> I was thinking in broadly Heideggerian terms of the assumptions about
> the way the world is structured that doing science in the way we think
> of it today (which probably wouldn't be recognized by an ancient or a
> midieval) presupposes.
Well, once you start talking Heidegger, you lose me, quite frankly. I think he was at best a poet, not a philosopher. He doesn't present philosophical arguments of the kind I recognize as arguments, anyway -- just clouds of suggestive verbiage.
> Well, that depends which philosophers you're talking about. Thomists
> and process philosophy types do use the term, but they're not in
> either of the two "mainstream" camps of Anglo-American and Continental
> phil. The latter will employ the term negatively ("overcoming
> metaphysics" in Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and the incredibly
> boring Rorty).
Again, I have my doubts about Thomists and "process philosophers" as genuine philosophers. A necessary condition for being a true philosopher, in my book, is that one be able to think straight: being careful about how one uses words, being able to identify and present sound arguments, etc.
Actually, I tend to have a fairly high respect for Rorty. I certainly don't find him boring.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt