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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: soc.college,talk.rumors
Subject: Re: Accuracy in Academia
Message-ID: <1000@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 25-Sep-86 09:55:29 EDT
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Posted: Thu Sep 25 09:55:29 1986
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  Michael Stein can always be counted on for a vitriolic response:
> 
> Sadly, not everyone teaching today has such high standards.  Many
> times I have taken  classes  from people who teach the material 
> as defined in the course catalog.  All you get from these types is 
> a balanced look at the entire subject material.   Often during the 
> entire length of such classes, I never once heard the professor's 
> personal opinions on the environmental effects of nuclear weapons, 
> the biological effects of ionizing radiation or even the professor's 
> personal political beliefs.  Instead these second-class profs only 
> deal with the subject material and provided a fair in-depth look at 
> the material as described by the catalog description of the course.  
> There you are paying 20 - 40 dollars per class hour  and you don't 
> get the opportunity to hear any of the professor's personal biases 
> or intutitions on any and all endeavors of the human race.  Kind of
> makes it all seem like a waste of time...
 
There is not a single subject area which does not involve assumptions,
presumptions, speculations and a nexus of intertwined concepts which
may all turn out to be wrong.  This has proven to be true repeatedly
even in the supposedly "objective" study of the physical sciences.
These very definitions of the field are of critical importance because
they rule out certain questions from even being asked.
They are an intrinsic *bias* towards a presentation of *any* subject.

Thus, for the premier example, we can take the Copernican Revolution
which has been ably described as a prime example of a "paradigm shift"
by Thomas Kuhn in his book, "The Copernican Revolution". 
By changing just *one* key assumption of astronomy and physics:
namely that the Earth was the center of the Universe, and did not move
but rather all other heavenly bodies moved about the Earth, Copernicus
ended up destroying the whole of not just Ptolemaic astronomy but
also the Aristotelian worldview of physics.  If the Earth moved around
the Sun as a heavenly body itself then there was no longer the rigid
separation between the "ephemeral and changing" substances of the
Earth and the "fixed and immutable" substances of the heavens,closer
to God.
Was Galileo "unbalanced" to boldly defend Copernican theory against
the Ptolemaic and Aristotelian views of the Universe?
The Catholic Church obviously thought so, as they put Galileo on trial
for challenging "Catholic doctrines".  And the Catholic Church, in
some sense was right. As it later turned out, Copernicanism *did*
lead to challenging the whole of the medieval Aristotelian universe
with its separation of the earthly and heavenly spheres.  Moreover
as Robert Merton pointed out in his excellent monograph on science
in the 18th century, there was a definite connection between the
people pursuing the new fields of inquiry opened up by the scientific
revolution and Protestantism, which of course was a severe challenge
to the Catholic Church.  Of course it just so happened that Copernicus
was right, and repressing Galileo was also repressing the truth.

If this is true in the physical sciences, how much more so is it true
in the hazy social sciences!
Mr. Stein complains that certain areas presumed to be covered by a
course were not.  But it is precisely determining the very
quesions to be asked which come to be most important in determining
a whole paradigm and approach to studying a subject.  Shall we
censor all those who ask questions which challenge our own views?
Shall we try the Galileos for changing the fundamental questions
even asked in a field?  Or shall we try to understand what they say
and examine and debate its worth?
                     tim sevener  whuxn!orb