Wednesday, November 17, 2010

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Externalism-Internalism: In Search of a focus of study for the History of Science


When we talk about science every day and actually feel more than ours and not only of scientists, we referimos a ese conjunto de conocimientos teóricos y prácticos que permiten que mi estadía en el mundo sea posible e incluso placentera.

Por lo tanto tenemos en claro los beneficios e incluso aquellos descubrimientos amenazantes para el hombre como la “Bomba atómica”, y aquellas aplicaciones que la ciencia nos brinda día a día en un supuesto veloz progreso que corre delante de nuestros ojos sin siquiera parecer pedir permiso; disfrutamos de la tecnología, nos tranquilizamos ante la salida de nuevos medicamentos, nos admiramos con clonaciones, inseminaciones artificiales, etc; y admiramos de tal manera todo lo que nos brinda la ciencia que la vemos como a kind of parallel world to ours, independent of us, but that "we borrowed" his multiple discoveries.

Given all this we should ask Where do all these theoretical and practical progress which we call science?, Is science as independent of our societies that is put into the hands of only a few scientists called?. .. It is with these questions that we are in the need to create or rather to reconstruct a history of science that allows me to account for its complex and important development to meet the multitude of changes it has "suffered" and that have led over all time. For my part I shall endeavor to recreate the history of science is in fact very long and complex, but if I take care of a minor problem which refers to the approach must be taken to conduct such a study of the historical evolution science.

As we have said, and even Juan José Saldaña [1] also interested in this issue points out, is commonly believed that science significant effect on man's daily life with technology advances and discoveries, but forget -o-we do not realize how we, meaning society, also affects it. This may seem inconceivable at first sight but we try to think about it in the search for a possible approach to the study of History of Science. Before this we get into a subject of great controversy in recent times "External or Internalism?

We went back to the eighteenth century where positivism takes from the beginning of great importance in the scientific and logical empiricism of this product, offers a rational system to operate with him in scientific research. This will generate the demarcation criteria to follow to determine what que es ciencia de lo que no, estableciendo principios epistemológicos. De allí se desprenden diferentes epistemologías como las llamadas normativas o las que conocemos por descriptivas. A grandes rasgos decimos que estas se diferencian por ser las primeras las que basan sus criterios en cuestiones lógico- epistemológico, las que niegan todo sujeto cognoscente, subjetividad, historicidad y refieren exclusivamente al contexto de justificación; por su parte las epistemologías descriptivas además de los criterios lógicos aceptan los psicológicos, sociológicos, históricos, su centro es el sujeto que conoce y su contexto es el de descubrimiento.

As we know

logical positivism assumes that reason finds its highest expression in science and believes that the same has a reason that can insulate itself from any outside influence. From there, science will have an internal coherence, independence and autonomy, not only necessary for the origin and development, but also sufficient in itself.

Thus we find this internalism that located in the epistemologies policy development involves the study of science as a process of knowledge production and development intrateórico, self-sufficient and independent of any outside influence as economic political and social movement that is developing its own language, theories, ideas and scientific laws.

This page sees science as isolated from anything that might happen in the society in which it develops or arises, and from this perspective, the study noted that the science exists in full by itself without any external intervention her that determine or condition. As Medina said [2] "This assumption seems an update of Platonism to the extent that it assumes that the World of Ideas has an intrinsic truth, existing independent of all men .. .

Following Medina [3] , it is interesting that he makes the distinction between hard or radical Internalism and flexible in hard Internalism as an example to us koira, etc. , dramatically holding what we were talking about, that scientific rationality remains independent of any external factor as these lead to the invalidation of the theory because it affects the truth content (inductivism). Medina called internalist flexible Popper and Lakatos showed by this a criticism of the induction where for them the empirical and external is always at stake in the selection of facts (although to a lesser extent and subject the latter to the former), and this would take away its character of "pure" rationality and objectivity.

At the other extreme is the externalism that corresponds to the descriptive epistemologies, and unlike the former not only accepted but even viewed as necessary relationship between the origin and development of science with other forms of knowledge and the political-economic structure and social of a given society, as well as accept the relationship between theory and practice. If externalism has suffered large declines over time (just recovering from the 70 or 80) has been the point of thinking that science is based exclusively on the economy, market and material production of society. This is a special case of externalism we call it Marxist historical materialism [4] , which explains the scientific production as a product of social relations, work and men working with materials that not only a way of being the man (alienated), but also scientific knowledge of their society, thus the superstructure of la sociedad -del esquema tan conocido de Marx- determinará entre otras cosas el desarrollo de la ciencia.

El externalismo entonces –sin caer en esa especie de radicalismo- será el que se interesa por esa conexión necesaria entre teoría y práctica, ciencia y sociedad, incluyendo allí a la economía, formas culturales y sociales, religión y tecnología.

Ahora bien, luego de conocer las dos posturas bien diferenciadas ¿Cuál de las dos posturas sería mejor elegir para abordar un estudio de la Historia de la Ciencia?

Como bien sabemos, la historia de la ciencia ha sido a long and complex development that accounts for the large capacity of man's use its most valuable tool: thought, reason.

As we have seen on previous occasions, he clearly externalist Farrington [5] in attempt to achieve a clear view on the beginning of science, goes back to times old, millions of years before Christ to show how the man was always as close to science but did not know his name. In this way since man set foot on earth put all of it for survival, in broad terms, achieved using fire, created tools for hunting and all kinds of work using mathematics, astronomy, art, stories of gods created stories then more purely rational to understand the world around them, did experiments, and they even put signs observed question to what he showed us the experience or previous theories, formulated, reformulated, criticized, questioned and solved .... In short, the world was becoming increasingly complex, they changed the interest arose new questions, new requirements for survival, and the man was able over time to create tools, experiments and theories increasingly complex and very different to the above. It showed the myths such as Marduk and then the great rational implementation Tales to explain the world and without the assistance or intervention of capricious and vengeful gods that in the end were the same or worse than us humans. The explanations, human needs were increasing, and therefore new solutions are sought, the same can be said that happened that happened with scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and even getting closer to the present with the new requirements in the society that led to this almost synonymous with the science we call technology.

This Is not had social influences such innovations theory and practice?, Does today does not affect the direction taken by science the need for a new vaccine or new explanations for events that happen the world?

however, does not mean by this that the cause of development of science is only outside, but external causes should be safe if taken into account. In this way all scientific knowledge is embedded in a society and given time, must have a reason, a type of determination and social or personal interest, that would make Galileo and no other of his time or earlier, refer achieved his heliocentric model of the universe. Of course I accept that the science of ancient times was not yet as developed as if it was indeed in modern times, and yes its antecedent affects Galileo Ptolemy intrateórico important development within science itself, but should affect anything else in science, social influence, characteristics subjective direct their research scientist, or perhaps in the style of Fouréz [6] , a simple note of the subject structure and a theoretical model ...

In this way, the scientist who depends on a whole-house development of science and the advancement of laws, theories, methods, etc, to undertake research (as well as today in terms of technology modern building still depends on the primary computer binary language) must also know and meet the requirements imposed by the development of their society, as also be conditioned and determined by their own interests and psychological and philosophical concepts. Thus science is not as independent of the world we are in, because even the internal of science is a necessary condition for the development of this, this is not enough, plays a key role as the link between science and society.

Obiols [7] in his writings on postmodernity us today highlights how the new conception of science as objective and no longer purely rational, one begins to see clearly in philosophers such as Kuhn. As indicated Saldaña [8] , Kuhn at first may seem internalist is the first attempt to break the barrier sharply between externalism and internalism, and that includes little to some external factors in their thinking from a society with all its complexities. We have clear examples that Kuhn gives us in his works [9] is the case of the concept of paradigm as disciplinary matrix that includes not only theoretical concepts but also a set of values, beliefs, and even interests who share a specific scientific community . Also another example is the scientific revolution that relates to a political revolution in which institutions, ideologies, values, interests, etc ... change. As shown in the paradigm of Kuhn join or rather come into play as well internalimo externalism context of justification and context of discovery.

Looking

clear examples of how externalism and internalism are but two sides of same coin that go hand in hand and a slice or choice of one or another context is unnecessary, we encounter the Medina presented [10] paraphrase P. Forman where he focuses on how domestic issues are only one of the causal factors of science. Scientists are studying how period before the invention of quantum mechanics (the decade of 20) had to adapt first to the intellectual context in which they found and which received many criticism, and then get out of the crisis that was the old quantum mechanics.

Another great example that highlights Saldaña [11] and even making Mikulinsky [12] is to Darwin and his theory on the evolution of the species with even begins investigations of internal actual problems of science such as biology and geology, Darwin found no solution that completely agree collecting facts realize that evolution, and thus extend work to see not only evolution but how was the origin of this. This is where the idea of \u200b\u200bnatural selection to create unique races of animals and plants that do take the practical, and also the idea of \u200b\u200bfighting for survival not only remarked that all animals must adapt to their living conditions to survive or die, but every man of his time that must adapt to the new capitalist society. Both helped him to create his theory of evolution. Since Darwin we only find the solution by relying on the practical, on notions demographic and survival took the economist Malthus.

seeing Thus it becomes almost inevitable that the internal and external put into play, giving both a kind of feedback give way not only the origin but also the development of science, we verify what the great scientist Albert Einstein [13] told us: "The project science as progress was made, is as subjective and psychologically conditioned as any other human endeavor.".

can be said that the science is not the train passing under our noses following long, but we can jump on at each station and perhaps even maintain its own structure, rules and mechanisms of function, we have actually marked your course with our subjectivities, the development of our needs and social demands.

only taking into account all this can board a real study of History of Science.

Stefanie M. Riani


[1] JJ Saldaña: \u200b\u200b"The science and non- science in historical explanation of the sciences "

[2] E. Medina: "The controversy internalism / externalism in the History of Science and Sociology"

[3] IDEM

[4] JJ Saldaña, "Science and nonscience in the explanation history of science "

[5] Farrington:" Science Greek

[6] G. Fourez: "The construction of scientific knowledge" cap2. The observation

[7] G. Obiols, S. Di Segni: "Adolescence, Postmodernism and high school "

[8] JJ Saldaña," Science and nonscience in the historical explanation of the sciences "

[9] Kuhn "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

[10] E. Medina: "The controversy internalism / externalism in the History of Science and Sociology "

[11] IDEM 9

[12] SR Mikulinsky "Introduction to the Theory of the History of Science"

[13] P. Extracted Thuillier's Science and Subjectivity: The Case Einstein

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