PY Core Course 2009/10
PY - Autumn Term
Objectivity
In the first paragraph of his autobiography, Charles Darwin wrote: “I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my life.” It is a striking appeal to the idea and ideal of objectivity, which the great scientist wants to apply to his own life. For many, the principle of objectivity is what defines science, especially modern science, which strives to acquire knowledge that, as a recent book puts it, bears no trace of the knower. Can we know what things are in themselves, free of everything that belongs merely to us and our perception of them, of all our biases and distortions? It would seem to be the only knowledge worth striving for. In this core class, we try to understand what objectivity means, how the idea has been defended and attacked, and how it changed the world.
Objectivity has not only been a scientific idea, even if in science it is much less often combined with other ideas and goals. Great novelists and storytellers like Flaubert and Chekhov talked about their ambition to describe objectively and dispassionately, to create a narrative voice that remains detached from every character and every event. And painters and sculptors have struggled, above everything else, with the question of how much of their own personality should be expressed in their works.
The deliberate striving for objectivity in the arts however, itself indicates a tension between objective knowledge and aesthetic representation and experience. One might even say, as one famous scientist did, that the problem with objectivity is that it cannot capture what is most important for us: for instance, it cannot explain the beauty of a flower or why an old song will move us to tears. More generally, a scientific worldview is often presented as void of all aesthetic and moral value.
In the world of politics, many decisive questions are almost inevitably framed in terms of what is particular to one perspective and cannot provide a basis for state coercion and what is impartial, neutral, objective, and just. Here too critics of an ideal of objectivity will be less enthusiastic. Does objectivity disguise the exercise of personal power, presenting it as the rule of reality, anodyne and irresistible? Does it deliver us from democratic rule into the hands of “specialists without spirit and vision and voluptuaries without heart”? We all yearn for objectivity, but when we get it, or seem to get it, the feeling is that something terribly important has been lost. Darwin, after all, went on to add: “Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me.”
PY Core Syllabus Autumn Term 2009/10
PY - Winter Term
Objectivity and Self-Knowledge
To be objective is to aspire to knowledge that bears no trace of the knower – knowledge unmarked by prejudice or skill, fantasy or judgment, wishing or striving. Objectivity is blind sight: seeing without inference, interpretation or intelligence. Only in the nineteenth century did scientists begin to yearn for this blind sight… L. Daston and P. Galison, Objectivity, p. 17
If "objective knowledge” is knowledge that bears no trace of the knower, does it make any sense to speak of “objective self-knowledge”? Is there a meaningful kind of self-knowledge that is not objective self-knowledge? What if the impulse to objective knowledge were itself subjected to scrutiny? What is its psychological origin? What role should objectivity play in practical judgments and ordinary human actions? Should we consider our serious commitments and dearest loves in the light of objective scrutiny? Is it possible that “objectivity,” especially when brought to bear on oneself, is a distortion or an incomplete way of knowing?
PY Core Syllabus Winter Term 2009/10
PY - Spring Term
Objectivity
In the spring term the PY core will meet for only the first half of the semester so that the second half will be free for working on the individual PY projects. At this time of the year, the PY projects should be at a level were students are able to present their research programmes in some detail. The classes will be structured around student presentations of their projects where the task will be to clearly present their work and to defend their research in terms of their chosen methodology. The guiding theme of this semester will be the role of methodology in academic research. Particular attention will be given to questions regarding the advantages (and disadvantages) of the interdisciplinary approach. PY project supervisors are invited to attend when their students are presenting.
PY Core Syllabus Spring Term 2009/10
