New Ways of Knowing Integrative Seminar/Reading Questions

New Ways of Knowing Readings: Post your reading questions for NWoK in the appropriate section below.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions - Thomas Kuhn
''I will post here the comments about how to read; in this case it will include my version of Josh's suggestions too. Joshua Paul was the TA in Sp'10. Please separate your comments from one another for ease of reading -Herb''

1.A possible motivation: Kuhn is making history of science a field that is safe for HISTORIANS. At the time he wrote, people valued internalist histories of science more than those soft cultural and historical explanations that seemed to ignore how science was so great. so different from all other human endeavors. The sciences all progressed, always moving smoothly from one triumph of understanding to the next to the next after that. At least that is how textbooks explained it.

Kuhn's ideas --a mixture of reality testing, historical examples, and sociological &amp; cultural history of science-- all debunk that usual story and introduce historical discontinuity, punctuated equilibrium and real social influences. This makes the history told by those who hold the winning current view --i.e. today's scientists-- less important than the story one told by one who is versed in the events and ternds of the times. The externalist history of the revolutions in science, if Kuhn were right (or should we say if Kuhn won the day) would be more important than the glossed over pseudo-history we otherwise might have.

2. Josh cautions that if you DO know about paradigms from social science contexts you perhaps have to be especially cautious in your reading &amp; writing -- Kuhn's is the original notion. The SS version is bowdlerized in ways which are useful for their own "possible ulterior motivation."That is, the social scientists rather rapidly pickedup on Kuhn's notion of moving from pre-science to science by developing an actual paradigm for research. Many individual social sciences (sociology, anthropology, economics, even politics and some parts of history) started to claim thier field had a leading paradigm; or should have aprticular paradigm as the best way to make intellectual progress. The notion of a paradigm as an intentional construct and a mark of being a real science --not just a "Study," or a pre-science-- may be part &amp; parcel of the social science use of the word paradigm.

Reading Questions
Jake H(s'10):

1. In your opinion, is the history of science a cumulative or relativistic process? What side does Kuhn argue and how effective is he in supporting his statements?

2. Kuhn acknowledges the possibility of a neutral language that would allow for discourse across disciplines, yet quickly backs away from the notion citing it as too daunting a task. Why does he avoid exploring this notion, even theoretically, and what are your own thoughts about this approach to the development of knowledge?

3. Kuhn is subject to the same paradigm structure he identifies in the scientific 'community'. How does this manifest in his writing?

**********************************F'10 comments***************************************

Josh F-D 1. Kuhn, while attempting to illustrate that the perception of 'paradigm changing' scientific breakthroughs is often inaccurate and prone to selective memory, seems to fall prey to the same effect. In his discussions about seminal work in the modern understanding of electricity, for example, Kuhn repeatedly cites scientists like Edison and Franklin as being behind the major shifts in thinking or as being the source of new thinking that set the framework for modern research in that field. Nikola Tesla, on the other hand whose work on alternating current helped provided much of the basis for the modern power grid, and whose work with wireless power transmission was seminal, is not mentioned at all. On the subject of X-rays, Röntgen is credited with much of the discovery. Tesla, who had elicited and studied x-rays years before Röntgen, is again not mentioned. Does Kuhn not discuss these things because he too was subject to history's selective emphasis, or is it that he felt that Tesla's work fit under the category of 'normal science' (merely elucidating the problem space defined by Edison, Franklin or Röntgen, rather than expanding on it), and is, as such, not worth mentioning?

2. Kuhn's theories about the propagation of scientific ideas would seem to fall somewhat flat in the modern scientific climate. String theory, while being highly controversial, does enjoy being the most widely entertained 'next step' in the human understanding of physics. It has not yet made the steps that Kuhn iterates, namely, providing evidence for theories explaining phenomena that competing theories could not explain, or providing phenomena that competing theories fail to explain, but has still made the jump to occupying what one might term as the forefront of popularity in the subject. In other words, it has collected droves of followers and, at least in part, discouraged research which might have otherwise gone ahead in the absence of the string theory paradigm, without first demonstrating that it is in fact more capable than other potentially competing theories at explaining phenomena. Is this a result of the exponential increase in the time and energy needed to conduct novel research in the field, thus forcing potential experimenting bodies to put their proverbial eggs in the same basket in order to even construct the apparati to do the research (as in the case of the large hadron collider, a 9 billion dollar project)? Is this effect going to compound as science moves away from one smart person in a laboratory doing novel research, towards hundreds or thousands of people working in concert using proportionally greater amounts of resources?

3. Are Kuhn's ideas going to go obsolete? Kuhn describes game changing shifts in thinking in several fields of the physical sciences, but since, as he says, all modern science is built on the slightly less modern science before it, might we reach a point where the amount of unknown or testable phenomena in a field predicate only one course of research? Might we also reach a point where the summed resources of the scientific community might be sufficient only to follow one path of inquiry?

Deidre Nelms, via eMail to herb

Here are my discussion questions:

-Why does Kuhn need to make a distinction between perception and interpretation of phenomena? / What role does individual subjectivism play for Kuhn in the scientist's observation and experimentation process?

- What does Kuhn think the role of science is? Does he want to change this role or merely [to] describe it?

- How should science be compared to other --unscientific-- methods of inquiry?

Tal Schechter
-While mostly it is a very well compiled thesis, there are some points where I feel that Kuhn rambles for a few pages, usually elucidating bits of history that are not relevant. Is there a purpose for their inclusion?

-In "The Resolution of Revolutions," Kuhn discusses the need for a neutral language, but I feel that he did not go into much detail with that. Why would they be necessary necessary?

-p.150 "It must occur all at once (though not necessarily in an instant) or not at all. How is this possible?

-p.165 Kuhn discusses the textbook approach to science, and the lack of primary literature in science curricula. As we read primary literature from the get-go, have we already begun reconstructing science learning?

-Are scientists aware of the revolution/crisis/paradigm shift as it occurs?

Luke Gay

As language shapes the way we percieve and concieve of the world around us, and this process coevolves with scientific understanding, what problems are generated by the rewriting of the history of science?

Kuhn focuses on the evolution of the western conception of astronomy as an illustration of the linear rewriting of scientific understanding. How can we (western scientists) gain from inclusion and integration of non-western understandings of nature?

On of the characteristics of paradigm crisis is the propagation of unique explanations of how to fit nature to theory and vise versa, can an individual help to bring about a revolution of understanding when there is no apparent paradigm crisis?

Sara Mendes

Kuhn suggests that paradigms are created and enforced as a set of theories or rules that are taught to and accepted by students. In order to make valid contributions to a specific field, is one expected to be formally trained in the rhetoric/rules and the paradigm of their subject? Do these restrictions reduce the accessibilty of science to non-elite people? Do they act to make the process of making scientific advances more efficient? Kuhn describes many scientific revolutions as invisible because of a desire to keep the history of science linear and cumulative. Does this impact the way that revolutions work as they are happening or only from the future?

How do you reject a paradigm and still make an impact on your field? Is awareness of the existence of paradigms enough?

********************************************************************************************

Genesis and the Development of a Scientific Fact - Ludwik Fleck
'' Very interesting history to this work, and its author: Read the biography at the end of the book first [but skip the translator's analysis of the content which is also found after the text]. This English translation was arranged by Thomas Kuhn many years after hisbook had sparked a revolution of its own -- and helped to make his career-- the modern revolution in our understanding of science, that is.''

''This book is where Kuhn got a lot of his framework &amp; ideas for "Structure," and he admits it in the preface that he wrote. Read that next,&amp; then Fleck’s prologue.. Even the title is remarkable: scientific facts have origins and development? That’s a new one on most of us. Fits right in however with my claim that fact means “made” as in the words factory and manufacture.''

''I am struck every time I read this book by the various drawings and illustrations taken from historical sources; it seems to me the current idea of photographic and therefore supposedly realistic styles are quite as culture bound as the old-timers ideas of what was good anatomical rendering. I am also VERY interested in the accuracy of Fleck’s account of daily laboratory life in the twenties, and how that comparers to what you might have experienced in more recent times. Finally notice the theme of how culture works, of common sense setting the terms for what gets to be scientific (such as bad -evil- behavior being connected somehow to bad blood), and how similar social processes may be at work in the sub-societies of scientists –using fancier words with pseudo-Latin etymologies, of course.''

Reading Questions
John:


 * What utility might Fleck's view of science have for knowledge workers? Might it allow them to convey their ideas better to disparate, non-scientific, groups? Might his proposal then be taken to be a self-interested one, as - were it to be adopted - his own work would gain broader audience, acceptance, and ultimately make him better remembered by future generations.
 * How can we redefine the goals of science to bring them in line with Fleck's point of view?
 * How do you, personally, visualize the structure of scientific knowledge and how it changes over time? Do you see it as a tree, graph, some sort of machine, perhaps an organism...? How do you bundle up this extraordinarily rich idea in metaphors, such that you can understand Fleck and Kuhn's arguments?

Josh Paul: What does Vademecum &amp; Journal science mean? How does it differ today? Do they still exist?

Marissa: Why does Kuhn leave out the conceptions of truth and reality that Fleck clearly enunciates?

Usha: What's your reaction to a fleck's statement that "immunology" has a war metaphor from the old myths of demon-caused disease? p.59

Cary: If there's not something specific in the nature of the nature of the scientific process which allows us to produce useful knowledge, what other knowledge producing processes are there?

Rueben: Is it amusing to the rest of you that philosophers say "world has facts" (they know thinking and how it involves social influences, history etc.) Natural scientists say "logical, good, thinking, is a fixed and great asset which we use" (they have seen scientific facts found &amp; made; it isn't pretty). They each seem to think the others' output is a fixed given.

Herb: WTF is active vs. passive knowledge?

Brenna: What if disease itself was not studied biologically, but sociologically? How would it change the method of curing a disease? 2010

Josh:

1. Fleck's assertions regarding thought collectives seems to be at odds with Kuhn's ideas about those scientists that break out of traditional means of thinking and move the field in a new direction. If one believes Fleck, then no scientist can operate in a vacuum, and any of his or her ideas will be influenced by their interactions with others in their field. How would he explain those scientists who, by and large, want nothing to do with their peers, (like Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman), and the ideas that they come up with?

2. Fleck bases about 60% of his book on research into syphilis. One could almost rename the book: "syphilis; the untold story". How well do Fleck's ideas transfer to other areas of science, especially in the modern academic and scientific climate? Would fleck have been better served with a wider range of supporting evidence?

3. Fleck mentions at one point that scientific progression often leaves behind alternate methods of reasoning through ideas, which may be detrimental. In many cases though, old ideas are left behind because they cease to have value as an explanatory force. The mythological or astrological explanations for syphilus, for example, ceased to have explanatory force once the science provided a better means of providing correlative evidence. Is addressing these discarded ideas important, and, if so, how does one keep ones thought collective and other forces from influencing their decision about what to study, in such a way as to make the endeavor pointless?

Deidre Nelms:

1) To what extend would Kuhn agree with Fleck's quote on pg 24 "many scientific positions steadily developed from proto-ideas... the developmental rudiments of modern theories"? Is science cumulative? Do Kuhn and Fleck use the concept of "accumulation" differently?

2) on page 76, Fleck describes science as developing in a "meandering" fashion, and gives examples of science going in unintended and unpredictable directions. Does Kuhn allow normal science to be unpredictable?

3) Fleck's problematic distinction between "active" and "passive" knowledge (pages 10, 49, 64) seems to hit at the basic question: to what degree is individual thought structured by the thought collective? Does an individual freely act or only mechanically react?

Kim:

1. Many languages, (German, especially), seem to have a knack for capturing certain concepts with a clarity and nuance that English (for example) cannot. Is it possible that Fleck's native language primed him to develop his theories regarding thought collectives? How might the English language be limiting our ability to see how these collectives function in our own various academic and professional communities? (126)

2. "Nonetheless, there are always other connections which are also to be found in the content of knowledge that are not explicable in terms either of psychology (both individual and collective) or of history. For this very reason these seem to be "real," "objective," and "true" relations." (10) This statement, I took to be a fairly traditional definition of "fact"--as a concept or phenomenon that exists apart from history or psychology. But this seems in sharp contrast to the examples Fleck uses throughout the rest of the book where "fact" is the complete opposite--it is something that shifts with the historical climate, or shifts because more/different/better knowledge arises. In his discussion of Low (128), he states that Low "regards his own theory as simple observation of nature, in just the same way as many contemporary scientists regard theirs." So, dammit, what is fact? Does it exist at all? Is that word simply the glue that holds traditional scientific paradigms firmly in place? Can we function without it? How?

Luke Gay

1) How does Fleck's discussion of the conception disease (62) compare with Kuhn's assertion that a paradigm can only be rejected in favor of a better stated paradigm with fewer exceptions?

2) "Every communication and, indeed', all nomenclature tends to make any item of knowledge more exoteric and popular(114)"  Is communication necessarily defined as the use of symbolic language, nomenclature (jargon)?  Do agreed upon definations constitute facts? Does "empirical" have contradictory concept in its useage? 

Tal Schechter

1. What are active and passive connections/knowledge, and what was Fleck trying to point out about them? For example, p.82

2. Is there no such thing as rational thinking? Is emotional thinking necessarily non-rational? p. 49

3. What does Fleck mean by cognition? For example, p. 40

Raphael Franca

Fleck provides us with a temporary definition of fact as a “thought stylized conceptual relation” p. 83. Is there another way to define fact besides as a “relation” that retains the necessary fickleness Fleck has demonstrated?

How does Kuhn’s critique about Flecks illusion metaphor (p.x) hold up against considering that Fleck has also stated the following: Thus every product of intellectual creation creates relations ‘which cannot exist in any other way’. p.101

“It creates the expressions appropriate to it, such as religion, science, art, customs, or war, depending in each case on the prevalence of certain collective motives and the collective means applied” (p.99) Is Fleck providing us with a conceptual precursor to culture?

The Order of Things - Michel Foucault
'' Remember -- the first sections are easy by comparison to the rest of the book. Do not make the elementary mistake of thinking that Foucault wants you to think like the people in any of the periods he describes, even though he speaks about each of them in turn as if they were the correct way of looking at the world. This is just a literary device to get you inside the heads of the particular historical era he is writing about. HIs main pioint is the archeaological metaphor; thta instead of historical continuity the "history of ideas" itself is to be replaced by a kind of punctuated equilibrium:that of long periods when the epistemology is set each one interrupted by a sudden break when a shift occurs and in a brief period the whole world is changed because everyone's way of knowing has been radically shifted. The overall sweep of the book is to announce a coming next shift of epistemology (at the time of his writing, no-one knew how correct he was nor that the new era was to be called the postmodern) -- I believe we are living in a post-postmodern time right now, but that is a matter for some later readings in the course''. '''Now for how to read. [This advice may be worth the price of our course all by itself]:'''

As I said in class the last time we met, many have found this technique to be the best:*

''If you read the sections of the book as fast as you can BUT slow down at the end of each subsection (say the last paragraph), it turns out to be a fine summary of the entire preceding section. Spend some time with each of the diagrams, and notice how his geometric explanations are all 2-dimensional until he gets to "dethroning the king" in the last sections on the Human Sciences. There Foucault speaks of a three dimensional space and the way that "Man" as the measure of all things is about to be replaced. How accurate is he in predicting the whole deconstructionism/postmodernist program? (A question that's especially relevant for those of you who have encountered these approaches in your SS, HACU &amp; other courses...) ''

______ 

 *It certainly worked for me.

Josh's Questions:

1. In Foucault's description of "Speaking" he provides that languages developed from primitive monosyllables. These no doubt required some resemblance to the thing they were trying to evoke when used (ie scream for pain, onomatopeia, etc.). Wouldn't this mean than language is still based in resemblance and not in representation? How does Foucault resolve this issue? (around p.107)

2. What does Foucault mean by the "reversible character of grammatical analysis"? (p.117, but he mentions it alot. I couldnt track it down...)

3. Is it possible to argue with Foucault? What would it take to confront the broad, deep archeaological (though very creative) analysis that this book is?

cary's questions:

1. What would a perfect analytical language mean for imagination and the arts?

2. What the heck is he saying in the last chapter?

3. If Foucault happened to sit in on one of our classes, what do you think he would say are the conditions (or limitations) of knowlege today? (provided he could get a few sentances before Usha killed him...)

Herb's:

1. What is your definition of modern? of postmodern? which of the eras that you know of are "modern" and which are not?[was ancient Greece in the golden age of Athens a modern era?] -- and is our time "modern" in the sense of your definition?

2. Why does Foucault stick to the subjects of activity and knowlege which are (or predate) what we call economics, biology and linguistics?

3. WTF: With all his erudition, does Foucaut not understand that art historians have an entirely different approach to "Las Meninas"? -- why is he not telling us what their take on Veasquez was?

N.B.I think Josh will bring the painting in to class; we have commissioned some big color blow-ups for ease of examination.

John's:

1. Foucault repeatedly makes reference to a toppling or collapsing of all of Western thought. Isn't this a little extreme? Did this ever really happen? Couldn't we take everything Foucault says about a collapse and view it in more positive terms? Wherein the Western body of knowledge goes through something more akin to a puberty - an awkward period of uncertainty which ultimately leads to profound growth - rather than a destructive collapse? How might people who experienced this "toppling" have viewed it (according to how Foucault has presented their world view)? In the game 'Tetris', are you building something?- or tearing it down?

2. W(ho)TF is Foucault writing this for? The book had a broad popular audience, but it sure as hell wasn't written for one. What is the danger of a book like this being read by an audience for whom it was not intended?

3. What's a silent philosophical laugh (p. 343)? Is this laugh the last foothold by which certain "well educated" individuals can assert their intellectual dominance over those who's ideas they consider inferior? Or perhaps "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent"?

Marissa's:

1. Why does F use biology, linguistics, and economics as his areas of study/knowledge to focus on? Could he have used other areas and still made the same argument?

Diana:

Would this have made more sense if we had read it backwards?

2. What does F think of the potential future of humanity? He doesn’t seem very optimistic.

3. What does he mean by the statement “It is comforting, however, and a source of profound relief to think that man is only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, and that he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form” (xxiii) ? WTF is his definition of man?

Reuben:

On page 84 (top paragraph), Foo-Kow seems to say that the popularization of science had zero effect on its internal trajectory which seems to be in contradiction to Fleck's theory of exoteric and esoteric knowledge. Thoughts?

2010 Fall
I met with Herb on Monday afternoon, and he is letting us finish the Foucault book for next week. Be prepared to discuss at least Part I, and have a paper for it for Wednesday. Hopefully you will read this before then, but Herb said that he would said out an email. I met with Herb because I am not a particularly fast reader, and was concerned about the point I was up to. It really does work to read the majority of the text at super-speed, and slow down for the last paragraph of a section. I am much further along than I would have been, had I tried to read the entirety. You have to keep reminding yourself to read fast, but you can get through it! -Tal

Tal

p201 How do you read those charts?

p61 Is it really impossible to be self-aware of your own period's thought-style? How does Foucault write about his own then? How much distance do you need to be aware- the next era or the next-next?

p81 "However, until the connection between language and representation is broken, or at least transcended, in our culture, all secondary languages will be imprisoned within the alternative of criticism and commentary. And in their indecision they will proliferate ad infinitum. Does this mean anything or is it just filler?

p284 What are the differences between the inflectional and affix languages? Or why does he use the word inflectional?

p325 What does this statement mean: "What must I be, I who think and who am my thought, in order to be what I do not think, in order for my thought to be what I am not?"

What is cogito, unthought, finitude, etc., and what is Foucault positing based on them? Zachary's questions:

1. How do you see this book effecting, if at all, a scientists' day-to-day work? What do you see a scientist doing differently having all of Foucaults points in mind?

2. What is your reaction to his discussion of value? What meaning does it hold for you personally, and for scientific work?

3. What do you think about how he characterizes the "human sciences"? Is that term synonimous with "humanities," "social sciences" or does it really just mean "study of humans"?

Deidre's Questions:

1) To what extent does Foucault admit of individual freedom, especially in the light of his analysis of man as a "strange empirico-transcendental doublet"? What is the relationship he conceives of between individual experience( and thereby action) and the socio-cultural conditions for that experience? Look to pages 322, 228, 331-2.

2) At the end of Man and his Doubles: the last paragraph beginning with "To all those who still wish to talk about man... we can answer only with a philosophical laugh- which means, to a certain extent, a silent one." Who is this we? Is it a different we that Foucault has been using throughout? Does Foucault see himself as conforming to or conversely set apart from "modern thought". Consider page 307 when he instead uses the pronoun "I", and page 386 "Of course these are not affirmations, They are at most questions to which it is not possible to reply; they must be left in suspense where they pose themselves, only with the knowledge that the possibility of posing them may well open the way to a future thought."

3) 351- 353, Foucault again takes up a discussion of representations in relation to the human sciences. Why is it that the constitution of representations cannot stay entirely restricted to the classical age? What is modernity's new relationship with representations?

Sara:

1) Foucault argues that language is merely a signifier of thought and that an object itself is a better representation of itself than the name given to it in language. How does this effect the way that literature/writing is understood when translated across different languages? Especially since The Order of Things was originally written in French. 2) Why does Foucault conclude with the Human Sciences? How are they different than emperical sciences?

3) How were the ideas presented in the book recieved by the scientific community when it was published/popularized? Josh:

1. Foucault makes the argument that the best language would be one that is truly transparent, such that the path between the language and the thing it denotes is clear and unambiguous. But then he says things like "However, since discourse is not simply a representative whole, but a duplicated representation that denotes another representation - the one that it is in fact representing...) p.92. Is Foucault bound by the faults inherent in the language he uses, such that he resorts to such muddled and confusing prose (quite often, it seems)? Is this an artifact of translation?

2. Foucault titles one of his chapters the "limits of representing", going on the elucidate the changes in how the various sciences he examines change the ways they describe their material. Is the title disingenuous to the content? All of the sciences are necessarily bound by the need to represent things. Should he have described the manner in which achieving objective, rational representations could be achieved instead of describing the manners in which they had already failed to do so?

3. Foucault roughly described the 'human sciences' as falling into 3 categories: biology, economics and philology (355). He equivocates a bit, and then in typical foucault style, says that this breakdown is "probably not too inexact" (366). Are the human sciences so easily defined, or is Foucault more or less arbitrarily defining the sciences in much the same manner as he spends the previous 300 pages decrying?

Luke:

1) What is the tiger's back that we are bound to? (322)

2) What is meant by the distinction between "a positive domain of knowledge" and "an object of science (367)?

New Ways of Knowing - Raskin &amp; Bernstein
cary's reading questions: (only have one so far and it's specifically for herb)

1. Herb: How does your actual scientific research reflect or not reflect the phylosophy set fourth in the book? What difficulties do you encounter when trying to embody this philosophy?

2. are all choices really free?

Marissa's:

1. What does Raskin mean by "bonding and affection"?

John's:

1. The term "empathic invariance" comes up several times throughout the book, first it is defined as "what each of us sees, identifies, and reaches out to in the other" (18), then as that which "sees oneself in the eyes of the Other" (71) and lastly "a capacity within all of us for each other" (284). Although similar, these definitions seem somewhat at odds. What is empathic invariance? And once answered, how does one develop and/or nurture their sense of empathic invariance?

2. Greater communication, less secrecy, more egalitarian access to information.. all of these are put forth as ways of promoting reconstructive thinking amongst knowledge workers - and yet the ability to do these things seems best enabled by technology. I'm specifically thinking of the Internet, anonymity networks.. stuff I'm into.. the development of these technologies is full of ethical quandaries (not to mention it's almost entirely funded by the Department of Defense). Military funding has brought technologies capable of unthinkable evil, yet it's also given us (what I believe) to be the most powerful tool for human liberation the world has ever seen. So simply agreeing not to work on military projects is not a solution. How can we decide which projects to work on when often the tool for liberation and the tool for destruction are one and the same - or worse are intricately linked up in a system of codependent technologies some of which are fundamentally deleterious.

3. Should hackers make the SAT answers public? (p 282)

Brenna

1. It seemed that many of the statements describing the motivation of knowledge included morality. What is morality and how can we assume that there is one that is better than another?

2/3. What is behind the human obsession with creating orders. Species, families, etc are all artificial though functional divisions; why do we make them? The implication of these divisions is that some descriptive statements inevitably become intertwined with normative statements. We have opposable thumbs is descriptive, however its connotation is also more evolved, thus better. Would reconstruction remove the confusion between descriptive and normative statements?

Zachary

1. Should information be a commidity? What would be the consequences of your answer on knowledge workers?

2. Are there any "ways of knowing" that are clearly direct byproducts of our "post-post-modern" age?

3. Do you think this collection really addresses "new ways of knowing"? Why or why not?

HERB again:This time I'm answering a question from some microbio-students in the hallway: What is it we did not learn about Lederberg and E.coli K-12 that your book seems to know?

[if there is a better place to put the answers like this please let me know(herb@helios)]

For the current info on Lederberg's lucky choice of K 12 and his subsequent experimental determination of which organisms might work, see e.g.

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/BB/Views/Exhibit/narrative/bacgen1.html

''That little exposition* seems not to have the bibliographic reference to Lederberg's subsequent experiment to see which prokaryotes showed "mating" behavior, among those organisms available for experiment in genetics labs at the time. It also seems to have run together the experiments Lederberg did immediately after his performance at Cold Spring Harbor with those that he did in Tatum's lab earlier than the summer, during his "research semester."''

All that aside, any help in correcting how i described this situation --or how New Ways of Knowing formulates its description-- including citing the experiment done only in the 1950's by Lederberg to survey in which organisms his original 1946 experiments would have succeeded, will be MOST welcome.

 PS. RE:infections, "pathogenicity," and what researchers in micro do not learn from the medical profession, see the Merck manual or any other diagnostic guide about UTI;or e.g., more readily accessible, this top google hit:

''"What are the causes of UTI? "Normally, urine is sterile. It is usually free of bacteria, viruses, and fungi but does contain fluids, salts, and waste products. An infection occurs when tiny organisms, usually bacteria from the digestive tract, cling to the opening of the urethra and begin to multiply. The urethra is the tube that carries urine from the bladder to outside the body. Most infections arise from one type of bacteria, Escherichia coli (E. coli), which normally lives in the colon." -- http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/Kudiseases/pubs/utiadult/ ''___ * Which says, in part:

"[his] findings were evidence that the two parent mutants had mated and exchanged genes, a process Lederberg called conjugation. Moreover, his experiments demonstrated that E. coli was haploid,meaning that it possessed only one complete set of chromosomes. In fact, Lederberg concluded that E. coli carried only a single chromosome. This was in contrast to the cells of higher organisms,which are diploid and possess two complete complements of chromosomes. Lederberg completed these crossing experiments in about six weeks, in time to present the results to a gathering of the world's leading microbial geneticists at the Cold Spring Harbor Conference on the Genetics of Microorganisms in July 1946.

"The very low incidence of mating, together with his technique of studying the genetic products of bacterial conjugation (namely, inherited nutritional requirements and drug resistance) in culture medium, prevented Lederberg from examining the physiology and kinetics, the stages and dynamics,of the mating process in detail. What actually happened on the cellular level during mating remained unknown. When new ways of photographing the stages of the mating process with the electron microscope were developed in the 1950s, they revealed that during conjugation the two bacteria of the mating pair lay side by side and formed a connecting bridge through which DNA is passed. This confirmed the finding by Bernard Davis in 1950 that for recombination to occur, the two parent bacteria had to have direct cell-to-cell contact." PLUS this about Urinary tract infections

"The urinary tract is the most common site of E coli infection, and more than 90% of all uncomplicated UTIs are caused by E coli infection. The recurrence rate after a first E coli infection is 44% over 12 months. E coli UTIs are caused by uropathogenic strains of E coli. E coli causes a wide range of UTIs, including uncomplicated urethritis/cystitis, symptomatic cystitis,pyelonephritis, acute prostatitis, prostatic abscess, and urosepsis. Uncomplicated cystitis occurs primarily in females who are sexually active and are colonized by a uropathogenic strain of E coli. Subsequently, the periurethral region is colonized from contamination of the colon, and the organism reaches the bladder during sexual intercourse."

from:http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/217485-overview &lt;this article seems also to indicate the presence of pilli are a factor in making a strain UTI-pathogenic; what is the effect of even (in)frequent combination on the probability of having or acquiring such pilli?&gt;

and goes on to say...

"Frequency United States

"E coli is the leading cause of both community-acquired and nosocomial UTI. Up to 50% of females eventually experience at least one episode of UTI. E coli causes 12-50% of nosocomial infections and 4% of cases of diarrheal disease."

FALL 2010

KIm:

1. Exactly Raskin's question on 9: Can the process of knowledge ever be neutral? Isn't there always motivation, and therefore, bias? Does "pure knowledge" exist? (Bernstein)

2. From Bernstein (49): What would the economic effects be if governmental funding of scientific research was halted? Would that not make science a purely capitalistic endeavor? How would that shift the dynamic of competition that so often fuels discovery.

3. Bernstein/Raskin (75): Is "deep knowledge" similar to "passive knowledge"?

Raphael:

1. What do the authors think of their demographic? Is it that people haven't thought about this before, that they don't care or are satisfied with the status quo, don't believe in the cause, or don’t think things will change so they must selfishly operate within the system to assure they're own comfort? 2. “...the technology in itself is neither pro-human nor anti-human, etc., and in fact is entirely neutral in the sense that its human significance will depend on the institutional framework in which it is embedded.” (p.105) At what stage of development does Chomskey believe tech is embedded in institutional framework? What are the implications for different answers? 3. "Furthermore, the high value that we place on modern inquiry in the natural and social sciences requires that we examine carefully how certain knowledges are constructed and whether they reflect rather than ameliorate human problems”(p.113) At what level of social organization should problems be consolidated to be presented to knowledge workers for their solutions? 4. “This is fanaticism, of the kind illustrated by the work of... ‘scholarship’ in the social sciences, and has no resemblance to science or scholarship...” Does Chomsky believe fanaticism is absent from science? 5. “How to begin? Facts can no longer stand as pristine: They are to be ‘deconstructed’, broken into different elements to show their speculative nature or value-hidden spin”(p.159) Which facts? All facts? How likely are we to do this to all facts? Not likely, so how do we decide which facts to re-examine?

Tal

1. With the advent of quantum physics it became apparent that we create our world by observing it. Is the world any different when there are no discoveries as such, only inventions?

2. How can reconstructive knowledge be implemented? In which part of society would one have to begin?

3. Which is more valuable, reconstructive knowledge or old ways of knowing as new ways of knowing? The method of reconstructive knowledge is somewhat clear, what would the method be for old ways as new ways?

Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body - Elizabeth A. Wilson
Herb says: Did everyone notice what a huge deal she makes of Freud &amp; Darwin? Does it validate or stimulate any thoughts about why Foucault picked the particular three fields he used in Order of Things? (And, by contrast, why do you think Marx is so ignored by EA Wilson?)

The REFERENCES section provides an easy way to see how big is the notion of Darwinian &amp;/or Freudian analysis in this book.

Note the references to Mike Fortun at a certain point. He always liked to tell us about the error of thinking biological=genetic and emphasized that there are plenty of biological but NOT genetic explanations for the further out applications of of the Human genome project for example; things like alcoholism, crime and poverty that wild-eyed genetic determinists and DNA chauvinists always talk about. (We read M.Fortun &amp; H.Bernstein next in this class!)

JOSH asks: What would be a common response of genetic determinists to the section in Ch.4 on blushing? What is the etiological preference of our body-knowledge? More specifically, why do we often think genetics comes first, creating a "blank" body that is then affected/infected by society and culture? What is it about our empiricity that creates this specific direction and order of events in development? Why would we be unable to observe the opposite?

John wonders: How do we get people in the humanities and the sciences to start talking to each other so that books like Wilson's don't _have_ to be written. Wilson does a great job mending some of the misconceptions on both sides of the feminist/biologist divide, but this divide is replicated endlessly throughout the humanities and sciences. What can be done to mend this larger rift? Why does this rift exist to begin with?

Cary: What would this book have looked like if written by someone who was trained primarally as a scientist? Is it possible for the theories in this book to be taken the extra step towards research and experimentation? Does it matter that Wilson openly addmits to using models long since abandonded by the neurological sciences?

Muddling Through - Fortun &amp; Bernstein
(Warning: you've gotta save frequently when entering changes to a Hampedia page, b/c it does not tell you when it is timing out.)

Damn Hampedia ate my entire entry!

So here is a short form AND recall my reading suggestions from class please.

Structure -- three sections: theory, practice, and envoie or send-off. The theory is in chaps 1-4; look out for serious thinking and some true postmodern wordplay throughout this part.

My first question: does the invented word realitty work for you? what does it do?

Brenna's question/suggestion in class was a different word "realityme" -- does this work better for you all?

WIll it still do so after you go to grad schiool and read those papers in technical subjects where every time-dependent equation uses f(t), with the italic t

Luke

1) I am curious about the social construction of time. On p 143 there is talk of not just making space, but time for making judgements.  How does our entanglment of time and money preempt the necessary complexity of science?

2) The question (p 172) of what our share as stakeholders is in a given situation. How do we define our citizenship? is it to a nation or a region, how do these things overlap and modify our share?

Tal

Did the authors idolize Foucault too much? They used a cover photo to address certain points, and referred to Foucault often, etc.

Are paragraphs made completely from questions self-defeating?

p270-273. Huh? What?

Zachary

1. Is "articulation" as described in chapter 2 useful? If so, how?

2. What did you gain from chapter six? Does it apply to your work?

3. They quote Charles Sanders Pierce, who defines reality as "what will be thought in the ultimate opinion of the community." Do you agree with this definition? Does it help our work?

Deidre

1) How are we to judge assemlages as judging assemblages? 142

2) page 28 how does science relate to faith?

3) Question for Herb: how was this book received?

The Invention of Modern Science - Isabelle Stengers &lt;To Be Decided, probably WILL include it this time (F'10) too!&gt;
My entry was eaten by unforgiving Hampedia timeout default settings. It basically said that funny "humorous" may also incorporate funny " strange." -- Especially, I suggested, under the ubiquitous francophone interpretation of humour provided by the philosophies of Henri Bergson. And Ms Stengers suggests the humour alterntive as better way for people to talk accross their various boundary assumptions, including the studiers of science who wish to reply to the science "warriors."

So her big deal is that the serious approach, that of irony, contrsts with humor. Irony entails continuing to pursue science and to use it as the best possbe modern knowledge despite eveything we learn of its fallibility, social construction and hidden --completely unavoidable-- assumptions and constraints. Humor may be more open for interpretation! --Herb

Student Questions

Zachary: 1. Does Stengers' discussion of humor do anything for you/your work? 2. Do you think she disparages the work of philosophers of science, if so, how and why? 3. Does her discussion of politics do anything for you/your work?

Student Presentations/Readings
[By cut-&amp;-paste, here is a version of the comment on "HOW to do it" instructions for applying New Ways -- quite general but perhaps not explicitly apppropriate for most of us this year, they are extracted from the book NWoK and a few other sources] Some actual suggestions for reconstructing/sciences &amp; knowledge (or things we learned or read about for doing Knowing in New Ways)  From several books, notably "new ways of knowing:" 1. Deploy the mixture of facts and values consciously and recognize the constructed nature of knowledge, of Truth. 2. Look to the dust-bin of history and the annals of lower-than current technology for possible solutions ”what is the traditional wisdom and how can you get an un-romanticized version of the indigenous knowledge?” or, for that matter, of any of the older traditions, some pre-dating science itself as an invention; always remembering that the sciences are not linear, progressive, ever-expanding spheres of understanding. They double back and use old metaphors, long-dropped paradigms and old --sometimes even disproven-- notions as the basis of newer ideas. 3. Seek Old Ways of knowing as “new Ways” in the terms used by Gary Snyder as cited in my essay for NWoK the book. 4. Inclusiveness of sciences – do science “by the people for the people and with the people,” or at the very least with those who are around you and can be consulted easily in the design of projects and asking of questions, setting of agenda. It is most important to use your imagination &amp; resources to consult those would be most affected by your research when it is applied. 5. Self-reflection within a field of knowledge is most important. The lesson of the 20th century is that self-reference within a field can also PROVE that it has limits (physics math, welfare economics, social sciences --with the observer effect, etc.etc.) 6. Replace the academic disciplinary divisions of knowledge with problem-based area-of-study/application-based knowledges. Use the John Dewey definition of inquiry to frame all investigations and do not be afraid to cross disciplines as well as to mix them in order to gain the knowledge necessary for social or individual purposes. 7. Notice the plurality of knowledges, truths and sciences can provide both humility and context to your understanding. 8. Go beyond the surface (almost sell-out) version of incorporating values as an add-on; a move that is exemplified and excoriated in NWoK as the “Environmental Impact Statement.” EISs came in with the wave of environmental regulation of the seventies and eighties of the last century, but they merely led to a new field of beltway-bandits who made huge consulting fees on explaining why a project has “no untoward harmful environmental impacts," a statement required by law – a project essentially identical to what would have been proposed without the EIS exercise, untouched by any of their analysis or insight or knowledge from what it would have been without any such `enviro’ considerations! 9. Recognizing the “trained incapacity” of experts whose vaunted education builds-in the seeming side effects of modern knowledge, effects long since incorporated into their fields of study by particular interests, especially those of rich and powerful men in society. Those interests are the ones that have shaped the disciplines in all those many years since the first scientific revolution. Rich &amp; powerful people are smart enough to understand where a subject is headed even if they cannot do the scientific work themselves. 10. Replacing the trained incapacity with a phronesis of the quotidian experience of hoi polloi. Which is Greek for the common sense, good sense based on everyday experience, of the many who make up a population. 11. Empathy for the engineer – as a required quality for those who would do something to benefit others, empathy is the best prescription. Remember the story of Raskin’s phrase “ pouring concrete over the lives of those who live in the project” if the engineer is insufficiently empathic. And my discovering that written expression just as I concluded that the huge World Bank irrigation projects literally poured concrete over the villages of some people in their “project areas.” 12. Match giving empathy to the engineer with turning over Project Power to the people who will indeed live it.