🚀 go-pugleaf

Androcles, you comment on my question by suggesting that its terms or
even its presumptions are problematic. However, I was trying to
ascertain the OP's meaning for "postscientism" in relation to a
conventional meaning(s) of scientism, and so I don't see how your
questions, however reasonable they may be in themselves, are
relevant. But let me address them anyway.

"Androcles" <Headmaster@Hogwarts.physics> writes:

> Haines, what do you mean by "the categories and axioms of natural
> science" and "knowledge"? Indeed, what do you mean by "natural"
> science?

Your question should have been, what do I mean by "science"? Natural
science is simply an artificial convention that distinguishes situations
in which human intentionality is a factor from those in which it is
not. I don't care for this distinction, but it is conventional.

Every science (understood broadly) rests on certain axioms, terminology
and certain conceptual categories. I assumed this was obvious. An axiom
is a statement that is presumed to be true because no investigation
starts from a tabula rasa. Terminology is simply social conventions
necessary for communication. Conceptual categories are a product of both
culture and the powers of the mind, and the former means they are not
impervious to criticism, although because our communication depends on
them, to criticise them requires special and explicit measures that make
clear what we are up to and also that we provide justifications to
warrant our deviation.

What is "knowledge" is a more contentious issue. I was using the term in
a conventional sense, but admit that in philosophical terms it is
contentious, although these contentious issues seem marginal to my
question. In any case, I would simply mean by knowledge statements about
the world that have truth value in that they correspond in some fashion
with the world. While one can quibble about correspondence theory, I
take such a definition as necessary to action in the world, and
it becomes problematic only if the aim is not action in the world, but
merely (passively) understanding it.

> Our world is transformed by technology, not by papers purporting to be
> knowledge. Any technology based on the epicycles of Ptolemy or the
> insane scribbling of Einstein would be a pointless exercise - as
> history has shown, for nothing has ever come from either.

Yes, I suppose. But the modern world does not entail just objective
forces, but also is constructed by human activity, and that activity is
obviously informed by our presumed knowledge of the world. It is not
whether a particular body of knowledge has had historical impact, but
that in general our knowledge of the world to a degree informs our
action in it, and increasingly the world in which we live is affected by
that activity. Are you here suggesting that knowledge is epiphenomenal
and that humans are passive artifacts of forces over which they have no
control?

Keep in mind the point of my comment. The author had offered a very long
list of quotations that seemed on the whole to suggest that our categories
and presumptions are all subject to criticism. I was only asking the OP
to specify what the point of his quotations was, and I suggested that
however problematic may be some of the presumptions of contemporary
science, it hardly warrants the term "postscientism", which presumes
there is some alternative. Until the OP offers an alternative, the term
does not seem to mean anything.

For example, the term postmodern does not mean that the modern world has
broken down, but that there's something we can define as being "modern",
and the definition of postmodernism differs with that definition in some
fundamental way. While postmodernists might insist that definition is
part of the problem (and hence some refuse to call themselves
postmodern), that can hardly be meaningful for those whose aim is
morally responsible action in the world rather than intellectual games.

-- 
 
       Haines Brown, KB1GRM