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> After deconstructing all the self-contradictory things that humans call knowledge And yet we proceed, at least in STEM subjects, with the epistemological met

> After deconstructing all the self-contradictory things that humans call knowledge And yet we proceed, at least in STEM subjects, with the epistemological methods that we trust and that we believe to work, as if postmodernists didn't happen. They may have influenced the politics of science, or the philosophy of science, but they have not changed a thing about how scientific or engineering knowledge is acquired.

dang 6y ago
I think that if we could zoom out to a more historical perspective, things would probably look different. History isn't linear and overlapping things are always going on at the same time. The new coexists with the old. It's true that most practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge don't give a fig about what the postmodernists had to say, but it doesn't follow that the postmodern critique is without effect. It would be interesting to know who 'wins' a hundred years from now. I wouldn't bet on the practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge as we know it today.
- azangru 6y ago
  > It's true that the practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge don't give a fig about what the postmodernists had to say, but it doesn't follow that the postmodern critique is without effect. Are there historical examples when radical philosophical scepticism changed the way science is done? Descartes, with his "evil demon", Hume, the solipsism of George Berkeley — they all have valid points, and they all have pointed out contradictions in things we call knowledge, with sufficient force to have been immortalised in textbooks on the history of philosophy, but they haven't changed the practice of engineering and science, I don't think.
  - orwin 6y ago
    Depends of your definition of science, but historical science definitely changed in the 70s. Was it under the inflence of postmodernists or skeptics? Was it by comparison to other scientific fields? Was it because historian now had real formations?
    - azangru 6y ago
      Hard sciences, I think, are based on the correspondence theory of truth – their statements are tested by whether or not they correspond to what's observed in what's believed to be reality. I realise that for some sciences, such as physics, it's becoming increasingly difficult, with such proposals as string theory or many-world theory. I don't know how much of a reality, apart from physical artifacts, there is in historical science.
  - dang 6y ago
    The rise of science itself is the leading example.
orwin 6y ago
It is because early postmodernists found a "Truth". And by that i mean a postmodern version: a reality from their point of view. Their critics of power, art and knowledge were right... Half a century before they made them for physics, and decades ago for biology, but for other fields (except maybe philosophy that turned around a bit before). This did not take in scientific fields because they did their revolution early XXth century. And while postmodern critics were right, their proposed solution (relativism and/or nihilism) weren't. Everybody now knows that when you have a valid critic, your solution will likely be viewed as "more valid", even though this is absolutely untrue. That's probably what happened in social studies. Also i follow subects in humanities (history and linguistic, and some consciousness philosophy) and those follow the same epistemological methods. Sadly you can only find the papers in academia and at least in France, know "historians" (TV historian) are not following those methods at all. ps: The only postmodern i read was foucault, so everything i've said on postmordernist only apply to my understanding of him.

dang 6y ago

I think that if we could zoom out to a more historical perspective, things would probably look different. History isn't linear and overlapping things are always going on at the same time. The new coexists with the old. It's true that most practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge don't give a fig about what the postmodernists had to say, but it doesn't follow that the postmodern critique is without effect. It would be interesting to know who 'wins' a hundred years from now. I wouldn't bet on the practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge as we know it today.

azangru 6y ago
> It's true that the practitioners of scientific and engineering knowledge don't give a fig about what the postmodernists had to say, but it doesn't follow that the postmodern critique is without effect. Are there historical examples when radical philosophical scepticism changed the way science is done? Descartes, with his "evil demon", Hume, the solipsism of George Berkeley — they all have valid points, and they all have pointed out contradictions in things we call knowledge, with sufficient force to have been immortalised in textbooks on the history of philosophy, but they haven't changed the practice of engineering and science, I don't think.
- orwin 6y ago
  Depends of your definition of science, but historical science definitely changed in the 70s. Was it under the inflence of postmodernists or skeptics? Was it by comparison to other scientific fields? Was it because historian now had real formations?
  - azangru 6y ago
    Hard sciences, I think, are based on the correspondence theory of truth – their statements are tested by whether or not they correspond to what's observed in what's believed to be reality. I realise that for some sciences, such as physics, it's becoming increasingly difficult, with such proposals as string theory or many-world theory. I don't know how much of a reality, apart from physical artifacts, there is in historical science.
- dang 6y ago
  The rise of science itself is the leading example.

orwin 6y ago

It is because early postmodernists found a "Truth". And by that i mean a postmodern version: a reality from their point of view. Their critics of power, art and knowledge were right... Half a century before they made them for physics, and decades ago for biology, but for other fields (except maybe philosophy that turned around a bit before). This did not take in scientific fields because they did their revolution early XXth century. And while postmodern critics were right, their proposed solution (relativism and/or nihilism) weren't. Everybody now knows that when you have a valid critic, your solution will likely be viewed as "more valid", even though this is absolutely untrue. That's probably what happened in social studies. Also i follow subects in humanities (history and linguistic, and some consciousness philosophy) and those follow the same epistemological methods. Sadly you can only find the papers in academia and at least in France, know "historians" (TV historian) are not following those methods at all. ps: The only postmodern i read was foucault, so everything i've said on postmordernist only apply to my understanding of him.