From: Huechroma-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 19:08:53 EST
Subject: Re:  Paradigms Lost


Eric wrote:
<<<The third Kuhn is pop-Kuhn, for whom the new paradigm is always just
emerging.  Others cannot see it because they are still lost in the old
paradigm, but those who are the chosen ones can.  These are the visionaries,
the prophets, the avatars. The new paradigm is crystals, systems theory,
holism, the new age, the third wave, cyberspace, creating your own reality,
the millennium, aliens...take your pick.

Paradigm theory in its pop version offers its believers the hope of a new
metanarrative of legitimation that no longer requires the need for
legitimation. (That science/reason thing is all simply part of the old
paradigm.)  If you don't grok, if you don't get it, you are a member of the
lost generation.

I am contesting these virtual Kuhns, these images of paradigm theory because I
think they are too often confused with what being postmodern is all about (The
anything goes slacker mentality whose watchword is ...whatever.) I don't think
this is what Lyotard is saying and I don't personally believe that being
committed to a postmodern perspective logically entails that we have to accept
this relativistic, social constructionist, pop version of science.>>>

Don Smith replies:
Given what Lyotard has to say in section 13, =93Postmodern Science as the Search
for Instabilities=94, it sees that he might be counted among those who believe
science has found a new paradigm. Consider the following quote from the end of
the section in which he has just provided several examples of postmodern
research:

=93 The conclusion we can draw from this research (and much more not mentioned
here) is that the continuous differentiable function is losing its preeminence
as a paradigm of knowledge and prediction. Postmodern science - by concerning
itself with such things as undecidables, the limits of precise control,
conflicts characterized by incomplete information =91fracta,=92 catastaphies and
pragmatic paradoxes -is theorizing its own evolution as discontinuous,
catastrophic, norectifiable and paradoxical.=94 

We pop-Kuhnians believe that the paradigm shift in science, which Lyotard
describes, helps undermine the metanarratives of determinism and =91science as
truth=92 which is part of the hegemony that spreads =91terror=92, to use Lyotard=92s
term.

Don