Curious to hear what folks in the #HistSTM community think about this new @aeonmag essay re: truth, Truth, science, and Science.
https://aeon.co/essays/its-time-for-a-robust-philosophical-defence-of-truth-in-science … …
(kudos to @samhaselby for bringing it to my eyes)
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I was surprised to see no reference to Shapin on truth, yeah?
The whole piece (I've gone over it more carefully) appears committed to the idea that somehow the answers to "does science get to truth?" is going to be found without looking closely at how science operates. Which gets at the core problem with it.
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I think in my final analysis - the article doesn't reflect my understanding (based on having done bench science) of what scientists actually do. Which amounts to the same thing,
@wellerstein. It's a shady version of science that seems like the shadows of Plato's cave.Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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It also doesn't take into account the core challenge of the climate deniers etc., which is not that science doesn't get to truth eventually, but whether a given scientific claim is true *now*.
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Climate deniers do not claim that science as a method is unreliable. They claim that there are multiple interpretations of scientific data and that their scientific claims are more valid that the claims of others. The approach in this essay does not resolve anything.
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(And if it doesn't do that, then what's the point? I read the whole conceit as somehow philosophers are going to give us a reason to think climate science is worth paying attention to. But it's engaging with a straw man — nobody is denying climate change b/c of Kuhnian concerns.)
End of conversation
New conversation -
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