Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 23:13:53 -0500
Subject: Re: More on Modernism, Reason and Myth


Justin:
>Contrary to what Rahul says, the use of analogy is essential to
>the sciences, even the exact ones. See Mary Hesse's wonderful Models and
>Anoglies in Science. (She was my old grad school advisor at Cambridge). Of
>course the scientifiuc use of analogies is very different from the old
>Humanist approach that Rahul rightly says was squelched in the
>Enlightenment. It's controlled by its value in producing empirically
>testible hypothesis, for one.

I really hate this kind of thing. No, I never said the use of analogy is
not essential to the sciences. Justin, I'm sure you're aware of the
possibly overstated but no doubt significant distinction between context of
discovery and context of justification. The use of analogy in making
models, forming hypotheses, and getting some vague idea of reasonableness
is very clearly essential to science -- I've even done it myself. Science
cannot be done by computers. On the other hand, no scientist will accept an
analogy as an actual piece of evidence in favor of some hypothesis,
although it can certainly have an impact on whether one tends to believe it
or not.

You seem to agree with the points I actually made, though.

Rahul




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