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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 07/04/2004 : 12:32:34 [Permalink]
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quote:
Theories and phenomenon seem to be separate categories. I do not know how to make that comparison.
Of course they are. Theories are what we use to describe and explain phenomenon. ex- The theory of evolution is our attempt to describe the observations we make about species changing. The observation of these changes is not contested (except by some of the hardcore fundies). The theory is our explanation, and it could change tomorrow if somebody comes up with a better explanation.
quote:
posted by coberst:I never even hinted that social sciences and physical sciences should have the same volumn of observed phenomenon and data.
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posted by coberst:
Our technology rides on the shoulders of the giants of the past. Our understanding and control of ourself is no more advanced than it was a thousand years ago. We have shown our intellectual social skills by a constant history of wars. We as a species have survived this inability only because we were too weak to destroy nature. We now are, thanks to technology, capable of destroying nature.
Nature has been able to heal itself so far but our technological strength has reached the ability to overcome this healing capacilty.
Our technological intelligence is accretive our wisdom intelligence is not. In wisdom we are not able to stand on the shoulders of giants of the past. The wisdom of man is buried with him his technology lives on.
Well, it seems to me like your protesting that our wisdom is not on par with our technology, and that it should be. |
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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ljbrs
SFN Regular
USA
842 Posts |
Posted - 07/11/2004 : 17:28:13 [Permalink]
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When I want to know about science, I do not rely on the philosophers of science to educate me. I go to the writings and observations of the scientists themselves in their particular fields to find out about their discoveries. Philosophers make commentaries on the sciences but are not "doing science" and have nothing to do with the development of science. They are observers and not participators.
I have great admiration for the sciences and scientists, but I leave the revelations concerning their work to the scientists themselves.
ljbrs |
"Innumerable suns exist; innumerable earths revolve about these suns in a manner similar to the way the seven planets revolve around our sun. Living beings inhabit these worlds."
Giordano Bruno
(Burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church Inquisition in 1600) |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 07/13/2004 : 19:44:56 [Permalink]
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coberst wrote:quote:
I find "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn to be a marvelous book on the nature of paradigms. I have formed most of my understanding regading this matter from this book. I think I am not alone in this judgement of this book.
Interesting coincidence. In the July/August 2004 Skeptical Inquirer, Susan Haack, in an article titled "Defending Science - Within Reason," says this when describing the shift from the "Old Deferentialist" paradigm to "the New Cynicism":Thomas Kuhn himself, it soon became apparent, hadn't intended radically to undermine the pretensions of science to be a rational enterprise. But most readers of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, missing many subtleties and many ambiguities, heard only: science progresses, or "progresses," not by the accumulation of well-confirmed truths, or even by the elimination of conjectures shown to be false, but by revolutionary upheavals in a cataclysmic process the history of which is afterwards written by the winning side; there are no neutral standards of evidence, only the incomsenurable standards of different paradigms; the success of a scientific revolution, like the success of a political revolution, depends on propaganda and control of resources; a scientist's shift of allegiance to a new paradigm is less like a rational change of mind than a religious conversion -- a conversion after which things look so different to him that we might almost say he lives "in a different world." Haack goes on to say that based upon these misconceptions - among others - we now have reams of "New Cynics" claiming that:Science is largely or wholly a matter of interests, social negotiation, or of myth-making, the production of inscriptions or marratives; not only does it have no peculiar epistemic authority and no uniquely rational method, but it is really, like all purported "inquiry," just politics. Wow. I'm glad I didn't latch on to that crap back in my "woo-woo" days.
Anyway, the point is, coberst, that apparently lots of people have a mistaken "judgement" of that book. Perhaps you should double-check your own opinions on "the nature of paradigms," whatever those opinions might be (I don't think you've told us).
Funny aside: Haack quotes Jonathan Rauch as saying, "If you want to empty the room at a cocktail party, say 'epistemology'." |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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coberst
Skeptic Friend
182 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2004 : 05:17:54 [Permalink]
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Dave
Thanks for the info. I was not aware that this matter was receiving a great deal of attention. From what you have quoted from the critics I am inclined to think them to be misguided. Reserving the right to change my mind later. I have been so nurished by Kuhn's book that I hope that after examining the matter more closely I remain a champion of his. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2004 : 07:13:42 [Permalink]
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coberst, apparently you missed the point of Haack's discussion of Kuhn, which is that a lot of people mis-read Kuhn, by "missing many subtleties and many ambiguities," and championed something he did not say. My (very slight) concern is that you examine the matter more closely to ensure that you are championing what Kuhn actually intended to write. I cannot tell whether or not you are doing so, because you haven't actually stated what you think the "nature of paradigms" is, and instead simply refer to Kuhn's book, which - according to Haack - leaves much to the reader's interpretation. In other words, someone else here could read Kuhn's book, walk away with the "New Cynicism" interpretation, and think that is what you are "championing," when in reality, you're not (or maybe you are, but others here will think you're not). Rather than suggest that other people read such a widely-misunderstood book to share in your understanding of paradigms, you should find a way to summarize your own interpretation of the work, so that people will know what you think, and not what they think Kuhn thinks.
In still other words, Haack appears to think highly of Kuhn, also. She just doesn't appear to think highly of the people who misread Kuhn's book, and used the incorrect interpretation they came away with to knock the philosophical foundations of science out from under it. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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coberst
Skeptic Friend
182 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2004 : 09:35:16 [Permalink]
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Dave
You may rest assured that I have never misread anybody's book. I know this assurance will please you. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 07/14/2004 : 10:20:42 [Permalink]
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coberst wrote:quote:
You may rest assured that I have never misread anybody's book. I know this assurance will please you.
Oh, absolutely. Please tell me how you know this. I would enjoy being as... um... confident as you are.
[Note to self: Chaloobi is right - we really do need rolleyes and insanity smilies. I could use them both right now.] |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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coberst
Skeptic Friend
182 Posts |
Posted - 07/15/2004 : 10:14:48 [Permalink]
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Dave
According to Kuhn a paradigm must be sufficiently unprecedented and sufficiently opened ended. The study of paradigms prepares a student for membership into the scientific community attached to that paradigm. The paradigm must receive approval from a vast majority of the members of that scientific community. It is the acquisition of such a paradigm that signifies the maturity of that discipline.
The usual development of a particular science is from one paradigm to another. Witness the movement from Newton to Einstein. Even though Einstein's changed paradigm due to relativity merely added a component to Newton's that served only when certain parameters went beyond certain maximums.
Before science has a paradigm all discoveries seem equally historic. There was no metric for separating the discoveries. The paradigm was the standard and principles of the science. It was Bacon I think who said truth came more from error than from confusion.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 07/15/2004 : 19:13:03 [Permalink]
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So, coberst, why not email a professor of sociology somewhere and ask, "what is the primary paradigm of sociology?" Rather than rely on your own ignorance to dismiss the entirety of sociology as non-sciences, why not follow your "own individual curiosity to answer questions that an active critical thinking adult might contemplate." (See this thread.)
And, I would still like to know how you know that you've never misread a book. That's where my individual curiosity is taking me, towards questioning how a person who should understand that all humans make mistakes (he being a student of critical thinking, after all) claims that he never has with regard to interpreting other people's work. The implications of this are stunning, to say the least. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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