Dear Colleagues, As always the discussions on this web are interesting and
take us often into unexpected realms. In this case philosophy of science.
I can not let Esteban's response to Tony unanswered. For those interested
in this topic, I excerpt a couple of paragraphs from a forthcoming book
chapter on the topic.
Boal, K. B., Hunt, J. G., and Jaros, S. J. (Forthcoming, 2/03). Order is
free: On the ontological status of organzations. In S. Clegg and R.
Westwood (Eds),Debating Organizations:
Point/Counterpoint in Organizational Studies. Oxford, UK: Blackwell
While most subjectivists are to some degree realists because they seek to
transcend "mere" opinion and ultimately reveal some deeper social reality
assumed to represent the "truth" or "truths" (Jacobson and Jacques, 1997),
at the extreme, postmodernists/poststructuralists hold that attempts to
discover the genuine order of things are naïve and mistaken and that the
language produced by the empirical process does not equate with an
increasingly accurate correspondence with reality (Hassard, 1993). Rather,
collections of interrelated discourses and the associated practices of
textual production make the world meaningful. That is, discourses, rather
than revealing some pre-constituted reality, create the world (Lawrence and
Phillips, 1998).
Such perspectives reject the notion that searches for true theories by
objective methods can exist. Objectivity is impossible (Mick, 1986)
because observations are theory-laden (Kuhn, 1962). Often, these schools
of thought juxtapose their position against both a mistaken view of
"positivism" and contemporary social science (see Hunt, 1994b; McKelvey,
1997; Phillips, 1987).
.....
According to Suppe (1977: 649), "
it is a central aim of science to come
to knowledge of how the world really is
.". Thus for the scientific
realist, the products of science are theories that seek to explain and
predict. The arbiter of the adequateness of our explanations and
predictions is truth ("genuine knowledge"), or "truthlikeness" (Popper's,
1972, verisimilitude), and the degrees or probabilities of truthlikeness
(De Regt, 1994). Any empirical test involves two high level theories: an
interpretive theory to provide the facts and an explanatory theory to
explain them (Boal and Willis, 1983; Lakatos, 1968). Inconsistencies
between these two theories constitute the problem-fever of science.
Growth in science occurs in our attempts to repair these inconsistencies,
first by replacing one theory, then the other, and then possibly both and
opting for a new set-up, which represents the most progressive
problem-shift, with the biggest increase in, corroborated content. Growth
in science can occur without refutations, and need not be either
evolutionary or linear. What is required, is that sufficiently many and
sufficiently different theories are offered. According to McMullin (1984),
scientific realism claims, "the long run success of a scientific theory
gives reason to believe that something like the entities postulated by the
theory actually exist" (26).
.....
Realism holds that science should pursue objectivity in that its
statements should be capable of public tests with results that do not vary
essentially with the tester (Hempel, 1970). However, this is not to be
confused with a caricature of objectivism that implies that science has
access to a "god's-eye view" or a "unique privileged position" to reach an
absolute truth. Realists recognize that any observations we make, and any
evidence we claim to accumulate are inevitably filtered through and limited
by the characteristics of our senses, our methods of measurement, and the
social-cultural context in which our research is conducted. The purpose of
the scientific method is to attempt to enable us to arrive at a defensible
knowledge claim. However, these claims are based on the recognition that
they are contingent--subject to future refutation or revision.
Scientific realism strives for objectivity. As Hunt (1976) states,
"Scientific knowledge, in which theories, laws, and explanations are
primal, must be objective in the sense that its truth content must be
inter-subjectively certifiable." This notion of objectivity is not to be
confused with Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) characterization of objectivism
as the claim that there is an objectively reality, about which we can say
things are objectively, absolutely, and unconditionally true and false
about it.
But as Beach (1984) notes, objectivism is
the thesis that there exists a systematic method of reasoning and a
coordinate set of beliefs embodying its principles
.These principles may
contain errors or half-truths, and yet may never attain a fixed and final
form. Yet insofar as (a) their consistency is publicly verifiable, (b)
their development is rational, and (c) their truth-content is demonstrably
greater than that of rival contenders, they do constitute reliable criteria
by which to evaluate subsidiary beliefs and hypothesis (159).
The above thesis is consistent with Popper's (1959) notion that science is
revolution in permanence. He suggested that the ontological status of a
theory is better than its rival, "(a) if it has more empirical content,
that is, if it forbids more 'observable' states of affairs, and (b) if some
of this excess content is corroborated, that is, if the theory produces
novel facts" (163).
--------------------------------
Kim Boal
College of Business Administration
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409
(806) 742-2150
KimBoal@ttu.edu