A Discussion on the Teachers’ Blogs: Science Communication from the Perspective of the Philosophy of Scientific Practice

**Science Communication from the Perspective of Philosophy of Scientific Practice**

2007-03-16 11:38:45

http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/48c5bb42010008zr#comment

Science Communication from the Perspective of Philosophy of Scientific Practice

Jiang Jinsong

Institute for Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University 100084

Science Studies, 2007 (1), 9-13

*[Date received]: 2006-04-14, revised date: 2006-7-20

Funded by: National Social Science Fund project (05BZX029)

[Author bio] Jiang Jinsong (1965–), male, PhD in philosophy, associate professor, research interests: philosophy of science and the relation between science and religion.

Abstract: From the perspective of philosophy of scientific practice, science is local knowledge that originates in the laboratory. Scientific knowledge is, in the sense of Foucault, a power relation that shapes the scene. Science communication is, in essence, the standardized reconstruction of society as a whole by the laboratory’s power relations, and at the same time a counter-reconstruction by society of scientific knowledge and power relations in a process of “destandardization.” Science communication has a political dimension.

Keywords: philosophy of scientific practice, science communication, power, standardization, laboratory

[Chinese Library Classification] N031                 [Document code] A

I. The Locality of Scientific Knowledge

How is science communication possible? Why is science communication necessary? The usual assumption is that scientific knowledge is objectively valid knowledge of universal applicability, truth that holds everywhere and can transcend the limits of nation-states, time, and space. On the other hand, however, scientific knowledge is always held only by a small number of people; most people lack even the most basic scientific knowledge and skills. There is a serious imbalance between the universality of science as object and its locality as subject: there is a contradiction between the boundless scope of scientific application and the limited number of people who possess it. Therefore, if one wants to bring the power of science fully into play, the only path is to work hard at spreading scientific knowledge.

However, according to the new findings of philosophy of scientific practice, this assumption does not hold up. Scientific knowledge is highly local, and modern scientific research is conducted mainly in laboratories. In this highly artificial setting of the laboratory, scientists construct an artificial, simplified “world,” making originally extremely complex natural phenomena easier to grasp, easier to control, and easier to obtain relevant information from. This is the reason modern science has been able to make such rapid advances in the development of knowledge. “The laboratory is the place for constructing the microscopic world of phenomena. Object systems are constructed in known contexts and separated from other influences so that they can be manipulated and tracked. Scientists circumvent the disorderly complexity that extremely restricts the natural appearance of phenomena by constructing an artificial, simplified ‘world’.” [1] In this highly artificial setting, the influences scientists exert on the object of study can mainly be divided into three kinds: isolation, intervention, and tracking.

Separating and isolating the object of study from its natural environment cuts off the intricate and complex natural connections it has with that environment, thereby simplifying the object’s relations and making it easier to study. For example, measuring the law of motion of free fall in a vacuum tube can eliminate the interfering factors of extremely complex air resistance and wind. From this point on, the true object of scientific research is no longer nature as it exists naturally, no longer a thing-in-itself that remains unchanged.

On this basis, one then manipulates the already isolated object. Only by forcefully intervening in and controlling an object that has already been isolated from its natural environment can the so-called hidden causal relations be revealed. For example, in the laboratory we subject materials to high temperature, high pressure, strong electromagnetic fields, and other physical influences in order to test what changes occur in the material under such influences, thereby constructing the relevant causal effects. In a certain sense, “scientific research is less a matter of the observer’s attention to identifying causal efficacy than a matter of proceeding through the causal efficacy presupposed by action.” ([1], 107) In this way, the causal relation that Hume originally understood as something that could not be determined through empirical induction is transformed into a causal effect that is presupposed and then highly determined through experiment. And such an effect can be determined only through forceful manipulation of things.

The experimental results obtained through isolation and manipulation must then be strictly tracked. Moreover, “tracking experiments involve controlling the entire experimental process from the beginning of construction. Tracking is not merely monitoring the results of the experiment, but more importantly monitoring the normal functioning of things.” ([1], 107) By comprehensively monitoring all components of the microscopic world constructed in the laboratory—that is, by classifying, coding, archiving, recording identities, locating, and handling every part—one can ensure that the object of study is completely under the researcher’s control and bring it very close to the state or properties described by the ideal model.

In order to obtain scientific knowledge, research personnel in the laboratory must also undergo strict scientific training, master the essentials of experimental operation, regulate their own behavior in dealing with research objects, and meticulously control and record all their operations; only then can the reliability and accuracy of scientific experiments be ensured. Therefore, the control and manipulation of scientific experiments not only intervene in and manipulate natural events, but also transform and control the activities of the people involved in the research.

Thus scientific knowledge is not a representation of a world external to us, but a product of our practical dealings with the world. It must be acquired through specific practical activities, and it can be verified only in specific settings. For example, the law of free fall is only strictly proved under vacuum laboratory conditions. Otherwise, under interference from air resistance and the like, the law of free fall simply would not appear in strict and accurate form. Therefore, both the acquisition and the proof of scientific knowledge depend highly on the laboratory setting and mode of practice; they are highly local knowledge.

II. Scientific Knowledge and Power

The prevailing view of knowledge and politics since modern times holds that power concerns only interpersonal relations and changes continually as human will and understanding change; knowledge, especially knowledge of natural science and technology, concerns the objective properties of the natural world and has nothing to do with human will. So although power may suppress or encourage the development of knowledge, it can only have an external effect on science; whether knowledge itself is correct has nothing to do with power. What lies behind this view is in fact the assumption that knowledge is merely a representation of the world. According to this assumption, the discovery and justification of knowledge are two activities that are entirely different in nature: the former depends on various specific situations and is closely related to the operation of power, whereas the latter is related to the universal characteristics of the objective world and has nothing to do with specific situations, and therefore has nothing to do with the operation of power.

In fact, Francis Bacon’s widely celebrated saying “Knowledge is power” can also be translated as “knowledge is power.” This is an important new discovery of philosophy of scientific practice. For we know that the development of modern scientific knowledge is rooted in the construction and manipulation of scientific phenomena in the laboratory. This construction and manipulation not only constructs new phenomena, but also develops new skills and reveals new truths. And the modes of restriction and reconstruction of the participants in scientific practice and of action that are manifested in such settings and practical activities are, in Rouse’s view, precisely what the famous contemporary Western philosopher Foucault means by power. Rouse says, “Power is exactly the feature of this setting or shaping, not of the things or relations within it. What is related to power is the way in which the interpretation within the setting reconstructs the setting itself, and the way it reconstructs and limits the agents and their possible actions.” ([1], 225)

Rouse believes that scientific research in the laboratory and its outward expansion are extremely similar to the disciplinary practices described by Foucault, and in fact intensify the latter. There are three aspects to the similarity: 1. The normalization, discipline, and restriction of the subject and its actions that Foucault speaks of are indispensable in laboratory research. “From the educational practices that cultivate scientists to the various forms of surveillance, normalization, and restriction that guarantee scientists’ research activities and their reliability, discipline is crucial to science.” ([1], 254) 2. The microscopic world of the laboratory is closer than any other place to a completely monitored and controlled “ideal” world, a world in which “everything is approved, nothing is unexpected or inexplicable, and everything is subject to strict surveillance, classification, and coding” ([1], 254). 3. The most important feature of disciplinary power is that its aim is to increase social productivity and utility. And the reconstruction and reorganization of material forces in productive activity developed through laboratory practice are indispensable conditions for the reconstruction and organization of human beings that Foucault focuses on more.

Therefore, Rouse believes that, from the perspective of constructing and manipulating a “microworld,” the laboratory is, in essence, like prisons, schools, hospitals, barracks, and factories: all are typical sites of power operations in the modern world. Such micro-power relations embodied in specific sites are not external interference with scientific knowledge, but are internal to scientific knowledge itself. The production and justification of scientific knowledge both take this power relation as a necessary premise. It is precisely this tight, omnipresent power relation that actively plays the function of promoting knowledge production.

III. Scientific Knowledge and the Standardized Reconstruction of Society by Power

Scientific knowledge, like other forms of knowledge, is also local knowledge: it arises in a specific laboratory or site of knowledge production, within a specific practical environment, and its validity and standards of evaluation cannot be separated from the site of production. For only in the world to which scientific knowledge is applied, when the basic characteristics of the “microworld” constructed by the laboratory are satisfied, will the same scientific laws appear, and only then will the scientific knowledge produced in the laboratory be valid and display so-called “universality.” The reason the results of scientific experiments appear universally valid is in fact that we standardize all the conditions under which scientific knowledge is applied according to the conditions of the laboratory. The standardization of scientific knowledge is, in essence, the standardized reconstruction of the entire social environment according to the model of the laboratory. In addition to the need to standardize material resources and experimental equipment, the people involved in the application of science must also be standardized in certain respects; to a certain extent, they must be like experimental researchers, able to carry out the required isolation, manipulation, and meticulous tracking of relevant objects, so that the knowledge and techniques effective in the laboratory can also function normally outside the laboratory.

The process of modernization is a process in which scientific knowledge is comprehensively applied, and therefore, to some extent, also a process in which nature and social life are transformed according to the laboratory. In this process, not only must the entire material ecological environment be transformed as required by scientific practice, but the public as a whole must also undergo corresponding changes and transformation. This reconstruction is manifested not only in knowledge and technology, but more profoundly in attitudes and emotions. For the public outside the laboratory has diverse lifestyles and traditions, and now faces standardized reconstruction. That is to say, along with the popularization and spread of knowledge, equally important is the spread and diffusion of the power relations in the laboratory. Science communication is, in essence, the expansion and extension of the simplified and controlled microworld, involving the reshaping of society as a whole with the laboratory’s power relations as the template. For example, the spread of new farming techniques is not only the diffusion of new knowledge; it also involves the establishment of new relations between farmers and seed companies, pesticide companies, the government’s investment in water conservancy projects related to irrigation water, and the establishment and coordination of new forms of production organization. Even traditional farming knowledge thereby gradually becomes ineffective, and the status of elders as traditional authorities is threatened and gradually marginalized.

But at the same time, other cultural fields and power relations in society will certainly produce considerable resistance to such reshaping. Only by overcoming this resistance, deconstructing traditional discourse, wresting discursive hegemony away from the possession of traditional culture, reconstructing social power relations, and ensuring that the practical mode of modern scientific knowledge—its isolation, manipulation, and comprehensive tracking and control of natural objects—is widely accepted by the public, can scientific knowledge truly grasp the public.

Therefore, in content, science communication must inevitably treat science as supreme, while other cultures and power relations are only qualified to be transformed and scrutinized; in mode of dissemination, it must inevitably take the top-down, centralized broadcasting model. From the perspective of the reconstruction of society by power relations, science communication is bound from the outset to bear a very deep imprint of scientism. This also explains why current debates about scientism are most intense in the field of science communication, and why scientism has been widely criticized in today’s Chinese fields of philosophy of science, psychology, literary criticism, and even pedagogy, yet still retains strong influence in the field of science communication. It is also in this sense that the dissemination of scientific knowledge has always been accompanied by Enlightenment ideology and by strong demands for political reform. For example, Voltaire once sincerely believed that so long as the French people could understand and accept Newtonian mechanics, they would no longer be fooled and deceived by tyrants and priests. Even the rather pedantic logical positivist movement took popularizing scientific culture as the main means of transforming society and striving for social progress. In the years when ultra-left lines were rampant, Chinese scientists contributed more than other groups to efforts to reduce the influence of erroneous ideological trends. This is also the true ideological root of why some older scholars today defend scientism with such emotion and persistence.

However, such transformation is by no means necessarily reasonable. The French Enlightenment philosophers imagined that one could simply ignore complex historical traditions and human psychology and completely remake society on the basis of reason alone; this was nothing but an extreme rationalist fantasy. [2] The modern history of developed Western countries shows that where the relationship between modernization and the preservation of tradition has been handled relatively well, the road to modernization has been relatively smooth, with fewer detours and lower costs, as in Britain’s Glorious Revolution. By contrast, the path to modernization has been rough and bumpy, costly, and marked by reversals, as in the French Revolution. In our country since modern times, the continuation of excellent traditional culture has been seriously insufficient. By comparison, in Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, all in East Asia, the continuation of traditional culture has been handled relatively well, and their modernization processes have accordingly been rapid and stable.

Even in a certain sense, the environmental problems that have become increasingly severe in modern times find their root in the process by which scientific knowledge is standardized and then transforms complex ecological systems. For in the outward expansion of the technical microworld of the laboratory, “the natural environment was artificially simplified, controlled, and deprived of some of its self-regulating and buffering capacities.” ([1], 245-246) The spread of modern scientific knowledge from Europe to the Third World is, in some respects, responsible for the backward position of the Third World. For scientific knowledge developed in European laboratories, whether in its concern for the heterogeneity of nature or its concern for social interests, served European expansion, so much so that one may say, “modern science was to a certain extent the result of planning and implementing European expansion.” [3] In the process of global modernization, Europe’s developmental model has a strong appeal to developing countries and regions. Although from an economic perspective Europe may be a model worth emulating, “from an ecological perspective it is not difficult to see that many aspects of Europe’s road to success constitute a unique path that is, for the rest of the world, little more than a dead end.” [4]

IV. The Two-Way Reconstruction of Scientific Knowledge and Power

From the perspective of philosophy of scientific practice, learning scientific knowledge is by no means merely a matter of conceptually mastering universally valid theories; it is, in practice, learning how to use exemplars in a specific way to solve similar problems. In this process, exemplars can often be, and should be, modified and extended. Likewise, science communication is not merely the dissemination of knowledge, but also the transformation and deformation of knowledge [5]. For when knowledge from the laboratory is applied to entirely different situations, the conditions on which it originally depended change, and the form and content of scientific practice undergo profound changes. This deformation is not merely a change in the form of expression of knowledge; it also involves adjustments to the content and limits of knowledge.

So the process Rouse emphasizes, in which scientific knowledge rooted in the laboratory is applied to social life, is a process of destandardization. I believe that this process is also, at the same time, a process I call “de-standardization” and “re-localization.” The process of standardization enables scientific knowledge to appear universally applicable. Yet this is by no means a feature unique to science. For example, Chinese Confucianism, Christianity, and other traditional cultures all likewise claim and emphasize their universal character. And the process of “de-standardization” or “re-localization” of scientific knowledge and power is the key link by which the dissemination of science and technology can actually be implemented.

Although I have not seen Rouse himself explicitly propose the concepts of “de-standardization” and “re-localization,” he does indeed incisively point out that “all strategies and techniques for reconstructing the world (represented by the laboratory) and their consequences will encounter resistance. The many restrictions that must be imposed in order to expand the artificial environment of the laboratory’s microworld will be ignored and resisted by the people who are expected to comply with them (these restrictions are also ignored and resisted to some extent within the laboratory itself).” ([1], 256)

Since knowledge is power, the processes of producing and disseminating knowledge necessarily involve the workings of power. Whether one speaks of the center-broadcast model or the deficit model of scientific communication, or the democratic model, the introspective model, and so on, all are expressions of different power relations. Power relations involve the bargaining and balancing of interests among different interest groups. Therefore, one cannot judge the effectiveness of scientific communication solely by the scientific community, nor can one take so-called accurate understanding of universalized knowledge as the sole criterion. Rather, it should be placed within the whole of social practice and assessed comprehensively according to the interests and goals of different groups. Scientific communication cannot be understood merely as crisis public relations for the scientific community, nor as a one-way infusion of knowledge. In fact, the process of scientific communication is a multilateral process of democratic interaction and construction among different interest-bearing agents such as the public, the scientific community, industry, and government.

The interests and power relations of the media themselves also cannot be ignored. As part of media products, scientific communication must conform to the media’s “production rules.” “Media reports are not a faithful mirror of scientific activity and its successes or failures; they are a medium between science and other spheres of life. The representations of science possess a relative autonomy independent of scientific activity, and exist in society as diverse, sometimes contradictory, mechanisms.” [6]

From the public’s standpoint, the acceptance of new technologies and new knowledge can also be understood as a process of domesticating something foreign and incorporating it into existing social power relations ([6], 167–169). For example, the early mode of computer application was the mainframe-plus-terminal model, embodying the highly centralized power structure of the U.S. Department of Defense and large industrial corporations. But the powerful American way of life, rooted in individualism, did not approve of this power relation. Later, through the efforts of the “computer liberation movement” and other initiatives launched voluntarily by large numbers of computer enthusiasts, personal computers were able to develop rapidly. And the power structure of a highly developed commercial culture later restricted and reversed the culture of free software copying that had been popular in the early “computer liberation movement,” evolving into today’s commercial model.[7] In this process, the direction of computer technology development was continuously adjusted in response. So the process of scientific communication is again a process in which social culture and power relations reconstruct the knowledge and power relations of science in reverse.

The reconstruction of power relations often forces laboratories to reconstruct micro-phenomena, thereby leading to adjustments and changes in scientific knowledge. For example, the invention of DDT was once regarded as a great invention; yet after widespread use in the natural environment, it revealed fatal defects: it was difficult to degrade and easy to bioaccumulate. It was precisely through Rachel Carson’s environmental criticism that this pesticide, originally regarded as extremely safe and even used on human beings, was gradually banned from production and use by countries around the world. And from the power relation of pest control alone, its limitation in polluting the environment is difficult to reveal.[8]

Clearly, the tensions and conflicts among different perspectives and positions in scientific communication bring into sharp relief the political dimension of scientific communication. We cannot take it for granted that the political issues involved in scientific communication are external. The practice of the expansion and dissemination of scientific knowledge, from a political perspective, is itself a kind of power relation. This relation runs through the entire process of production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, and at the same time exerts profound influence on other forms and institutions of our social life such as politics, economics, and culture, even affecting our understanding of ourselves.

V. The Political Dimension of Scientific Communication

Because scientific communication involves the operation of different power relations, it is an activity highly dependent on position; therefore, disagreements cannot always be eliminated simply by increasing knowledge. According to the traditional deficit model, the more widely science and technology are disseminated, the better, and the more the general public understands science and technology, the more supportive they will be of science and technology. But in fact, sometimes the more the public understands the actual knowledge of science and technology, the more likely they are to question, oppose, and criticize activities related to science and technology. For example, surveys conducted by researchers in Europe found that the higher the level of biotechnology knowledge in a country, the greater the awareness of related risks, so support for animal genetic engineering was instead lower. ([6], 126–127)

Researchers in China engaged in theoretical studies of scientific communication have already clearly linked different models of scientific communication and different kinds of communicative content to different positions [9][10]. From the perspective of philosophy of scientific practice, different models of scientific communication embody different modes of reconstructing power relations. Just as in political science research the phenomenon of resistance and counter-resistance reveals the role of power and exposes value conflicts among different interest groups, so too the misunderstandings, distortions, superstitions, and so on discovered in the process of scientific communication cannot be regarded merely as negative phenomena that need to be overcome, nor merely as signs of the public’s low scientific literacy.[11] On the contrary, they are often expressions of the people’s defense of their own rights on issues of being informed, interests, and risks involved in the production and application of scientific knowledge; they are a process of democratic participation in social life, and also a process of democratically participating in the use and practice of science.

The conflicts of interest among different groups in scientific communication can help us reflect on whether the kind of practice and social reconstruction originally envisaged is in fact reasonable. Such conflicts may require not only changes in the public’s knowledge, but also changes in scientific activity itself. For example, pressure from AIDS patients in the West forced researchers to listen more closely to patients’ demands and altered scientific research strategies, such as broadening the population sample range of those accepted for drug testing. ([6], 146)

Another example: in the Republican era, Chinese medicine suffered suppression from Western medicine and Westernizers, and was once banned by the Republican government. However, various forces from below—including supporters of traditional culture and resistance from the grassroots—forced this ban never to be fully implemented. After Liberation, the people’s regime, on the basis of its political affinity with the lower grassroots strata and its awareness of protecting national culture, used political power to successfully revive the cause of Chinese medicine to a certain extent, and carried out highly distinctive attempts at integrating Chinese and Western medicine. Although at the time there were many problems in specific practice due to interference from ultra-leftist currents in the broader social culture and excessive political intervention in scholarship, it cannot be denied that it to a certain extent promoted the development of medicine, and also realized the interests of the grassroots strata, becoming a classic case highly praised by the famous philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend.[12]

Because modern social life today depends comprehensively on science and technology, technocratic ideas and practices have come to dominate, and a large number of political and ethical issues have been reduced to purely scientific questions and become objects of expert monopoly. In this way, the universality of social democracy has been seriously weakened. This is the most serious problem facing the realization of democracy in today’s society. On this point, perceptive thinkers in the West have already criticized and deconstructed it from various angles, and have explored many practically feasible forms of practice to constrain and correct it. The consensus conference, which originated in Denmark, is one successful model now widely emulated.[13] Last year, our country’s public hearing on the renovation project of the Old Summer Palace should be said to have been a commendable advance in terms of public participation and the embodiment of multidimensional values; however, compared with more complete and mature similar forms abroad, there is still a considerable gap.

Of course, in emphasizing the inherent relation between scientific knowledge and power, and in paying attention to political and ethical factors in the process of scientific communication, one must avoid vulgarized understandings and must learn from the lessons of the past ultra-left era, which ignored the relative autonomy of the scientific community and harshly interfered in scientific activity. But in any case, the discovery of the political dimension in scientific communication, from the standpoint of the development of the scientific enterprise, makes science more open and more critical; while from the standpoint of democratic political construction, it greatly broadens the scope of democratic politics’ applicability [14] and deepens our understanding of democratic politics. This is highly meaningful for the new development of both science and democracy in modern society.

References

[1] Joseph Rouse. Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science [M]. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2004. 106.

[2] Burke. Reflections on the Revolution in France [M]. Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1998. 116–117.

[3] Sandra Harding. The Cultural Plurality of Science: Postcolonialism, Feminism, and Epistemology [M]. Nanchang: Jiangxi Education Press, 2002. 95.

[4] Joachim Radkau. Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment [M]. Baoding: Hebei University Press, 2004. 222.

[5] Thomas Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [M]. Peking University Press, 2003. 30.

[6] Meinolf Dierkes, Claudia von Grote. Between Understanding and Trust: The Public, Science, and Technology [M]. Beijing: Beijing Institute of Technology Press, 2006. 109.

[7] Luo Changhai. Microsoft Culture [M]. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2004. 2–29.

[8] Gao Guorong. The pesticide debate in the United States in the 1960s and its impact [J]. World History, 2003(2), 12–23.

[9] Liu Huajie, On Three Positions in Scientific Communication [N]. Science Times, 2004-2-6(B2).

[10] Tian Song, How Is the Citizen Position Possible? (I), (II) [N]. Science Times, 2004-3-5(B2), 2004-3-12(B2).

[11] Joseph Rouse. Engaging Science: How to Understand Its Practices Philosophically [M]. Cornell University Press, 1996. 185.

[12] Paul Feyerabend. Science in a Free Society [M]. Shanghai: Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1990. 94, 110.

[13] Liu Jinchun. A New Model of Public Understanding of Science: The Origins and Research of the European Consensus Conference [A]. Proceedings of the Academic Seminar on Communication and Popularization of Science and Technology [C]. Beijing: Tsinghua University, 2006. 80–88.

[14] Ulrich Beck. Risk Society [M]. Nanjing: Yilin Press, 2004. 291.

Scientific Communication in the Horizon of Philosophy of Scientific Practice：

Mutual Social Reconstruction of Knowledge and Power

JIANG Jinsong

Institute of Science, Technology and Society, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084

Abstract: From the point of view of philosophy of scientific practice, science is local knowledge originated from laboratory. Scientific knowledge is power relation in Foucultean term which has function for shaping situation. Scientific Communication is standardize reconstruction on whole society by power relation within laboratory ,and meanwhile is de-standardize reverse reconstruction on scientific knowledge and power relation. Scientific communication has the political dimension.

Key words: Scientific Communication, Laboratory,  Philosophy of Scientific Practice, Power relation, Standardization

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Article Comments

The following comments by netizens represent only their personal views, and do not represent the views or position of Sina.com.

Kan Taiyang

2007-03-18 23:25:02

I’ve always felt that laboratories are pretty twisted. Back when I was doing my master’s thesis research in solid-state physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, I felt really awkward being in the lab, even though my advisor was also from Sichuan and was especially good to us students. Still, I didn’t like the lab, didn’t like doing experiments. It was all thanks to my junior classmates that I managed to graduate smoothly. Alas, I’m ashamed……

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-19 18:02:47

Let me ask the blogger a question: what is local knowledge?
I’ve never seen an explicit definition, although literally the term seems quite easy to understand.
Recently I’ve noticed a kind of knowledge that is very valuable in practice, yet cannot be placed within the framework of science and broadly defined scientific knowledge. For example, a map of Beijing: people living in Beijing may not have gone to college, middle school, or even primary school, and may basically have no scientific knowledge at all, but their heads cannot be without a map of, at the very least, the area around where they live. This kind of knowledge has far greater practical value in life than scientific knowledge.
Another example: what each listed company does, who the chairman is, what kind of major shareholder structure it has—these kinds of knowledge obviously do not belong to economics or securities investment knowledge, but in practice they are more useful than those kinds of knowledge.
These two examples are both local, and also situational knowledge, and they are very important. Do they count as local knowledge?
But this kind of knowledge is still vastly different from laboratory knowledge. To say that laboratory knowledge and these kinds of knowledge belong to the same category doesn’t seem appropriate.

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Lao Jiang

2007-03-19 22:14:22

Indeed this article did not really introduce local knowledge properly; there wasn’t enough space!

What you are talking about should belong to local knowledge. This concept originally comes from anthropology. For example, the knowledge that a certain tribe knows that when a certain bird flies in, it is time to sow seeds—that is local knowledge, and its validity and applicability are affected by regional and other factors.

The two kinds you mentioned undoubtedly belong to local knowledge.

One major breakthrough of the philosophy of scientific practice is to regard scientific knowledge, which everyone recognizes as universally valid, as essentially local as well. Quite imaginative! At first glance it seems absurd, but in fact it is not. If you read this passage carefully, you should be able to understand it (though it really is too compressed):

Scientific knowledge, like other kinds of knowledge, is also local. It arises in a particular laboratory or site of knowledge production, in a particular practical environment, and its validity and criteria of evaluation cannot be detached from that site of production. This is because only in the world to which scientific knowledge is applied, only when the basic features of the “micro-world” constructed by the laboratory are satisfied, will the same scientific laws appear; only then will the scientific knowledge produced in the laboratory be valid and display its so-called “universality.” The reason scientific experimental results appear to be universally valid is, in fact, that we have standardized all the conditions under which scientific knowledge is applied according to laboratory conditions. The standardization of scientific knowledge is, in essence, the standardization and reconstruction of the entire social environment according to the laboratory model. In addition to standardizing material resources, experimental equipment, and so on, the people participating in the application of science must also be standardized in certain respects; to a certain degree they must be like experimental researchers, able to carry out the required isolation, manipulation, and meticulous tracking of the relevant objects, so that the knowledge and techniques that work in the laboratory can work properly outside the laboratory as well.

Scientific knowledge is standardized local knowledge; the two kinds you mentioned are non-standardized and non-standardizable local knowledge, and there is indeed a considerable difference.

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Laojiang

2007-03-19 22:20:28

Look at the sun:
If that is the case, then it is almost certain that your major did not go very well, hehe.

Your situation belongs to that of a resister who resists being standardized according to the laboratory model.

If everyone were like you, modern science would slowly be lost and would need to be protected or even listed as intangible cultural heritage. The universality of scientific knowledge would then be unable to appear……

I once imagined: under what circumstances would modern science be lost? This is a very good science-fiction topic.

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Laojiang

2007-03-19 22:52:46

to yxy:
Let me say a couple more things; perhaps then you will understand.

You have spent time in laboratories, so naturally you know that the laws and knowledge discovered there hold only under specific conditions. For example, in free fall, a feather and a coin landing at the same time is only true under vacuum. To make this local knowledge universally valid, one must standardize the conditions under which this knowledge is produced—for example, the vacuum in the mechanics laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences would need to be pumped to the same level as that of the Cavendish Laboratory……

Some of our factories require certain stages to be sterile and dust-free, just like a laboratory……

This process of standardization is often very overbearing. Therefore, the application of science often changes our original ways of doing things and our customs. Only after these artificial conditions are fully guaranteed will the knowledge from the laboratory be valid.

Actually, what I just said—that the local knowledge you mentioned cannot be standardized—was also not right. Suppose we suddenly and insanely decide that all cities in the country must be transformed to look exactly like Beijing, not one bit different. Then the commercial center of every city would be called Wangfujing, every city would have Peking University in its western suburbs, and each would have a Boya Tower inside it. Once standardized in this way, Beijing’s geographical knowledge would become standardized knowledge and would possess a certain “universality.” Every Beijinger, wherever they go, would be superior in geographical knowledge. Beijing-centrism would naturally become an unquestionable truth. We would then proclaim, just like scientismists do when they say that science came from the West but belongs to all humanity, that although urban geographical knowledge comes from Beijing, it is nevertheless the truth of the whole country.

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-20 12:48:29

I simply recently finally noticed that a class of knowledge I used to attach very little importance to is in fact very important in practice. For me, this is also a not-so-small change in understanding. I think it is related to what you often say about local knowledge and context-specific knowledge. I can’t yet say how large this adjustment in understanding will ultimately become.

For now I only think this kind of knowledge is very important, especially in practice. Neglecting this kind of local knowledge is disadvantageous in practice, so one needs to adjust the tendency to care only about theoretical knowledge.

But I still think these kinds of knowledge are very different from all sorts of theoretical knowledge. If you insist on arguing that scientific knowledge is also local, I think that is forced.

I think such an argument obscures the truly important issue, namely what the relationship between local knowledge and universal knowledge actually is, and how the two kinds of knowledge should be understood and handled.

Let me give another example of local knowledge. I have found that salespeople in shopping malls are very good at remembering people. Remembering customers and saying, when they come again, “You’re here; you previously bought such-and-such,” must certainly help increase the transaction rate. This knowledge is also highly local and time-specific, and at the same time very practical. For them, knowing a bunch of economics may not be as useful as this knowledge.

It can be said that every profession has a pile of such knowledge. In many situations in life, this kind of knowledge is more useful than theoretical knowledge. After all, only a few people study each specialty, and most people who have not studied it encounter no great obstacles in life. Salespeople did not go to school for so many years; they have plenty of spare mental space, so why not store more of this kind of knowledge? University professors, on the other hand, have their minds occupied by theory; they have less of this kind of knowledge, and in life they inevitably feel out of place at times.

I just cannot make sense of saying that this kind of knowledge is the same as theoretical knowledge. If I were to say that first-order scientific knowledge and second-order philosophy of science knowledge are the same, that second-order is first-order, would you agree?

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Laojiang

2007-03-20 14:20:37

Your progress in understanding is very important, but you still have not understood the aspect of local knowledge that the philosophy of scientific practice is concerned with. Let me explain again and see whether I can make it clear:

Your view of knowledge is basically a kind of reflection theory. In this view of knowledge, the validity of knowledge is unconditional. For example: “Salespeople in shopping malls are very good at remembering people. Remembering customers and saying, when they come again, ‘You’re here; you previously bought such-and-such’,” although its application has conditions (if the salesperson is laid off, this knowledge may have no practical use for him), in itself it is universal (at any rate, someone really did buy some thing or other in a certain shopping mall, and so on).

The philosophy of scientific practice emphasizes this: knowledge is a kind of practical ability, and its correctness depends on specific conditions. For example, the law of free fall is constructed under the condition that the laboratory is evacuated. Detached from this condition, the law has no meaning.

It is precisely in this sense that the philosophy of scientific practice emphasizes that scientific theoretical knowledge derives from local knowledge in the laboratory. Its apparent universality derives from the standardization of laboratory conditions.

If you can understand up to here, then when you go back and read my original text and the comments above, everything will fall into place.

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-20 16:33:17

I don’t understand.

How could a salesclerk’s knowledge be more universal than the law of free fall?

Please also consider the first-order/second-order question I asked earlier.

Right now I feel that practical knowledge is yet one level lower than theoretical knowledge. It is more concrete, so it is more useful in practice, and accordingly its abstractness and universality are weaker.

You used to always say that once the problem of the scientific view is solved, the problem of worldviews is just a specific application. I replied that even if the problem of the scientific view is solved, the problem of worldviews may not be solved.

Now there is a corresponding case. As someone whose knowledge is mainly theoretical, I used to think that once theoretical problems were solved, practical problems would be deductions and applications. Later I found that even if theory is solved, practice may still not be solved well. Now I realize that at least part of the reason is that practice still requires the addition of a great deal of local knowledge.

This afternoon I encountered yet another kind of local knowledge: what the various government agencies do, and how they operate, probably counts as local knowledge. It is only valid in China, only valid during this period. Schools do not teach these things, but they are very useful for adapting to society. I really admire colleagues who have such knowledge.

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Laojiang

2007-03-20 18:57:18

My way of putting things is a bit lacking. You really did not understand my article and comments.

【I don’t understand. How could a salesclerk’s knowledge be more universal than the law of free fall?】

This question should be carefully turned back on yourself.

My previous comment made it very clear:

Under a reflection-theory view of science, the salesclerk’s knowledge appears to be universal. Under a practice-theory view of science, we discover that even the law of free fall is local.

【Right now I feel that practical knowledge is yet one level lower than theoretical knowledge. It is more concrete, so it is more useful in practice, and accordingly its abstractness and universality are weaker.】

This way of thinking is precisely what the philosophy of scientific practice criticizes as the so-called 【theory-priority view of science】. It believes that practice is the application of theory.

The philosophy of scientific practice turns the problem around. Practice is the point of departure; theory is constructed in practice, and the scope of its validity is also determined by practice.

I feel that you have lost the scientist’s sense of things.

I guess you do not know why I imagined that ideal experiment in which cities across the country are transformed according to Beijing. I suggest you read and think about it again carefully. All I did was change the scene of what scientists do in the laboratory.

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Laojiang

2007-03-20 19:02:30

My earlier formulation of the problem of science and worldview was not sufficiently rigorous and needs revision.

My current view is that the two influence each other, and one can reach the right path from either side. Of course, to reach the right path, the problems on both sides must be broken through and resolved.

[Anonymous] Guba

2007-03-20 19:25:36

As I understand it, “local knowledge” mainly does not refer to the fact that its “validity” is limited to a certain place. “Correct” and “effective” are two different concepts. Chinese herbal medicine given to foreigners is also effective, but traditional Chinese medicine is wrong for outsiders; the law of free fall is also approximately effective under natural conditions, or one could say very useful, but being universally useful does not mean being universally correct. Just as foreigners may believe Chinese medicine is “useful” while completely disbelieving traditional Chinese medicine theory, few people would deny the universal “usefulness” of modern science, but if one wants to talk about “correctness,” the standards for judging right and wrong still come from “the local.” “Local knowledge” can further be understood from anthropological angles such as “dialect,” custom, culture, and so on. The most primitive knowledge systems of human beings are manifested in various languages. Language is not only a tool for expressing knowledge; it is itself knowledge. Within a language there is an entire worldview, value system, and mode of thinking; as for what counts as “correct,” that too is contained within the language. If you do not understand his dialect, you do not even know what he is saying, let alone judge whether his knowledge is correct. But if you place yourself within his language and culture and begin to think in that language, then your worldview, values, and mode of thinking will all be assimilated, and you will then regard the knowledge in that language as universal truth. Scientific knowledge is similar. If you do not think according to that experimental, empirical, mathematical, quantitative worldview and value system, you simply cannot understand what scientists are saying. But if you want to understand science, you must learn that language and way of thinking, and if you are unconsciously assimilated while learning the language without reflection, then when you go on to hear those scientific theories, they will all become universal truth.

Still, I want to mention one problem in Laojiang’s article: Laojiang seems not to have made a clear distinction between “science” and “technology.” Laojiang says: “The reconstruction of power relations often forces the laboratory to reconstruct micro-phenomena, thereby leading to adjustments and changes in scientific knowledge.” But the cases he cites are one involving DDT and one involving computers; both are technologies. Progress or revision in these technological levels and technological knowledge does not rewrite the conclusions of theoretical sciences such as mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Can the knowledge of foundational theoretical science, like the law of free fall, also be adjusted and changed by the reconstruction of power relations?

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Laojiang

2007-03-20 20:26:23

The examples really are not varied enough.

But:

1. The distinction between science and technology is not very important here in the philosophy of scientific practice.

2. In principle, I think the reconstruction of power relations really can adjust scientific knowledge, including the scientific knowledge of basic theory. Of course, such adjustment does not simply mean altering the formula for free fall. Rather, it introduces some new relations and perspectives, making some past perspectives and relations gradually less important, just as Western medicine replaced traditional Chinese medicine.

However, since the rise of modern science, power relations have not yet been adjusted enough, so we have not yet seen adjustments to very foundational scientific knowledge. But biology, under the influence of feminism, has already produced some new scientific knowledge, such as primate studies.

[Anonymous] Guba

2007-03-21 00:33:06

I still do not know much about the philosophy of scientific practice; when encountering it for the first time, one always has to be a bit more cautious.

Up to now, I myself still very firmly insist on the difference between science and technology. The former ought to be studied in a supra-utilitarian way (that is, I should not consider what use the results of my research will have), but technological research ought to be utilitarian; technological research that does not consider application is absurd. Science is not power, technology is. The utilitarian nature of technology makes it easy, and indeed necessary, for it to be influenced by and to influence “power.” Entanglement with power is something technology cannot escape, but can science escape it? I think that saying language, culture, and worldview all shape the construction of scientific knowledge is something I believe, but when it is specified as “power,” that becomes somewhat questionable. Of course, stepping back, power relations and culture are hard to separate; one also hears claims like politics is culture or culture is politics, but once “power” is especially emphasized, stronger argumentation is needed. I can easily believe that conflicts between different groups’ cultures, language conflicts, and even ideological conflicts affect the construction of scientific knowledge, but when emphasis is placed on different groups’ “interests” conflicts, I find it harder to accept. I really do still have a strong streak of idealism: I believe that scholarship cannot escape the curtain of culture and the restraints of language, but it can still escape utility. Of course, science in the real world is constrained by utility, but the difference is that even ideal technological research cannot transcend utility (even if it transcends the utilitarian interests of the researcher personally, it must still consider providing benefits to some group of people; technology unrelated to interests is absurd), but what about ideal science? Of course, in the era of Big Science, even the purest scientific research requires large amounts of funding; without funding, research cannot be done. But here the issue of interests merely determines whether research can proceed at all, while power relations can only determine which research yields results faster; perhaps they still do not go so far as to control scientific conclusions (of course, this is speaking under the ideal condition that all scientists are idealists).

[Anonymous] Guba

2007-03-21 00:33:31

(continued from above)

I agree that when analyzing actual problems in the history of science and sociology of science, there is not much difference between the study of science and technology; both are subject to the control of power and interests. But in the ideal realm, the two are still different. And the ideal distinction is relevant to real science-and-technology policy: if ideal scientific research is supra-utilitarian, then we should advocate this kind of “useless science,” advocate keeping scientists away from interference by power and interests, and create a free and relaxed environment for scientists to work in (rather than constantly pushing scientists with demands to “produce results,” or even forcing scientists to declare political positions); whereas for technology, one should uncover and promote its utilitarian nature, and investigate just whom it serves and for whom it provides power: if the direction is appropriate, then it should be encouraged, and a sound patent system should be established to stimulate technological innovation. Technological innovation is something that must be stimulated by “results”; if results cannot be produced, that will not do (“innovation” was originally an economics term; only when it generates benefits does it count as innovation). If the direction is not appropriate, then it must be reformed. Technology is not something politically neutral; “bourgeois technology” really does exist. These are all very real issues. It does not work to use the logic of developing technology to stimulate scientific research, but technology also cannot be stimulated without development; nor is it very good to let the country sit there waiting to die without developing technology. I believe that in the considerations involved in formulating science-and-technology policy, science and technology are two things that must absolutely be distinguished.

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Laojiang

[It is easy for me to believe that cultural conflicts, linguistic conflicts, and even ideological conflicts among different groups affect the construction of scientific knowledge, but when it comes to emphasizing “interest” conflicts among different groups, I find it harder to accept.]
In fact, cultural, linguistic, ideological conflicts and interest conflicts cannot be sharply separated either. For example, the cultural, linguistic, and ideological conflicts between Marxism and liberalism are closely connected with the interest conflicts between classes.
I agree that the argument is not sufficiently well developed; that has always been my old flaw, a rather large leap in thought.
I have not completely erased the distinction between science and technology; I am only saying that they are alike in that both are local and practical.

[Anonymous] Gu Chu

2007-03-21 11:45:39

I also mentioned that power relations and culture are hard to separate, and one could even say that culture is politics. But even if they are the same thing, saying them with different words emphasizes different aspects. As for me, I took the key point of the distinction between science and technology to lie in their relation to power and interests, so I think the influence of power and interests on science and technology cannot be treated in the same sweeping way.
Ask a mathematician what use studying Goldbach’s conjecture has, and the answer might be “I don’t care what use it has, it’s just fun,” or “I don’t care what use it has, because truth is there, so I want to go find it,” and so on. Ideal scientific research is precisely supposed to be like this. But technological invention is different: inventing DDT was certainly for the sake of using it; a technological invention includes not only a design for how to produce it, but also a design for how to use it. The question “what use is it?” must permeate technological research and be kept in view; otherwise it is not technological creation but artistic creation. Because I understand the distinction between science and technology here, I feel that the reason why the adjustment of knowledge in basic science has not yet been affected is not only because the adjustment of power relations is not yet large enough, but also because the way power-related adjustments affect basic science is different: theoretical science always has a force resisting the influence of power and interest relations, whereas technology is fatefully power itself and cannot escape it.
Teacher Jiang’s article is excellent. If it were written so that the argument was airtight, it might actually be harder to develop the thinking; unless it had the length of a monograph. If a paper makes the reader feel that every sentence is right, that it fits together seamlessly, and that there is no room for further refinement or deepening, then that is also rather boring.
Some of yxy’s questions were answered very clearly by Teacher Jiang. But as for the claim that theoretical scientific knowledge is also local knowledge, I still retain some reservations. The key lies in how one understands “local knowledge” — whether there is in fact any “universal knowledge,” and if so, what kind of knowledge might be universal. And if one says that all knowledge is local knowledge, then that claim needs to be argued for especially carefully. But concepts need to appear in pairs; if a concept cannot find its opposite, then the concept’s original meaning may need to be re-understood. It is like if one says “everything is technology,” then many questions become impossible to explain clearly. If all knowledge is local, then how is cross-local communication possible? Between different regions, is it possible, or should one seek, some kind of universal consensus? Scientific knowledge, to be sure, is originally local, but shouldn’t it be universalized?……

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-21 12:43:51

I agree with many of Gu Yun’s views.
Let me talk about this passage:
“【I now feel that practical knowledge is one level lower than theoretical knowledge. More concrete, so it is more useful in practice, while its abstractness and universality are correspondingly weaker.】
This line of thought is precisely what the philosophy of science in practice criticizes as the so-called 【theory-priority view of science】. It holds that practice is the application of theory.
The philosophy of science in practice turns the problem around. Practice is the starting point; theory is constructed in practice, and the scope of its validity is also determined by practice.”
————————
The background of this round of discussion is exactly that I am considering the question of practice.
“Practice is the starting point; theory is constructed in practice, and the scope of its validity is also determined by practice.”
Okay, I agree; that is exactly what I think.
“I now feel that practical knowledge is one level lower than theoretical knowledge. More concrete, so it is more useful in practice, while its abstractness and universality are correspondingly weaker.”
This view can be completely unified with the previous sentence in my understanding, whereas in your view it is completely contradictory.
“This line of thought is precisely what the philosophy of science in practice criticizes as the so-called 【theory-priority view of science】. It holds that practice is the application of theory.”
That is where the divergence lies. Do you still remember our earlier discussion of the relation between worldviews and scientific views? You thought that specific sciences were nothing but the application of a scientific view. But I said that a second level has meaning because of the first level, just as making money is for eating. You are a theory-priority thinker in your relationship between scientific view and worldview; when I mention first level and second level, you immediately think of theory-priority, but in fact when I say something is second-level, I am precisely saying that although it is abstract, general, and universal, it is rigid and detached from reality, and only through its influence on the first level does it have meaning.
The opposition you emphasize between practice theory and reflection theory, in my understanding, does not seem to exist.

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-21 12:49:55

The example of making the whole country into Beijing is too strange; it is hard to take it seriously.
Could there be a better one?
You see, the local knowledge examples I gave are all very real, aren’t they.

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Lao Jiang

2007-03-21 14:01:50

to Gu:
1. The “power” here is in Foucault’s sense. In this sense, basic science, like technology, is permeated by power and is inseparable from power. According to Heidegger’s view, science itself is also technological.
2. All knowledge is local knowledge. If that is so, does the concept of “local knowledge” still make sense? I think there is no problem in theory. As for the question of cross-local communication, the modern scientific solution is standardization. Whether there are other solutions besides that, I really have not thought about carefully. Perhaps that is a problem the next article should address.
to yxy:
1. For now, let’s not discuss the relation between scientific views and worldviews, or the issue of first level and second level. I have somewhat changed my thinking on this issue and am not yet very sure of it. If we mix them together, it will easily become confused.
2. Back to local knowledge. I understand your line of thought, and I certainly think you have made progress compared with before. But what we are paying attention to here is another aspect, and you have not yet shifted over to it.
The thought experiment I made up seems strange, but the logic is very simple.
Let me try again, using the free-fall experiment to explain it. For example, under vacuum conditions in the laboratory, you discover that a chicken feather and a coin fall in the same pattern. This knowledge is highly local and cannot be used in everyday life. For instance, tossing a coin to decide whether to buy a certain stock is very fast, whereas tossing a chicken feather and waiting for it to hit the ground would be awkward, and so on.
But because modern science has produced a set of institutions that make it relatively easy for major laboratories to regulate experimental conditions, and because the standardized promotion of your vacuum conditions in the Chinese Academy of Sciences laboratory makes it so, the free-fall knowledge you discovered acquires universality. This universality depends on the standardization of conditions.
Likewise, even knowledge that seems impossible to universalize, such as geographic knowledge about Beijing, can still have universality as long as we can, if my imagined scenario really worked, give it standardized conditions.
So the reason natural science knowledge has greater universality than humanities knowledge is nothing more than that it controls natural phenomena and provides standardized conditions, which is relatively speaking, less costly economically and ethically.

[Anonymous] Someone

2007-03-21 17:44:16

[It is easy for me to believe that cultural conflicts, linguistic conflicts, and even ideological conflicts among different groups affect the construction of scientific knowledge, but when it comes to emphasizing “interest” conflicts among different groups, I find it harder to accept.]
===========================
Once “ideological” conflict has been mentioned, that is already “interest” conflict.
Applying regional knowledge to the whole, I have never seen it not go wrong, whether at the level of a nation or of an individual.

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-21 17:55:00

You mention cost very well. Thinking about problems this way makes it less easy to go astray. Things that go astray generally do not fit economic principles.
The chicken-feather and coin example is not good. In fact, no standardization transformation is needed at all; just dropping stones of different weights can test the law of free fall. It is enough under ordinary measurement precision. By contrast, chicken feathers are rather special and require vacuum experiments to explain.
You see, the world is not transformed according to the laboratory here; rather, most things in the world originally already conform to the law of free fall, with only very small errors. The vacuum experiment transformed the concept, allowing people to accept that the specialness of chicken feathers does not affect the law of free fall. Transforming concepts is of course easier than transforming the world. Even a conceptual change is economical; although explaining chicken feathers is a bit more complicated, it unifies the explanation of various falling phenomena and conforms to the principle of cognitive economy.
The example of making the whole country into Beijing is quite different.
The key point is that when you say the conditions outside the laboratory were changed, that is probably not right. What was changed was only people’s concepts; people re-understand various phenomena according to the concepts obtained from the laboratory, rather than moving the laboratory conditions outside the laboratory.
I think it makes sense to emphasize the importance of local knowledge, but to insist on calling science local knowledge goes too far.

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Lao Jiang

2007-03-21 18:44:02

Modern natural science is experimental science. Nature itself has no strict laws; laws are manufactured. Of course, they have to be manufactured successfully.
The transformation of concepts is achieved through the transformation of conditions; this is the secret of the success of modern Western experimental science, and also the greatest difference between Western experimental science and the cognitive traditions of China or other regions.
The experimental process is not only a process of material manipulation, but more importantly a process of conceptual transformation. For example, yxy thinks that the law of free fall exists from the beginning. If that were so, then I could also think that all the cities in the country originally looked just like Beijing. Unfortunately, I did not develop this point very well in the article. Everyone has underestimated the significance of the experiment too much.
If the conditions outside the laboratory are not transformed and controlled, then the scientific and technological results developed in the laboratory are hard to apply. This condition has many aspects. It includes precise measurement, control of human behavior, conceptual brainwashing, and so on.
The macro-process of modernization is, to a certain extent, transforming the whole society and nature into a huge laboratory. If people in society do not all, to some degree, become experimental scientists, then science cannot survive in society. This is what I jokingly said when replying to “looking at the sun”: if everyone were like her, modern experimental science would have to die out.
So it is no surprise at all that environmental problems and alienation problems are now appearing. It would be strange if it were not so. So “someone” is right!
It seems that yxy now understands the example of transforming the whole country according to Beijing, but is still thinking about practical activity from a theory-priority perspective, so the significance of the laboratory is still not understood sufficiently.

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-22 11:02:18

“Nature itself has no strict laws; laws are manufactured.”
————————
I estimate that Gu Yun would also not agree with this, and Jiang Xiaoyuan, Liu Huajie, and others may not necessarily agree either. After all, they all believe in a scientific worldview.
“For example, yxy thinks that the law of free fall exists from the beginning. If that were so, then I could also think that all the cities in the country originally looked just like Beijing.”
————————
If you consider the cost, it becomes very clear. Without spending any cost, you can roughly verify the law of free fall by finding two stones, whereas if you travel through the cities of the whole country, you will find they are not like Beijing. It would cost too much to make them all the same.
I still think you have pushed this too far.

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-22 11:18:59

Gu Yun’s example of Chinese medicine as local knowledge, I will think about again after going back, but I still feel that the definition of local knowledge is rather confused.
Xinzhai Lao Jiang’s understanding is basically locally valid knowledge, and naturally also knowledge accepted locally. That is why he says that only by systematically transforming the world outside the laboratory according to laboratory standards can scientific laws become effective.
But Gu Yun says that knowledge that is universally valid yet accepted only by people in one place is also local knowledge; Chinese medicine is one example. With such a definition, basically one can no longer say that science is local knowledge, because although science is produced in the laboratory, it is universally valid and has already been widely accepted by society, so it cannot be said to be accepted only by a portion of people.
Either definition is possible; I estimate anthropologists would not scrutinize this subtle difference so seriously, and everyone just uses the terms interchangeably. But once this concept is brought into discussions of philosophy of science, obvious divergences arise and precision becomes necessary.
Actually, I am not interested in this direction of discussion. The examples I have given are all knowledge that is locally valid in modern life and highly practical. I do not know how to categorize such knowledge, and correspondingly I have not allocated memory for such knowledge in my mind, so I am not good at remembering it, and as a result I often feel out of place in many contexts. I hope that through discussion I can better understand this kind of knowledge.

[Anonymous] Gu Chu

2007-03-22 13:27:53

My own related views are all extremely immature, so I mainly ask questions. I am very cautious about concepts like “locality” and “power.” I have read very little about “power” in Foucault’s sense; roughly speaking, it means “power is everywhere,” power is relation and has no subject or center, power is a mode of human existence, and so on. I also have not made it clear. The key is that this seems to make every relation a form of power, so what then is “non-power”? Aside from special concepts such as being, existence, or nothingness, emptiness, perhaps one can say they have no corresponding counterparts; other concepts are always relative. Even when one says cold is the lack of heat, evil is the lack of good, one still ultimately has to replace qualitative differences with differences of degree in order to understand the corresponding concepts. But when talking about concepts such as “local knowledge” and Foucault’s “power relations,” I seem to have some understanding of the meaning they express on the surface, yet I find it hard to imagine how their corresponding concepts are to be understood, and thus I have always retained some doubt.
The theoretical science in my mind has in fact always been very classical; modern theoretical science still continues an older tradition. Apart from the modern laboratory tradition, what supports theoretical science is not only experiment, but two even older, perhaps even more important pillars, which I call the “religious” and the “artistic” (faith and aesthetic sense). On the one hand, science presupposes a certain naturalistic faith, such as belief in the independence and uniformity of nature; on the other hand, it is a pursuit of harmony and aesthetic feeling. The reason the law of free fall is believed in is by no means only the evidence provided by the laboratory; more importantly, this law fits harmoniously into the entire theoretical system, enabling people to understand the world in the simplest and most aesthetically pleasing way. And the reason the claim that all cities originally looked just like Beijing is not accepted, apart from empirical evidence, is more importantly that this claim is unsystematic, disharmonious, not simple, not beautiful……

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Lao Jiang

2007-03-22 14:09:04

to yxy:
Since you are especially interested in this, your definition of local knowledge is also very meaningful.
to Gu:
As for the concepts of local knowledge and power, I need to spend some time sorting them out again and then write a special article on them.
In addition, the proposition that all cities originally looked just like Beijing is not a position I want to express positively.
The original sentence was: “yxy thinks that the law of free fall existed from the beginning. If that were so, then I could also think that all the cities in the country originally looked just like Beijing.”
What I mean is: “Nature itself has no strict laws; laws are manufactured. Of course, they have to be manufactured successfully.” Just like “all the cities originally looked just like Beijing,” this is not how things were from the beginning, but the product of a mad designer and a large-scale urban transformation.

[Anonymous] Gu Chu

2007-03-22 16:45:21

“yxy thinks that the law of free fall existed from the very beginning. If that’s so, then I can also think that all the cities in the whole country originally looked exactly like Beijing.”
I think that the analogy of “all the cities in the whole country originally looked exactly like Beijing” is not enough to make scientists doubt the belief that “the law of free fall existed from the very beginning,” because the latter belief is strongly supported not only because it has been experimentally confirmed, but also because of faith-based and aesthetic reasons.

In addition, my understanding of “science,” or even of any “knowledge,” is not a set of isolated assertions, such as: “Under the condition of ignoring air resistance, the speed at which an object falls is unrelated to its weight.” Is this sentence science? Is the sentence “Beijing was founded more than 3,000 years ago” knowledge? As I see it, if you take such a sentence out in isolation and look at it, it is nothing at all! To understand the first sentence, you must first know what is meant by “air,” what is meant by “resistance,” what is meant by “falling,” what is meant by “speed,” and so on and so forth. Without understanding these concepts, this sentence is just a string of symbols. But to understand those concepts, one necessarily has to bring in an entire system of knowledge: different understandings support and interpret one another, all the way until you must be familiar with and understand the whole linguistic system. Only then does that isolated sentence become knowledge for you, so knowledge must necessarily be systematic. The reason the law of free fall is trusted is that it plays an indispensable role within an entire knowledge system; it supports and interprets many other concepts and laws, and if you are going to reject this law, you will have to bring down an entire swath of theory. In this sense, the law of free fall and the proposition that all cities originally were the same as Beijing are not comparable in status; the latter is just a single isolated “proposition.”

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Lao Jiang

2007-03-22 17:45:18

Knowledge is a system, not a fragment. Brother Gu said it well!
The proposition that “all cities originally were the same as Beijing Municipality” is not, at present, on the same level of knowledge as the law of free fall. That’s true. But in principle, they are the same. We can reinterpret and redefine “Wangfujing,” “Peking University,” “Boya Tower,” “Xinzhai,” and even “Xinzhai Lao Jiang,” and so on……
I said: “The experimental process is not only a material process of manipulation, but even more importantly a process of conceptual transformation. …… It’s a pity I did not develop this point well in the article.” It really should be developed properly and argued carefully. I can make an excuse here, namely that the 8,000-character length limit of academic journals today is too restrictive. To be more honest, it’s that I did not attach enough importance to this.

[Anonymous] Gu Chu

2007-03-22 22:05:14

That’s right, which is why I initially did not raise any objection to your analogy of Beijing. The systemic nature of knowledge is important for understanding why science can be so forceful. Take the law of free fall: “Under the condition of ignoring air resistance, the speed at which an object falls is unrelated to its weight.” To say whether this sentence is correct or not, the prerequisite is to understand the meaning of the sentence; one must know the many concepts involved in it, otherwise one simply cannot even read it. But the paradox lies here: once you try to grasp the meaning of this sentence, it is hard to avoid having your own thinking and ideas subtly transformed. For example, first, to understand an expression like “under the condition of ignoring …,” one often tacitly accepts the legitimacy of “simplifying” thought; to understand the concept of “… force,” one often has to tacitly accept some mechanistic worldview; then, to understand concepts like “speed” and “weight,” one often tacitly accepts a way of thinking in which motion and matter can be “measured.” And once you have intentionally or unintentionally accepted these basic ideas and ways of thinking, then when you look again at whether this sentence is correct, it often seems obviously correct. Learning language and learning knowledge are often the same process (the process by which children construct knowledge works the same way), so I regard the expansion of modern science as a kind of expansion of a local language.

[Anonymous] Someone

2007-03-23 10:54:36

The example of Beijing and the law of free fall is not incommensurable.
Kant calls “carrying on within reason” an important rule of pure reason, and as for “free” fall: has anyone actually seen a truly “free” fall? Has anyone seen an area in which even the gravitational field has been shielded away?
This is also where the Beijing example is not comparable: after all, we have seen cities outside Beijing. If we suppose that a child has lived in Beijing from birth and has never gone anywhere else, and even more crucially, everyone around him is like this too, then in the environment in which he lives, “cities” outside Beijing are merely a concept. If you talked to him about the classical gardens of Suzhou, he would probably think, oh, perhaps they are about the same as the Weiming Lake.
How to understand “locality” is indeed a problem, because as for those bits of scientific knowledge, who knows where they came from.
Writing this, I suddenly remembered what Teacher Jiang said the other day: that the nature is “nothing,” nihility, nihility, haha.

[Anonymous] yxy

2007-03-23 12:34:38

Saying that science is the expansion of a local language is better than saying that science is local knowledge.
Originally, it started out as something local and limited, and later expanded until people all over the earth accepted it—Beijing dialect became Standard Chinese, after all.
But to say that science is still local knowledge now is something different.

Xinzhai Lao Jiang

2007-03-23 14:15:47

to yxy : Science is a local language that has been fully expanded. But that does not mean it is no longer a local language.
Locality has its own specific meaning, different from the sense in which we usually use the word.
to Gu: However, the expansion of this local language called science is closely related to laboratory operations. You can explain the meanings of Beijing, Wangfujing, Peking University, Boya Tower, and so on, but if you can, to a certain extent, transform various small cities of different styles so that they approximate the Beijing model, then the rationality and necessity of that explanation can be more easily accepted by people, and may even make us have no choice but to accept it. This is a relationship at the shallow level.
I have not thought very clearly about the deeper level yet. I’ll say more about it later.

[Anonymous] Gu Chu

2007-03-24 10:24:19

I’m not particularly convinced yet of the significance of laboratory operations for the expansion of science. On the one hand, the spread of science among the populace does not need to rely on experimental evidence; many people even do not know that modern science is experimental science (quite a few pseudoscientists don’t either), yet they still become scientistic. I think the reason science overawes the masses is mainly the enormous power displayed by modern technology, the power to transform heaven and earth, to go up to the heavens and down to the earth.
For scientists, trust in fundamental theoretical science also often does not depend on experiments. Teacher Jiang said that “modern scientific research is mainly carried out in laboratories,” but if I set science and technology apart and look specifically at the most basic theoretical sciences, such as physics, then the main fundamental laws there were often not obtained in laboratories. Just take the law of free fall: it was originally obtained through a thought experiment, using a proof by contradiction, and then it was accepted. Other things, like the law of inertia, were also accepted through thought experiments. In modern times, relativity was not worked out in a laboratory either; it was all “thought” out. For physicists, inner aesthetic feeling may be what is truly important. So long as a theory is exquisitely beautiful, even if it can never be experimentally confirmed, scientists are willing to accept it (as with quark theory); and if something does not make sense theoretically, then no matter how precisely it matches experimental evidence, scientists are not easily willing to submit (for example, early quantum mechanics).

[Anonymous] Xinzhai Lao Jiang

2007-03-24 11:46:29

Brother Gu is indeed rather classical.
Let me spend some time thinking this through properly, and then come back to learn from you.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.

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