Re: rational vs. emotional science

Rolfe Windward (rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu)
Fri, 19 Jul 1996 16:59:55 -0700

Jerome Bruner comments in _Actual Minds, Possible Worlds_ (1986) "We give
different =91reality=92 status to experiences we create from our differently
formed encounters with the world ...each way of creating and experiencing a
world must be regarded in some nontrivial way as the extension of some
stance=97and some of these stances we call =91emotional=92 while others=
escape
this label. The danger of course is that the stances that we consider
rational ...are likely to be viewed as stanceless, as if automatically
guided by a ghost in the machine called =91right reason.=92 But suppose, by=
way
of self-therapy, we substitute the word =91passionate=92 for =91emotional.=
=92 Then
perhaps we would be less willing to draw the old distinction, for example,
we would cheerfully say that Immanuel Kant, the Sage of K=F6nigsberg, was as
=91passionate=92 in his employment of the stance of =91right reason=92 while=
writing
the Critiques as Stavrogin was devoted to his obsession in Dostoevski=92s
novel. Both are victims or beneficiaries of selectivity, both are single
minded.=94 (pg. 110)

I would opine that the problem is more paradigmatic than methodological;
i.e., the qual vs. quant distinction can be misleading--I've seen
qualitative methods used in a reductive manner and quantitive methods used
in expansive ways, by men and women both. However I suspect, and would tend
to agree, that excessive quantification in studies of systems we know to be
complex (and these certainly include the social) tends to become more
prevalent where elites are weak, where private negotiation is suspect, and
where trust is in short supply (as alas, it very much seems to be these
days). Theodore M. Porter (1995. _Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of
Objectivity in Science and Public Life_. Princeton University Press) does (I
think) a really first class job of expanding and explicating this
phenomenon. I would also recommend his earlier book (1986) _The Rise of
Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900_. In everyone's copious free time of course=
:-)

Regards, Rolfe

Rolfe Windward [UCLA GSE&IS: Curriculum & Teaching]
e-mail: rwindwar who-is-at ucla.edu (Text/BinHex/MIME/Uuencode)
70014.0646 who-is-at compuserve.com (text/binary/GIF/JPG)