From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Aug 30 2001 - 07:48:55 MDT
Tim Maroney wrote:
>
> > But in the last chapter Kuhn tentatively attacked the view that science makes
> > progress toward objective truths: "We may, to be more precise, have to
> > relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry
> > scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth."
> > Kuhn's book lately seems to have become read (or at least quoted) as a
> > manifesto for a general attack on the presumed objectivity of science."
>
> Note Weinberg's correct observation that this is a tentative observation,
> reinforced by Kuhn's "we may". It's anything but a strident or definite
> conclusion -- it's part of a section mulling over various ways to look at
> the implications of the contrasts Kuhn noted between science's
> self-description and its actual history.
Yet it is this 'tentative' observation which has won out in the public
scene as Kuhn' legacy. The damage he did with these subjectivist
statements is among the greatest propaganda losses to luddism.
> Is anyone suggesting that we should
> never even consider the idea that scientific paradigm shifts form a
> successive approximation to truth?
Not I, but that is the position of the subjectivists and of the luddite
movement.
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