Pluralistic synthesis SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM PHILOSOPHY of SCIENCE Pluralistic synthesis SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

Against Universal Objectivism or Scientific Realism A scientific account is universally valid. Therefore, if scientific theory, T, is true, it is true everywhere and always. The denial of this is relativism. It implies that reality may vary across space at any given time. A scientific account is valid independently of what people think and do. Therefore if T is true, it is true even if nobody believes it. The denial of this is constructivism. It implies that, for a given place, reality may change over time.

Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) Deleuze refers to his philosophy as a transcendental empiricism experience is always presenting novelty exceeds our concepts this raw experience of difference actualizes an idea, unfettered by our prior categories, forcing us to invent new ways of thinking

Philosophy, Art and Science Deleuze sharply distinguishes art, philosophy, and science as three distinct disciplines, philosophy creates concepts, the arts create percepts (novel qualitative combinations of sensation and feeling the sciences create quantitative theories based on "functives“ (fixed points of reference) They are"separate melodic lines in constant interplay with one another."

Reason , Thinking & Thought Reason is always a region carved out of the irrational—not sheltered from the irrational at all, Reason is traversed by unreason and only defined by a particular kind of relationship among irrational factors. genuine thinking is a violent confrontation with reality, an involuntary rupture of established categories a thought always determined by problems rather than solving them

Values standards of value are internal or immanent: to live well is to fully express one's power, to go to the limits of one's potential, not to judge what exists by non-empirical, transcendent standards.

Jean-Francois Lyotard Jean-François Lyotard (10 August 1924– 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well-known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition in La Condition Postmoderne: Rapport sur le Savoir (1979).

Collapse of Grand Narrartives meta-narratives - sometimes 'grand narratives' - are grand, large-scale theories and philosophies of the world, such as the progress of history, the knowability of everything by science. postmodernity is characterised by an abundance of micronarratives.

Science as Language Games 'language games', denotes the multiplicity of communities of meaning, the innumerable and incommensurable separate systems in which meanings are produced and rules for their circulation are created.

Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (born 22 June 1947, Beaune, Côte-d'Or) is a French Anthropologist[1] and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS)[2]. After teaching at the École des Mines de Paris (Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation) from 1982 to 2006, he is now Professor and vice-president for research at the Institut d'études politiques de Paris (2007)[3], where he is associated with the Centre de sociologie des organisations (CSO).

Science as Culture The objects of science are socially constructed within the laboratory Objects of science cannot be attributed with an existence outside of the instruments that measure them and the minds that interpret them. Scientific activity is a system of beliefs, oral traditions and culturally specific practices— science is reconstructed not as a procedure or as a set of principles but as a culture.

naïve descriptions of the scientific method, in which theories stand or fall on the outcome of a single experiment, are inconsistent with actual laboratory practice. In the laboratory, a typical experiment produces only inconclusive data that is attributed to failure of the apparatus or experimental method, and that a large part of scientific training involves learning how to make the subjective decision of what data to keep and what data to throw out, a process that, to an untrained outsider, looks like a mechanism for ignoring data that contradicts scientific orthodoxy.

Actor Network Theory Actor Network theory maps relations that are simultaneously material (between things) and “semiotic” (between conceptswhich are potentially transient, existing in a constant making and re-making. The networks of relations are not intrinsically coherent, and may indeed contain conflicts. The networks use explicit strategies for relating different elements together so that they form an apparently coherent whole. This means that relations need to be repeatedly “performed” or the network will dissolve.