Yo, Curt--

I'm not defending the Frenchman, but his basic thesis says that all scientific inquiry is colored, in the most global way, by both the field and the researchers.

Fair enough, Bob.

First spiritual rule: We first have to deal with our resistance to the truth before much of any progress can be maid.

What does this mean? It means that there are various layers to work through, and the first one is the psychological/ego layer (a never ending process). The ego personality wants only to be right, and to "discover" answers, by way of facts and figures, that confirm what is already believed to be true. The last thing "we" want to discover is something new that will disrupt our conviction that we are correct in what we belive, or feel is true. This conditioned mindset blocks anything new coming in. So first you work on the cognitive blocks, which often have robust emotional and sensate components.

There are very refined methods to do this. A major part of the adventure is to find the method that works best with your particular personality structure. All methods are not the right methods for a given person. You have to have the right tool.

JL

One of those methods is called "science".

Actually, I think the initial premise of Lyotard is too broad. Sometimes science can involve story telling--and sometimes it does not. For example, many problems in physics don't leave much wiggle room for storytelling. My experiment to confirm or refute a given hypothesis is going to yield exactly the same result as your experiment--even if our belief systems are quite different.

As we get farther away from the hard sciences, however--from physics to chemistry to biology to the "soft" sciences, there is increasing room for personal bias and opinion to enter the area of investigation. The less we are able to reduce any scientific phenomenon to a "particle-in-a-box" and only view the effect of a single controlled and measured variable, the more possible explanations there are for any observed outcome.

Curt