Comments on: Who Said It?

By: No Nym

No Nym — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 18:35:02 +0000

Steve Labonne said: “Of course Peirce just wasn’t that kinda guy.”

Like Dewey was?

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:56:29 +0000

If Peirce had ever presented his main ideas clearly and systematically in a nice easy-to-read little book like Kuhn’s Structure, nobody would ever have heard of Kuhn. Of course Peirce just wasn’t that kinda guy.

By: ed_finnerty

ed_finnerty — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:30:19 +0000

when I read Kuhn it seemed like a rehash of Whiteheads Climate of Opinion stuff, which of course was a rehash of …, (etc to infinite regress)

By: soru

soru — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 15:24:54 +0000

I think the vast majority of the studies have shown it to be false.

However, the people who believe it to be true are not dead yet.

By: Nicholas Gruen

Nicholas Gruen — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 12:36:00 +0000

Kuhn didn’t do much. I’m sure he was a clever fellow, but his ‘discovery’ was simply the rediscovery of things that people had known about the history of science for ages. The pragmatists probably put it best, and C.S. Pearce said similar things earlier than Dewey. But Adam Smith said not dissimilar things in his History of Astronomy in the eighteenth century.

By: Crooked Timber » » Who Said It?, Part the second

Crooked Timber » » Who Said It?, Part the second — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 04:58:10 +0000

[...] Jon Mandle points to one anticipation of Thomas Kuhn. Here’s another – this one about the romance of paradigm-shift vs. the pedestrian dullness of ‘normal’ science: [...]

By: Cosma

Cosma — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:31:32 +0000

Re Laudan on Planck’s quip: See Arthur Donovan, Larry Laudan and Rachel Laudan (eds.), Scrutinizing Science: Empirical Studies of Scientific Change (Kluwer, 1988), especially the introduction, where this is postulate “GA4.5”.

By: Henry (not the famous one)

Henry (not the famous one) — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 21:15:16 +0000

St. Thomas Aquinas (speaking to Dante Alighieri, whom he happened to meet in the Fourth Heaven, the Sphere of the Sun, roughly 706 years ago) echoes the first part of Dewey’s statement:

«E questo ti sia sempre piombo a’ piedi,
per farti mover lento com’uom lasso
e al sì e al no che tu non vedi . . .

. . . perch’elli ‘ncontra che più volte piega
l’oppinion corrente in falsa parte,
e poi l’affetto l’intelletto lega.»

“And let this always weigh down your feet like lead,
to make you move as slowly as a weary man,
to refrain from yes or no when you do not see . . .

because hasty opinion too often
points the wrong way and then affection
for one’s own opinion binds up the intellect.”

Paradiso XIII: 112-114, 118-120

By: marcel

marcel — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 20:00:08 +0000

Briefer Planck (#2 above):

Science progresses funeral by funeral.

http://www.tiaa-crefinstitute.org/research/speeches/docs/010597b.pdf

By: No Nym

No Nym — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:26:43 +0000

I called Dewey, this sounded (and was) just like him. Had I not guessed Dewey I would have said Laudan, but it’s not in his style. Same underlying concerns, though.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:04:40 +0000

A whole host of people have studied Planck’s principle, though I don’t know of Lauden doing so. I think the vast majority of the studies have shown it to be false.

By: pdf23ds

pdf23ds — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 17:46:05 +0000

In other words, most of the important questions beg the question.

By: Steve LaBonne

Steve LaBonne — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 17:40:18 +0000

And as I recall Larry Laudan wrote a paper in which he tested Planck’s quip against the historical record and claimed to find that it was not supported. (Anyone have a reference?)

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 17:30:42 +0000

I always liked this one from Max Plank:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

By: Bill Hooker

Bill Hooker — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 17:23:27 +0000

I’m reading Dewey’s “Quest For Certainty” (1929) at the moment, and realizing that many later philosophers of science probably owed him a considerable debt. I haven’t read enough to know whether this is an acknowledged debt or a case of Dewey’s ideas coming back into vogue.