RE: Star's book

From: Nate Schmolze (schmolze@students.wisc.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 06 2000 - 09:30:08 PST


Paul,

In reading Peter's paper again and your and his comments on Lakoff, I would
describe my position as follows:

Peter quotes Ilyenkov 1977: 67,

"The naive person immediately and uncritically takes this hybrid for an
external thing, and therefore judges things in conformity with the specific
state evoked in his brain and sense organs by an external effect in no way
resembling that state”

I disagree with the the embodied view of Lakoff. For me it is
"constructivist" in that knowledge is embodied. In this light I found
Alterman's (1999) article, The Closed Room, in MCA awhile back very useful.
I also see Lakoff pointing toward this "reality" out there that we don't
have access to which I also disagree with.

Peter then states,

"The “embodied” view is premissed on the impossibility in principle of
unravelling this experiential complex (which would entail a “God’s eye
 view”), while Materialism is based not just on the possibility of doing so,
but on the theoretically and empirically verifiable fact of so doing in the
course of history"

Yet, from Peter's quote above I would see the hybridity itself as the
material and am not convinced science can unravel this "experential
complex".

Does science speak of some truth about the world, of course it does because
its part of it. Is its knowledge independent of social relations as you
argued earlier, I don't believe so. I don't think the boundries can be so
easily seperated and find a danger in reifying them "in there" or "out
there".

You mentioned earlier that "scientific concepts" are not constructed
artifacts. For me, for them to be constructed would imply a seperation that
I don't believe exists. My real concerns though is how if its scientific
concepts or classification their naturalization or reification is an act of
power.

I guess how I would define our differences is via necessity you see
scientific concepts as knowledge that is independent of social relations
whereas I see them along the lines of reification and alienation.

Nate



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