Out of science

Today in my new "fond memories" Gemini podcast, let's go back to the nerve center of the communist French intelligentsia, where the mold of revolution theory is filled with the praxis nectar of worldwide enemies of states and coffee is €1 if someone thought to buy some: the Jusqu'Ici, 169 grande rue de la Guillotière, in Lyon.

I used to go to the Jusqu'Ici to attend the reading club, which was an approximately weekly meeting with a handful of people interested in reading a text, an article or a chapter of a book, with the idea that not being alone helps a lot to decipher the often opaque prose of marxists, feminists and anarchists. The ambience was always warm and very welcoming to clueless but curious people, we had good tea and even crêpes sometimes.

After one of these meetings, people were going about their business in the small library and I was at a table with two dear friends, M and F, and we were carrying on a debate loosely related to the reading we just did. M is passionate about science and technology; some would call him quite “cartésien” (logical, rational). F is a talented musician and maybe causally, far from being irrational, often has ideas and suggestions out of the box. We were probably gone from the argument that Marxism could be considered scientific, an idea that M liked. F point was roughly the following:

> I understand that the scientific method is useful to build stone by stone a solid understanding of various phenomenons, but is it really the only way for us humans to gather knowledge? Can we, should we accept that experiences and feelings can lead us to other, useful paths?

F could not quite pin what she had in mind, but anyway it was not really to M's liking. Chinese medicine? The power of placebo. Witchcraft, astrology, religions, remains of ancient times where we tried to find answers with the only tools we had. Nowadays we have the scientific method and if you can't prove something using it, it stays a thought experiment regardless of its perceived benefits. I kind of align with this, but I enjoy thought experiments so here is one.

Hard sciences (maths, physics, chemistry, etc) are discovered and/or invented by humans and it seems no one has a convincing and definitive answer on how to articulate this "and/or". Every new brick brought to their edifices come from someone's initial experience, head scratching and formalisation. Ultimately, science is a human construct and trying to elevate it as either an absolute discovery of divine laws or constrain it as an endless creation of rules to work with may not be the most fruitful debate; what is certain though is that it is possible to see sciences as especially powerful "interpretive frameworks" (french: grille de lecture) and maybe that should be enough for everyday life.

Scientific method on Wikipedia

Later, I connected this conversation with an issue I had regarding sociology as a science. I'm convinced deep down that what most of what Pierre Bourdieu said is true to a large extent, but I struggle to accept that my conviction is due to his arguments being proven using the scientific method: so many parameters can go unnoticed or misinterpreted in a sociology study. Bourdieu has been lauded and criticized for trying to bring this part of humanities to the big boy yard of hard sciences by dusting those variables and bring some methodology from philosophy, and while it has been a enriching venture for the field, I feel more and more like using his works as a very accurate interpretive framework of social phenomenons and not like a set of immutable axioms is the most sane way to appreciate the dynamics of humanity he outlined.

Some consider sociology to be a pseudoscience due to insufficiently rigorous application of the scientific method. Indeed there is something deeply satisfying with logic that can't be easily ported to social sciences. In a logic proof, you can say that given that A implies B, then if B is false A is false as well and that's it, no talking. In the smallest sociology study imaginable, how the hell do you define predicates such as A or B? Income or region of birth, why not, but exposition to culture, education, real life social network? How can you possibly be as precise as a logic or math demonstration predicates with the human world variables? Good luck with that.

Does that mean that any attempt at sociology should be discarded because it leaves room to inaccuracies and errors? Even if Bourdieu books seem to be so consistent with what the empathetic eye can see? If yes, don't we lose the ability to gain new insights and intuitions on phenomenons that the hard sciences will not be able to prove in the next ages, if ever? If not, then what prevents me from using astrology, as it seems to work so well as an interpretive framework for some people? Am I simply stuck on the border between science and belief or is science simply the belief in the scientific method?

Fuck I was supposed to work this afternoon and now I want to read Foucault.

Pseudoscience on Wikipedia