Re: Women's Ways of Knowing Study (Applied to physics

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@sfu.ca>]

> Leigh Palmer says:
> > > 	I thought the authors made a good case until the end of the book
> > > but hurt their credibility by their political attacks.
> >
> > You have yielded to a human weakness. The political leanings of the authors
> > should have no logical bearing on your acceptance of their previous
> > arguments *per se*.
>
> You seem to imply that a line of reasoning in the social sciences has the
> same objective clarity as a logical or mathematical proof.

I do, indeed. Among our children are a sociolinguistics professor and a
philosphy professor. There are many scholars in my own university who
are not physical scientists. Were I to deprecate the logical abilities of
these folks I would alienate myself from friends, family and colleagues!

A good line of reasoning is to be judged upon its own merits. It may not
be easy for a scientist to evaluate a line of reasoning in the arts or
humanities (I dislike the term "social sciences") just as it is usually
difficult for a scholar in those disciplines to evaluate a scientific or
mathematical argument, but it is not impossible to do so. For a start,
look at the premises. They are often stated less compactly than is usual
in scientific exposition. You must also consider the implicit premises,
and you may well be unfamiliar with those, just as a philosopher might
be unfamiliar with the fact that the kinetic energy of a charged particle
moving in a static magnetic field is invariant, a fact which a physicist
might use in an argument without first stating it. From the point of view
of a radical feminist there are several unstated axioms with which you
and I would likely take issue, but we should not condemn their arguments
without first identifying those axioms. Like scientists, radical
feminist scholars write mostly for the eyes of their colleagues and they
experience difficulty communicating their ideas to the nonexpert (and
frequently hostile) public.

> In the research for this book, the authors clearly had to make many
> interviews and then distill generalizations from them.  It appears (based
> on the messages so far posted) that this was not done in the manner of
> statistical testing; rather, the authors are suggesting a framework within
> which to interpret their observations.

Do you believe that scientists do not do the same thing?

> IF (and I have no idea if this is true) the authors harbor sociopolitical
> biases and are unable to set those biases aside in writing the book, then
> it is reasonable to suspect that they were not able to set those biases
> aside when making their observations.

If you believe passionately in causality you may find it difficult to
accept results of EPR experiments that seem to violate causality. I know
I have that problem. I may have to realign my prejudices, however

> In brief, in the social sciences, political leanings may influence the
> data, and hence may be relevant in evaluating an argument based on that
> data.

This is also the case in the sciences. I believe this weakness is
attributable to the fact that the participants in both kinds of
activities are fallible and irrational, or what is the same thing,
human.

Leigh