The Enlightenment sought to apply the scientific method that had been so successful in Physics to all branches of knowledge. In the late 18th century saw the great Naturalists began the transformation from Natural History to Biology and Geology. But in the humanities you had people like Humboldt (also a naturalist) who also laid the groundwork for Anthropology. And the thing is, the success of cultural anthropology in the 20th century has been to realise to what extent culture influences the way we reason about and perceive the world (i.e., the rational and empirical basis of the Enlightenment approach are culturally determined). In this way, the scientific study of human culture shows that the Enlightenment is itself a culture and not universal. This is the truth at the core of the Postmodern reaction to the Enlightenment.
Now that people wedded to the Enlightenment values are beginning to realise what's going on, we might have a positive resolution that goes beyond both the Enlightenment and Postmodernism. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis? That would be a Hegelian happy ending... A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Secondly, I don't see how the fact that a significant population is for all intents and purposes uneducated on these values can matter. In the 18th century (or 19th century for that matter), universal education was nonexistent, yet those are commonly associated with the Enlightenment. Surely, today's near universal levels of education in rich societies compares very favorably?
While education is far more substantial in "fixing" ideals and values, cultural signposts serve to ground that knowledge as a shared experience. Without public recognition of values, they become a private experience. A sort of deregulation or outsourcing toward sporadic and local selfish charities.
One of the central tenets of the Enlightenment is its universality (since it is based on reason and empiricism, it is independent of culture). It can be argued (and has been on this site) that the Enlightenment ended up undermining itself by showing this tenet to be false.
It is easy to conflate the "Enlightenment" with "Modernity," which was one of its children. Another Enlightenment value was that social status should be based on merit, not birth. It is also easy to forget that "western liberal democracy" was not the only political offspring of the Enlightenment.
The other notable political offspring was the Soviet State. They embraced the same universal values as the others. It can be argued that they were much more effective in identifying and nurturing talent wherever it was found than were most "western democracies."
Universality proved very useful to the governance of a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society. They had no use for nationalism or racism with so many nationalities and ethnicities. Religion was suppressed in the name of rationality. I am, of course, referring to the official dogma, not actual practice. Apples to apples, as it were.
Since 1989 we have seen a general retreat from universal values and a rise of nationalisms. This has become the context to the rise of market fundamentalism. But these universal values were never too well rooted anywhere, and were repeatedly overwhelmed by nationalism and racism in the 19th and 20th centuries.
As the Dutch said while fighting the Spanish: "It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
The other notable political offspring was the Soviet State. They embraced the same universal values as the others.
By contrast, historical sciences require interpretation, because alternative histories cannot ever be observed. It's obvious that interpretation has a degree of arbitrariness, which the postmodernists have rightly pointed out.
Yet in Physics, postmodernism has no place. The primary authority is the experimental result, and the interpretation is merely a convenient summary which can always be replaced or ignored. It is a second tool for answering questions, which complements the experiment, which can always be performed.
Does your Hegelian dialectic count as universal if it applies only to a subset of human knowledge? ;-) -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
The primary authority is the experimental result, and the interpretation is merely a convenient summary which can always be replaced or ignored.
But, in addition, the history of physics is as much the history of the theories as it is the history of the experiments. Or, in fact, more about theory than about experiment, with key experiments punctuating the transitions between successive theories. Don't get me wrong, I still agree with Sokal when he said
I confess that I'm an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I'm a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be ``true'', why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don't aspire to be the Emily Post of quantum field theory.)
It is physics that represents a small subset of human knowledge. In fact, the more physics we know the less we need to know as the theories become more and more generally applicable. But for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment. Instead of moving en masse to mesoscopic physics, theoretical high-energy physicists have marched onwards in pursuit of unification and quantum gravity with no experimental hints, with know (disastrous) results. The extent to which research in theoretical physics is directed by the likelihood of coming up with a publishable paper to put in one's CV for the next job placement 3 years down the line is positively postmodern.
Finally, "my" Hegelian dialectic is not about "Knowledge" but about structural narratives/frames/myths of a society. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Experiments need a theory to even describe what is going on, or if their result is surprising, why it is surprising.
Why publish actual data otherwise? It would be sufficient to publish the theories, and just claim that they work.
However, you're entirely right that the choice of which experiments are significant (and therefore are the ones that should be carried out and published) depends on the theories of the day. So the succession of experiments is guided by the history of the theories. Is that what you mean?
It is physics that represents a small subset of human knowledge. In fact, the more physics we know the less we need to know as the theories become more and more generally applicable. But for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment.
The extent to which research in theoretical physics is directed by the likelihood of coming up with a publishable paper to put in one's CV for the next job placement 3 years down the line is positively postmodern.
Finally, "my" Hegelian dialectic is not about "Knowledge" but about structural narratives/frames/myths of a society.
good papers (though not all) will be cited, while the trash gets forgotten
When you do a literature search properly you quickly encounter the reality of the plagiarizing of reference lists. Papers are not quoted because they are good, but because they are quoted by other papers. Then again, you're right, just because they are listed in the references doesn't mean they have been read by the authors so, yes, the trash is forgotten.
for the last 30 years theoretical physics has become largely divorced from experiment. Now I think you're exaggerating too :)
it's far from clear that we're close to a GUT. And if we were, so what? We still wouldn't be able to calculate a lot of systems for fundamental mathematical reasons
The results speak for themselves, whatever they are.
At the risk of repeating myself, this diary is not about the experimental sciences, it's about the dominant narratives of society.
But, seriously, most modern experiments make no sense without a theory. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
(key word missing...) A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
Information theoretically, the meaning is in the prior and the likelihood. The amount of surprise is, too, since entropy is an explicit function of the model, and for a given datapoint it can take any value as soon as you vary the model.
Is knowledge more than a collection of facts? Yes, but I would say it's a construct built on facts. If we lose the theories and the models, we can rebuild them, or substantially equivalent ones, from the facts. If we lose the facts, we can't just simulate new ones and call them real. -- $E(X_t|F_s) = X_s,\quad t > s$
Within physics you have astrophysics or cosmology which are also historical.
And, to a certain extent, stationarity and ergodicity are model-dependent features.
It's not that "postmodern" "textual analysis" doesn't apply to physics, it is that when studying physics one has to take into account the repeatability.
So "repeatability" is a special quality that applies to a subset of human knowledge.
No, it is limited by the extent of repeatability. A vivid image of what should exist acts as a surrogate for reality. Pursuit of the image then prevents pursuit of the reality -- John K. Galbraith
