Objectivity and Standpoint Theory in Agricultural Engineering

Day and Gastel seem to advocate for an objective assessment when writing materials and methods. While I was told at orientation that this book was for science, I wonder if the same principle would apply to the humanities and arts. Day and Gastel also intensely focus on exactness of language and clear communication. The central idea in science is for work to be reproducible.

Like all engineering fields, mathematics and the pure sciences are key cornerstones to our work. As such objectivism is critical. Since agricultural engineering is moving in many cases towards a more holistic, sustainable view, the pure sciences and mathematics cannot be used exclusively. This is especially true when assessing social and cultural aspects of sustainability, which cannot always be satisfactorily quantified---at least not yet.

But in order to engage in sustainability, it will be necessary for engineers to look beyond the equations. I’m not so sure that everything can quantified and if it can, what about uncertainty? Does this staple of objectivity allow for speculation?

However, this does not mean that we abandon our logic or the scientific method. My statistics professor once told me that you can have a situation where car accidents are correlated with the color of leaves in the fall and that on some level, one must have the presence of mind to realize what this means. Obviously, we should not remove trees with leaves whose colors cause more deaths just because of a correlation coefficient.

The other extreme is allowing other outside factors contaminate the scientific method. When the scientific method is compromised, the measurements may not reflect reality. As scientists and engineers, we must have the scientific method as our base and build from there. Particularly in the social sciences and perhaps even in some field measurements, qualitative analysis and subjectivity are necessary for a starting point. One such project I worked on involved a group of students subjectively assessing tree damage done by squirrels. We had to look at the trees and make a subjective judgment that was then complied as data. Data can then be analyzed.

The question I would pose is if qualitative studies would ever be appropriate for pure science and engineering besides social sciences. We do use surveys for stakeholder feedback in my field.