File spoon-archives/lyotard.archive/lyotard_1998/lyotard.9812, message 60


Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1998 05:53:31 -0800
Subject: RE: Paradigms Lost


Eric Wrote:


<<<When I questioned the theory of paradigms, the argument was principally
aimed at those who use it in a reductive manner to see science as a social
construction and nothing but.  Neither Kuhn nor Lyotard use the term
paradigm in this manner, so possibly I am simply chasing a pomo straw man,
but nonetheless I persist in seeing science as more than social
construction.  Its unique characteristics include an accumulation capable of
absorbing revolutionary changes (paradigm shifts) in a way that goes way
beyond relativistic social fashions and its own rate of change continues to
expand exponentially.  In a word, this is not a paradigm.  It is a
monster.>>>

Don Smith replies:

I think that postmodernists find Kuhns theory of paradigm shifts in science
useful in that it shows that science does not deal in absolutes but that
what is thought of as truth in one paradigm can be displaced in the next.
This example gives weight to the postmodern theory of the increasing
incredulity toward metanarratives. Paradigm theory challenges the
enlightenment's emphasis on rationality and confidence in empiricism.

As to the question of whether science is more than a social construction I
don't see how it could be thought of as anything else. It is a human
endeavor. However, that doesn't mean that the results are not material. They
certainly are, both the good and the bad. However it certainly has taken on
a momentum of its own. But to reach back to Marx's point, capitalism has a
way of reifying social constructions so that they seem to be "things"
independent of human activity and therefore exempt from human control. This
is very convenient for those whose interest is best served if the objectives
of science go unquestioned.

   

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