Series Title: Science for Use: In praise of the inexact, the inelegant, and the unassuming

The theme of these two talks is science for use: what demands should we expect scientific claims and concepts to fulfil when we want science not just to help us understand the world but to help us change it? As my title suggests, contrary to what is widely assumed, exactness is not the answer. The slogan for the talks comes from my late husband, Stuart Hampshire, who enjoined: Do not bring more exactitude / precision to a subject than it can bear – and, I add, than is useful. 

Lecture 2:   In defence of loose talk in science – so long as it is not detached

Abstract: This lecture argues related points about polysemous concepts and about the reports of study results.  Both are ambiguous and for both what matters is to manage the ambiguity – not eliminate it.

Polysemous concepts are congestions, consisting of many more concrete concepts stuffed in together; and they apply in virtue of different combinations of these in different domains (like ‘hardness’ in the natural sciences and in the human sciences, ‘poverty’, ‘anxiety’, ‘utility’). Why shouldn’t science get rid of these and in each domain use the more exact concept that picks out what is needed there? My defence of them is analogous to Eleonora Montuschi and Pierluigi Barrotta’s defense of the polysemous ‘objectivity’ – but of ‘objectivity to be found’. When we enjoin science to measure poverty in a given setting, we should not suppose that the scientific community already knows which features stuffed into this concept matter there.  We use the ambiguous concept ‘poverty’ to enjoin science to find this out.

Commentators at Large: Quayshawn Spencer and Carlos Santana