contrivance

Jay Lemke (JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU)
Sat, 12 Jul 97 22:20:33 EDT

I'd admire Mike's effort to discover the possibility of
naturalistic inquiry in a traditionally experimental discipline.

Don's query, I think, is more about the distinction than about
the possibility. Mike's aim in the chapter, he says, is to show
that naturalistic data are adequate for a scientific psychology
(which I certainly believe). But in what sense are experimental
data contrived and naturalistic data _not_ contrived, I think
Don is asking, given that all analytical frameworks, by defining
what counts as data, what is salient, how it shall be compared
to other instances, what counts as a generalization, how
generalizations shall be couched in a specialized discourse of
description, explanation, etc. are in some sense (well described
by Latour I think) a sort of contrivance.

And experimental contrivance is a particular sort of contrivance.

But Mike is still right to draw a distinction, I think, but it is
not the simple one of uncontrived naturalistic activity data vs.
contrived experimental data (this is my inference, not Mike's
actual claim). It is rather the subtler distinction between a theory
that _excludes_ data from all _other_ forms of activity/contrivance,
_except_ that from experimental contrivance, vs. one that admits
data, even as necessarily contrived, arising in and from all
activity types, and not just experimental activity.

The issue that this (rather contrived?) analysis then raises is:
what is the status, in an activity-theory based cultural psychology
of experimental method and experimental data?

It would not be, in my view, consistent to _exclude_ experimental
activity as a form of activity that produces data about human
behavior-in-context. But it would require a further analysis of
just what happens in the experimental method, and what the nature
and status of the data deriving from it may be.

My own approach to this would probably take the form of see the
activity of experimental researchers as itself the primary data,
and the 'data' produced by experimental activity, like the
'conclusions' it produces as meaningful and valid as data _only_
when embedded in an analysis of the total activity. This is of
course just the reverse of the meta-theory of experimental method,
which claims that its data and conclusions have validity
precisely to the extent that they are independent of the activities
that generated them. Hence they are as much dis-embedded from
those as possible.

This dis-embedding is akin to Latour's famous 'black-boxing', so
that 'results' are cited by others without reference to the
methodology, motivations, or role in research programs (and
career-building) that gave rise to them -- EXCEPT when someone
is out to discredit the findings. Latour has often noted this
curious asymmetry: that context is relevant only for scientific
errors, never for scientific successes. Mistakes are due to
humans, truths to nonhumans. A clean separation, if not a very
coherent or credible one.

I am going to try to buy a copy of CP-OFD this week, but will
have to be off again to another conference before I can have
read it all. But perhaps someone who is reading it can tell
us what happens to the status of experimental method, data,
and conclusions in the naturalistic framework Mike is seeking
very properly to validate.

JAY.

JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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