BIOL 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Metanarrative, Falsifiability, Science Wars
09/07/2017
Lecture 2
• Science does not give us truth
o Some scientists will say yes, because they are offended by the contrast (science is
a social construct)
o In monkeys, male scientists see male domination, female scientists often see the
female interaction as more important
▪ This led some people to believe that all sciences are socially influenced
• Scientific critics who disagree with climate science make science better by making
methods more complete and questioning the consensus
• Pseudoscience mimics the methods of science for commercial or ideological reasons and
pretends to offer scientific evidence on a claim that is presented for them to make money
or influence people
• Because of the internet everyone can put out a theory or a fact, so we have to learn to
make a hierarchy of what is more/less believable
o Science used to be focused on academic journals, now there are journals with no
peer review in which you can publish anything
▪ These journals are for profit, and accept randomly generated BS
o Crazy ideas look like scientific papers
• Arts and humanities emphasize human experience: there is no hierarchy in what is better
or worse, it’s just diverse (Shakespeare isn’t better or worse than Junot Diaz, just
different)
• Social sciences and natural sciences do have a hierarchy
o Social sciences emphasize discovery of laws of behavior via scientific method
o Natural sciences emphasize the discovery of laws of matter
o We may not be getting closer to the truth, but we’re getting farther from incorrect
• Pure science students don’t get enough historical and sociological perspective on what
they are doing and why
• Arts students should acquire a better understanding of how empirical and theoretical
consensus is achieved and self-corrected in science
• Science wars: between physics (dubbed realists, science gives us objective laws of
nature) and humanities (dubbed relativists, science is culturally determined, system of
belief, the concept of scientific truth is a social construct invented by scientists to justify
their hegemony over the study of nature)
o Relativists ← → realists as a spectrum
▪ Science as pure narrative, science as temporary consensus, science as
objective truth
▪ Relativists think realists are hegemonical (need to control all aspects of
information)
• 1970s→ scientific revolution
• The golem→ how consensus is achieved in frontier science during the period where
experimenter’s regress often predominates
o Differences between cutting edge, frontier science vs. established science, and
how the former turns into the latter
• The golem
o The role of high impact factor publications in establishing consensus
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