on science...

Related to Latour.
Something to remember about science: science is founded upon the appealingly rational idea of empirical knowledge - observation, measurement, recording, and repetition. However, these things are, like many other things, not as solid as one might wish them to be.

Our observation is limited to what we can or do observe. In the US, one is "officially" taught that there are five or so senses, with a sixth somewhere between the wished-for/believed-in and the observable, related to the perception of electromagnetics. A great deal of people have these in common, to varying degrees. We know that we do, because we have tools that tells us so, and measurements called decibels. However, due to our differences, we have "deficiencies" - which are only deficiencies in relation to the statistical mean value for a particular population for a particular measurement, in one or many senses.

Currently, a spacecraft launched 30 years ago has reached the borderspace of the heliosphere, but there is no monitoring or survey equipment on board beyond that which is capable of relaying the craft's position. This little time capsule, is empty, save for its capability, and our capability through it, to locate it in space, and in so doing, locate space. How many holes are there in this? How many different types of information could have been gathered; how many things of interest to our species?

How many types of information that we do not know about?

Measurement itself is another issue. Measures of sight or hearing are only of value in comparison to what is considered to be the normal ability. What is considered to be the "normal" ability? Is it the level of hearing or sight capacity that can be measured to be possessed by most people? Or should it be the level in the middle of the lower and higher end of ability? This is not an independent measure, without relationship to some other variable. The units of measure are all subjective, in some sense - horses are still, in the 21st century, measured in a unit called hands. It is currently accepted that a hand is equal to what is known as 4 inches, but what the hell is an inch. I've never seen one in the wild, and my hands are not 4 of them wide. Nor are my feet 12 of them long. They are based on decisions, made standard and viable only because of agreement upon their continued use. I myself will only hope to never see such a thing as a millimeter in nature, as it sounds quite poisonous.

Recording? I'd hope the average reader of the average text or work or document or piece or poetry or prose or drama or comedy or short story or magical spell would understand the faulty nature of transcribing what is not written into what is written. And certainly, the problem of the transcription of what is written to another written form is fraught with danger and possibility. The transcription of an experiment and its results is no exception.

The same holds to repetition. Science is predicated upon the experiment, and the re-creation of results to create a supported case for a relationship between things. This re-creation of results must be achieved by re-creations of that which elicited the results in the first place. Look, if perception, measurement, translating, encoding are tough, let's not even joke about re-creating the conditions for a particular event. Not friggin possible. To be able to recreate the conditions, we would first have had to be able to observe all the conditions which made the results of the initial experiment possible. Herein lies one limitation. Secondly, well, if the agreements for the measurements stay the same, this might be an easier part, what with the agreement and the effort towards the precision of instruments likely to be involved in such an important scientific endeavor as ours. Still, measurement is a funny notion with any amount of thought, and that's worth noting. Then, the first go-round must have been interpreted, encoded, and re-interpreted in such a way as to make these conditions of replication/repetition possible.

Science is a symbol of our understanding, but should not be understood as the boundary of understanding, nor should it be accepted as gospel or poetry without genuine acknowledgement of its limitations in the first place, which are basically our own.