Social Construction and Materialism
I often find some of the most significant pushback I received on ideas of social construction come from those rationalist types committed to science. This is something I find somewhat ironic, because I believe social construction is in fact most aligned with their own beliefs.
As explained previously, social construction regards the epistemological question of knowledge and not the ontological questions of fact.
In short, a "mountain" may be a real thing in a material reality, but how we define it, where we consider it starts and stops, what we conceive it to include, are all products of the human mind and socially mediated.
And this is where we can reach an 80% understanding with these sciencist minded folk I'm referring to. Yes, the "concept" of a mountain is social but there is still a real mountain.
And that might be good enough at times, but sometimes the final 20% is necessary.
What does it mean for their to be a "real" mountain. If we are sticking with the sort of objective-minded, materialist scientist I am talking about, then there isn't really such a thing. What I mean is, reality does not adhere to some sort of idea of a "mountain." There is no defining point of "mountain" stamped into reality. There is no teleological force working towards creating "mountains." When the earth formed it was in no regard to a template or blueprint of "mountain."
There is just reality, all encompassing, all connected, universal reality.
When we study the material universe and advance our understanding of it, we are not marching towards uncovering what a "real" mountain is absent from human social thought. We as humans are refining and adapting our concepts of broad reality in ways that serve our purposes better.
When I say that social construction doesn't deny the absence of a material reality and there is indeed a "real" mountain, what I am actually saying is that there is reality and we carve up and divide that reality into comprehensible components for our purposes, with one of those parts being "mountain."
For me this is the irony of what some of these sciencist folks suggest. Whereas I see a messy, holistic material reality preceding any sort of concept or classification, they instead counterpose the existence of ideal forms that reality must conform to, and our task is merely to uncover these.
So when Geoscience Australia classifies a mountain as:
A named markedly elevated landform bounded by steep slopes and rising to prominent ridges and individual peaks.
Whilst the UK government officially understands a mountain as:
a summit of 2,000 feet (610 m) or higher.
I conclude this is reasonable and reflects the different needs and purposes of different institutions in different geographic locations. Whilst my interlocutor argues that only if there was deeper study, more research and greater adherence to science we could converge our definitions towards what a "true" or "real" mountain "actually" is.
Does this sound like a straw man? Well, in some ways it is. I have never argued this point about a "mountain." This blog post is just laying the groundwork for a subsequent one, discussing another "real" (but still socially constructed!) phenomena, one embroiled in politics and culture wars: sex.