Today I read an article on Divulcat neutrality of science, and I have ventured to state my views on the subject, although I must admit my ignorance in deep philosophical issues.
often hear or read statements by senior scientists, in which is seen tremendous confidence in science as a form of knowledge entirely objective and independent of social context in which it operates.
However, in my humble opinion this is certainly not the case.
Compared with other major forms of knowledge, such as religion, philosophy and mythical thinking, it is possible that science itself is concerned more objective knowledge that humans have developed. But far from being free of social influence.
One of the great benefits of science is that it places its own limits. Science only works with assertions that can be falsifiable, so that this restraint, it managed to develop a much more objective understanding of religions or philosophical systems. Apart from this, science has fine tools and powerful weapons to correct its own mistakes and progress (what with a lot of rhetoric, Sagan called baloney detection kit).
In this regard, it is the way to approach the objective reality that has developed.
But this understanding of science, it only takes account of science as an abstract entity. There is no denying that science, in a conceptual, it is objective.
But this is only half true. The science of the abstract is objective, but should not be forgotten, that those who used science, scientists are human and as such humans will only be able to be fairly objective. Very few people would deny that science affects society. The opposite relationship, that society influences science, is more controversial.
Needless to say, technological development, ie, applied science to society, is very influenced by it. The applications of science are determined by society (applications that, unfortunately, are not always just for the benefit of all.) Are the social necesiades (whether meédicas, military, political, ...) that drive technological development. Think of if not the Manhattan Project (which Oppehneimer said represented the time when science met sin).
However, when we walked out of applied science and entered the field of basic science, the thing might not be so clear.
In basic science research there are many interests at stake, and it is they who "ordered" many times the conduct of research projects. Scientific research depends on budgets, so there will be certain lines of study which will enjoy more economic, while others will be more difficult to thrive. Moreover, when a well-established scientific paradigm, those jobs that are out of the conventional paradigm that makes it, do not enjoy good support from the rest of the scientific community, or a large impact. Its most likely destination is the neglect and indifference. Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn-style) take time and are very slow. Recall, for example, which took about 40 years that motorists ideas of plate tectonics was finally installed in geology and geophysics.
These two facts show that science is not free from external influences. There are many issues that influence the "Big Science" to overlook. However, that's what makes it different from any other form of knowledge, science has the powerful ability to recycle itself, and gobbling up their mistakes corrected.
paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a delightful book, The Mismeasure of Man , which was hiding a fierce critic of the intelligence test. For this work circulated the names of leading scientists of the mind, as Paul Broca, Cesare Lombroso or Cyril Burt, and showed how their work was directly related to the social context in which they developed. According to Gould, all research in psychology of intelligence nineteenth century to mid-twentieth century was strongly influenced by social ideas.
similar conclusions were set out in the work of similar hue, is not in the genes , written, among others, Richard Lewontin, which refute the theories of biological determinism and theories about the genetic basis of differences between human groups and human behavior.
History of Biology provides many examples of how it is influenced by social ideas.
A classification system of living beings, as proposed by Linnaeus in the eighteenth century (in some ways still in force, is the hierarchical classification system based on kingdoms, families, species, ...) only have been possible in a society in which attributed the diversity of life to the action of the Divine Maker, and in which it was believed that species were immutable and static entities.
Cuvier's catastrophic ideas, which were an obstacle to the distribution transformer Lamarck, were, to some extent, influenced by the religious climate of the time. Disregarding the opposition he encountered, from the religious world, the theory of evolution by natural selection of Darwin in his early years.
even later evolutionary thinkers like the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, developed their ultimate vision of the evolution, influenced by his strong religious convictions. Similar example would be for example, the model of evolution by orthogenesis (the idea that evolution agencies cuasidivina by an outside force that directs your changes) that arose in the early twentieth century.
Another good example of influencing society in biology is the question of spontaneous generation: the fact that this idea goes back to Aristotle, and to be defended by the great thinkers of the Church, like St. Thomas or St. Augustine, were sufficient authority for argument has long been assumed to be true.
Biology also has a couple of good examples of use of scientific ideas and legitimating of social ideas, social Darwinism, which involved the use of the idea of \u200b\u200bnatural selection and competition as a justification of capitalism, or the revival and effect of Lamarckism and inheritance of acquired characters throughout the first half of the twentieth century, in the former Soviet Union's hand Tromfin Lysenko. Not only
biology or psychology, or evolutionary thinking have been subjected to social influences. In my view, other branches of science, a priori more sheltered and more objective fashion, such as physics or chemistry, are subject to influence.
And you do not go back to archirepetido example of Galileo's heliocentric theory to justify that statement.
whole theory of heat and thermodynamics is developed from the late eighteenth century, in my opinion, it influenced by the pressure of the Industrial Revolution.
The great physical chemist, recently deceased, Ilya Prigogine, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977, wrote in one of his books and various scientific concepts of time are influenced by philosophical ideas of the physicist in question.
In chemistry, for his part, during the second half of the eighteenth century, the scientific community was divided between mechanistic, trying to explain biological phenomena were explained as inorganic compounds, and vitalistic, posed that organic substances could not be synthesized in the laboratory, and that action could only be built by a "vital force" that separated the living from the inert. Berzelius important organic chemicals such as defending vitalist thesis. It was not until 1828 that Wöhler synthesized urea, since then, other chemicals to do the same with other compounds, such as the acetic Kolbe, Berthelot with methane, ..., so the idea of \u200b\u200blife force was finally banished . It goes without saying that this idea of \u200b\u200bvitalism and life force has certain religious reminiscences, and behind it lies the idea that there is a guiding hand of creation (so-called life force) that the dead live comvierte.
The idea of \u200b\u200bcreating the universe from nothing, as is the Big Bang theory, could only have arisen, I believe, in the West, with our vision Christian world. It is significant that one of the fathers of Big Bang, the French mathematician and astrophysicist George Henri Lemaître, was a priest. So is the fact that, great philosophers and thinkers, atheists and materialists like Kant, Engels and Marx, were supporters of the idea of \u200b\u200ban infinite universe had existed forever.
remember now, too, have read once that the Physical Society of Japan had decided to expel from its meetings any physical work to protest military reaction to the manipulation of science.
In my opinion, these are all examples that show that science is not no means alien to the social context in which they live by scientists (I notice also that the idea is neither new, nor is mine, lol). Perhaps
science as an abstract idea as a tool itself is objective. But its products, different scientific paradigms are far from neutrality and to be free of social influence, or at least the influence of certain "truths" assumed. As well Realizing Heisenberg with his uncertainty principle, the explanation depends on who explains.
