Only one sex?

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Nov 30 19:25:41 PST 1999


Angela:
>>Charles: "Most"? The accumulation of knowledge may be zig zag and not in
>a straightline (i.e. dialectical) but postmodern conceptions of
>epistemology aren't the majority yet, are they?<
>
>what 'postmodern'? kuhn is not a postmodernist, right? it's not a zig-zag
>nor an accumulation, but a series of more or less dramatic ruptures in
>basic conceptions and assumptions -- in kuhn's phrase, paradigm shifts.
>unlike kuhn, we would look at the relationship between these paradigm
>shifts and the mode of production, the character and compositional effects
>of class struggles, etc.

It is unnecessary to deny the accumulation of knowledge in order to argue that the existence of exploitation and oppression still makes much of our knowledge production ideological. We know more about the world and its inhabitants than, say, Thomas Aquinas did, don't we? Most educated people nowadays do not subscribe to the geocentric theory. Didn't Marx give a better explanation of capitalism than Smith or Ricardo did?


>an historically-specific
>critique of an historically-specific formation

As for historical specificity, denying the accumulation of knowledge makes you ahistorical. 300 years ago, the number of the Japanese who spoke English must have been minimal (close to zero), whereas now all public school students in Japan are required to take six years of English before they graduate from high school. The creation of the world market has had its effects on knowledge production, dissemination, acquisition, etc.

BTW, do you have a rational ground to choose Gould's account of evolution instead of Dawkins's? If so, what?

Yoshie



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