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Does it matter if our acquisition of knowledge happens in “bubbles” where…
- Does it matter if our acquisition of knowledge happens in “bubbles” where some information and voices are excluded? Discuss with reference to two areas of knowledge.
The phrase 'does it matter' in the question asks us to explore whether or not there are any ethicality issues in acquiring knowledge from "bubbles"
Acquisition: Can include both the production where we would be able to acquire the knowledge once it is produced or just solely the acquiring of knowledge which can be from others within the "bubble"
Bubbles: Secluded and shut off communities that share common characteristics or values
- On multiple basis such as gender, race, political belief, social class
- Could be due to geographical or medium barriers such as different places or different social media platform
- As a metaphor, although bubbles are closed off, it is also translucent and is able to merge with other bubbles thus it can be considered for human bubbles as well
How big is the bubble actually is?
- Do bubbles actually exist when humans all share the same intrinsic nature of being 'human'
- Those belonging in a bubble may belong in other bubbles and also belong in the larger 'human' bubble. Thus, there are still exchanges of information and voices which may allow some of the knowledge to seep into other bubbles
- The issue of ethicality is non-existent
= In the natural sciences, bubbles are more likely to exist within the professional world where outsiders who do no specialize in the subject are involuntarily excluded from the knowledge and those who do specialize in the subject but do not share the same characteristics such as race/gender/social class or the same values such as the willingness to disbelieve preconceived knowledge are voluntarily excluded from those inside the bubble
= In the past, bubbles are much more significant due to the lack of equality and limited globalization or connection between different societies
Natural sciences
- Percy Lavon Julian being denied due to his race
- Mary Anning's works being ignored and sometimes stolen due to her gender
- Ludwig Boltzmann vs positivists
- He received an Austin Fellowship in Chemistry, which allowed him to attend Harvard University to obtain his M.S. However, worried that white students would resent being taught by an African American, Harvard withdrew Julian's teaching assistantship, making it impossible for him to complete his Ph.D. there.
- They had written him, “I’ll take your Mr. —, but I’d advise you to discourage your bright colored lad. We couldn’t get him a job when he’s done, and it’ll only mean frustration. In industry, research demands co-work, and white boys would so sabotage his work that an industrial research leader would go crazy! And, of course, we couldn’t find him a job as a teacher in a white university. Why don’t you find him a teaching job in a Negro college in the South? He doesn’t need a Ph.D. for that!”
- Europe gave him freedom from the racial prejudices that had stifled him in the States.
- Bubble: White-dominated academic circles in America and Europe
- Information and voices: Julian's potential discoveries in chemistry (eg. he went on to lay the foundation for the steroid drug industry's production of cortisone, other corticosteroids, and birth control pills)
- Ethicality: Unethical because the white academics reject Julian's possible contributions based on his race even though it has no impact on his abilities and knowledge
- As a woman, she was not eligible to join the Geological Society of London. However, her friend, geologist Henry De la Beche, who painted Duria Antiquior, the first widely circulated pictorial representation of a scene from prehistoric life derived from fossil reconstructions, based it largely on fossils Anning had found and sold prints of it for her benefit.
- Anning became well known in geological circles in Britain, Europe, and America, and was consulted on issues of anatomy as well as fossil collecting
- The gentlemen geologists who published the scientific descriptions of the specimens she found often neglects to mention Anning's name. Anna Pinney, a young woman who sometimes accompanied Anning while she collected, wrote: "She says the world has used her ill ... these men of learning have sucked her brains, and made a great deal of publishing works, of which she furnished the contents, while she derived none of the advantages." Anning herself wrote in a letter: "The world has used me so unkindly, I fear it has made me suspicious of everyone".
- The fossils she found provided important support for a controversial suggestion of Cuvier's: that there had been an "age of reptiles" when reptiles rather than mammals had been the dominant form of animal life.
- Bubble: Male-dominated geological circles
- Information and voices: Fossil discoveries and research
- Ethicality: Unethical because alienating Anning due to her gender even though her gender does not affect her talents caused her to become more cautious of sharing knowledge
- Boltzmann challenged the foundations of his field, proposing to accept that not everything can be defined and calculated with certainty (positivism), but some aspects can only be approximated with a certain probability. Boltzmann’s idea that matter, and all complex things were subject to entropy and probability (kinetic theory), triggered an immense shift in the world of physics, but not without great resistance among colleagues, including Wilhelm Ostwald and Ernst Mach, two of his greatest opponents.
- Criticisms of kinetic theory in this period were motivated by a general philosophical preference for empirical or phenomenological theories (positivism), as opposed to atomic models. The leaders of this reaction, in the physical sciences, were Ernst Mach. Wilhelm Ostwald, Pierre Duhem, and Georg Helm. Mach recognized that atomic hypotheses could be useful in science but insisted, even as late as 1912, that atoms must not be considered to have a real existence. Ostwald, Duhem, and Helm, on the other hand, wanted to replace atomic theories by “energetics” (a generalized thermodynamics); they denied that kinetic theories had any value at all, even as hypotheses.
- Positivism was strongly believed to be the correct scientific approach — proof requires underlying observable evidence, something ‘given’, or — in the words of one of Boltzmann’s main opponents, the positivist Ernst Mach: “Atoms? Have you seen one yet?”
- Bubble: Positivists
- Information and voices: Discoveries in kinetic theory
- Ethicality: Unethical because the refusal of knowledge based on philosophy and perspectives whereby the other party may be right occasionally halts scientific development
History
- Japan's teaching of their colonialism past
- Researchers disregarding indigenous people's knowledge
- Japanese people often fail to understand why neighbouring countries harbour a grudge over events that happened in the 1930s and 40s.
- Rape of Nanjing: The Chinese say 300,000 were killed and many women were gang-raped by the Japanese soldiers, but some in Japan deny the incident altogether.
- Comfort women: Fujioka believes they were paid prostitutes. But Japan's neighbours, such as South Korea and Taiwan, say they were forced to work as sex slaves for the Japanese army.
- By the late 1990s the most common Japanese schoolbooks contained references to, for instance, the Nanjing Massacre, Unit 731, and the comfort women of World War II, all historical issues which have faced challenges from ultranationalists in the past. The most recent of the controversial textbooks, the New History Textbook, published in 2000, which significantly downplays Japanese aggression, was shunned by nearly all of Japan's school districts. (The beginning of the integration of bubbles)
- Bubble: Geographical
- Information and voices: Historical perspectives and interpretation
- Ethicality: Unethical because Japan not accepting the viewpoints of the colonised countries may stretch to other issues as well, thus resulting in international conflict
- In the past two decades, archaeologists and environmental scientists working in coastal British Columbia have come to recognize evidence of mariculture — the intentional management of marine resources — that pre-dates European settlement. Over the course of thousands of years, the ancestors of the Kwakwaka'wakw and other Indigenous groups there created and maintained what have become known as “clam gardens” — rock-walled, terrace-like constructions that provide ideal habit for butter clams and other edible shellfish. Published research studies prove that Indigenous communities knew about mariculture for generations but Western scientists never asked them about it before.
- There are significant differences between Lakota and Cheyenne accounts of what transpired at the Battle of Greasy Grass (Little Big Horn) in 1876, and the historical accounts that appeared soon after the battle by white commentators. The Lakota and Cheyenne can be considered more objective than white accounts of the battle that are tainted by Eurocentric bias. The ledger drawings of Red Horse, a Minneconjou Sioux participant in the battle, record precise details such as trooper’s uniforms, the location of wounds on horses, and the distribution of Indian and white casualties. In 1984, a fire at the battleground revealed military artifacts and human remains that prompted archaeological excavations. What this work revealed was a new, more accurate history of the battle that validated many elements of the Native American oral histories and accompanying pictographs and drawings of the events.
- While some actions leave no physical evidence, and some experiments can’t be replicated, in the case of Indigenous knowledge, the absence of “empirical evidence” can be damning in terms of wider acceptance. In contrast to Western knowledge, which tends to be text based, reductionist, hierarchical and dependent on categorization (putting things into categories), Indigenous science does not strive for a universal set of explanations but is particularistic in orientation and often contextual.
- Bubble: Western scientists and historians
- Information and voices: Mariculture and historical accounts
- Ethicality: Unethical because Westerners not even considering indigenous knowledge may make the process of acquiring knowledge even longer when it doesn't have to
Excluded: Does not exist within the bubble, whether voluntarily or involuntarily ie. the information and voices are from those outside the bubble
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Subjective or objective knowledge?
- Subjective knowledge would not matter as much because it aligns with the nature of bubbles being decided based on the same characteristics or values. So, it is natural that they would arrive at the same knowledge
- Objective knowledge is much more significant because the gatekeeping of this knowledge could lead to false knowledge persisting, limited development in the acquisition of knowledge and the prevention of other bubbles from benefiting from the knowledge (all ethicality issues)
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Information and voices from outside the bubble could contribute to the acquisition of knowledge in terms of changing the existing knowledge inside the bubble or adding on to it. When those outside the bubble are excluded, there is an ethical issue whereby they could feel discouraged or angered while those within the bubble suffer from having less knowledge or false knowledge