----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> Kuhn's phrase "paradigm shift" has caused endless nonsense among
> non-scientists, especially those in the so-called "humanities."
Richard
> Levins, in the brief response that I fwd to the list, makes the point
> nicely: "I think Hawkes missed the boat in many ways. The first of
which
> is worrying about Thomas Kuhn's question: is this or is it not a new
> paradigm? That will be settled later." There may be an extant instance
> in which a humanities professor has used "paradigm shift" without
making
> an utter ass of him/herself, but I can't recall any such instance.
>
> It is safest, unless one is both a professional scientist _and_ a
> professional historian/philosopher of science, simply not to use the
> concept.
===============
And a great big reflexivity alert to you too Carrol!!! :->
>It seems utterly silly to me, anyhow, to call Einstein's
> 'overturning' of Newtonian gravity a paradigm shift -- that
overturning
> occurred well within the house of physics.
==================
Double super reflexivity alert.
> All of the "paradigm shifts"
> that make much sense are not shifts within a given physical or natural
> science but the "shift" constituted by the very origin of such
science.
> Galileo/Newton constituted a paradigm shift from non-science to
> science. Relativity and Quantum mechanics are developments (though
> far-reaching ones) within the science that Galileo etc created.
=============== G & N were rank amatuers compared to what's gone on since 1905
> "Science," however we define it, has to be judged by non-scientists
(or
> scientists speaking from outside science), but that fact does not
> justify anyone in the kind of amateurish fumbling around exhibited by
> Hawkes, and it certainly doesn't justify the Nation's Book Review
> Editor.
>
> Carrol
================
Read Gould's book yet?
Ian