Only one sex?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

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