Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1998 09:05:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: Football (European), Rugby, and the rules of the game Lois wrote: > So, innovation is similar to paralogy but not quite the > same. It can look the same. What is the difference? I > think the difference is that paralogy takes us into a new > language game. It is not an innovation within the system > (rather like Kuhn's normal science) but a move to change > the game that allows data before us to show different > patterns. The paralogy, then (read on for the next > paragraph) tends to destabilize the game that is being > played and allow us to move into another language game by > encouraging the promulgation of new rules and norms that > are locally and provisionally determined. Instead of xerostomia, let me offer an Austinian example which I think clarifies the distinction between innovation and invention--and I see invention as the paralogical. Austin tosses out as an example the mythological origins of rugby: that a player picked up the football (soccer ball) and started to run with it, at which point others started to chase him, etc. Thus a new game was formed. One might easily draft this *event* into the service of innovation by constructing a narrative of how rugby improves on football (it's an "evolution of the game" etc. etc.). But as an event, as a moment of paralogy, it is strictly invention--but precisely because something is put into play. The game doesn't come to a crashing halt. Play continues in an altered game (not necessarily better or even the "new" of innovate). --mark
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005