ttpphd, 1 month ago Scientific knowledge is a public resource for action and for belief. ROM HARRÉ Scientific knowledge is a public resource for action and for belief. To publish abroad a discovery couched in the rhetoric of science is to let it be known that the presumed fact can safely be used in debate, in practical projects, and so on. Knowledge claims are tacitly prefixed with a performative of trust. Interpreted within the moral order of the scientific community ‘I know...” means something like “You can trust me that...”, “You have my word for it’. If what one claims to know turns out to be spurious then on this reading one has committed a moral fault. One has let down those who trusted one. As an ethnomethodologist might put it, trustworthy knowledge is what is ‘true for all practical purposes’. But the moral force of performatives of trust would be undermined if results were presented in this candid way.
Scientific knowledge is a public resource for action and for belief.
ROM HARRÉ
Scientific knowledge is a public resource for action and for belief. To publish abroad a discovery couched in the rhetoric of science is to let it be known that the presumed fact can safely be used in debate, in practical projects, and so on. Knowledge claims are tacitly prefixed with a performative of trust. Interpreted within the moral order of the scientific community ‘I know...” means something like “You can trust me that...”, “You have my word for it’. If what one claims to know turns out to be spurious then on this reading one has committed a moral fault. One has let down those who trusted one. As an ethnomethodologist might put it, trustworthy knowledge is what is ‘true for all practical purposes’. But the moral force of performatives of trust would be undermined if results were presented in this candid way.