Why am I now more comfortable? This class, like some before it, has opened my eyes to the blurring of "reality" and "truth" with bias and perception. While I knew before that everything presented as "truth" and "real" in the softer hard sciences (i.e. biology, as opposed to the harder hard sciences such as physics and math), was biased and an approximation to the ever elusive Reality. When I capitalize Reality, I am referring to the concept that there is, somewhere out there, yet to be discovered, One Way that things Are. However, I was uncomfortable with that. I wanted to know, to solve the problem of eliminating bias and reducing approximation, and replacing it with secular data whose existence was not determined by the human who made it- that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (measuring something inevitably alters it in some way, thus rendering the measurement inaccurate) could somehow be eliminated, if we found the right way of researching, or experimenting, or presenting information.
However, no longer is it important to me that the bias be eliminated from knowledge, "truth", and "reality", because it informs that "truth" and does not necessarily render it False. Would it really matter if we found the exact point on the phallo-meter where a baby penis turned into a baby clitoris? No! Because it still would not predict the questions of an individual's identity or sexual preference, or avoid the need for future medical intervention. Does it matter if we determine exactly which errors in chromosome duplication and separation result in where on the sex scale between male and female lies an individual? No, because what we decide to do with that information, and how each individual feels is informed by a multitude of factors. This is so exciting! I can now stop my fruitless endeavor to create a method for producing a "reality" that accurately reflects Reality, but rather spend my time teasing out the nuances that make the data meaningful, and bring about more, and greater questions.
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I think it's so interesting how the points that made the class so clear to some are also the points that blurred the lines for others. The ideas of truth vs reality seemed to throw several of us for a loop but in the long run still allowed most of us to learn so much, such as being able to analyze the world around us with more vigor.
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