Date: Tue, 30 Jul 1996 04:01:16 -0500
From: rahul-AT-peaches.ph.utexas.edu (Rahul Mahajan)
Subject: Re: Buddy, can youse paradigm?


Jeff J:

>Whether one agrees with his philosophy of science or not, Kuhn's work in
>the history of
>science shows that it is (usually) the fine points often mistaken for
>stagnation that
>move science along.

This was well known long before Kuhn. The attitude social scientists take
here is rather reminiscent of that of the explorers who "discovered" places
like darkest Africa, except that all they have to do to make their
discoveries is to ask someone else.

>-The other is Relativity, the result of the crisis produced by
>Black Body radiation and the photoelectric effect.

This is wrong. Relativity had nothing to do with either black body
radiation or the photoelectric effect. It came out of the inconsistency
between Maxwell's equations and Newtonian mechanics and, experimentally,
>from results such as that on the aberration of stellar light, Fizeau's on
the speed of light in a moving medium, and the Michelson-Morley
interferometry results on the nonexistence of the ether.

Black body radiation and the photoelectric effect were both involved in the
creation of quantum theory.

>  I'd be quite suspicious of anyone
>who claims that science is through with discovery because it is not in a
>state of crisis.

Me too.

Rahul




     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---