I shouldn’t have left my previous statement without any elaboration — that was a pretty inflammatory comment to make and I apologise.
When I say “gravity is a social construct”, part of what I’m getting at is that the natural world is distinct from scientific knowledge we create when attempting to model the natural world, and that our scientific knowledge is, by necessity, socially mediated.
I like gravity as an example of this because of how fundamental it is: even animals have some level of intuitive understanding of gravity — they don’t need to understand what parabolic motion is to be able to demonstrate it when they jump over things.
But also, our understanding of gravity has vastly changed over the years. In the 1800s, astronomers had measured Mercury’s orbit so precisely that they found it to be inconsistent with what Newton’s Law of Universal Gravity would predict, so they figured there had to be another planet closer to the Sun. Turns out there wasn’t though, and it was only after Einstein’s theory of relativity that Mercury’s weird orbit could be explained.
They had good reason to guess that another planet was responsible for Mercury’s orbit though, because the same guy who made that guess (a French astronomer, Urbain le Verrier) had actually predicted the existence of Neptune just a few years earlier; he had used Newtonian gravity to analyse the orbit of Uranus and found that it was slightly off from what observers had been measuring, and deduced that there must be another planet that nobody had seen yet that was causing these perturbations.
These two examples show two different ways that we can respond to experimental observations not matching with our theoretical understanding: sometimes it’s productive to assume our current theory is correct and that our observations are wrong or insufficient in some way, and sometimes we fix the disparity between what we see and what we know by amending our theories, like we did when we learned the limits of Newtonian gravity. Choosing which hypothesis to investigate is how science (and scientific knowledge) is socially constructed.
Disclaimer: I’m a biochemist, not an astrophysicist, so talking about gravity isn’t my primary domain. Many of these ideas are articulated far better in this video essay by Dr Fatima (and I suspect some of my phrasing is subconsciously borrowed from this video — this is bad citation practice on my part)
Social constructivism applied to science argues that an objective, observer-independent reality doesn’t exist, (or that if it does, it’s not accessible by humans, which is functionally the same thing). Under that framework, then whenever we talk about gravity, we’re not talking about some objective truth, but our attempts to model what we perceive as an objective truth. Hell, the only way we’re able to have this conversation at all is because I wrote “gravity is a social construct” and you understood what I was referencing enough to disagree.
Regardless of what we call them, or how we understand them, the laws of physics nevertheless apply – as you eluded to in your example of animals being subject to gravity, despite their understanding of it.
This is not true of race or gender. They exist exclusively as categorizations and narratives within our collective set of definitions and understandings. They do not exist outside of human culture.
So at best what you’re saying is that our understanding of gravity is the result of a social construct. Which is just needlessly pedantic.
But since that’s apparently what we’re doing then your statement is still incorrect. It should be:
Not in the definition; usage is not the definition:
Usage of Race
Sense 1a of this entry describes the word race as it is most frequently used: to refer to the various groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits, these traits being regarded as common among people of a shared ancestry. This use of race dates to the late 18th century, and was for many years applied in scientific fields such as physical anthropology, with race differentiation being based on such qualities as skin color, hair form, head shape, and particular sets of cranial dimensions. Advances in the field of genetics in the late 20th century determined no biological basis for races in this sense of the word, as all humans alive today share 99.99% of their genetic material. For this reason, the concept of distinct human races today has little scientific standing, and is instead understood as primarily a sociological designation, identifying a group sharing some outward physical characteristics and some commonalities of culture and history.
I simply just didn’t think of it. I also said “Gotcha.” to the other dude, acknowledging their side is (from what I can see and understand) is right. I rest my case. I’ll edit my messages too.
If my brother has red hair and is 6 feet, and I have brown hair, and am 5 feet, we would still be the same race, so no, there’s no correlation to race there, nor is it important to note. Because race is a social construct.
“Real” in that they are just a social contstuct, like race.
Gravity is a social construct
Gravity Is A Social Construct, And That’s Ok YT
Edit: I see you’ve already linked the video downthread.
Mmm nope. It’s a fundamental force.
I shouldn’t have left my previous statement without any elaboration — that was a pretty inflammatory comment to make and I apologise.
When I say “gravity is a social construct”, part of what I’m getting at is that the natural world is distinct from scientific knowledge we create when attempting to model the natural world, and that our scientific knowledge is, by necessity, socially mediated.
I like gravity as an example of this because of how fundamental it is: even animals have some level of intuitive understanding of gravity — they don’t need to understand what parabolic motion is to be able to demonstrate it when they jump over things.
But also, our understanding of gravity has vastly changed over the years. In the 1800s, astronomers had measured Mercury’s orbit so precisely that they found it to be inconsistent with what Newton’s Law of Universal Gravity would predict, so they figured there had to be another planet closer to the Sun. Turns out there wasn’t though, and it was only after Einstein’s theory of relativity that Mercury’s weird orbit could be explained.
They had good reason to guess that another planet was responsible for Mercury’s orbit though, because the same guy who made that guess (a French astronomer, Urbain le Verrier) had actually predicted the existence of Neptune just a few years earlier; he had used Newtonian gravity to analyse the orbit of Uranus and found that it was slightly off from what observers had been measuring, and deduced that there must be another planet that nobody had seen yet that was causing these perturbations.
These two examples show two different ways that we can respond to experimental observations not matching with our theoretical understanding: sometimes it’s productive to assume our current theory is correct and that our observations are wrong or insufficient in some way, and sometimes we fix the disparity between what we see and what we know by amending our theories, like we did when we learned the limits of Newtonian gravity. Choosing which hypothesis to investigate is how science (and scientific knowledge) is socially constructed.
Disclaimer: I’m a biochemist, not an astrophysicist, so talking about gravity isn’t my primary domain. Many of these ideas are articulated far better in this video essay by Dr Fatima (and I suspect some of my phrasing is subconsciously borrowed from this video — this is bad citation practice on my part)
Neat, but none of that makes gravity a social construct. Race and gender are.
What is your understanding of a social construct? I wanna make sure we’re on the same page about definitions
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism
Social constructivism applied to science argues that an objective, observer-independent reality doesn’t exist, (or that if it does, it’s not accessible by humans, which is functionally the same thing). Under that framework, then whenever we talk about gravity, we’re not talking about some objective truth, but our attempts to model what we perceive as an objective truth. Hell, the only way we’re able to have this conversation at all is because I wrote “gravity is a social construct” and you understood what I was referencing enough to disagree.
Regardless of what we call them, or how we understand them, the laws of physics nevertheless apply – as you eluded to in your example of animals being subject to gravity, despite their understanding of it.
This is not true of race or gender. They exist exclusively as categorizations and narratives within our collective set of definitions and understandings. They do not exist outside of human culture.
So at best what you’re saying is that our understanding of gravity is the result of a social construct. Which is just needlessly pedantic.
But since that’s apparently what we’re doing then your statement is still incorrect. It should be:
Race is skin color and the region of where someone was born or inherited traits passed down through children.
Merriam-Webster doesn’t mention skin color.
It does. " because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin …"
It’s been a long time since I’ve read the definition of “race”, but it is at the very least heavily correlated with skin color.
Discrimination against someone by their skin color isn’t called “racism” for nothing.
Not in the definition; usage is not the definition:
It’s always helpful to learn.
All of which is entirely arbitrary. Why didn’t you include hair color, or eye color, or height?
I simply just didn’t think of it. I also said “Gotcha.” to the other dude, acknowledging their side is (from what I can see and understand) is right. I rest my case. I’ll edit my messages too.
Nobody would consider hair color, eye color, or height among people with the same skin color as part of their “race” – that’s the point I was making.
Fair enough. They still have some correlation though, important to note that.
If my brother has red hair and is 6 feet, and I have brown hair, and am 5 feet, we would still be the same race, so no, there’s no correlation to race there, nor is it important to note. Because race is a social construct.