Ken Collins wrote:
>> Bruce Lilly wrote in message <3795FE06.7DBC6BB7 at erols.com>...
> >Ken Collins wrote:
> >>
> >> a good book, discussing the 'same-stuff' from a behavioral perspective,
> is
> >> Thomas Kuhn's, _The Structure of Scientific Revolutions_.
> >
> >I'd call that "a load of postmodernist pap" rather than "a good book".
>> call it what you will, although Mr. kuhn's analysis did not give an
> accounting in terms of nervous system function, his analysis is verifiably
> correct.
Kuhn starts his "pair o' dimes" nonsense with the bald assertion (p. 2) that
"Aristotelian dynamics [is] ... neither less scientific nor more the product
of human idiosyncrasy than those current today". The edifice that Kuhn
attempts to construct on that shaky foundation simply won't stand up.
Aristotle's dynamics was based solely on speculation, without the tempering of
experimentation *or* observation; those latter essential aspects of the
scientific method were not part of Aristotle's methods, which therefore cannot
be reasonably asserted to be "scientific".
He [Kuhn] blathers on about a so-called "Copernican revolution", mentioning
Aristarchus of Samos only by saying that the latter had a "complete
anticipation [...] of Copernicus", without providing any explanation of how
one might go about "anticipating" (much less performing a "complete
anticipation") of something or someone 1800 years in the future.
If there's anything of substance in Kuhn's book that is "verifiably correct",
it has somehow escaped my attention amidst the postmodernist mumbo-jumbo, and
believe me I've *tried* to find something of substance there.
A much more rational (not to mention readable) account of the rise of science,
of Aristarchus of Samos and of Copernicus, etc. can be found in Bertrand
Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy", ISBN 0-671-20158-1.
