Is science objective?

There is a bit of irony you are having this discussion on a microprocessor based machine which sends messages across a network to have the letters you are reading now rendered on an LCD (probably) screen.

All of these technologies are based on science-- in fact the computer you are using now was based directly on the work of scientists (from materials science, to plastics to the quantum mechanics used to design your microprocessor).

Is that claim all this science works, and that you are reading these words, a fact? Or is it representative of some bias.

I think that as long as science is dependent of funding, which it gets from corporations and organizations that have an interest in the potential applications of whatever is being researched, it can never be truly objective.

Something may be the subject of scientific study, and the study itself may be void of opinion and objective. But there is always an intent at the base of any project, and if a study fails to deliver what was expected of it, it may be cast aside. Even if it had other applications and uses that would benefit us, these aspects wouldn't neccesary be detected.

So while scientific process and method may be objective, the selection of what is to be subjected to it isn't, and therefore science isnt' competely objective.

A wise person can separate the practice from the practitioner.

Kuvaz, can you please explain further what you mean by the above statement?

Thanks for the resent replies, yes, K, please can you elaborate?

Hi Cy--long time, no see. I hope you're keeping out of bother.



Science is always objective. You're saying that these procedures are not scientific.

it was a response to the following comment edgar blyth

He meant that not all those who claim to be scientists are actually scientists. And a lot of folks claim to be scientists. But very few are objective. That's because objectivity is a bit severe on the nerves.

Brilliant.

Only an intellectual could respond like that. I'm usually informed after one of my corny insights that I have my head up my arse.

Refering to Kuhn's "paradigms" in which it is impossible to seperate practice from practioner, perhaps a "wiser" person re-defines "objectivity" as "universal functional agreement subject to revision".

Yeah, that sounds like a more eloquent definition.

No, I really like the ones I understand.

Kuhn argued, I gather, that scientists work within an unquestioned set of beliefs which he called a paradigm. I think, though I'm not sure, that he also argued that there is no logical reason to ever change the paradigm. Which seems to me to say that once you have science you are stuck with it no matter where it leads even if it is to Orwell's stick rattling in a bucket or to the breakdown Luc Goddard predicted at the end of Alphaville resulting from the incongruence between science and human nature.

Alphaville, a must see, depicts a technological dictatorship, the paradigm, run by a computer (Alpha 60) which outlaws free thought, love, art and emotion. Punishes them with death. When Lemmy Caution destroys Alpha 60 with a riddle which fuses all its terminals (he shoots its mastermind in cold blood) the citizens are lost and are depicted trying to climb up the walls as Lemmy escapes with the damsel in distress in an old banger.

Interestingly, the voice of Alpha 60 is that of someone who has had his larynx removed. Structured belching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_b6X_S1jn0

Is that correct Fresco?

Really? I thought it sounded weird.

It was meant to sound weird Queenie.

pq,

Paradigms change when a weight of "counter examples" arises which cannot be "satisfactorily" accounted for by the current theoretical framework. In that sense paradigm shifts are "logical". Scientists operate with "established theoretical frameworks" rather than "beliefs", though psychological entrenchment is common.

As I understand it Kuhn thought paradigm shifts were not strictly logical. Which doesn't mean they are not. Only that Kuhn thought not.

I gave the Alphaville example to suggest that when a pardigm becomes entrenched only catastrophic breakdown can shift it. If such a breakdown is logical you can stuff logic where the sun doesn't shine.