Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
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Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
Morris, who was in Kuhn's class at Princeton, was supposedly the victim or target of an ashtray thrown by Kuhn. Is anybody else following this kerfuffle?
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
The Ashtray is a pretty severe attack on Kuhn's 50 year old book.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
Kuhn still makes perfect sense to me, and should act as a warning to all who take the science too religiously.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
It appears that Morris is an intellectual light-weight using polemic exaggeration to build a strawman argument to attack his old teacher.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
My reading of the SSR is that it is a pretty good analysis of how science stumbles along. It's not the only analysis maybe, but a pretty good clarification of dynamics. Fifty years along, we are now used to think in terms of paradigms, or assumption bundles, in every field of endeavor. The dynamics and vocabulary that Kuhn introduced are now part of everyone's paradigm whether they know it or not. Back then, it could have been harder to accept. Why? Incommensurability! :)ThomasHobbes wrote: ↑August 8th, 2018, 6:00 pm What's Morris' point here.
Kuhn still makes perfect sense to me, and should act as a warning to all who take the science too religiously.
It's easy to see the SSR as being a bit hyperbolic, are scientific advances really "revolutions"? Are scientists still devoted to an old paradigm really in a different world from those working with a new one? Out of touch? Are the different points of view really incommensurable? So I can understand criticism of the book. But Morris' attack is shallow and petty. And he uses the (dubious) ashtray story as an angle.
Most obvious problem is Morris faulting Kuhn for promotion of (horrors) "relative truth". I really didn't come across any discussion of relative truth in the SSR. There's your strawman.
Say more about "should act as a warning to all who take the science too religiously."
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
Surely the whole point of SSR?3uGH7D4MLj wrote: ↑August 10th, 2018, 10:32 am.
Say more about "should act as a warning to all who take the science too religiously."
The paradigm serves the vested interests of those born into it; have staked their careers on it and tend to resist new and better ideas.
The old professor with tenure at the University is the ball and chain of progress, like the Catholic priest wishing to burn the heretics.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
The point is that Kuhn was talking about the academic process of science.Eduk wrote: ↑August 13th, 2018, 3:07 pm I would argue that the ball and chain of progress is only very very slightly anything to do with tenured professors ( indeed I'm sure they are of net benefit). Rather the ball and chain of progress is complete science illiteracy coupled with supreme overconfidence.
Hence I talked about vested interests
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
Does theory ever "touch" the world, in that to know the theory is to know the world that exists apart bringing theory into it? No. it's not that there is no world to know, but that knowing it is, to look at Rorty's take on this, a propositional matter, and there are no propositions "out there". Rorty's pragmatism is very much apart from standard scientific objectivism.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
Kuhn does use the term world, to mean the immersion in a paradigm of a scientist. A scientist using a different set of assumptions is actually in a different world, incommensurable with a perhaps newer or different paradigm.
It's interesting that "world" is in Kuhn's SSR vocabulary, but with a completely different meaning from what you are presenting. Just a curiosity.
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Re: Thomas Kuhn vs Errol Morris
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