Implications Of Objectivity And Objectivity

Lorraine Datson and Peter Galison discuss pertinent issues concerned with objectivity in the modern world: how it is different from truth? Is it practically possible to acquire an objective view? What are the implications of seeking objectivity?

Objectivity is not equivalent to truth. Firstly, truth is absolute whereas objectivity is relative to object being objectified. In other words, truth is beyond the realm of corporeality but objectivity has to have some association with a material entity. Facts generated by objectivity may also define its converse, opinions i.e. the statement ‘person X has opinion Y’ is a fact but truth is only defined by and in terms of itself. Secondly, the domain of truth is infinite but facts may be attributed to

scientific experiments. Objectivity captures a finite set of information whereas truth cannot be precisely projected by finite resources. Google Maps, an abstractly objective way of identifying spatial reality, does not depict the real truth of nature: the actuality of space is far greater than that depicted by such maps. Actually, an infinite amount of information remains still un-captured as the difference between an infinite amount of total information and the finite amount of conveyed information is infinite.

Although the realm of objectivity is far lesser than that of truth, it is still unattainable. A crucial misconception in categorizing objectivity is that every reproducible process is considered objective. Similarities in different representations of a single object do not imply similarity of its representation with its objective reality: it is totally possible that none of these representations manifest its objective reality. Therefore, reproducibility is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for objectivity. A significant tool for objectivity is the sensory action, especially the act of observation. Observation is not a one-way phenomenon: it

In the medieval period, objectivity was the inverse of its modern definition: the self was thought of as objective, while the universe as subjective. This demonstrates that the pre-modern understanding of the world was self-centric and everything was apprehended as relative to one’s own self. A similar revolution, called the Copernican revolution, occurred in physics, which insinuated that the Sun, instead of the Earth, is the nucleus of the universe. It entailed the idea that the universe exists as it is; it is our conscious perception that is subject to change. A century later, this idea was incorporated in the denotation of objectivity, which encountered an 180o shift. This event of history provides an instance to Stenger’s principle of the ‘ecology of practices’ where one mode of knowledge aids in advancing another. The pursuing of objectivity has immensely dismantled human creativity. The reproducible nature of scientific objectivity has shattered the basis of necessity of imagination: imaginative thinking will not amend the so-called objective outcome. Walter Benjamin insists that the pre-modern practice of image-making, i.e. painting, possessed an ‘aura of the painter’. The advent of photography has taken away this aura from image-making: the degree of freedom to which