Barry Brumment- Person of Interest...-ish

   In his subsection "Science and the direct observation of nature" of Part II, Brummett makes some rather interesting claims about science and the scientific method.  Up until this point, we could refute that truth is relative because we wouldn't have scientific truths or facts without there being absolute truth.  Brummett claims that "reason and the scientific method, or any method whatsoever, will impede the direct observation of any objective reality.  Therefore, no science can possibly directly observe absolute nature."  The reason that it can't directly observe nature is that we observe the nature through a lens of theory which influences our ways of observing.  The scientific facts and laws of nature that are, in our minds, supposed to exist outside of our observing them, but these laws are only representations of our observations, according to Toulmin (who Brummett quotes often).  Whenever we try to reduce nature to controlled experiments, we manipulate.  Between the manipulations and theories, we observe with bias which is the exact opposite of what the scientific method tries to accomplish.  The sort of detachment the methods require are also unattainable.  "What the observer observes is the observed affected by the observation, which affects the observer's act of observing." 

As an example, in the TV show Person of Interest, Finch observes people through the security cameras and microphones and uses a machine to determine who is going to be or going to start trouble.  

Finch is not detached from his observations because he wants to prevent crimes from happening.  As I've only seen two or three episodes I can't tell you or even guess as to what Finch's motivation for this sort of observation is, but we do know that Finch is willing to put his life on the line to continue his observations.  This makes him biased.  This is why in one (actually probably more than one) episode Finch and Reese mess up or think they mess up in their assumption that one person is going to start the trouble, when actually the computer has deemed that person a victim.

The security cameras themselves are the kind of detached observation the scientific method calls for.  But cameras don't change the world or decide truths.  And because security cameras are so prevalent in our society, we lived a panopticized life (the observed being affected by the observation).  Finch's machine decides who is about to be in trouble, but it can only do that by applying the rules Finch created for it (which are rules of marking behaviors of the panopticized).

This in a way goes back to Nietzsche and the issues between nature and the representations of nature.  If science says that trees are made of wood and leaves, it is only because society has agreed that the substances that make up a tree are that which we call wood and leaves.  These wood and leaves then have the shape and texture that they do because we share the same perception of it.  For all we know, the tree could be made of thousands of crystals or flames that our senses perceive as wood and leaves because our senses cannot perceive them in any other way.

This then suggests that ALL truth is relative.