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Sunday, February 7, 2010

Postmodern Approach To Research

I was reading today about postmodern approach to science and it "clicked". It is so releaving to find out that the view of the world with multiples "knowledges", multiples "truths" is accepted. Looks like I just was not talking to the right people.
The world is so subjective - we call a thing "objective" if the influential majority agrees that it is so. Especially in social sciences - human being is changing and quite rapidly over the last decades.
It feels like a valid question for me to ask: is something in this world unchangeable or is there just no reason to change it? Or - we lack control of how we change it. We do not want to change the climate to result in global warming - but we are doing it (lack of control, but enough power).
Maybe our world can be viewed as just a tool that we as human beings are using to create. Science is the way to learn to control this process. At the moment we create in an experimentative way - how will it work? Sometimes we do not know. It is always a risk. But there is always not enough time -- we want to know the answers even if we risk a lot. But that's the human nature. Or is it? :) Came to the mind: "There are 2 kinds of people: those who do things and those who do not want to make mistakes". Obviouly, while those who do not want to make mistakes are always late and have to face the consequences. That's unproved generalization, of course :-)
But I was thinking about creating knowledge vs discovering it. There are 2 things that support this view in my mind. First, the observer (scientist) influences (changes) the observed object. So the truth was not the same before somebody took an effort to try and find it. The second, the world changes under our influence, so human beings themselves are creating those things that have to be studied and contributed to the knowledge base. Part of this second thing is the nature of human beings themselves - we are not only changing the world, we also change ourselves.
In a way I would also say that truth is a function of time - it changes continuously, so the findings about it are always too late to describe the real truth. And this post is hugely outdated as well :D

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