[Fis] Scientific Communication and Publishing

[Dai Griffiths]

Thanks Mark,

I agree with you about

>I do not believe that we “ought” to change the way we communicate about science because
>publishers and universities have too much power; that they have too
>much power is a systemic consequence of something else."

I've found Bateson's fragmentary comments on power very useful:

" 'power', as used in talk about politics and personal relations
is no longer acceptable. In principle all metaphors derived from a physical
world of impacts, forces, energy, etc., are unacceptable in explanations of
events and processes in the biological world of information, purpose, context,
organization, and meaning. The "power" metaphor must therefore be carefully
pulled to pieces for whatever meaning it has-- and must be looked at, as a
functioning falsehood or error, causing what pathologies?"
http://unauthorised.org/anthropology/anthro-l/march-1996/0378.html

I would argue that our task is to unpick the bald statement that 'publishers have too much power' to establish what systems are in motion. That is not an 'ought' discussion, but I think that it involves mechanisms that are in the domain of the political (laws, accumulation of capital, lobbying, ideology...).


>there is a not-there in our academic papers; and there is
>a not-there in this message too. How might we go about analysing it?

I don't have any great knowledge of apophatic theology, but perhaps it sees God as 'the necessary phenomena which is missing from the human world, but which is required in order to give coherence and meaning to our experience'. If God were defined or described from within the human world then God would no longer provide an external source of meaning.

Similarly, in order for our academic papers to have meaning there has to be an external structure of coordination between human beings to generate that meaning. It is not in the ink (or pixels). That coordination also extends to the expectations that we may have about the purpose that a paper in a discipline should serve, and the unresolved problems which it is appropriate for it to address. These external structures do not only provide a context for meaning, but also constrain the forms which the papers can take. To locate these aspects in the paper itself would generate category errors: e.g. the whole discourse cannot be contained within a communicative act. Hence the paper is inconceivable without what is missing from it.

Is this line of your thinking?
What is missing from my comments on what is missing?

Dai


On 05/10/16 09:04, Mark Johnson wrote:
> Dear Sergej, Rafeal, Loet, Dai and list,
>
> First of all, thank you very much for the references – Gieryn looks
> fascinating (thanks Loet), and I will check out the Hobart and
> Schiffman (thanks to Pedro). It always strikes me how powerful acts of
> intellectual generosity are, and how much difference there is between
> pointing to a reference as if to say “This is the gang of academics
> who either agree with me or I disagree with them!” and “As someone
> who’s travelled along a similar path to you, I believe you might find
> this enlightening”. When we write academic papers, we tend to (indeed,
> have to) do the former. The latter is far more empathic - which leads
> me to reflect on Rafael’s comment about pre-understanding (I say more
> about this further down) On a forum like FIS, we can do the latter. I
> ask myself which is more useful or constructive in scientific
> discourse, and which should be encouraged?
>
> Between the comments of Dai and Sergej I think there is what Pedro
> refers to as the ‘critical stance’ (as in critical theory etc, I
> guess). Here I would like to clarify my position. I do not believe
> that we “ought” to change the way we communicate about science because
> publishers and universities have too much power; that they have too
> much power is a systemic consequence of something else. Rather the
> argument is that the nature of the science we now practice (complex,
> uncertain, contingent) necessitates new forms of communication, and
> this science cannot effectively communicate itself through traditional
> media. It is not an argument about ‘oughts’, it is an argument about
> the ontology of complex science and communication; it is a complex
> science reflection on the communication of complex scientists.
>
> That we currently have complex science and highly attenuated channels
> of communication is a source of pathology: we are at a transitional
> stage in history and such periods are often accompanied by all manner
> of social and political problems (just think of the pathologies of the
> early 1600s!). One feature of this is that we slip from talking about
> ‘is’ to ‘ought’ without reflection. I’m unconvinced by the power of
> political arguments (however much our professors of sociology would
> like to persuade us otherwise!) for moving things on – it only
> encourages what Bacon criticized in the Cambridge academics of the
> 1600s: “They hunt more after words than matter” (I worry about words
> like ‘entanglement’ – what does it mean?); it is scientific arguments
> and practices which carry the greatest power and which (in the end)
> are ontologically inseparable from political change. I suspect the
> distinctions between different kind of arguments are the result of
> different kinds of constraint.
>
> Having said all this about science, I want to say something about
> theology(!) Rafael’s point about “pre-understanding” sent me to the
> work of Arthur Peacocke and to the relationship between ‘information’
> and ‘logos’. To see information as constraint in both in the science
> we do, and in the way we communicate our scientific understanding, is
> to emphasise the ‘not-there’. Alongside Loet’s work on redundancy
> (which is Shannon’s ‘not-there’), I’m fascinated by Bob Ulanowicz’s
> ‘apophatic’ information: the term ‘apophatic’ is also theological. I
> hope the point is not seen to be a fuzzy or ‘god squad’ one (that’s
> not me): it is simply to say that focus on the ‘not-there’ –
> particularly if it can be given an empirical dimension – presents a
> way of seeing the ‘not-there’ of multivariate empirical practice in
> the same scope as the ‘not-there’ of scientific communication. The
> theologians (Keith Ward and John Haught should also be mentioned here)
> have an important contribution to make. I’d be grateful if anyone on
> the list has looked into this further. Paul Davies’s edited collection
> “Information and the nature of reality” is a good starting point.
>
> So there’s a scientific question: There is a ‘not-there’ in my videos
> (actually, a lot of redundancy); there is a ‘not-there’ in our
> experiments; there is a not-there in our academic papers; and there is
> a not-there in this message too. How might we go about analysing it?

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Professor David (Dai) Griffiths
Professor of Education
School of Education and Psychology
The University of Bolton
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