On Fri, 30 May 2008, Jerry Monaco wrote:
> It is no different for instance, than the way Tiberius Gracchus, from
> what we can surmise "valued" the world, or Machiavelli.
Machiavelli was not a political theorist?????
You and I have different standards.
> You can call them "theories" if you wish also, but they don't seem to me
> to have the explanatory power of Quantum Mechanics or evolutionary
> biology.
Of course not. Those are theories of natural science. The world of meaning doesn't work that way. Science got its whole start by excluding intensions and interpretations and focusing entirely on forces --- a good idea when studying the nature world, which is made up of matter of forces, and where the existence of beings with wills was an illusion. But you can't do that with people. In the world of meanings, interpretation is everything. So everything's always disputable.
Michael