Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 06:34:18 +0800
From: David Geelan <bravus-AT-innocent.com>
Subject: Re: PKF: On Liking Popper AND Feyerabend ...


I often speak of my perspectives on issues as 'postmodern', and that puts some
people off. What I really mean, I suppose, is simply freedom from a single,
comprehensive worldview - freedom to embrace plurality. Within that freedom, it
may be strategic and pragmatic to use modernist stories about how the world works
for some purposes.

I feel similarly about Feyerabend as a philosopher of science: 'anything goes' permission not to have to become a disciple of one thinker or another, but to
'have my Kuhn and Popper too' (and Lakatos, and Ricouer, and...)

I think one Western trend we can well do without is defining ideas in pure
opposition to one another: advocating one perspective as a panacea, and tarring
its competitors as useless and wrong. The more pluralistic perspective I'm
describing doesn't lead to the impossibility of debate, but to more care in
describing the *purposes* for which we choose particular conceptual tools.

So put me down in the 'liking Popper AND Feyerabend' camp! And Victor, how can you
say Popper's ideas are superseded? Are Plato's? I don't think so. They all add to
our repertoire of ways of dealing with complex bodies of knowledge and sets of
social practices.

Warm regards,

David Geelan

Dale Huckeby wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, Kenneth Allen Hopf wrote:
>
> > Victor,
> >
> > >Yes, but now he is wholly superseded, old stuff, history. We cannot say the
> > >same about Feyerabend.
> >
> > Popper is not only NOT superseded, but he has spawned a school of thought
> > that is growing and becoming more influential, not less so.  Feyerabend
> > is a good and interesting philosopher, but Popper is by far the greater
> > of the two.
>
>   Growing and becoming more influential?!  It's been my strong impression,
> buttressed by occasional debates on HOPOS, that _both_ have long since
> been supplanted by Kuhn.
>
> Dale Huckeby
>
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--
Dr David R Geelan
Institute for the Service Professions, Edith Cowan University
Ph. +61 8 9370 6728 (Intl) or (08) 9370 6728
Fax +61 8 9370 6700 (Intl) or (08) 9370 6728
Home page: http://bravus.port5.com


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