All About Perspective

A couple of common themes among all of these readings (& one recording) is the perspective of certain cultures’ ideas about different methods and philosophies, and the philosophies of the arts and science in societies. As stated in the first reading, Art As A Way Of Knowing, “ever-expanding boundaries of art as a field of activity encompass experiments where aesthetics reshapes learning situations and power dynamics and look to more integrated approaches to address complex systems.” This is just the start, it is basically explaining the background of artistic and scientific practices. “Art is a resource for learning science…” This articles’ perspective is about how you basically need that background information of art for the foundation to build science upon. Another perspective was about the feminist standpoint on science. “Standpoint theory offers a way of thinking about the social and situated nature of science without dismissing the value of scientific knowledge.” This article just explains that in a feminist’s perspective they are open to seeing things from different perspectives and people who are not in the “dominant perspective” have access to knowledge that those within it don’t. This article also goes on to say, “within standpoint theory, our positions outside these central domains of power offer us a privileged position from which to better see the knowledge and the systems in which it was created.” Being in this perspective, you have an open mind to all the ideas/cultures without putting one down. Silence Is Never Neutral; Neither Is Sciencestood out to me the most, but only because of everything that is going on in the world with all the events on top of the pandemic. This article talks about how science is built on racism, “too many scientists today continue to downplay or outright erase the role science has played in perpetuating anti-Black racism and violence.” Scientists of color are not supported or represented. This article ends with saying “If we want science to help tackle our biggest challenges, science institutions must train and hire Black, Latino/a, and Indigenous scholars” These themes are important to me because being in most of the categories, being a black female, I can easily relate and understand the feelings of these people and what they’re going through. With everything going in, in this day and age you need to have an open mind and be accepting of others. Being black in a dominantly white society is hard, as a woman we don’t face half the problems a black male bares. Being a female in a society where “Men Rule All” is also a challenge. Not getting the same opportunities, or if we are offered those opportunities they’re for less pay than a man. “Science is never neutral.” In other words, we all need to work together in order to move forward correctly. Like the last article stated, “Scientific institutions must immediately get to work on rooting out anti-Black racism and all forms of racism and discrimination.” And it won’t happen overnight, but one person and one day at a time can change everything.