{"id":2326,"date":"2018-01-17T15:34:03","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T14:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/?p=2326"},"modified":"2018-07-27T12:04:45","modified_gmt":"2018-07-27T10:04:45","slug":"perse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/perse\/","title":{"rendered":"In case of peace?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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4. Information<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n

[\u26a0 This is an old unfinished draft ]<\/span><\/p>\n

We’ve been beating around the bush and comparing science to other things. Let’s talk of science itself now.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Possibly the most fundamental thing that makes science tick is this:<\/p>\n

Humans\u00a0can<\/strong><\/em> agree.<\/span><\/p>\n

They don’t need to. In practice they often don’t. But in essence they can<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Science is not establishing what people should agree on, nor requiring people’s agreement for anything, nor even attempting to make people agree. It’s the other way around. People can<\/em> agree, and science owes<\/em>\u00a0to that – its existence, the sense it makes, and its subtle sensual sort of splendor.<\/p>\n

Not only does science stem from people’s innate ability to look at things the same way, perhaps more importantly, it concentrates<\/em> on it – not<\/strong> on the fact that they do\/did\/might\/will see things the same way, again, just on the fact that they can<\/em><\/strong>. Science makes this matter. It builds on the possibility by formalising<\/em> it, exercising it and challenging<\/em> it. That’s precisely why disagreement<\/strong>\u00a0is so crucial to science<\/strong>. There is only so much science that can be done within a group of (one or several) people who consistently look at things the same way. Together, people who already agree can confirm the things they agree on, and perhaps impose their perspective on those who don’t agree with it. What else?\u00a0To agree\u00a0<\/em>is not\u00a0to exercise<\/em> the ability to agree,<\/em>\u00a0it’s to have exercised it once. <\/i>In order to exercise it again, there has to be a contradiction at hand.<\/p>\n

If we want to keep having proofs of humans\u2019 innate ability to agree, we must value instances where they don\u2019t – and do what essentially science is all about: put this ability of ours into action.<\/p>\n

Thus, possibly\u00a0the second most fundamental\u00a0thing that makes science tick is this:<\/p>\n

Humans see things differently.<\/span><\/p>\n

But aren’t differences in perspectives mere representatives of differences in individuals, responsible for failures of the state of consensus? Nope, not when you know how to work them. Formalise them faithfully and they start telling on relations among individuals and ways to navigate between their diverging views.<\/p>\n

Humans that navigate together tend to look in the same direction for a while.\u00a0\u00a0The rest is magic: things come out of looking in the same direction for a while.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So what science proposes is to navigate together between our diverging views, identify the contradictions at hand and turn them into\u00a0something else – something tangible that humans share for a while and possibly build things out of, aka “information”.<\/p>\n

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So how clear is it now that science is\u00a0(one of) our best chances at not entertaining contentious states? By definition, science is the art of turning disagreement into something else available for us to share and use as long as it lasts. And since science doesn’t ask us to all agree and all see the world the same way, it ensures us we won’t bore ourselves to death. It will keep us disagreeing and destroying, and conforming and constructing.<\/span><\/p>\n

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We’ve established that humans have the ability to look in the same direction, and that they also generally don’t consistently.\u00a0We’ve mentioned that consensuses are suspicious with respect to science-making. Let us add that for similar reasons, lasting dissensuses are too.\u00a0 Disagreeing is not making science. Science cannot operate without equivocity, but without brand\u00a0new<\/em> instances of\u00a0 it, it withers. Without brand new\u00a0instances of equivocity to make brand new common sense out of, there are no brand new pieces of information to produce .<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4. Information [\u26a0 This is an old unfinished draft ] We’ve been beating around the bush and comparing science to other things. Let’s talk of science itself now.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3234,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allgemein"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3234"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2326"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2506,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326\/revisions\/2506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.fu-berlin.de\/incaseofpeace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}