[MD] What is SOM?

[MarshaV]

Greetings Bo,

"The evidence for the nineteenth-century novelty of scientific objectivity 
starts with the word itself.  The word "objectivity" has a somersault 
history.  Its cognates in European languages derive from the Latin adverbial 
or adjectival form *obiectivus/obiective*, introduced by fourteenth-centruy 
scholastic philosophers such as Duns Scotus and William of Ockham.  (Tthe 
substantive form doesn not emerge until ;much later, around the turn of the 
nineteenth century.)  From the very beginning, it was always paired with 
*subietivus/subiective*, but the terms originally meant almost precisely the 
opposite of what they mean today.  "Objective" referred to things as they 
are presented to consciousness, whereas "subjective" referred to things in 
themselves.  One can still find traces of this scholastic usage in those 
passages of the 'Meditationes de prima philosophia (Meditations on First 
Philosophy, 1641) where Rene Descartes contras the "formal reality" of our 
ideas (that is whether they correspond to anythng in the expternal world) 
with their "objective reality" (that is, the degree of reality they enjoy by 
firtue of their clarity and distinctness, regardless of whether they exist 
in material form).  Even eighteenth-century dictionaries still preserved 
echoes of this medieval usage, which rings so bizarrely in modern ears: 
"Hence a thing is said to exist OBJECTIVELY, objective, when it exists no 
otherwise than in being known; or in being a Object of the Mind."" (Lorraine 
Daston & Peter Galison, 'Objectivity', Zone Books, October 31, 2007, P.29)


What exactly is SOM?  Do you think it has an essence?  Seems to be it's 
_evolved_ over the past 2000 years?  Evolved.  Meaning different things at 
what points in its evolution?  What are you arguing for/against?  You cannot 
mean the conventional view because there has always been quite a difference 
between the philosophers/scientific pov and the laypersons pov.  The SOL 
seems to dissolve when you understand that s/o has been a moving target.

Marsha