Date: Mon, 10 Jun 1996 18:39:47 +0300 (EET DST)
Subject: Re: ..cat


Rahul, thanks for your answers

and sorry this took so long, but our comms systems were
down. You wrote:

"Classical epistemology doesn't get discarded, it's merely
seen as a special limiting case of the deeper quantum
epistemology. Further advances may see quantum epistemology
as again a limiting case of something larger, although they
may not."

Do you mean that we have today several epistemologies? One
for quantum physics, second for, say, social history etc. If
it's so, is there any relation between them? What is
'epistemology' then (in a situation where it doesn't have
any general relevance)?

"... it makes a lot more sense to say that physical
discoveries are here to stay and our basic conceptions come
and go, or would if philosophers had even an iota of
imagination."

I take you mean our basic conceptions concerning natural
world? At least in human reality there are some constancies
of which there's no reason to construct new conceptions.

"... scope of relevance of these discoveries is often quite
well defined."

This reminds me of one esteemed linguist who said in the
eighties that there's no reason for social scientists worry
about trends in linguistics after WW2 because they have
nothing in common with other social sciences. (BTW, he
himself esteemed quite a lot Claude Levi-Strauss'
anthropological studies exactly from the point of view of
linguistics. Foucault's early works he dismissed totally).

However (and keeping in mind case Virilio), social
scientists didn't believed him. Instead used different
theoretical models and methodological applications because
they were so fruitful for them. I think that quite often,
>from linguists point of view, those applications were more
or less 'unprofessional'. But that's not the point. Those
applications weren't used as linguists tools but as
sociological ones, for example. And even as such they got
dismissed sooner or later but they did their job - helped to
broaden view (for example, in what ways hegemonistic
discourses manage to grab people's attention, even their
minds etc), helped to extend 'disciplinary thinking' to new
domains, whatever.

(Well, I don't think this to be good example. Language and
linguistics are, unlike physics, of some relevance for all
human/social sciences. Other thing is that thinking social
action somehow follows linguistic rules or be structured
according linguistics structures is surely false. Rather
contrary?)

Jukka



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