On Science, Academia, and Knowledge

A while ago I was talking to an acquaintance about why it is important to consider racial differences when conducting certain social studies. I don’t remember what we were discussing exactly, but at some point I mentioned that it was impossible to get objective results, or “facts”, about people and society, simply because our social environment is in constant change. To this, my interlocutor responded that if sociologists are unable to reach discrete truths, then it must be that Sociology is not a scientific field.

Although that wasn’t the first time I’d heard something like this, our conversation got me thinking about what it is that people consider to be science. Moreover, it felt to me that by disregarding a field as scientific meant that its knowledge was automatically of less value than that of other fields. I, personally, and for quite obvious reasons disagree with this view, but I’d like to share a bit of why that is the case.

Defining “Science”

In The Process of Social Research the authors talk about how many people do not necessarily associate the social sciences with words like “science” or “scientist”. Instead, they often imagine a person wearing a lab coat performing chemical experiments or something of the like. This is a common misconception, but the truth is that, for a field to be considered “scientific”, all it means is that research in that field employs the scientific method: it is based on “systematic and verifiable observations”, it’s testable, and has a falsifiable hypothesis (that is, other people are able to reproduce our study and provide evidence to counter the hypothesis).

The Limitations of Science

While I’m somewhat used to people discrediting work done in the field of Sociology (a social science that happens to be my major), and I now don’t really care about it, I find it both extremely interesting and dangerous that the argument of “not really science” is used to discredit particular types of knowledge. Now I’m not only talking about academic endeavors, but also about information gathered from personal experience. To me, there seems to be an overt reliance on what is generally considered science, and an underestimation on forms of knowledge that are obtained outside academic settings.

This is a dangerous mindset because it ends up discrediting information obtained through methods that are just as valid as the scientific one, like testimonials. Further, trusting science too much can be troublesome, as it has shown several times to not be necessarily unbiased and objective; many forms of oppression in the West and elsewhere have been perpetuated and justified under the premise of being “natural”. Moreover, our interpretation of scientific findings is constrained and influenced by our sociocultural context. Alok Vaid-Menon puts it clearly in their book Beyond the Gender Binary : “Scientific knowledge is not fixed -it shifts as cultural prejudice is revealed and challenged. Oftentimes we associate scientific knowledge with knowledge itself, dismissing everything else as just opinion”. Here, in discussing the arguments commonly used to discredit diverse forms of gender expression, they say that one of the ways in which Western society produces and reinforces the gender binary is by exaggerating findings based on unreliable evidence that has been debunked and condemned by professionals.

Knowledge from Experience

What I want to convey is not that we should ignore what scientists say, but that we should be both open and critical of different methods for producing knowledge. In reality, fields that seek to understand human and social issues from a scientific perspective are valid forms of understanding phenomena, as are non-academic methods, like lived experiences. This is particularly true when such testimonials come from people who have been historically silenced, where their knowledge allows us to look at the micro-processes that shape social life, and by providing a valuable, personal perspective that is not often seen in academic research, they help us understand larger issues.

Knowledge can take different forms, including blog posts or infographics, and even when discussing the same topics, people’s personal experiences allow them to describe things from a unique perspective. A good example of this is Ainhoa Suarez’s book Yo soy la Otra , a collection of testimonials from women writers in Mexico, each describing their experiences and thoughts about the industry in their country. I really enjoyed reading this book because, although we might have access to quantitative data on the number of women writers in Mexico, for example, it is a completely different thing to learn directly from them their experiences and thoughts on what their profession and cultural environment entails. Pensar lo doméstico is another great example. In this online space, people, especially women, share readings, experiences, feelings, and ideas about domestic work, and also explore their relationship with it.

Closing Thoughts

Writing this post took me well over a year. I could never finish it because whenever I read it, it felt incomplete; At times I felt like I was writing it to justify the knowledge I’ve acquired and the one I have to offer. I also felt like I was trying to defend myself from the discreditation my work has sometimes been subject to. After editing this text way too many times, I have a clearer view of what my intention is: While I’m aware that I cannot change people’s beliefs or feelings about certain forms of producing knowledge, I want for us to remain open to the ideas of people who write from personal experience, outside of conventional learning settings, and to remain skeptical about what we consider “science”. While the scientific method may provide an organized form of investigating diverse phenomena, it is not foolproof, nor is it the only way to understand the world, and by no means is it the path to a universal, objective “truth”. It is a means to learn and better understand our surroundings, as is making connections and living life.

Originally published at https://acsanchezr-blog.blogspot.com on March 10, 2022.