University of wales
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Subjective versus Objective Phenomena|
Is the social anthropologist condemned to the study of subjective phenomena while the scientist enjoys the privilege of studying objective phenomena? By Kevin M. Purday The quantitative researcher adopts the posture of an outsider looking in on the social world. He or she applies a pre-ordained framework on the subjects being investigated and is involved as little as possible in that world. This posture is the analogue of the detached scientific observer.1 It is interesting that it is assumed that the physical scientist, and subsequently a social scientist using ‘scientific’ quantitative methods, “is involved as little as possible” – merely observing objective reality as “an outsider”. However, it seems likely that this is fundamentally untrue and this essay sets out to show that both physical and social scientists are an integral part of what they study. Starting with physical science, if one accepts the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics,2 the act of human observation at the quantum level causes the collapse of the wave function3 since this happens inevitably at the moment of observation for it is the collapse that allows the observation. It is not the interaction of the equipment with the quantum world but the human action of taking a measurement that leads to the collapse of the wave function.4 The observer’s act of taking the measurement causes the wave function’s collapse and thus changes the world.5 In areas other than quantum physics does the observer simply ‘capture a picture’ of objective reality? Although many people might argue that a scientist is studying objective reality, many in science itself would accept that “When we look down microscopes at cells from our bodies, study brain waves as traces written out by an EEG machine, or examine the chromatographic paper which tells us about processes within the cell, we are not making independent observation (sic) of an objective world, but subjective models of our consciousness.”6 At best the supporters of the “objective” role of science try to argue that following on from Galileo, Descartes and Locke, they are able to objectively study the primary qualities of matter, namely mass and motion.7 However, we know that mass and energy are interchangeable8 and that motion is relative9 to, for example, the speed of the observer thus indicating that even the so-called primary qualities are hardly co-operative in our quest for ‘objective’ knowledge. As for all other qualities, the “study of secondary qualities must be the science of subjective experience.”10 If reality is changed in a quantum experiment and it is difficult to maintain even that physics is a study of totally objective phenomena, what happens in a situation that straddles the physical/social science divide? The famous so-called Milgram experiment was designed to “examine the situational variables responsible for the elicitation of obedience.”11 In theory this piece of research was an experiment but since it had no control group it might be more accurate to call it a controlled observation. Indeed, it has been stated that his ‘‘ ‘experiment’ consists of repeated ‘ethnographies.’”12 Milgram claimed that the participants suffered no long-term harm but the ‘experiment’ certainly upset many of them13 and had a long-term effect on some as one of them very eloquently wrote to Milgram.14 Moving even further down the road towards the social sciences, written questionnaires are treated as though they give quantitative data and therefore that elusive ‘snapshot’ of objective reality. In practice, we know that written questionnaires have numerous disadvantages: low response rates, respondents not being the addressee, etc.15 The wording of questions is an extremely vexed area: “Researchers strive for objectivity in surveys and, therefore, must be careful not to lead the respondent into giving the … desired answer.”16 The most glaring example of this was revealed by the research into leading questions asked of witnesses of car accidents.17 The question “Did you see a broken headlight?” elicited responses very different from those elicited by the question “Did you see the broken headlight?”18 It would appear then that so-called ‘hard’ science is not so ‘objective’ as urban myth19 would have us believe.20 The scientific observer is heavily involved with what s/he is studying and cannot be a totally detached observer. As we move along the spectrum from physics and the physical sciences towards the social sciences, we simply find that the lack of objectivity and detachment merely assumes a different form. This position is usually called ‘postmodernist’ and has been both advocated before21 as well as attacked.22 The attacks have come from those who support a totally objective view of the world.23 Those who support a postmodernist view may be proponents of a moral position24 or holders of a position along a spectrum from the epistemological to the metaphysical impossibility of objectivity.25 The metaphysical is the more radical of the two since metaphysics by definition underpins epistemology but the two are inextricably linked. In one sense the world existed before humans came along and started to explain and interpret it. In another sense, from the moment when humans did start to do just that, there can be no reality “behind the cultural world.”26 The reason for this simple: we are a part of the world we are studying. If we consider String Theory, there may be eleven or even twelve strings and multiple (mem)branes in our universe, we may opt for M Theory or even F Theory27 but whatever theory ultimately achieves consensus, it will be a fact that we the observers are inside what we are observing. It cannot be otherwise for thinking inevitably transmutes what is thought.28 Quantum physicists who accept the Copenhagen interpretation acknowledge that they are part of the world they are studying and that they necessarily interfere with that world when they study it. Phenomenologists, following Husserl’s injunction to practise ‘bracketing’,29 which is an attempt to honestly lay aside any pretence to be studying some platonically ideal and objective existent, openly acknowledge that they are dealing with a phenomenon i.e. something as it appears.30 Despite some doubts to the contrary,31 ethnographers try to bracket their own opinions and to record the way a society views itself. Malinowski’s private diary, rather than being a source of shame, is actually an indicator of how successful he was in bracketing his own views.32 Doubtlessly he both affected the Trobrianders and was affected by them,33 but, like the quantum physicist, he attempted to portray reality fully aware of his own entanglement within it and thus the limitations of the attempt. Download 78.5 Kb. Share with your friends:
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