It is possible to model the exchanges in the scientific community by means
of the theory exposed here, indeed:
First
of all, what
is precisely a theory?
It is a means to pass on a certain vision of things.
To pass on implies that there is:
A broadcasting station: The author of the message whom is
the "Observer"
A receiver: The " Scientific Community
", formed by the "Peers" who recognize themselves as such
A message: The "Theory" itself.
As regards a theory with scientific or technical character, this message is
in connection with "Objects". Kant wanted to show that in any
experiment, it is necessary to distinguish two elements, the one
relating to the object (the object "in itself") - which we shall indicate by " Object 1 ", the other one in the own nature
of the observer We shall define as object " for one " or " Object
2 ", the object mediatized by the scientist. Although the object is
the cause of the experiment, what sees the observer of it also
depends on him.
On the other hand, the public which addresses our
Observer forms a group, with its own culture, i.e. all the common accepted
knowledge. This forms the "Paradigm" in which it is advisable to
refer. In this field are elaborated the scientific ideas, are in confrontation the
theses in a ceaseless work of justification, refutation, forgery and a check.
This work constituting, by itself, the material of paradigm (in Thomas S .
Khun's sense) in the heart of which they evolve. We can schematize
this paradigm to represent there the connections which become
established there in the following way:
Field of Paradigm:
Experiment: Object 2 == > Observer
Communication: Observer == > Community
Validation: Community == > Paradigm
Appropriation: Paradigm == > Object
The
final feedback is a modification of the way the community look at the
World. Everything paradigm wears in him its limits and bounds by
there even a field of experience. In this context, certain experiments can show themselves crucial, in what
it fault
paradigm already admitted. There is no more feedback: we are in
front of a "catastrophic" case. It was, for example, the measure of the speed
of light, or the theory of the black bodies at the beginning of the 20th
century... This representation remains rather summary because preoccupations of different
order get involved there: from the raw observation towards a coherent interpretation of the object, there is a
level change of language. In a symmetric way, the expression of the public
formulates rather rarely in propositions of tests and against direct
checks. The debate does not come down immediately on the experimental
ground and limits itself at first to an exam of admissibility of the proposed
thesis. It is to say that the previous pattern, describing the scientific
speech, is inserted between two levels concerning very different activities:
The scientific method lays on 3 levels
Level 1: the Field of
Observation
Level 2: the Paradigm
Level 3: the Sociological
Field
Field of the observation: It is in
particular about the work in "laboratory":
At first, the
observer addresses nobody, but bounds his field of observation, defines a
protocol of experiment, the results of which he will directly use to refine his
experiment. In this work, the Observer presents two faces,
alternately active and passive:
On one hand he has to
build its experiment ( We shall speak about
"Experimenter" and of " Protocol of experiments "),
On the other hand he collects the
result and confronts it with the theory which drove him ( We shall speak
about "Theorist" and shall keep the term of "
Object 1 ").
Settling of the experiment: Experimenter == > Protocol
Experiment: Protocol == > Object 1
Observation: Object 1 == > Theorist
Adaptation of the Protocol: Theorist == > Experimenter
There
are situated the considerations of the epistemologists of "realist" tendency
trying to define what is the experiment. The systematic
consideration of a feedback of the observer / experimenter on the object is
rather recent. It became almost indispensable since Heisenberg's works in
the thirties.
Sociological field:
The scientific activity is not made outside the social field, indeed:
The Observer should gather the
means to experience He
should make live his "lab", his team, present budgets by respecting the
standards of the civil society: it is what defined the " researcher's " status,
The scientific community is included in a
society, which asks for accounts. They should justify their social
utility, answer the expectations of the public.
It is to
say that the scientific activity does not develop freely, and gets closer the
most active part of the society: where from the importance of the military justifications
for certain researches.
This stake in perspective of the scientific debate allows to understand that
it is not a pure and simple exchange of arguments among peers. It is
always difficult to make listen to a new theory which questions existing
paradigm, because the questioning interferes on the previous 3 levels:
At the level of experimental, there are no available credits,
At the scientific level (paradigm) it strikes the accepted theories,
In the social standing, it genes established institutions (where from a
lack of means at the level 1 etc....)
To establish the debate, it
has to be judged relevant by the scientific
community, it must be seen as part of the preoccupations of the moment. It is always possible, when the theory in question gives the hope to
fill a gap of paradigm. For example, the physicists are looking forward to
new ideas to take out some contradiction between quantum mechanics and
relativity. The physics knew number of "revolutions" and advances by
jumps, since Galilee.
But, there is no hope of listening when the investigated
domain does not belong to a field of questioning considered
relevant.
It is exactly the case of the theory that occupies us
here: no place for a theory of the social organization using tools of the
physics. The problem is not scientific any more but becomes philosophic
because we touch the status of the individual.
Indeed, the individual stops having a
particular status, he is not any more (as the "Observer"
describes here) that a piece of few levels structure, flooded within infinite structures: he becomes FRACTAL
Structure in 3 levels:
(Remark:
this 3 levels model can quite easily be seen as a Chinese's hexagram. Refer to
my page I Ching)
