----- Original Message ----- From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
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
================
Yes, and Gould said nothing of significant ontological/epistemological value that wasn't also said by Herbert Simon in the 'Sciences of the Artificial' which is one hell of a lot thinner. Should he therefore not have written the book?
So Ecclesiastes, you still haven't traded in your 8-track player for a CD machine yet, eh?
It's a pretty short step from "there's no new thing under the sun" to "there shall be no new thing under the sun." And some forms of anti-individualism flirt with the latter; that is as dangerous in theorizing societies as it is in politics.
Ian