Date: Thu, 21 Jul 1994 19:42:07 +0100 From: m_cockerill-AT-omega.lif.icnet.uk (Matt Cockerill) Subject: Re: Bhaskar's Ontological Grounding of Dialectics A couple of epistemological comments from the lab-bench: Hans Ehrbar <ehrbar-AT-econ.utah.edu> writes: >(2) How can you find out about that part of the world which is not >accessible to science? By what Bhaskar calls a second-order or >transcendental argument, which looks at the effects in order to infer >what that must be like which has these effects. Bhaskar's classic >example, which has established him a lasting place in modern >philosophy of science, is the following: > >From the fact that science is possible we can conclude that the world >is such that science is possible. This sounds to me to be a very Goedel influenced view of epistemology. As you know, Goedel's incompleteness theorem implied that in any consistent and sufficiently complex formal system there exist true statements which are not derivable from the system's axioms. In the same sense, I take it that Bhaskar is saying that the methodology of science produces incomplete knowledge, and that there exist second order truths (analagous to Goedel's theorem) which can be recognised as true, but which would never have been hit upon by scientific methodology. >>The foundational moment of critical realism was a Copernican/Darwinian >>revolution which stood the world back on its feet again, critiqued the >>*epistemic fallacy* and situated epistemology constellationally within >>ontology. > >(The only word which my development did not explain here is: what does >this have to do with Darwin? Presumably Bhaskar refers to the fact >that science is a social evolutionary process. I guess that Bhaskar is simply referring to the Darwinian revolution as the second step in the loss of anthropocentricity from natural philosophy. After Copernicus it became accepted that we weren't central to the universe in a bricks and mortar sense, but it was Darwin's revolution that more seriously questioned the assumption that we were the central concern of a Creator's cosmic masterplan. ===============================================Matt Cockerill <m_cockerill-AT-icrf.icnet.uk> Imperial Cancer Research Fund (Cell Cycle Group) Clare Hall South Mimms Potters Bar Tel: 071 269 3876 Herts. EN6 3LD Fax: 071 269 3801 ===============================================
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