Posted by P. Richard Hansen on July 19, 1999 at 16:57:22:

In Reply to: Misconception about "social constructions". posted by Lauri Gröhn on July 19, 1999 at 15:50:32:

Hush hush my dear,
I am afraid that the nearest building is only 8 storages high, do you think that will do the trick?

By the way I recent your language and find it to be the result of a lack of understanding and wisdom.
I will though react on your claim.

Would you believe that there is actually a lot of people on this planet that does not believe in Newtons laws, and do have alternative explanations.
These explanations fit very nicely into their ways of living, their cultures, religion and/or believes, and they seem to still be alive and well.

Besides that, Newtons laws or any socalled law of nature are all measured and explained by a set of metric systems like seconds and meters or feet.
No one will be able to understand these laws without the social construction of, and agrement on, these systems meanings. Do you believe that they came out of thin air?.

Apart from that the relativity theory and chaos mathematics reveals that there is many things in nature that we do not understand fully.
These explanations, once revealed, may or may not show up to be completely different from those we know of today.
History shows that all explanations, or knowledge, stand only as long as there is not a new and better one to replace it.
Remember that once the human race was certain that the earth was flat!. Was that knowledge?.

So you see my dear Lauri, again you mix up your perception and miss the point completely.
You cannot see the social world from the perspective of a scientist of nature.
The social world does not contain laws of nature. It is built on fealings and meanings that cannot be classified or expressed by processes or schematics.

Furthermore you cannot do experiments on the social world like your little amusement above.
Findings in a social world does not let itself easily reproduce, not even by the same interpetrer.

The mere fact that we disagree on that, states my argument completely.

With kind regards
Richard

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Follow Ups:

• Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". Lauri Gröhn 17:55:42 7/19/99 (12)
  • Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". P. Richard Hansen 19:10:06 7/19/99 (11)
    • Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". Reilly Atkinson 16:17:26 7/20/99 (9)
      • Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". P. Richard Hansen 17:02:01 7/20/99 (8)
        • Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". Reilly Atkinson 18:52:00 7/20/99 (7)
          • That book Lauri Gröhn 03:25:29 7/21/99 (1)
            • Re: That book P. Richard Hansen 07:20:47 7/21/99 (0)
          • Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". P. Richard Hansen 20:17:20 7/20/99 (4)
            • Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". Reilly Atkinson 19:19:14 7/21/99 (3)
              • Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". P. Richard Hansen 21:29:50 7/21/99 (2)
                • Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". Reilly Atkinson 13:07:21 7/22/99 (0)
                • Philosophy of sosiology is not philosophy of... Lauri Grohn 03:11:58 7/22/99 (0)
    • Let a thousand flowers bloom... and add to the diversity of perspectives needed for "living in interesting times." Martyn R Jones 23:38:44 7/19/99 (0)

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