To quote from the article:
"Before (Niels) Bohr, scientists could imagine that they were taking the viewpoint of God, looking in on the universe from the outside, so to speak. The Alain Aspect experiment (in 1987)demonstrated that science does not possess such an omniscient perspective. We are always part of the processes we study.

There’s a great summary of the new situation in the book The Nonlocal Universe by Robert Nadeau and Menas Kafatos. They sum it up this way:

The philosophical postmodernists were correct in assuming that scientific knowledge exists in human subjective reality and wrong in assuming that this knowledge is not privileged in coordinating our experience with physical reality. Conversely, members of the scientific community were correct in assuming that the mathematical description of nature is privileged and wrong in assuming that this description exists in some sense prior to or outside of human consciousness.

In other words: the findings of science are privileged compared to rumor, myth and pseudo-science. But the activity of science does not show any features that are demonstrably different from other human activities, such as art, politics or business. Science is not just falsifiable experimentation. In fact studies of the cognitive processes used by scientists show no special system, no different quality to the activity itself, compared to anything else we do. (Of course this is controversial; papers supporting and attacking this position can be found in The Cognitive Basis of Science, (Carruthers, Stich and Siegel, eds.) There may be some feature to scientific thinking that’s unique; but we haven’t found it yet. It’s beginning to seem that the only consistently identifiable difference between scientific thinking and any other human discipline is its purpose.

In order to still be considered the second culture in the two-culture war, science has to demonstrate that it really is different (as a culture) from the humanities. Science’s results are distinct and unique; but science as an endeavor is not, except by virtue of the fact that it produces those results. The only way that scientists can continue to elevate themselves above other thinkers is through their special relationship with mathematics. Mathematics is still (so the story goes) a window to an objectively real world, and access to transcendent truth via math is ultimately what privileges the scientific mind.

At least, it looked that way, until cognitive science started to examine the nature of math..."

From there I segue into a discussion of Where Mathematics Comes From, a topic I've ranted about elsewhere. In any case, the point is that it's possible now to conceive of science as being just another thing we humans do, without at the same time abandoning the notion that its results are privileged compared to those of other human disciplines. I do not believe that this is the attitude of the so-called "Third Culture" thinkers, which is why I don't identify with them. Nor is it the attitude of most postmodern "cultural critics."

What I'm proposing may seem like a strange and contradictory way of thinking. It's actually quite straightforward. Let me quote again from my upcoming article:

"So how can science produce results that are special, without having any special features itself? My belief is that it can do this because science is more reliant on a particular form of distributed cognition than most other disciplines. Briefly put, distributed cognition happens when you replace mental activities with physical activities or with somebody else’s actions. (Examples: using a slide rule to calculate; asking a colleague for his data.) It is the use of scientific instruments to think with that distinguishes science from, eg. theological debate. A great book on this subject is Cognition in the Wild, by Edwin Hutchins, which is about ship navigation as a form of distributed cognition. If the instruments used by a scientist are seen as active participants in the scientist’s thought process, it becomes clear that they help to anchor that thinking to the real world. Hence, science is able to make true statements about the world and does not drift off into theoretical fantasy-land. But science is not alone in using distributed cognition."

This is the basic idea of what I call "embodied science", which is science without the whole metaphysical "pipeline to God" crap. I think most scientists just get on with business without thinking about such issues, but the problem comes when someone asks them to compare what they do to other disciplines; then they tend to revert to the old idea of science as a privileged activity. I'm proposing an alternative view that I think fits the 21st century a bit better.

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