Miles Jackson wrote:
>
> On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Eubulides wrote:
>
> >
> > One need not be a methodological individualist to think there are
> > *serious* problems with the above assertion.
> >
> >
> > Ian
>
> You sound like a strict Darwinist arguing with Gould about
> species or clade selection! Why the glorification of the
> individual organism? If we don't need to do that in
> evolutionary theory, we sure as hell don't need to do it
> in social theory.
There are, of course, "*serious* problems" with almost every significant theory in every realm of human thought. There are, as I understand it roughly, several different highly general "theories" (or routes towards a theory) in current physics to explain among other things the recent discovery that the universe's rate of expansion is increasing rather than decreasing (as it should be given Einstein's general theory of relativity). [This is goofed up but the general point holds that even in that supposedly most precise of sciences there are serious problems in conflicting theories, each of which solves problems conflicting theories can't.] And the point of this is that Ian's objection is really a rather silly tautology no matter _what_ it is applied to. It's always true and always irrelevant.
We can even quote scripture on the topic. :-) According to Mao, Marx & Lenin will look pretty silly a thousand years from now. *Serious* problems in their theories -- but probably the only way we will 'solve' those problems (by going beyond Marx & Lenin) is by sticking pretty close to them for quite a while, just as, if I follow correctly at all, physicists are sticking pretty close to general relativity even as 'problems' accumulate and suspicion grows that it has serious problems. Some kinds of theory can only be exploded by practice _internal_ to the theories. A self-conscious search for "new ideas" for the sake of "new ideas" usually produces not new ideas but old ideas in disguise.
Carrol
>
> Miles
>
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