Criticism
In order to study scientific knowledge from a sociological point of view, the strong programme has adhered to a form of radical relativism. In other words, it argues that – in the social study of institutionalised beliefs about ‘truth’ – it would be unwise to use 'truth' as an explanatory resource. That would be to include the answer as part of the question (Barnes 1992), not to mention a thoroughly 'whiggish' approach towards the study of history – that is an approach seeing human history as an inevitable march towards truth and enlightenment. Alan Sokal has criticised radical relativism as part of the Science wars, on the basis that such an understanding will lead inevitably towards solipsism and postmodernism. Strong programme scholars insist that their approach has been misunderstood by such a criticism and that its adherence to radical relativism is strictly methodological.
Read more about this topic: Strong Programme
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)