Brief summary of theory loading of observation

STS 112 David Mercer

The ‘Theory loading of Observation’ and its implications for doing history of science

Naive theory of observation

• The material world is a systematic collection of facts

• Looking at this world (the object), is the perceiving subject, equipped with their visual and cognitive apparatus

• Assuming the subject, is unbiased, free from social or cultural prejudices, they will receive true perceptions of external facts

FIGURE 2 NAIVE VIEW OF PERCEPTION

Reality (System of given facts)

fact

eye

brain perception of fact

World→Fact→Sense Organ→Nervous System→Brain→True Perception Of Fact

“true knowledge” should be a perfect mirror image of external reality Slide: Courtesy of Bob Brown after J.S. Schuster: The Scientific Revolution

Naive theory of observation

Naïve Empiricism

• Image of human observer a little like a camera that can take ‘objective’ pictures of the outside world

• In these traditions of ‘epistemology’ normally also assumed that humans can then accurately record/ report these observations without distortion and also build them into theories.

• As you can imagine, some debate about how this can best be done and how we can try to make sure people aren’t mistaken or biased and can use ‘objective’ language to report what they see.

Influences some simple textbook models of science Slide: Courtesy of Bob Brown after J.S. Schuster: The Scientific Revolution

FIGURE 2 THE METHOD STORY

hypothesis

report generalise (induction)

observe

Nature= System of given fact

Test vs Nature

deduce prediction

Test OK hypothesis law

Test not OK Start over

Implications for doing history of science

If we take these simple views on board uncritically they encourage a vision of the history of science as simply an ongoing accumulation of more and more observations and facts. In this approach when views of past scientists disagree with the present it must be the result of either their incorrect observations or their lack of observations. The role of the historian of science is then, to document the accumulation of knowledge and the sources of distortion which might explain errors in past science. This is a very limited vision.

Critiques of naïve empiricism

Numerous areas of scholarship have suggested that

observation is a much more complex process than

indicated in the previous slides and that a lot more is

involved in humans building knowledge of the world than

simply building up observations

Examples

• Psychologists and cognitive scientists interested in processes of perception and cognition

• Philosophers interested in epistemology and theories of the mind. • Educationalists studying learning processes. • Anthropologists studying differences between cultures.

• Art Historians noting at different times people perceive art differently.

• Linguists interested in the way people structure and make sense of language.

• Historians of Science explaining past scientific worldviews.

• Marketing and Advertising researchers wanting us to buy things or shape our behaviours.

Today mainly look at:

(a)Some very basic psychology of perception

(b) Theory and language

+ examples taken from other

fields.

Gestalt

• Seeing things as wholes

• You see a building not one hundred thousand bricks

• We make ‘sense’ of multiple inputs of information ignoring some inputs and filling in the gaps in other cases

• Gestalt drawings used to reveal these active sense making processes necessary for perception

Duck ? Rabbit?

FIGURE 4

is the ball inside the cube or outside the cube ?

Teaching to see

• If you can't see one or the other shape in the gestalt diagram then perhaps you can be ‘taught’ to see it … – interesting that you could be taught to see

something by members of a certain culture

– Maybe scientists as members of a sub-culture are taught to see things, such as the objects of scientific inquiry!

– Following 2 Slides: Courtesy of Bob Brown

Can you be trained to see Cloud Shapes?

Can you be trained to see Cloud Shapes?

Theory loading of perceptions

• You need an external input of electromagnetic disturbance and you need some prior knowledge to fuse it with.

• Depending on which bit of prior knowledge gets fused with the information, your brain produces one perception or another

Making sense of unfamiliar with the familiar?

FIGURE 7

Reality??? We have access to it only through our grids of theory/belief etc.

incoming electromagnetic disturbance

Perception of duck

Perception of antelope

Projection back on reality i.e. ducks/antelopes exist in the world.

D

A

Slide above courtesy J Schuster ‘The Scientific Revolution’ • the categories set in our grids by belief, theory and

language determine the things we see inhabiting our world – But that doesn't mean that there's no world out there!

• Of course there is a world, but it only gets shaped for us, for our perceptions and our reports (facts), by our grids.

• Grids can vary from society to society, from one historical period to another, and with different groups within a society

• The study of the history of human knowledge and belief is therefore the study of grids and of the factors; social, economic, political and cultural, that preserve or alter grids

But …

• But what about at the frontiers of science? Where new things are seen and proven to exist (or not)

– a lot like a Gestalt switch as facts are ruled right or wrong at the research front,

– Researchers argue all the time about what is being seen and what is not being seen

Language • Languages shape ‘facts’ for their speakers and that

languages contain implicit theories which do that shaping • People learn language and its meanings through being

parts of communities or imagined communities • Language refers to ‘objects’ but also to itself • Languages grow and are organic and contextual, meanings

change • Different languages shape the world of facts differently • Words describing colours help us see colours ! • More precise language more ‘theory loading’ ? • The colour red easy to describe in day to day life but for an

artist an optician or physicist… ?

“The pen is red” • everything is made out of atoms and molecules

– each type of atom or molecule has a characteristic way of absorbing and then re-emitting certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum

• The surface layer of the pen is made of molecules which have the characteristic of absorbing certain parts of the spectrum, and re-emitting some electromagnetic radiation in that part of the spectrum which, when it strikes our nervous system, makes us apply the term ‘RED’

• In other words there is no ‘red’, there are only interactions of electromagnetic radiation and molecules.

• in a very real sense, the pen isn't red, the pen ‘reds’ ( for further discussion see Schuster e reading)

Theory loading of facts

• Different languages = different facts

• Different theories = different facts

Facts

• Are communicable, verbal or symbolic reports which may relate back to our perceptions

• They are also shaped by the languages and theories or systems of communications in which we can utter or form the reports

facts are socially conditioned

• facts are variable over time – facts may vary for different people at different points of time – and for different individuals and groups at the same time

• facts are negotiable ~ and revisable

• when facts change – Ask why certain groups constructed their facts the way they did,

and what political, social, intellectual and historical factors shaped and affected the way the facts were made and unmade by the contending parties

• To explain scientific change remember to ask sociological, psychological, historical, political and economic questions about the players

Radical and softer implications

• A radical interpretation of theory loading of facts might suggest that we can never escape individual interpretations/ constructs of reality !

• Less radical philosophical versions simply see theory loading as part of human interpretation processes always present in producing knowledge and something that sciences need to be aware of and take into account in certifying knowledge

• Interesting debates about what recognising theory loading involves in practice

Co-production and Communities? • STS scholars and Historians of Science often talk of the co-production of

knowledge ie: our facts are a mix of what’s out there in nature but also inescapably shaped by human perceptions which are always in some ways theory/ socially influenced.

• They also normally think in terms of ‘theories and grids’ in science, as parts of the foundations of expert knowledge making communities things that participants in these communities learn and gives them common languages and starting points to do scientific work…

• Grids and theories can change and scientific facts can change, science grows and scientific truth is not the same as some other versions of truth for that reason!

• It is also sometimes argued that a strength of scientific truth is that it is conditional that it requires formal validation and is only as good as the arguments and evidence supporting it

• This means the History of Science also involves exploring the different/similar ways communities of scientists have argued for and validate their work at different times

Social Shaping of Knowledge ?

• STS and History of Science ‘theory loading’ taken to imply the ‘social shaping of knowledge’ ie: our theory loading is deep, mainly subconscious learned through being part of a culture (for Natural Philosophers and Scientists expert sub-cultures) and become embedded in our languages, observations and practices.

• Normally not seen as an individual grid issue eg: if you are the only person seeing the world in particular way there may not be anyone else you can communicate with.

• The importance of ‘theory-loading’ and grids can help explain why in times of deeper social division and conflicts there can sometimes be not only be disputes about the implications of facts but disputes over the basic facts themselves. If too many competing cultural grids and theories too many competing facts generated to get social consensus?

• Other STS subjects explore these types of issues further in relation to problems with climate change skepticism and the politics of expertise

Social Shaping in Knowledge Science via Research Traditions(Paradigms)

• As historians of science we can get to observe the way the ways different sciences change over time and the way what might count as a reliable observation might not longer count between one generation of scientists and later ones

• Changes in theories and grids are crucial to understanding the processes of scientific change and why change is sometimes fast/ slow

• Changes to grids and theories often corresponds in historically interesting ways to social changes within science’s and pressures from outside of them

• Later in the session we explore the ways various changes in technology, religion and economy, and the way sciences were organised might map on to new grids and theories encouraging emerging sciences to think of the natural world as something to be explained using mathematics and experiment and in the case of Darwinism nature involving a struggle for survival