From: ROSSERJB-AT-jmu.edu Date: Thu, 20 Jun 1996 15:27:38 -0500 (EST) Subject: Thomas Kuhn I just wanted to follow up a bit on one or two of Rahul's remarks (I'll be disappearing for an extended period of time after tomorrow), given Kuhn's recent death. 1) You can't have it both ways, Rahul. On the one hand you cannot maintain, as you did, that one must do something genuinely original in the natural sciences to get a Ph.D. while simultaneously maintaining that "anyone can get a Ph.D if they hang around long enough" as you did vis a vis Kuhn and his Harvard physics Ph.D. I know plenty of ABDs who never got theirs. I just saw one today here at UW-Madison who had a similar topic to mine and is in his 50s. Washing dishes so he can hang around the scene. 2) I was glad to see you agree that it might not hurt physicists to study some philosophy/methodology. But we all know that time is tight and it is hard to get people to even study anything even in connected areas within their discipline, at least if they want to be successful "normal scientists" (keep your eye on the goal, don't deviate!). 3) I knew Kuhn personally, which does not mean that he was right about everything (and you're no Kuhn ("thank heavens," say you):-)). But I would note that he regularly and frequently objected to the misuse and misapplication of his concept of "paradigm." Granted that much of the fuzziness is there in his _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_, but at various points he argued that it came from the idea of a centrally organizing experiment or example which could provide the foundation for a broader theoretical framework and approach. This does not seem overly mushy to me. 4) One point that has not been addressed is Kuhn's argument that a paradigm shift involves a change in language, or if you prefer, the meaning of words in a language. Thus the development of and acceptance of the theory of relativity actually changed the meaning of the words "space" and "time." 5) This is to somebody else, sorry I don't remember who. But the claim that dialectics applies to economics and politics but not to natural sciences can also be debated. I note that probably a majority of professional economists would tell you that they attempt to use the scientific method, recognizing fully the difficulty of carrying out controlled experiments, etc., that they have an abstract theory , just like the physicists (much of it stolen from the physicists), that Marx has been shown logically and empirically to be wrong about fundamental things (labor theory of value out the window, see transformation problem and, yes, there are varying organic compositions of capital across sectors empirically; falling rate of profit highly conditional, see Okishio Theorem) and that thus they can proceed in a pragmatic "whatever predicts best" manner just like the hard physicists. Thus, discussion of Marx, dialectics, and such stuff is to be left to a bunch of soft-headed history of thought types, sort of like Kuhn in physics, who hard types like mathematical theorists and econometricians can duly ignore. BTW, as an aside to you, Rahul: I picked up a hint from one of your posts that you are a grad student. Are you in danger of becoming one of those "permanent ABDs" from spending too much time on the nets? Better be careful (same goes for you too, Baroness), although the various lists you haunt would be the worse off without your "disciplining," :-). Barkley Rosser --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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