Posted by P. Richard Hansen on July 21, 1999 at 21:29:50:

In Reply to: Re: Misconceptions about "social constructions". posted by Reilly Atkinson on July 21, 1999 at 19:19:14:

Reilly,

"Like you dont dig it, man"

I think that this discussion is moving away from the focus it originated from in the first place, so lets bring it back on track.

There is nothing obscure or abnormal in the fact that you were able to cooperate with these people from different anthropological cultures.
As a physicist you are part of a 'great culture' which often has very well defined standards and language across other culturerelated elements.
These great cultures you will be able to find in all organizations as well (eg. softwaredevelopers, economists, machineoperators etz.).
These members of the great cultures are also influenced by more locally constructed meaningsystems that defines the cultures or subcultures they belong to in the organization.

It does not matter if knowledge is true or not, only the most reluctant corners of epistemology works with that assumption.
The point is if the agreed knowledge has a function in the society where it was constructed.

You say that you work with social science, and yet you deny the existens of societies that do not believe in gravity.
At the same time you still sound to me very much like a scientist of nature and not in sociology.

To your information I originally graduated from the university with a degree in Electronic Engeneering, so I am very well aware of physics indeed.
And as a matter of fact both Bohr (who is a countryman of mine)and Einstein both talks about objectivity versus subjectivity, which you of course, because of your obvious lack of knowledge in the social sciences, do not connect to the dominating sociological paradigms.

I sense that you have not read this book and therefore cannot participate in a debate on its viewpoints. It is therfor quite natural that you do not gain anything from the summary.
I certainly do not like the summary of the book either, and I do not think that it is describing the context or viewpoints that it brought to me, in any way satisfyingly.
But through my empirical work I have come to realize that the viewpoints and the conclusions are actually very precise in their description of what i experience in the field and they have therfor become part of my knowledge.

It also describes the very reason why so many of us in this forum disagree on so many things, and I believe that without having understood these differences, we will never be able to participate in anything but these destructive "conversations".
Personally I do not gain anything from this forum anymore, and a new assignment on a research project is calling for my time and attention.
It will be some time before I return and I hope that this time will work for the better.

Richard

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Follow Ups:

• 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)

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