-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
STS-Oct-M36-Frost.rs3
103 lines (100 loc) · 5.37 KB
/
STS-Oct-M36-Frost.rs3
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
<rst>
<header>
<relations>
<rel name="antithesis" type="rst" />
<rel name="background" type="rst" />
<rel name="circumstance" type="rst" />
<rel name="concession" type="rst" />
<rel name="condition" type="rst" />
<rel name="elaboration" type="rst" />
<rel name="enablement" type="rst" />
<rel name="evaluation" type="rst" />
<rel name="evidence" type="rst" />
<rel name="interpretation" type="rst" />
<rel name="justify" type="rst" />
<rel name="means" type="rst" />
<rel name="motivation" type="rst" />
<rel name="nonvolitional-cause" type="rst" />
<rel name="nonvolitional-result" type="rst" />
<rel name="otherwise" type="rst" />
<rel name="preparation" type="rst" />
<rel name="purpose" type="rst" />
<rel name="restatement" type="rst" />
<rel name="solutionhood" type="rst" />
<rel name="summary" type="rst" />
<rel name="unconditional" type="rst" />
<rel name="unless" type="rst" />
<rel name="unstated-relation" type="rst" />
<rel name="volitional-cause" type="rst" />
<rel name="volitional-result" type="rst" />
<rel name="rst" type="rst" />
<rel name="attribution" type="rst" />
<rel name="conjunction" type="multinuc" />
<rel name="contrast" type="multinuc" />
<rel name="disjunction" type="multinuc" />
<rel name="joint" type="multinuc" />
<rel name="list" type="multinuc" />
<rel name="restatement-mn" type="multinuc" />
<rel name="sequence" type="multinuc" />
</relations>
</header>
<body>
<segment id="1" parent="2" relname="attribution">Paul Edwards writes:</segment>
<segment id="2" parent="23" relname="span">
&gt;If LIEBERMAN or anyone else genuinely believes that STS convincingly
&gt;demonstrates that external reality doesn't exist, I would like to be
&gt;notified of just where and how this has been done. On my reading, most STS
&gt;literature asserts, and often demonstrates, some form of interpretive
&gt;flexibility in scientific claims or technological design. But there is a
&gt;vast difference between flexibility, an excellent metaphor whose
&gt;connotations should be taken seriously, and infinite malleability - which
&gt;doesn't even work as a metaphor (from what experiential background could it
&gt;be drawn?), much less as a coherent literal description of anything at all.
&gt;The most common philosophical mistake in STS is to leap from the
&gt;possibility of _multiple_ interpretations or constructions to the
&gt;possibility of an _infinite_ number. When something flexes too far, it
&gt;breaks.</segment>
<segment id="3" parent="18" relname="span">
Excellent!</segment>
<segment id="4" parent="3" relname="antithesis"> Social construction needn't be philosophically assimilated with
the more perverse spinoffs of German idealism.</segment>
<segment id="5" parent="20" relname="span"> To Paul Edwards' perceptive
comments on the value of the notion of interpretive flexibility, I'd add
that not only are meanings and truths implicitly negotiated, the more
durable outcome of such controversies or fact-makings is a sort of
constructive ambiguity.</segment>
<segment id="6" parent="7" relname="condition"> If a meaning or truth is subject to multiple social
meanings</segment>
<segment id="7" parent="19" relname="span"> it is less brittle and less apt to crack under social or political
pressure.</segment>
<segment id="8" parent="7" relname="elaboration"> Take nuclear power (which, of course didn't have a sufficiently
flexible/ambiguous meaning)--it had many meanings from "too cheap to meter"
to a symboll of American (or French) techno-prowess.</segment>
<segment id="9" parent="10" relname="antithesis">
Excuse my naivete, friends,</segment>
<segment id="10" parent="21" relname="span"> but I still can see why scientists are soo
irritated with us</segment>
<segment id="11" parent="10" relname="evidence"> (cf. the article on Latour in Lingua Franca as well as
Gross & Levitt, etc).</segment>
<segment id="12" parent="16" relname="span"> Doesn't ideologically bolting oneself to a particular
conception of reality risk rendering oneself obsolete once the facts or
cultural winds change?</segment>
<segment id="13" parent="12" relname="elaboration"> How many scholasticists or royally-supported
astrologists (or alchemists) are around these days, anyway?</segment>
<segment id="14" parent="17" relname="span"> As a historian
of technology, I can envision the day when Taylorists and industrializers
are commonly seen not as avatars of objective truth,</segment>
<segment id="15" parent="14" relname="antithesis"> but as silly
fad-followers (at best), self-serving experts, or politically dense tools
of their employers...</segment>
<group id="16" type="span" parent="10" relname="evidence" />
<group id="17" type="span" parent="10" relname="evidence" />
<group id="18" type="span" parent="5" relname="background" />
<group id="19" type="span" parent="5" relname="evidence" />
<group id="20" type="span" parent="22" relname="span" />
<group id="21" type="span" parent="20" relname="background" />
<group id="22" type="span" parent="24" relname="span" />
<group id="23" type="span" parent="22" relname="background" />
<group id="24" type="span" />
</body>
</rst>