There seems to be a lot confusion in the replies here regarding what Audra is saying — which is an entirely uncontroversial statement within the academic disciplines that study how science works now and in the past (e.g., the History, Anthropology, & Sociology of Science).https://twitter.com/ColdWarScience/status/1017211382176059392 …
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Replying to @wellerstein
I always liked John Casti's three-tiered definition of "science". Except for the first definition, all the other definitions are 'political' in some sense. People seem to be willfully or otherwise interpreting the statement as pushing some kind of relativist postmodernist agendapic.twitter.com/JHsDJrAS2R
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Replying to @curiouswavefn @wellerstein
Even facts and theories have political components
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Replying to @moritherapy @wellerstein
Yes, but one would assume (especially if you’re a Platonist) that while one might tread a particular politically-influenced path to a fact like matter-energy equivalence, the fact was always there to begin with.
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Replying to @curiouswavefn @moritherapy
I draw a distinction between "mass-energy equivalence, the concept described by physicists" and "the way nature works." Our concepts can very accurately describe nature, but they are not the same thing as it. When we speak of "facts" we still speak of concepts.
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Replying to @wellerstein @moritherapy
Agreed. The concepts are an approximation to "reality", although in many cases (like mass-energy equivalence or the structure of DNA), they are validated so well that they're probably as close to reality as we're ever going to get.
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Replying to @curiouswavefn @moritherapy
Separate from the question of whether we should assume we've hit the end of the road with our understanding on these matters (which interestingly gets you into territory that makes scientists uncomfortable), I would just put the emp. on looking into what "validated" means here.
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At some point, a given concept might become so useful, so indispensable, that it becomes silly to imagine that it's going to be overthrown. It becomes part of the bedrock of so many other ideas. Agreed 100%. But that usefulness — that validation — is like a constant prodding.
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That prodding is still a form of human intervention. It's what sustains the concept. So you never really take the "people" out of the equation. And if you can't take them out, you can't take the other parts that come with them, either.
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Which is just to say: the "facts" don't sit in some separate category from the rest of the work of science. They're part of it. I think notions that try to separate the "facts" from the rest of it do injustice to the amount of work involved in sustaining "facts."
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