Rigorous methods reveal narrower slices of reality

Evidence

One does not have to rehearse the well-known phenomenological and ethnomethodological critiques of official records and tables to see in Lippmann the classic fallacy of the Cartesian tradition, to wit: the belief that metaphors of vision, correspondence, mapping, picturing, and representation that apply to small routine assertions (the rose is red; the Cubs lost 7–5; IBM is selling at 67 1/2) will apply equally to large debatable ones. Numbers may picture the stock market, but they will not tell you what is going on in Central America or, alas, what we should do about Eastern Europe. — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 359 (#expands, via linked claim)

There is always one reality and we cannot grasp it scientifically in its immediacy and wholeness but must consider it from a number of different viewpoints and thereby make it into a plurality of mutually independent scientific subject matters. This applies, too, to those psychological phenomena whose contents fail to combine into an autonomous spatial world and which are not strikingly set apart from their psychic reality. Language, for instance, is certainly constructed out of psychological forces and for psychological purposes. But its forms and laws are treated by the science of linguistics with complete neglect of the realization (a realization which alone is given) that this is the object; they are treated exclusively through the presentation and analysis of the construction of the content and the forms that result from it. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 207 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Science justifies methods by success while ignoring domains where intersubjective certainty fails; One reality supports many independent scientific viewpoints of it — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 207; Cartesian metaphors valid for small facts fail on big contested ones — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 359 (+4 more)

Related

• Representation metaphors suited to small assertions fail on large debatable ones (similarity 0.87)
• Cartesian metaphors valid for small facts fail on big contested ones (similarity 0.84)
• One reality supports many independent scientific viewpoints of it (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Science justifies methods by success while ignoring domains where intersubjective certainty fails #expands (0.60)
• Cartesian metaphors valid for small facts fail on big contested ones #expands (0.55) — James W. Carey, Communication as Culture- Essays on…, 359
• One reality supports many independent scientific viewpoints of it #expands (0.50) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 207