tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post3073161571931973202..comments2023-11-02T08:42:23.947+00:00Comments on The Subversive Archaeologist: Some Prefatory Thoughts on TAG 2014 Manchester [Updated]thesubversivearchaeologisthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02730417511321512990noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-63690365713238955132014-11-20T16:04:32.434+00:002014-11-20T16:04:32.434+00:00Hi, Iain. Thanks for your comments. I'll try t...Hi, Iain. Thanks for your comments. I'll try to be brief. [Yeah. I know. *sigh* Good luck!] I find it very useful to distinguish between what philosophers of science call the Context of Discovery—where our ideas come from—and the Context of Justification—how we decide between competing knowledge claims. The former is the playground of Foucault and Kuhn. The latter has been the stronghold of Logical Empiricism for centuries. Perhaps I should have been more explicit in my "Prefatory Thoughts.” <br /><br />As often as bigots of all stripes have tried to pervert their observations to prove a point—whether unconsciously or not—there have been cases where "the data" have simply put a stop to the nonsense. What this tells me, and many others, is that the way we judge competing knowledge claims IS important. If someone wants to say that they think science is radically flawed because it's practiced by misogynists, or racists, or zealots, let them say so. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference to the phenomena we're trying to understand. Those phenomena are what they are, regardless of our 'created categories.' But, as you point out, one of the most strident voices of post-modernism, Foucault himself, uses evidence—empirically verifiable evidence—to support his claims, whether he would have liked it or not, it means that he’s creating knowledge in what we’ve come to know as a scientific way, a way that gets us closer to a more truthful understanding of a phenomenon—even if the phenomenon under scrutiny is Science, itself. That's the important take-home message to my mind: Science isn't a monolithic body of knowledge, it's a word that describes the process of us puny humans edging closer to an accurate—empirically grounded—account of what we find interesting and in need of explanation. How we characterize that process—i.e. the flavour of scientific philosophy we follow—has no effect on our successes. Scientific Realism is just a tune-up of the way one group of people—philosophers of science—view the process of making scientific knowledge. From that perspective, it’s possible to see that Logical Empiricism has had a profound and at times detrimental effect on the Contexts, both of Discovery and Justification. And I’m hoping that more people than you and I will come to realize it, and that they’ll cease these essentially ideological battles about the Context of Discovery, see that science is an incremental process of making knowledge that can be—at a minimum—assessed “on the evidence” within the Context of Justification. Thanks, again, for popping in!thesubversivearchaeologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02730417511321512990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-70319680840203398002014-11-20T02:59:24.113+00:002014-11-20T02:59:24.113+00:00Well my 2c worth is that not even the scientists e...Well my 2c worth is that not even the scientists embraced Hempel's characterisation of their work and if people are really interested there are quite a few discussions on how science really works including a great anthropological study called "Life among the Scientists: An Anthropological study of an Australian Scientific Community". While Kuhn's work was important a more developed study of the working of science was of course Foucault's early work "the birth of the clinic" and "Madness and derangement" (terms that seemingly could apply to TAG) which emphasised how the process of scientific work was enmeshed in power rather than discovering natural phenomena (which Foucault demonstrated were not natural at all but created categories and entities).<br /><br />Perhaps the most interesting thing about Foucault s work is that it is data ridden - he looks for evidence and this is not denying that there is disputation about the concepts and ideas he draws from the evidence but the evidence is there. Similarly with Binford the bigger picture stuff and the language particularly in his early papers is used by many to through all his stuff out whereas I have found his later writings on hunter-gathers extremely thought provoking.<br /><br />I have never understood why you cannot apply different theoretical approaches to different archaeological problems instead of trying to make one approach fit everything.<br /><br /> IainShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02325890799477789627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-2901092358902632462014-11-19T01:36:40.320+00:002014-11-19T01:36:40.320+00:00Hi, Paul,
Thanks for elaborating on the impetus fo...Hi, Paul,<br />Thanks for elaborating on the impetus for this session. Prior to reading the paper abstracts I was afraid that I was going to be at a disadvantage with respect to the empirical findings that would be presented. I see that the subject matter spans the Lower Paleolithic to the Chalcolithic. So, now I KNOW that I"ll be out of my depth only part of the time! thesubversivearchaeologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02730417511321512990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-14619582495709226632014-11-19T01:05:30.363+00:002014-11-19T01:05:30.363+00:00These aren't the droids you're looking for...These aren't the droids you're looking for.thesubversivearchaeologisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02730417511321512990noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-38843560825553801462014-11-19T00:31:06.834+00:002014-11-19T00:31:06.834+00:00cont 4...
My Point, like yours, is that both extre...cont 4...<br />My Point, like yours, is that both extreme positions are wrong and illusory. As you rightly point out we need scientific method to get the data and we need an inferential framework to interpret them. Thus, the conceit of my abstract was in deliberately caricaturing a very real issue which is now beginning to hamper British archaeological discourse. You only need to read a great deal of the work on the British Neolithic and unfortunately some in the Mesolithic to see how pervasive the 'i don't do science' has become. There are some brilliant ideas but I always say- yes but where is your data? How do you get from one to the other! It is also good you mention Palaeolithic studies which has virtually become a theory free zone and where many of the 'I don't do thoery group' I have heard saying it-'hail' from.<br />Im really looking forward to our session and your insights. I'm pleased to say- as you can see from the abstracts i sent you a while ago- we have the whole range of the debate and importantly from people doing it right- in my view. There are some exciting papers on your favourite topic of Levallois as well as some others. It should be a great session! Thanks for your contributions so far.<br />Paul R Prestonhttp://lithoscapes.co.uk/contact/paul-r-preston/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-43662921086189472962014-11-19T00:29:56.917+00:002014-11-19T00:29:56.917+00:00Cont 3...
Thirdly, this group of hyper-theorists t...Cont 3...<br />Thirdly, this group of hyper-theorists think you don't need the scientific method. I know as I have had to try to re-train some who were taught this nonsense. In effect they seem to reject wholesale as 'bad' everything that went before post Processualism including scientific method (because they erroneously equate science as 'Processual'). <br />Fourthly, there is another group of 'scientists' who are the 'don't do theory group' who equally polemically reject theory. They fail to appreciate the paradigmatic structures we have to interpret through and naively think just doing science and produceing data is all we do and the data speaks for itself. That is they fail to see the interpretational edifice built on top of their data.<br />Paul R Prestonhttp://lithoscapes.co.uk/contact/paul-r-preston/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-23429460698403115172014-11-19T00:28:56.563+00:002014-11-19T00:28:56.563+00:00continued 2....
Secondly, the highlighted section ...continued 2....<br />Secondly, the highlighted section you have discussed actually has been aimed at a growing number of archaeologists in the UK―especially the majority of whom tend to go to TAG―who now seem to have a myopic and extremely binary view of theory and science. Here I mean younger archaeologists who were taught in the early to mid-noughties in the UK and their lecturers― who I call 'hyper-theorists'― who have been too influenced by the likes of Shanks and Tilley and think all you need to appropriate bits of the work of some fashionable philosopher. They seem to think you can come up with a model (without knowing that is exactly what they have built) keep repeating it and it will be true- without presenting any data, testing hypotheses etc or explicitly stating their methodology. In short thier work is non-replicable and speculative. Paul R Prestonhttp://lithoscapes.co.uk/contact/paul-r-preston/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-37753150828875517532014-11-19T00:28:02.591+00:002014-11-19T00:28:02.591+00:00continued....However, and this a the big However- ...continued....However, and this a the big However- the issue I raise in the abstract and specifically what is exposed in the highlighted section of the abstract is actually so very necessary for a number of key reasons. <br />Firstly, it was not aimed at those like you or me who have an acute grasp of the philosophy of science and archaeology. The issue is ― without wanting to pre-empt my introduction paper to much― many archaeologists in the UK simply see thier given periodic study topic, archaeological theory and method as separate sub-disciplines. There is no joined up thinking only unnecessary and binary thinking- which is why the session aims to highlight some of the issues you raise. <br />Paul R Prestonhttp://lithoscapes.co.uk/contact/paul-r-preston/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-7830248725372432752014-11-19T00:26:59.310+00:002014-11-19T00:26:59.310+00:00Rob. I am really looking forward to hearing more ...Rob. I am really looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts at TAG. Thanks for this post I really enjoyed it and I think you make some very significant points and fortuitously many of the ones that I have been driving at in the abstract and will speak on. That is, Like you I received a great theoretical education- in theory or rather the history of philosophy of thought of both science and archaeology. So I understand the importance of both a firm methodological apparatus as well as the interpretive framework that we use, plus the paradigmatic biases we tend to have. Thus you are right that the statement is unnecessary for those of us who have been educated properly or have a thorough understanding of the philosophy of science and archaeology. That is realise there is no artificial polemic in theory or science- that they are actually part of the same thing.<br />Paul R Prestonhttp://lithoscapes.co.uk/contact/paul-r-preston/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3040099150725637733.post-4106309780017526112014-11-18T22:36:33.407+00:002014-11-18T22:36:33.407+00:00Interesting you'd mention Kuhn. Once upon a t...Interesting you'd mention Kuhn. Once upon a time in a graduate seminar, Mike Schiffer happened to mention to us that he'd had the chance to meet Kuhn during the heady days of the "New Archaeology" in the late 60s. After telling Kuhn all about the changes sweeping the world of archaeology, he convinced Kuhn to read some of the work of Binford, Longacre, and others. Kuhn's response: "I don't see anything resembling a scientific revolution here."Dave Maxwellnoreply@blogger.com