this seems to have been given a pass, and I don’t see why.
darwinfinch wrote @ #30:
…Er, what? Actually, I’m fairly sure that the entire concept of “objective reality” is “that which exists even when you don’t believe in it.” This can be effortlessly extended to include “that which exists even when you don’t recognise it” or “that which exists even if you are entirely unaware of it’s existance”. The existance of things “out there” does not depend on our ability to perceive them or understand them at any given moment in time, hence the “objective” part of “objective reality”.
What you are talking about is something more like paradigm of understanding or worldview. Not quite the same. What you seem to say there edges dangerously to the sort of Deepak Chopra claim that when Columbus’s ships first turned up in the Caribbean, the natives there literally couldn’t see them, because they had no understanding or frame of reference for seeing something that alien.
There was an essay written by the naturalist Loren Eiseley some years ago which involved descending into a narrow gorge and finding a spider web strung across it. He took out his pencil and twanged the web a few times to see if he could lure out the spider so he could get a look at it. Sure enough, the spider charged out, but annoyed at finding nothing in its web it did the thing that some spiders do and started twanging the web wildly itself, with the purpose of maybe snaring what had brushed the web but not stuck there. This started Eiseley off on thinkg
ing about how spiders were not really in a position to understand “pencils”, either in terms of their intelligence or their background experience — and wondering if there were phenomena which we brush up against where we have the same sort of limitation.
Your argument seems to say that pencils don’t exist in a spider’s objective reality. That’s wrong; patently they exist, and one even got deliberately used on a spider web. The issue is that the spider didn’t understand it. Similar with humans, as stated above.