The Structure of Science?

[coberst]

The Structure of Science?

 

The main philosophical problems of modern society are intimately associated with Tom and Jane’s enchantment with Science. Normal science is, for too many, an enchanted idol that is perceived as the savior of humanity. No matter what dastardly things humans may do, Science will save us.

 

Science—normal science—as Thomas Kuhn labels it in “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” moves forward in a “successive transition from one paradigm to another”. A paradigm defines the theory, rules and standards of practice. “In the absence of a paradigm or some candidate for paradigm, all of the facts that could possible pertain to the development of a given science are likely to seem equally relevant.”

 

The Newtonian scientific paradigm was a mathematical, quantified, pattern capable of reducing reality to an atomic level. It’s ideal, if there was one, was man as a machine or more likely a cog in a machine. In such a science we lose the individual man and woman. Rousseau was offering something entirely different. It was holistic and non-reducible. It was a gestalt that included man as neutral manipulator of scientific experiments but also as a subject with values who was a totally thinking, feeling, free agent.

 

“Rousseau showed that morality had to be instrumented, by man according to an ideal formulated by him; the science of man could only have meaning as an active ideal-type of science.” Newtonian paradigms left no room for such and ideal. It had no room for a holistic woman or man. The solution proposed by Rousseau was to make humanity first and science second; science was to be the servant of wo/man rather than wo/man as the servant of science.

 

The paradigm of Newtonianism turned out to be a tougher nut than the Enlightenment could crack. Such individuals as Darwin and Spencer appeared on the scene and quickly humanity was sequestered again into the background by Science. Dewey’s long life time proved insufficient to the challenge and the reason why: “pragmatism contained no moral criteria by means of which a man-based value science could be instrumented.”

 

Marx recognized the problem inherent in scientism and shifted ground from Rousseau’s ideal-type to the possible-type. Marx said that we should do what is possible and possible in our time. Marx advocated the victory of the laboring class.

 

“What are the main problems of modern society; how can man’s situation in the world be improved?” Marx determined that the Newtonian paradigm was morally unedifying; the social problem was the alienation of man. But with Marx the ideal vision of the Enlightenment was swallowed up in the Revolution. The ideal of a full and free liberation of the human potential was destroyed in the Revolution.

 

And therein lay the rub. What is a paradigm of normal science as Kuhn so succinctly wrote about and which, as a concept, was unrecognized in Kuhntonion form a century ago, but was nevertheless, even then, the heart of normal science.

 

Kuhn says that practitioners of normal science have: a paradigm that makes a science normal when most if not all members agree upon a theory as being true. When this agreement breaks down then a new paradigm is agreed upon. The paradigm defines a map for action. The thing that separates a paradigm from some kind of, green light and red light group agreement about crossing the street is that there is more careful control, calculation, instrumentation, and a greater willingness to place before the world a conjecture to be evaluated as to its truth. A paradigm defines the theory, rules, and standards of practice.

 

It seems that almost all domains of knowledge wish to emulate Science. Science for most people is technology and if questioned we would probably find that science means physics. We have placed Science on a very high pedestal because technology has been so successful. Every domain of knowledge wishes to be as good as Science.

 

I suspect that the way to judge how well a domain of knowledge is like science is to discover if it does or does not have a paradigm. Like Kuhn notes in his book that without a paradigm any knowledge is as good as any other. Paradigm converts chaos into system.

 

Many of the ideas and quotes in this OP are derived from Ernest Becker’s book “Beyond Alienation”. Me and Ernest agree that the “main philosophical problem for modern society” is that we need a paradigm for the “science of wo/man”. Have you a paradigm for this new science? Me and Ernest do but we disagree on some aspects.

[Turtle]

...

Many of the ideas and quotes in this OP are derived from Ernest Becker’s book “Beyond Alienation”. Me and Ernest agree that the “main philosophical problem for modern society” is that we need a paradigm for the “science of wo/man”. Have you a paradigm for this new science? Me and Ernest do but we disagree on some aspects.[/b]

 

Hey Coberst.:) Here's what I think, from a philosophical paradigmy sorta' view, about you & Ernst.

 

...The votaries of philosophy, when they carry on the study, not only in youth as a part of education, but as the pursuit of their maturer years, most of them become strange monsters, not to say utter rogues, and that those who may be considered the best of them are made useless to the world by the very study which you extol. ~Adeimantus to Socrates

[coberst]

Jung says man needs “to break with tradition so that he can experiment with his life and determine what value and meanings things have in themselves, apart from traditional presuppositions”

[Turtle]

Jung says man needs “to break with tradition so that he can experiment with his life and determine what value and meanings things have in themselves, apart from traditional presuppositions”

 

I'm not surprised. Ironic, isn't it, that you have embraced the Jungian tradition of rejecting tradition. :hihi: Round n' round, philosophy goes, useless to the world. Must be important if someone wrote it down. Quiet everyone; an old man is talking! Break it up folks; nothin' to see here. :valhappy_smile: Please, no one mention Jung's experimenting with spreading racist views. Shhhhhh..........

[coberst]

Turtle

 

I do not think that philosophy is useless to the world. In fact our lives are guided by our philosophical theories and therein lay the rub.

 

Unlike the natural sciences wherein new theories are quickly assimilated within the culture our humans sciences and philosophical theories may take generations before new theories seep into the culture. This is why we are in such a precarious situation. Our intellectual sophistication fails to keep up with our technological sophistication thus leaving us much like children splashing about in a pool of gasoline while playing with matches.

[Turtle]

Turtle

 

I do not think that philosophy is useless to the world. In fact our lives are guided by our philosophical theories and therein lay the rub.

 

Unlike the natural sciences wherein new theories are quickly assimilated within the culture our humans sciences and philosophical theories may take generations before new theories seep into the culture. This is why we are in such a precarious situation. Our intellectual sophistication fails to keep up with our technological sophistication thus leaving us much like children splashing about in a pool of gasoline while playing with matches.

 

Mmmm.... I think this is what Adeimantus was getting at. You lay the 'problem' on people for not getting philosophy - or not getting it fast enough perhaps- and I see the problem is with the philosophers and their philosphy.

 

For all your doom & gloom predictions and assertions of the terrible state of humans for having & using technology, here we are, still alive & still communicating through thin air on computers as we sit in comfortable homes sipping warm beverages brought from around the world and taking miracle drugs that shrinks our prostates so we're not in the can 50% of our waking hours and 25% of the sleeping ones. We're pretty old Coberst and don't we remember precarious positions all along from the time we shot out the chute? If it's all so bad as you make out, why haven't you lit your match? I'll tell you why; because rotten as you make it all to be, you still think it's worth hanging out on the chance something better happens and that because better things do happen. Your actions discount your words, and that is the real problem with philosophy. :Bump2:

[coberst]

Turtle

 

The fact that the species has not yet destroyed it self is not a solid argument that this will not happen.

 

I keep-on keepin-on because I would hate to see life destroyed on this planet just because our species does not have the will to use the brains we were born with to better advantage.

[Turtle]

Turtle

 

The fact that the species has not yet destroyed it self is not a solid argument that this will not happen.

 

I keep-on keepin-on because I would hate to see life destroyed on this planet just because our species does not have the will to use the brains we were born with to better advantage.

 

;) Oh Coberst...what will we do with you, or perhaps better said, what would we do without you. :naughty: I keep using the term 'ironic' to describe the difference between what you extol and what you do, when really that is a euphemism for hypocrite. If you actually followed your tenets, you would be living naked in a clay jug on the edge of town and fornicating in the streets at will as did Diogenes. :naughty:

 

Fine enough to say, what if we think about this or that in such or such a way, but it is the monstrous type of philosophy to always go about crying wolves are falling from the sky.

 

Do you have a garden Coberst? A plant by any other name would get your hands just as dirty taking care of it. :naughty:

[Turtle]

Hey Coby. :doh: Found this article of interest & related to your disdain & doomfull prognostications on the evils of technology. Enjoy. ;)

 

How Google Is Making Us Smarter | Machine-Brain Connections | DISCOVER Magazine

 

More significantly, the ominous warnings feed on a popular misconception of how the mind works. We tend to think of the mind as separated from the world; we imagine information trickling into our senses and reaching our isolated minds, which then turn that information into a detailed picture of reality. The Internet and iPhones seem to be crashing the gate of the mind, taking over its natural work and leaving it to wither away to a mental stump. As plausible as this picture may seem, it does a bad job of explaining a lot of recent scientific research. In fact, the mind appears to be adapted for reaching out from our heads and making the world, including our machines, an extension of itself.

...

The extended mind theory doesn’t just change the way we think about the mind. It also changes how we judge what’s good and bad about today’s mind-altering technologies. There’s nothing unnatural about relying on the Internet—Google and all—for information. After all, we are constantly consulting the world around us like a kind of visual Wikipedia. Nor is there anything bad about our brains’ being altered by these new technologies, any more than there is something bad about a monkey’s brain changing as it learns how to play with a rake.

 

Neuroscientists will soon be able to offer fresh ways to enhance our brains, whether with drugs or with implants. To say that these are immoral because they defile our true selves—our isolated, distinct minds—is to ignore biology. Our minds already extend out into the environment, and the changes we make to the environment already alter our minds.That doesn’t mean we must approve of every possible extension of the mind, and even good extensions will have some drawbacks.

 

Socrates worried that writing would make people forgetful and unwise. Sure enough, writing did rob us of some gifts, such as the ability to recite epic poems like The Iliad from memory. But it also created a much larger pool of knowledge from which people could draw, a pool that has continued to expand (or, dare we say, continued to extend?).

[coberst]

Turtle

 

The extension of the human body as a result of technology is a very important concept, which, I think, was first spoken of by Marshall McLuhan in one of his books on 'the media is the message'.

 

The more extended is our body the more necessary is our understanding of the science of morality (which does not yet exist unfortunatly) because morality is about relationship.

[Turtle]

Turtle

 

The extension of the human body as a result of technology is a very important concept, which, I think, was first spoken of by Marshall McLuhan in one of his books on 'the media is the message'.

 

The more extended is our body the more necessary is our understanding of the science of morality (which does not yet exist unfortunatly) because morality is about relationship.

 

Mmmm...I was hoping you might respond on the gardening, but oh well. :D

 

Now as to no science of morality, isn't that what Philosophy claims as its own? In any case, off you go again with doom & gloom. :hyper: Good grief C-Man! We're here & we're queer (in the strange way ;)) and by all accounts, so it's been for tens of thousands of years. You did notice that Socrates took your doomy view of writing in that article? What!!? Such a great Philosopher mistaken? 2,000+ years and here we still are, more of us in healthier condition than ever I might add, and we find you saying the internet is going to kill us all. If Socrates & History are any judge, you won't have to live to see it.

 

Back to the article I linked to & their experiments with raking monkeys. Is there some moral problem they have with brain extension? :hyper: Well, thanks for chatting me up and on to the next unusual claim you have, assuming of course we haven't destroyed ourselves before then. :eek2: :) :hihi:

[Turtle]

Hi Coby! :hyper: Can I call you Coby? Cool. So anyway Dennis, the danged-blanged cursed technology of the internet has me here again spreading my filthy destructive thoughts like puke in a Roman vomitorium. :) If anything I say got you to chuckle, or even maybe crack just a teensy smile, would ya tell me? :D

 

So, in answer to your question, yes. Yes I am fully aware of my own ironic monstrousnesosityhood in so much as I am decrying philosophy for philosophical reasons. ;) Life is a tasty peach, except for the pip, which is bitter & poison. Don't eat the pip!

 

Oh...hi everybody else. :eek2: :hihi: :hyper: