science is self-regulating

science is self-regulating

what is culture? here are the two best definitions i found from the dictionary:

the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group: the youth culture; the drug culture.

Anthropology. the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.


i've noticed that the fundamental way to attack science from a non-scientific perspective is to reduce science to a system of beliefs, which at some point relies on inferences or leaps of faith in order to form a coherent, self-contained system; as such, some have deemed science as comparable to religion, while social science has dwelled on how culture fills in the so-called gaps of science, thus making science culturally-embedded. the problem with these criticisms is that they fail to offer an alternative approach that bests science, for science is only second to reason as being able to lay claim to universal truths. with religion, the flaw is obvious: why replace a partially irrational system (science) with a totally irrational one (religion)? ultimately, while this may be a gross oversimplification for a subject on which many books have been read and entire classes have been taught, i think religion believes that establishing universals through the scientific method is not superior in any way to universals that have been establish by sheer intuition or experiential knowledge and have gradually evolved and been passed down as accepted truths much in the way culture does from one generation to the next. the legitimacy of the truths of these belief systems is supposed to be evinced in the success that these belief systems have had in the survival and grow of each religion's followers; such is also a reasonable explanation for why religious wars have been and still are at the forefront of human disagreement. the other plausible explanation is the outright rejection of universals, a belief stemming from aristotle's philosophy that universals are reinterpreted as somehow being part of particulars. however, such is not a valid solution to the universal/particular dualism proposed by plato.

now, for my favorite part, the so-called culture of science. certainly, any person's life profession is going to impact their ways of life and cause them to bond with others in the profession who share a similar life approach. this alone, however, does not explain how science is culturally-embedded. when differences appear between methodologies from two different cultures on a consistent basis, thus negating the possibility of sheer coincidence, it can be determined that the differences are due to cultural differences, differences in the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another. ok, so it follows that science is not totally independent from cultural influences. so, 1) how do we rid science of cultural influences, and 2) how do we define what those cultural influences amount to? i have previously addressed point 1 using aliens a way to regulate scientific methodologies by comparing them across species instead of across cultures, and then applying this concept to comparing methodologies without the need for actual aliens. however, i'm sure many social scientists would claim that culture operates on so many implicit levels that attempting to weed out methodological differences is still a cultural practice in and of itself. my previous blog entry refuted this by placing science on an abstract pedestal, thus making it immune to cultural practices, and if it is not immune to cultural practices, then it is at least as much dependent on the differences among individual scientists as it is among different cultures. unfortunately, this is only a theoretical perspective on how science operates among the minds of its adherent, and has not been proven.

so the big question remains: how do we define culture? since "hard science" does not appear interested in examining culture, then social science, by claiming the study of culture, has ultimately reduced science to social science and rendered the claims of each discipline to being interdependent, with both adopting their own methodological approaches and neither discipline being able to lay a superior claim to universal truths. however, just because social science appears to be the only discipline that studies culture in a remotely objective fashion doesn't let it off the hook from criticisms of its own methodologies. since science is second only to reason at finding universal truths, then how can social science pretend to be better at regulating the irrational aspects of science than science is able to self-regulate? simply put, culture can be broken down into behaviors and beliefs. what social science, particularly anthropology has done, is studied behaviors using a methodology as scientific as possible, then attempted to make these behaviors compatible within the context of theoretical frameworks established by the discipline. as such, social science considers its study of science as scientific and simply an extension of science since social science can ultimately be reduced to science. however, there is a dark secret that social science tries to deny or neatly gloss over: examining beliefs by themselves in addition to their manifestation through behaviors (and sometimes through language). sure, social science pretends that beliefs can be manifested through behaviors and language, but one knows from simple behaviorism in psychology that behaviors do not 100% correlate to what is in one's mind, the place where beliefs reside. anthropology actually tried to make in-roads in this area in the 1960's with cognitive anthropology, but the sub-discipline quickly became untenable and was essentially abandoned.

is there a better solution to examine people's beliefs than through their behaviors? of course! the study of cognition, or cognitive science. let's examine a theoretical example. my previous blog entry postulated that science, by operating on an abstract level, should not be affected by cultural influences, or if it was, then it was affected as much by differences among individuals as differences among cultures. this abstract level is what plato would consider to be universals conceived in one's mind. now, imagine we have real-time brain scanning for scientists from different cultures as they conduct the same experiment coinciding with videotaping them as they speak during each part of the experiment as part of a demonstration. now, although this is somewhat of a gross oversimplification, what one would have to do is find correlations for brain activity for each part of the experiment, and theoretically he/she could figure out how much of the methodology's process includes abstract thinking, how much non-abstract thinking similarities and differences there are for scientists in the same culture compared to scientists in other cultures (for determining culture's influence), and how much non-abstract thinking similarities and differences there are for scientists across cultures (for determining the effects of each particular scientist's uniqueness on implementing the experiment's methodology). now, i could introduce some fancy names for neurological equipment and terminology for brain parts on a macro and micro level, but i'm too lazy to look them up at the moment. anyway, the point is that as technology improves, greater emphasis on determining culture's impact on science will be proven via science. as such, science has the potential, depending on the success of developing neurological technology, to eventually be seen as a self-regulating discipline, with social science's criticisms simply serving as a transitory, stop-gap creation to attempt to explain science's deficiencies. of course, it is possible that technology will not improve to the point where we can adequately assess people's beliefs by examining their brains, and if such is the case, then we will continue to rely mainly on behavior for assessing culture's impact on science. the problem with social science claiming that science is culturally-embedded isn't with some of their findings that there are in fact differences in scientific methodologies that most certainly appear as the result of cultural differences; these observations are true and important to regulating science and making it as objective as possible, and can even be seen as a form of science regulating itself had the investigations been carried out by scientists instead of social scientists. the reason for this is that scientists would simply have to identify cross-cultural differences in methodology and attempt to rectify them philosophically; scientists do not need background in studying cultures in order to identify culture's influence on scientific methodologies. but returning to social science, the problem is that social science claims more than it can substantiate by reducing science to a cultural phenomenon, to the point where culture, instead of just poking a few holes through an otherwise solid universal truth found via science, has been used as a tool to throw the entire validity of science into question, and furthermore given social science the authority to regulate science instead of allowing science to regulate itself. social science claims more than it can substantiate because it makes too many assumptions and inferences in its methodology of studying behavior exclusively, then attempts to fill any remaining holes with an extensive theoretical framework that is not fully justified by scientific inquiry. as such, a large part of social science's criticisms of science boil down to philosophy that is not currently falsifiable at present nor can one make firm inferences from, as one does with something like evolution. i think this is a rather irresponsible approach, and while certainly the ideas might be valid -- we won't know for sure until neurological testing improves -- they should be accompanied by the disclaimer that they are just ideas, not facts. the idea that any of these theories is valid due to its rigor is completely false, and has everything to do with winning arguments than actually proving something, in this case the something being to what degree culture influences science. ultimately, valid attacks against science must be rational arguments against irrational aspects of a supposedly rational discipline. having faith in science is believing that ultimately humans can behave rationally enough to produce a body of knowledge that is objective despite the inherently irrational elements in human nature and living habits.