Theory-Ladenness

Depending on the context of the discussion (say a dispute about some aspect of the Indian culture), the disputants can treat wearing the bindi or a saree as facts. However, in another context of the discussion, these facts might become theoretical claims. For instance, is the Indian woman wearing a bindi or an Indian male wearing kumkum on his forehead being religious or not? Consider, for …

Check Balu’s paper on comparative theology, and in particular Francis Clooney’s: Translation, interpretration and culture: on the disingenuity of a comparative theology

You ask whether or not it was ‘factual’ that a ‘paraiah’ was not allowed on the same street as a Nair or a Brahmin. The evidence we have says that a Paraiah was not allowed to be on the same street as a Nair, but it is not clear whether it also applies to the presence of a Brahmin. First, here is some of the evidence. The Portuguese traveler Duarte Barbosa was among the first to talk about it in …

Until the sixties of the previous century, there was some kind of consensus about the nature of scientific enterprise. One strand within it had to do with the nature of facts. One thought that scientists collected facts (data) and formulated hypothesis (or theories) to explain them. This distinction between theory and facts was seen as an absolute distinction: facts (or data) existed in Nature …