Problematising Problematisation, or, Blunting Occam's Razor with a magnet.

[This was written on train, as such, it's a ramble]

This may be controversial. That it may be so is a testament to the inability if the academé to properly treat the rash of Foucaulian  Postmodernism that infected parts of it in the 90s. By now we should have a logic-cream or something.

Or at least according to my current epistimé anyway.

Nuance is not invention

I'm for nuance. I'm all for observing the complicated nature of things. But I'm also a big fan of Occam's razor: don't over complicate things unnecessarily. Whenever I see that awful word 'problemitise' my teeth hurt and my spidey-senses tingle. So I thought I'd give it a taste of its own medicine. 

Let's begin with a question: what does 'to problematise' mean. Well, what it should mean, in my opinion, is to leave no stone unturned and make sure we have not missed anything that might have a barring on the outcome of our investigation. Sadly,what it tends to mean is a post-structural, postmodern notion of 'let's see if we can stretch definitions to breaking point and then, once we have injected enough poison to murder the subject, let's claim the subject was sick all along.' 

Problematic scientific problems

Let me think of an example. How about certain theorists' rather odd opinions of science? 

This is a paraphrased amalgamation of a few things I have read 'problematising' science. Most of them said all this. Honestly, they did [if you want sources, let me know, but I'm on the train right now!].

'Science's they say 'is a white, middle-class, bourgeoisie, European construction, that through its use of transcendental deductive constructs bypasses materiality to make disembodied knowledge claims of absolute truth that are inherently masculine, in their cold emotionless logic tied only to reason.' They do this, of course, using a computer and publish on the internet and fail to see the irony, or even defend the irony, of that. 

I wish I was making it up.

Time to problematise the problemetisation.

White, middle-class, male: in the west, sadly, but this is not inherent in the process, but part of a historical problem that fantastic women scientists, like Athene Donald, as well as black and working class scientists are trying to address. Science isn't the way it is because the protagonists are mostly white middle-class men, rather science is dominated by white middle-class men for the same reasons much of the rest of the western world is, and this must end.

Does this mean scientists like Athene Donald are masculanised by the process of science; well I suspect she would have something to say about that.  Where does this idea that to be cold, logical and rational is to be masculine while to be otherwise is feminine anyway? Well, from the same patriarchy that people which describe science ad masculine seek, rightly, to destroy. Shall we not pick up and use gender stereotypes for our own ends when it suits, people?

Is science cold and logical? Mostly. Why? Because it endeavours towards the goal of objectivity. To add supposedly feminine 'warmth' (I'm surprised they don't include 'dry'  and 'wet' in their description of masculinity and femininity. After all, what's the 21st century without some humoural medical theory?) would reduce the chances of objectivity still further. It is not cold and logical because it is masculine, but because it had to be so.

Transcendental deductive constructs that bypass materiality (again, this is a paraphrase of real.arguments): well the constructs, such as maths, are no more immaterial than any other language. Their job is to describe reality, or to invent possible realities. The difference between mathematics and most other languages is that it is bound by very strict rules regarding what is permissible and what is not. ‘But what about Frege and logical calculus?' you ask. Well, I would argue that this view of standard language is wrong. Language is not just a set of rules, it is also an action, something you do. Its logic can be very fuzzy at times. The language used in science is more tightly bound to ruled and is less.susceptible to such fuzziness. Nevertheless it is predicated on descriptions of the material world, and even the most ingenious and elegant theoretical physics remains hypothetical until we find a way to.observe it; the Higgs Bosom is an example of this. Science is far from immaterial.

How about disembodied knowledge claims?

Well, it is true that science attempts to see the world from above. It tries to separate its subject from the self in the pursuit of objectivity. But isn't this a contradiction of the claim it is masculine and white? You betcha! I don't see how it is possible to be disembodied AND masculine and white. Nevertheless, some try to make that claim.

In short, there is a problem with this problematisation.

How do I view science? Being outside the dominant Foucaulian paradigm within philosophy of science and much if the social sciences, I see it as not a philosophy but a tool. It's not perfect, a little bent at the corners, but it gets the job of observing and understanding nature better than anything before. It's a combination of induction and deduction that, through falsification, become a self correcting mechanism: Kuhn's paradigm shifts happen not because of cultural change, but because the level of falsification of an old idea becomes great enough to dismiss it. More than that, it corrects itself at the methodological level and assisting that self-correction is the job of good philosophers of science. Not generating mumbo jumbo about disembodiment or strawmen in which all scientists are still positivists. And male. And European.

And that, would you believe, is a controversial opinion within the academy. It is also as complex as I think it needs to be. All the rest just blunts the pudding and over-eggs the razor. Nuance is important, but it must be based in reality, not in some rationally contrived situation in which people sit by the fire like Descartes with a ball of wax proclaiming 'Je pense façon complexe, donc, je suis!'

Historical Problems

History can be guilty of such terrible bouts of probelmatisiation. I see the pursuit of history as occupying a unique place within academic endeavour. It is both a humanity and a social science, and it is neither. It, and its sister archaeology, can happliy borrow from the physical sciences when needed - tree ring data to find out about past climates, radiometric data to discover the ages of objects, x-raying paintings to discover their construction and so on. It can borrow techniques and approaches from a variety of intellectual disciplines; psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, even biology. In order for us to truely know ourselves we have to know our history, but in order to do that, we have to use every tool at our disposal. And yes, I can hear Sir Geoffrey Elton turingin in his grave, donm;t worry, I'm sending  Marc Bloch to sort him out; he didn't turn and run at the first sign of trouble; a proper hero. But once more, I digress.

History has so many tools at its disposal for discovering the past to a reasonable degree of accuracy, or at least one thread of the complex and nuanced beast that is history, that we don't need to add to it with wild speculation. Far too often I encounter historical papers that are big on 'look, I read Goffman, Derrida, and Judith Butler' and short on actually telling me what has actually been deduced from the sources. This doesn't make me an anti-theorist, far from it, but I am an anti-pet-theorist. I am somewhat one who thinks that a combination of induction - look at the sources - and say what you think you see - and deduction - test if what you think you see holds up with more source analysis, and if what you see fits a theory then great, there may be something in that theory. If it doesn't, take a deep breath, maybe even stick your bottom lip out for a time, and then suck it up and think again.

Please, whatever you do, don't use the magnet of problematition so that the data fits the theoretical dreams of your academic heroes. Look through iron filings that fall by the wayside, for in those lie a real source of nuance.