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To: exDemMom
No matter whose ideology is being promoted, trying to make science fit an ideology never works. It doesn't matter if it's Lysenkoism or creationism; ideologically driven science does not and cannot work. The only people I've ever seen trying to assign a moral component to the theory of evolution are literal creationists. Science itself has no morality; it is merely a tool. The people using the tool supply the morality.

I reference this for your consideration, "More recently, however, postmodern relativism has invaded science as well, threatening to undermine the objectivity of scientific enterprise. Old-line historical relativists prized the objectivity of science because is served them well as a foil for exposing what they considered to be the comparative non-objectivity of historical constructions. But during the 1960s proponenents of so-called Weltanschauung analysis of scientific theories, such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, radically challenged the old, positivistic view of science. According to these thinkers, scientific work takes place within the context of an all-embracing worldview (Weltanschuung) or paradigm, which is so intimately linked with a given scientific theory that for scientists working within that paradigm, their observations are not neutral, but theory-laden; the very meanings of terms used by them are determined by the theory so that scientists working within a different paradigm aren't even talking about the same things; and what counts as a fact is determined by a scientist's Weltanschauung), so that there are no neutral facts available for assessing the adeaquacy of two rival theories. On this analysis, scientific change from one theory to another becomes fundamentally arational and is to be explained sociologically. On, Weltanschauung analysis scientist find themselves in the same boat sith historical relativist, for scientific theories are constructions which are not based on objective facts and cannot claim to describe the world as it actually is. Ironically, then the old-line relativists' complaint that scientist (unlike the historian) has direct access to the objeects of his study has been undercut by postmodernist relativists who challenge the positivists idea that scientists neutrally observe the uninterpreted world around them. The scientist's understanding of the present is just as much a theoretical construction as is the historian's understanding of the past, a construction which cannot be checked for its correspondence with the objective facts, since one's Weltanschauung determines what the facts are.(Frederrick Suppe, "The Search for Philosphic Understanding of Scientific Theories," in Structure of Scientific Theories, 218-20.)

As Suppe explains, it is false that there is a different Weltanschauung uniquely correlated with each scientific theory. If the notion of a Weltanschauung is difined too broadly, then it just becomes equivalent o one's total-background, experience, beliefs, training, and so forth, in which case the striking fact is that scientist possessing widely different Weltanschauung do employ the same theories and come to agreemnt on the testing, articulation, and use of such theories. On the other hand, if one tries to narrow the definition of a Weltanschauung, then the fact is that scientist involved in research programs on different theories to not necessarily have different Weltanschauung, but clearly understand the competing theory, the observations and evidence that support it, and regularly communicate with one another about such matters. It would be bizarre, for example, the say that all proponents of the standard Big Bang theory have a unique and different Weltanschauung than cosmologists who advocated the old Hoyle "Steady-State" theory, rather than to say they just disagreed on which theory offered the best explanation of the evidence.

IN OTHER WORDS, everyone has a worldview and ideology and cannot but help insinuate it into their view of science, politic, history, sociology, economics, etc. So, by what criteria do we adjudicate these positions? ? ? We should go back to a point where we all agree on what is proper and fit...Is that point, "what did our parents say is right"? ? "Is that point, what do the most people agree to say about a given subject"? ? "Is that point what a cleric says about said subject" ? ? "Is that point what any individual says about that subject"? ? Or should we agree to begin the examination by asking, "What is truth?" "Does 'TRUTH' exist"? "How do we come to know truth"? " Can we all agree to approach the subject with logic, rational thought, and reason". As a Christian theist, I would agree with that last profered approach,....but does the scientist agree?

434 posted on 08/28/2011 12:39:23 PM PDT by Texas Songwriter (I)
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To: Texas Songwriter
Thank you so very much for sharing your insights, dear Texas Songwriter!
460 posted on 08/28/2011 9:57:28 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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