In looking over some older postings I very belatedly realize that I made a
rather obscure reference to the Museum of Jurassic Technology (MJT) in the
Museum's of Practice thread. The MJT actually exists and, as of six months
ago anyway, is located in the 9300 block of Venice Blvd. of Culver City, CA.
It's collection of curious objects and amazing "facts" are well organized,
meticulously described and the curator, David Wilson, apparently takes the
entire matter quite seriously (or is an absolute master of irony)--in any
case it's orders of magnitude more coherent than the National Inquirer. For
those who don't care to take the trip, I strongly recommend Lawrence
Weschler's, _ Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder: A Natural History of
Amazement_. 1995; Pantheon Books. Using the MJT as a centerpiece, this book
represents the author's examination of the unusual and how it is defined and
socially treated. The first part of the book focuses on the Museum and it's
founder while the second expands on the historical role of museums and the
tension between what is known and what is mysterious (with the conclusion
being that to know more is to only generate further mystery).
On the subject of reflexivity I'm literally all over the place: one moment a
Catholic, another Protestant, then agnostic, then atheist.
Epistemologically, large segments of science seem to rather uncritically
accept the essentially Aristotelian (empiricist) representation of the
reality problematic (we view reality through a lens w/ some level of
correspondence between "it" and our ideas) and then, using variants of
Berkeley's argument, quite rightly attack this representation and arrive at
some form of relativism/skepticism. This clearly requires a reflexive
rejoinder and, if this is accepted as I think it logically must be given the
first, then attempting to separate this rejoinder into institutional and
personal tracks (the former acceptable, the latter apparently not) seems
rather tortured to me; i.e., I can understand an aesthetic objection here
(e.g., don't interrupt the main narrative, put it in an appendix; you're not
a novelist for goodness sakes, etc.) but not a logical one.
As with the (in my opinion) shaky epistemological assumptions underlying
naturalistic research, this is one of those cases where I like the
conclusions and implied methodology but am unhappy with the derivation. I
certainly find myself in agreement with the idea that there is, as Myrdal
comments, "no better device for excluding biases in social sciences than to
face the valuations and to introduce them as explicitly stated, specific,
and sufficiently concretized value premises" but I don't see reflexivity
_per se_ as necessarily justifiable on epistemological grounds; primarily I
guess because I don't find the empiricist formulation (however tacit) of the
reality problem very convincing, particularly in an era of post-Galilean
model oriented science, and hence do not find arguments for relativist or
idealist conclusions particularly compelling either.
Rolfe Windward
UCLA GSE&IS
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