I’ve recently spent a significant amount of time in environments, in which people hold both positivist and socially constructivist views on science, knowledge, and epistemology.
Myself, I grew up in an environment that was highly positivist, but as I grew up I drifted strongly towards the socially constructivist viewpoint as a result of my reflections and exposure to art, social sciences, and philosophy. Nowadays, I understand where both of these groups of people are coming from — but it is sometimes hard to deal with the fact that we are rarely aware of our own orientation on what we consider as “knowledge” and how it should be obtained. And in science(s), I can see an evident split in between of people who are able to discuss this matter, and who are not. This is a direct result of these matters being discussed (or not discussed) as part of different fields’ education.
To me, an ideal situation would be one in which everyone would be aware of their epistemological orientation and able to discuss these differing viewpoints in a constructive manner. Too often, the discussions end up in friction emerging in between the people, when in fact we could learn a lot from discussing these differences.
I find it shocking, that Haraway’s article from ’86 says “recent social studies of science and technology, for example, have made available a very strong social constructionist argument for all forms of knowledge claims, most certainly and especially scientific ones. According to these tempting views, no insider’s perspective is privileged, because all drawings of inside-outside boundaries in knowledge are theorized as power moves, not moves toward truth” [1] — yet this would be fresh news to many people working in harder sciences. Generally we can say, that positivist viewpoint has been trumping the alternative viewpoints within our history.
I only hope, that this matter would be adapted as part of the curriculum in all fields of university level education (whether it be master’s or bachelors, I don’t know). I think it is important, that each person is able to understand the orientation of their own field (and their personal orientation), and the limitations that come with it. How can we function as a society, if we don’t?
How can we collaborate, if we result to ignorance and deem someone elses opinions “less valuable” due to differing epistemological orientations?
[1] Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective
