Simon, Armin, List.....

I find some of these characterizations of science unhelpful -  they rake 
over old arguments that I thought we'd junked years ago i.e. culture 
wars. Science believes in it's propositions according to the best 
possible evidence. It doesn't claim absolute truth. As for the belief in 
universal laws, again these are presented as hypotheses backed up with 
best possible evidence. Science gives us a very good method for 
understanding material and environmental processes such as climate change.

Facing environmental catastrophe we need more interdisciplinary practice 
not less, I do however agree that the terms for these collaborations 
need to be carefully framed.

best

Tom Corby


>
> From: Armin Medosch <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Armin Medosch <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 07:51:57 +0100
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Fwd: [NEW-MEDIA-CURATING] Art-Science and
> Science-Art Curricula: Call for Contributions
>
> Hi all
>
> the problem is not just instrumentalism but what science studies
> scholars call the ideology of science or scientism, the believe that the
> results of science are objective, that the 'laws of nature' are
> universal and eternal and exist outside society. If an institution or an
> individual scientist are wedded to that idea then I cant see how any
> self-respecting artist can work with them except as some ethnographer or
> social anthropologist of science. Unfortunately most institutions have
> scientism built into their belief system so that in any collaboration
> the artist would have to submit to a strong apriori decision about the
> superiority of science as a system of knowledge to be admitted to the
> institution, there is no reconciliation possible between the epistemic
> cultures of science and art on that basis.
>
> Furtherly, I am afraid that pure science is not necessarily a remedy
> against that ideology of science, it can grow there as well as in a
> commercial R&D lab; rather, pure science itself is an ideological
> construct to justify certain types of funding, whereas in reality most
> science is strongly connected with R&D anyway and empirically speaking,
> by far the majority of science is conducted in a commercial R&D context.
> Those points are not my 'opinion' but paraphrasing an interview with
> philosopher and historian of science Simon Schaffer from Cambridge.
>
> All that does not mean that artists and curators should not engage with
> it, but, if possible, on their own terms and with a careful approach
> that checks and selects methodologies, projected outcomes, etc.
> Otherwise the questions that can be asked are very narrow indeed
>
> best
> armin
>
>