Manuel Alberto Torres Núñez

Artes liberales en ciencias sociales

Profesor: Álvaro Corral Cuartas
Ciencia, progreso y justicia social

The social thing on scientific knowledge

On this chapter Values and Objectivity of Longino’s book, the main problem that I think
Longino is trying to say is that objectivity in scientific inquiry is a consequence of the
scientific inquiry being a social, instead of an individual enterprise. So, having said that, for
Longino, the scientific knowledge is the product of a consensus between the individual
subjects.
This consensus has to be with a critical point of view according to the experimental data
and hypothesis, this tow last ones has to be transformed through the conflict and integration
of people’s different contributions to scientific knowledge. And with this many
contributions we could probably have intersubjectivity for the search of an approximation
of the ‘’good science’’. This could be a method that is an approach to a transformative
criticism. But, in order to have real criticism, we need four important factors:

 Recognized avenues for criticism: this is the proper place to present the criticism:
forums, conferences, interviews, etc.
 Shared standards: this is the interactions with the different experience with the
world and how do we expand our knowledge
 Community response: the circles of inquiry has a responsibility to be able to handle
the response of the scientific community
 Equality of intellectual authority: all points of view that has important hypothesis to
say and analyzed are important, but only if it’s free of ideological dominance.
Thanks to this important factors, Longino, prove us that criticism can be responsible and
social. This method on my mind it’s very similar to Paulo Freire’s method, I know it’s very
different, but, my point it’s: in order to be able to create a proper way to investigate with a
very good hypothesis, we need to talk between the participants in the circle of inquiry. The
dialogue it’s so important because it could create not only good science, but important
reflections that could work as a first step to make good investigations, that could help us to
create solid social knowledge.

Referencias
Longino, H. (1985). Chapter Four. En H. Longino, Science as social knowledge (págs. 62-82). Princeton:
Princeton University.