On Sun, 10 Sep 1995 JPhMiller@xxxxxxx wrote:
> I would want to say that modern natural science differs from ancient
> natural science in three distinct ways: it is technological, it is
> mathematical, _and_ it is experimental.
Perhaps a key difference between ancient and modern science is a
feature of modern science that hides behind its mathematical nature.
Today we operationalize language in order to measure reality that will
then be studied with statistical procedures (experimentally or otherwise).
This gives science the power to invent reality as well as study it.
A simple example, and I think it is one of the originating examples of
this kind of thinking, is Binet's IQ test. Until we had IQ tests, the
concept of intelligence was much less pinned down. He operationalized the
concept, told us how to determine when a child's IQ was higher or lower,
and prepared the way for IQ to be measured and analyzed statistically. It
incidentally, however, turned IQ into a "thing" and slanted what we
thought of intelligence in ways that we didn't notice. For behind the
numbers were his arbitrary choice of criteria for measurement. Today in
many states we no longer allow the automatic testing of children because
we see that racial and gender bias is built into these tests -- something
that certainly escaped Binet's attention, but as a psychologist who has
tested children, I'm very aaware of.
There are many other arbitrary definitions in science today. Even
something that feels as hard science as cancer research inevitably
includes such arbitrary definitions in order to measure what it is
studying. This self-consciousness of the modern scientist regarding
measurement of reality is quite recent and invades all the sciences. (See
P. W. Bridgman's important book, The Logic of Modern Physics, 1927). But
the practice of shaping reality with arbitrary definitions in order to
measure it surely took place before people became conscious of it and I
want to suggest that a key difference between modern science and earlier
science is the way we have learned tricks of definition in order to render
the world measureable for mathematical analyses.
If anyone here has any historical information on the process of
operationalizing reality before there was a theory about it, I'd be most
interested. My own thinking on this process is really mostly twentieth
century. I did do a paper on this some years ago, however, that I
reflected my study of how this measurement process is related to our
difficulties in using science to understand the kinds of things people
like Heidegger lead us to want to understand. See: Shawver, L.
Research Variables in Psychology and the Logic of their Creation.
Psychiatry, 1977, 1-16.
..Lois Shawver
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