May 4, 2018 09:19 PM
(This post was last modified: May 4, 2018 10:06 PM by C C.
Edit Reason: punctuation correction - missing period
)
This is curious from the standpoint that it's crouched under "politics" rather than philosophy of science. There may be the usual (but potentially unintentional) smokescreen ploys found here. Like demoting the original and given "external world" of sensation or outer experience to an insignificant status (i.e., it's simply ignored). While promoting to important / supreme status the metaphysical counterpart of the latter, which depends upon arguments and theory-makings of reason to output details about it rather than the experiential evidence which instantiates the former (not to mention the ceaseless multiplicity of the metaphysical type's competing, different versions). Of treating "scientific progress" as if it either is about or should be marching toward a specific final truth or confirmation about a "physical world" (one which is again in an abstract context, not reference to obvious corporeal / physical phenomena of perception). Of confusing idealism with either anti-metaphysics movements of the past or with mitigated epistemological doubts about those metaphysical realism claims which amount to "our group's account of an archetypal or transcendent version of the external world is the true one". (Idealism itself is another metaphysical orientation, so can hardly be either skepticism or nihilism about that branch of activity's products). And of obscuring the consequence that even if science was running about declaring that it had the flawless truth about the rationalist tradition's external world (both ancient and modern), that would set-up an obstructing dogma (The Truth) which would stifle progress and the ability to revise.
http://bostonreview.net/politics/errol-m...hing-truth
EXCERPT: It has now been over fifty years since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), a book considered by many to be one of the seminal works of the twentieth century. I do not regard it as such. Although it has spawned thousands of worshipful articles and books, it remains for me, at best, like Pet Rocks—a fad. When I first wrote this, I received instant criticism from my editor and others: fads are short-lived, while enthusiasm for Kuhn’s book has persisted for half a century. And unlike Pet Rocks, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was never sold as a forting companion, a solution to urban loneliness in a post-industrial society. So not exactly Pet Rocks. Maybe what emerged was more of a cult. With Kuhn as leader, dispensing his own brand of pernicious intellectual Kool-Aid.
A cult, then: misplaced admiration for a particular person or thing. Or maybe it is the Emperor’s New Clothes, a case of community madness, an almost inexplicable desire to believe in something nonsensical because others are doing so. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions itself feasts on the offal of innuendo and vagueness. It is, at best, an inchoate, unholy mixture of the work of others—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Carnap, Norwood Russell Hanson, Alexandre Koyré, Jerome Bruner, and more. At worst, it is an assault on truth and progress.
Some philosophers and historians of science who are familiar with the controversies that have swirled around Kuhn’s work believe that most of the issues have been put to rest. I would argue otherwise. But just what are these controversies and why should anyone care? Why should you, the reader, care? I suppose it depends on whom you ask, but for me, they point to big questions—about how language attaches to the world, the nature of truth, reference, realism, relativism, progress. Questions that continue to demand answers. Can we have knowledge of the past? Does science progress toward a more truthful apperception of the physical world? Or is it all a matter of opinion, a sociological phenomenon that reflects consensus, not truth? Unfettered emission of greenhouse gases promotes global warming. Species evolve through natural selection. Can we meaningfully assess the truth of these assertions? In my book, The Ashtray, I discuss many aspects of Kuhn’s work—indeterminacy of reference, incommensurability, scientific change triggered by anomalies, Darwinian evolution as a model for the development of science, the relativism of truth, the social construction of reality, his philosophical idealism, and more. In each of these aspects, I have found it to be wanting and, more often than not, false, contradictory, or even devoid of content.
And then there is the specter of skepticism. Kuhn was a great skeptic, but [...] he both believed in something and, at the same time, hoped to undermine it. His skepticism fed on childhood doubts. Have we not all wondered whether the world really exists? Whether we are just figments of someone’s imagination or artifacts of some infernal computer program, like in a Philip K. Dick novel or The Matrix (1999)? It could be. Why not? But on the other hand, don’t we all have a strong predilection for realism? We perambulate in the real world. Let’s consult an authoritative source. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines realism as the belief that there are things that exist “independent of anyone’s beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on.” Chairs, tables, rugs. The furniture of the world...
MORE: http://bostonreview.net/politics/errol-m...hing-truth
http://bostonreview.net/politics/errol-m...hing-truth
EXCERPT: It has now been over fifty years since the publication of Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), a book considered by many to be one of the seminal works of the twentieth century. I do not regard it as such. Although it has spawned thousands of worshipful articles and books, it remains for me, at best, like Pet Rocks—a fad. When I first wrote this, I received instant criticism from my editor and others: fads are short-lived, while enthusiasm for Kuhn’s book has persisted for half a century. And unlike Pet Rocks, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was never sold as a forting companion, a solution to urban loneliness in a post-industrial society. So not exactly Pet Rocks. Maybe what emerged was more of a cult. With Kuhn as leader, dispensing his own brand of pernicious intellectual Kool-Aid.
A cult, then: misplaced admiration for a particular person or thing. Or maybe it is the Emperor’s New Clothes, a case of community madness, an almost inexplicable desire to believe in something nonsensical because others are doing so. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions itself feasts on the offal of innuendo and vagueness. It is, at best, an inchoate, unholy mixture of the work of others—Ludwig Wittgenstein, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Carnap, Norwood Russell Hanson, Alexandre Koyré, Jerome Bruner, and more. At worst, it is an assault on truth and progress.
Some philosophers and historians of science who are familiar with the controversies that have swirled around Kuhn’s work believe that most of the issues have been put to rest. I would argue otherwise. But just what are these controversies and why should anyone care? Why should you, the reader, care? I suppose it depends on whom you ask, but for me, they point to big questions—about how language attaches to the world, the nature of truth, reference, realism, relativism, progress. Questions that continue to demand answers. Can we have knowledge of the past? Does science progress toward a more truthful apperception of the physical world? Or is it all a matter of opinion, a sociological phenomenon that reflects consensus, not truth? Unfettered emission of greenhouse gases promotes global warming. Species evolve through natural selection. Can we meaningfully assess the truth of these assertions? In my book, The Ashtray, I discuss many aspects of Kuhn’s work—indeterminacy of reference, incommensurability, scientific change triggered by anomalies, Darwinian evolution as a model for the development of science, the relativism of truth, the social construction of reality, his philosophical idealism, and more. In each of these aspects, I have found it to be wanting and, more often than not, false, contradictory, or even devoid of content.
And then there is the specter of skepticism. Kuhn was a great skeptic, but [...] he both believed in something and, at the same time, hoped to undermine it. His skepticism fed on childhood doubts. Have we not all wondered whether the world really exists? Whether we are just figments of someone’s imagination or artifacts of some infernal computer program, like in a Philip K. Dick novel or The Matrix (1999)? It could be. Why not? But on the other hand, don’t we all have a strong predilection for realism? We perambulate in the real world. Let’s consult an authoritative source. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines realism as the belief that there are things that exist “independent of anyone’s beliefs, linguistic practices, conceptual schemes, and so on.” Chairs, tables, rugs. The furniture of the world...
MORE: http://bostonreview.net/politics/errol-m...hing-truth
