From: Glenn Bradford (gmbbradford@netscape.net)
Date: Thu Jan 09 2003 - 10:49:32 GMT
Hi Matt,
When I asked you why you thought it was better to cut science
down to the level of the humanities, and what criteria would
judge them as then being on par, you answered, in part, that:
MATT:
"Their authority extends over their subject matter and
they are both in the service of humanity, and doing a good job,
so why put one up on a pedestal?"
This is agreeable as far as it goes, but then we have to ask
what criteria we are using to judge what "doing a good job" is.
You touched on an important criterion when you said:
MATT:
"Physicists work on rocks and their opinions about
rocks are basically all the same and literary critics
work on texts and their opinions about rocks [I think
you meant "text"] are basically all different."
This is a spinned way of saying that science generates knowledge
and literary critics generate opinions. (It simply gives the wrong
impression to reduce "the world is round" and "the heart pumps blood"
(for examples) to opinions.) If your criterion for "doing a good
job" is generating knowledge, then science belongs on the pedestal.
MATT:
"Following Rorty, if we interpret "rational" to mean "the use of
persuasion" (making irrationality the use of force), ..."
Rorty is certainly a part of the pragmatist tradition when it comes
to the practice of making new meanings for words, but I daresay his
odds at successful acceptance of these are slim and until that day
of acceptance, if it ever comes, his writing will either be
misunderstood, as was James', or rendered inscrutable by anyone not
wholly familiar with him. Insofar as this practice has affected
pragmatism, so-called "strong" misreadings have taken a reasonable
enough sounding proposal regarding "truth" set forth by Pierce, James,
and Dewey and turned it into an overbearing form of relativism.
When I questioned you about the quantonics site being an example
of "normal science", you said:
Matt:
"Ah, yeah. I should have said "normal discourse (which is analogous to
Kuhn's 'normal science')." I didn't mean to imply that they were doing
science. What I mean is that, for better or for worse, they have chosen an
interpretation of Pirsig and have moved on to puzzle-solving. What's
occuring here is more dynamic then that, which would be more analogous to
Kuhn's "revolutionary science." That's all I really meant by it. "
I don't see much discourse at Doug's site. I think it's the royal "they".
It's basically him and his essays and a little correspondence. I don't
understand how his writing is even analogous to Khunian "normal science".
If you are treating his site as a microcosm of society, then my complaints
are that you can't decide what's "normal" in a society of one, and even if
it were normal, I don't see him puzzle-solving. Actually, I think he seems
much more revolutionary than us in terms of ideas (as far as I can make
sense of them), and we are only more dynamic by virtue of our lively discourse.
Glenn
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