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Pastimes : Neocon's Seminar Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (458)	4/27/2001 6:13:54 PM
From: gao seng	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1112

what is, how to know what is, and how to live in accord with what is -- ontology, epistemology, and ethics. It is complicated. I now fear after reading your post that my observation that philosophy theories are circular, that is that nothing new is being contributed but no one faction can dominate the scene in perpuity are wrong. Rather it is evolving much as Kuhn describes. Snipped from google: There is always a reigning paradigm through which all data are interpreted and so forth. Any evidence contrary to the dominant paradigm is always greeted with skepticism--as is appropriate--from the scientific community. As a result, theories are tweaked, the evidence is somehow shoe-horned into the paradigm, or sometimes--as is often the case with evidence against evolution--it is simply dismissed out of hand without any serious consideration. Eventually, though, enough evidence mounts that some scientists, who are often of a new generation, pursue alternate theories until at some hard to discern moment, a "paradigm shift" takes place. All of sudden anyone who believes the old theory finds himself on the other end of the ritual pooh-poohing that goes. ______________ I am trying to find time to read this book. In 1962, Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which depicted the development of the basic natural sciences in an innovative way. According to Kuhn, the sciences do not uniformly progress strictly by scientific method. Rather, there are two fundamentally different phases of scientific development in the sciences. In the first phase, scientists work within a paradigm (set of accepted beliefs). When the foundation of the paradigm weakens and new theories and scientific methods begin to replace it, the next phase of scientific discovery takes place. Kuhn believes that scientific progress-that is, progress from one paradigm to another-has no logical reasoning. Kuhn's theory has triggered widespread, controversial discussion across many scientific disciplines. "Kuhn, Thomas Samuel," Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 2000. © 1993-1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.