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
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