I have been neglecting my posting responsibilities. Essays will be uploaded soon -- after Mr Cheong returns them -- and since one goes into the maw of the teachers' lair every week, there'll probably be something new once in a while.
In the meantime, here's a teaser:
The Hawthorne experiments and the Uncertainty Principle demonstrate that we can never hope to know the world as it really is only in the context of pure scientific inquiry. For example, for the Uncertainty Principle, this 'world as it really is' exists only if 'know' refers to objective, calculable truth down to the smallest unit of existence. While in the passage it has been admitted that you can only know either the velocity (edit: momentum) or the position of a very small particle but not both, one can predict trends by discovering the velocity and the propensity of these particles in terms of positioning separately, but under as similar conditions as possible, and from there create a view of the world which will probably be close to what 'it really is'. So there is hope that we can 'kknow the world as it really is', especially if -- with new technology being invented by the year -- a way is eventually discovered to circumvent the Uncertainty Principle and allow both the position and the velocity of a very small object to be found at one time.
This case is similar for the Hawthorne experiments, in which the results are affected because the workers, with their personal goals and agendas, were aware of being scrutinised and so would attempt to warp the results in their favour by, perhaps, giving proof of their hard work. This trend is easily circumvented as well simply by not letting the workers know about their being observed: for example, a spy could be planted in their midst, or secret cameras installed. In short, in observing the psychological or social world, making observations that are not contaminated by the observed's activities and choices is achievable merely by ensuring that the subject observed is not aware of being observed in the first place.
At this point in time it can be agreed upon that while the Hawthorne experiments and the Uncertainty Principle demonstrate only the problems that one runs into when looking to 'know' the world as it 'really is', with such obstacles potentially solvable through the invention and the use of future or higher levels of technology -- the suggestion of using secret cameras in place of manual supervision to observe the workers in the Hawthorne experiments to aboid disturbing the workers' normal sensibilities is one such. In short, there is still hope. However, while these conundrums posed by the Hawthorne experiments and the Uncertainty Principle do appear solvable, there remains the question of the problem of defining a unit. Both the Hawthorne experiments and the Uncertainty Principle represent or concern microcosms of what the layman would define as the 'real world', what the essay terms as the 'macroscopic world of matter', the Newtonian mechanics to our atomic science. To show the contrast, even the passage admits readily that the macroscopic world is easily, if I may take liberties with the word, 'solved' -- both the position and the momentum of a body are easily calculable, for one. The problems arise when one attempts to go deeper into each smaller unit (especially comparative to the human's average size or perception), where even the most minute of errors are infinitely magnified. Given that human nature by its very definition is errornous, the 'world as it really is' becomes yet more precarious the deeper we decide to plunge. Also, given that we would continue to discover infinitely small divisions of particles (the atom was conceptualised before Anno Domini as the smallest possible unit of matter, but then as yet more powerful microscopes were invented, electrons were discovered, and then quarks, and so on -- as, logically, something has to be made of something else), completely precise knowledge of the world from this perspective becomes progressively more difficult to find.
It is simliar for the Hawthorne experiments (if one considers the purpose not to be for the original intent of finding the ideal factory conditions, but for predicting human behaviour). This study concerns the difficulty of studying behavorial patterns objectively, but let us assume that they would want to go deeper; the scientists may decide that they wanted to know the rain processes of a human functioning in otherwise normal circumstances, for example. To do that they might have to attach patches to the subject's body. But the fact that knowing these patches are there may cause heightened anxiety or may actually directly affect the workings of the neurons in the brain, which further corrupts the data collected -- compared to the simple, distant observation of increased productivity under human monitoring in the Hawthorne experiments themselves. And so on, ad infinitum (edit: ad nauseum?). As the scientists probe deeper, perhaps even beyond cranial processes to interfering with electrical impulses and synapse transmissions in their search for what makes people tick, the possibilities for error become yet more and more enormous. The problem with finding ultimate knowledge about the world is in that with infinitely divisible units, it is impossible -- partly because they are so small, and partly because the room for error is so great.
But here is a counter-example. Supposing that even time has infinitely divisible units. And yet, the smaller the unit, the less room there is for error: instead of a series of events which appens for an extremely quick duration and is gone in a flash, a very small sliver of a unit of time -- magnified to present a significant duration for the purposes of study, of course -- will display a world that is almost immobile, perfect, well-nigh unaffectable (for even if something moves very fast, its velocity eventually approaches something very near to -- but not quite -- nil with each progressively smaller unit of time). This is on the surface in complete opposition to the earlier example of the divisibility of units in matter and the psychological sea. However, all three examples are similar in that they present an extremely warped view of the world that is not representative of what, as far as peoplea re concerned especially in their daily lives, the world "really is". Deducing the goal of achieving knowledge of the world is thus proved not to be logically possible with going into increasingly smaller and less relevant microcosms of what is usually experienced, most importantly at the first level of perception (the senses -- after all, one cannot see an atom), and next at the palteau of the question of reality (as scientific proof is well-nigh worthless in providing surety of even the existence of the world, especially against solipcism.)
In conclusion, the Hawthorne experiments and the Uncertainty Principle demonstrate that we can enver hope to know the world as it really is at the scientific level, and in that it does not answer the question of the existence of reality at all. However, it is also invalid because it does not appeal to our every (sensory or psychological) perception of knowledge of the world and, following the 'infinitely divisible unit' argument, presents an innacurate picture to the 'world as it is'. The 'infinitely divisible unit' argument is particularly controversial, however, because even as it advocates the invalidity of the Hawthorne experimetnts and the Uncertainty Principle by proving them inaccurate, it also concedes that one can never pin down the subtlelities of the world 'as it really is' in the scientific, micromolecular context. Therefore the Hawthorne experiments and the Uncertainty Principle demonstrate that we can never hope to know the world as it really is to the extent that the 'world as it really is' has to be first defined as that of the material, macroscopic world in which our perceptions exist; reality itself; or in the scientific concept, where the answer to everything (edit: anything) can be found in units and particles.
This was my mid-year paper. You can tell from the overly flowery language that I was getting quite high on adrenaline by the end. ('Psychological sea!' Whatever was I thinking)
If you read this, please counter-argue or otherwise comment, and I shall be a happy girl.
