2.13.1 The argument of scientists with philosophers that focuses on contemporary French theorists is not new. CP Snow is the first to recognise this, and a number of science philosophers have been involved in the debate, most famously Popper, Kuhn, and Feyerabend. Popper laid the foundation for the philosophical debate in 1959 with a book entitled The Logic of Scientific Discovery in which he made an effort to create a criterion for demarcating between scientific and non-scientific theories. That criterion he established to be 'falsifiability': in order to be scientific, a theory must make predictions that can, in principle, be false in the real world. One must compare the theory's empirical predictions with observations and experiments. This emphasis on falsification, and not verification, shows that one may never prove a theory true, because it makes an infinite number of empirical predictions, of which only a finite number can be tested. But one may prove a theory false, because only one reliable observation contradicting the theory suffices. Popper expanded his falsification tenet into a philosophy that he called 'critical rationalism.' One scientist ventures a proposal and others try to knock it down with contrary arguments or experimental evidence. He viewed criticism, and even conflict, as essential for progress of all kinds. He certainly was successful in generating a lot of debate, criticism, and analyses fuelling the work of many science philosophers, most famously that of Kuhn and Feryerabend.

2.13.2 Kuhn was the 'father of relativism, which roughly speaking designates any philosophy or claim that truth or falsity of a statement is relative to an individual or a social group. One may distinguish different forms of relativism according to the nature of the statement in question: cognitive or epistemic relativism when one is dealing with an assertion of fact; moral or ethical relativism when one is dealing with a value judgement; and aesthetic relativism when one is dealing with an artistic judgement. His book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, may be the most influential treatise written so far on how science does (or does not) proceed. Most notably, in this book, Kuhn introduced the now trendy term "paradigm," which defines the kinds of problems that are studied, what criteria are used to evaluate a solution, and what experimental procedures are deemed acceptable. In an interview with Horgan he traced his view on science to an epiphany he experienced in 1947 when he was working towards a doctorate in physics at Harvard. He was pondering on how brilliant yet how wrong Aristotlešs physics was, and suddenly he realised that Aristotle invented basic concepts with different meanings than did the modern physicists.(Horgan, 1996, pg. 43) He concluded that his physics, understood on its own terms, was simply different from, rather than inferior to, Newtonian physics. Consequently Kuhn left physics for philosophy and struggled for fifteen years to define this epiphany into a theory, which depended largely on his concept of paradigm. Paradigm, up to that point, was used merely as an example that served an educational purpose, used, for instance, in conjugation of language. Kuhn argued against Popper's idea of falsification, saying that it was no more possible than verification; each process implies the existence of absolute standards of evidence, which transcends the individual paradigm. A new paradigm may solve puzzles and may yield more results, but it does not mean that it is 'truer' in an absolute sense than the older 'truths.' The word paradigm, since it was introduced by Kuhn, has become, as he says in his interview, "hopelessly overused" and was "out of control." It spread beyond the history and philosophy of science and is now particularly popular in the world of art and technology. Kuhn attributes this to possibly not being precise enough with his definition of the word and indeed was charged by Margaret Masterman to have defined it in twenty one ways in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (Masterman, 1970) [11] [top]

2.12.4 Clearly this points to a semi-favourable position for artists in relation to the sciences, particularly those working with technology. What complicates matters, however, is that many artists are inspired and interpret the very philosophers that are under attack from the scientific community. [10] What Sokal and Bricmont fail to notice is that absolutely all authors that comprise their book have become staple philosophers for artists working with media, particularly Deleuze and Guattari, to whom they dedicate an entire chapter analysing their misuse of scientific and mathematical terms. On the one hand one could argue that Deleuze and Guattari utilise these scientific and mathematical terms in a distinctly metaphorical or philosophical senses, which would explain their vague or tenuous relationship to 'hard' scientific fact; this argument is lost, however, when one points to direct quotes and references out of a book on the theory of differential equations that uses terms such as 'singularity' and 'singular point' in a distinctly technical and mathematical sense. The terms are then used in their literal senses without any distinguishing between their use as such rather than in a metaphorical context, nor is there offered an explanation of how we might understand the relationship between literality and figuratation as such. (Sokal, 1997, pg. 216) (Deleuze,1990, pp. 50, 54, 339-40n) Although I very much sympathise with Deleuze and Guattari's approach and can relate to their writings in many ways, I feel that Sokal and Bricmont are flashing an important red light to artists who are inspired by scientific innovation and discovery and are interested in working closely with the scientific community. [top]

Notes:

11. Kuhn denied that he defined paradigm 21 times, as Materman asserted. In a postscript to later editions of Structures, Kuhn recommended that paradigm be replaced with the term exemplar, but it never caught on. He eventually gave up all hope explaining what he meant. (Horgan, 1996. pg. 46) [back]