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Wolf, LOL! Was it here or was it on HOF that we deconstructed Dick and Jane? I recall that the younger posters were having trouble imagining what the fuss could be about until Prim loaded pictures from one of the readers. Then it was like looking at crime scene photos ... the pernicious acculturatio...

By the "other side" I meant the conservative factions within academia that waged war on deconstruction, but your point still holds. What I was trying to get at was that the opposition to American-influenced deconstruction made it real by responding to it as if it were real. And to the exte...

For purposes of discussion, I think it worthwhile to separate the information from the use that is made of it. Lesson 1 scientist cannot betrusted, as for the climatologists -nobody has ever taken them seriously before - so who can blame them. Well, compared to what? Compared to politicians? Compare...

So the only imperative to "action" is one which demands a shift in epistemology. But I think the claim of those like Butler, who works in queer theory and feminist studies, is that such a shift in epistemology will have more far-reaching ripple effects, so to speak. It matters whether we ...

Ax, thanks for that link! (Gotta read that book) A bunch of people threatening all kinds of subversion by means that couldn’t possibly produce it, and a bunch on the other side taking them at their word and waging cultural war. Not comedy, not tragedy, more like farce, but farce with consequences....

Hitting a couple ideas randomly because I haven’t much time ... Maybe you can expand on the connection to Socrates. I’m not very knowledgeable when it comes to languages, and I wouldn’t know how to generalize this “generalize over a property” into proper linguistic terminology, but it woul...

Jadeval, let’s see is I can squeeze some luxury time out of the day ... Going back to this idea of how we map the concept to the thing, and whether concept and method are necessarily distinct, it’s hard for me to talk about abstraction abstractly. :) I’m always wanting to ask in which sort of ...

Iavas, are you saying that no one should study this because it lacks importance in some general sense, or that no particular scientist should have to study it?

I don't see how one could even know for certain that a burden of "proof" rests necessarily with anyone since the various criteria for what constitutes a valid "goal" or "truth" are already embedded within and around the various specific methodologies, themselves embedd...

You do not draw in anything beyond your five senses. I’m not understanding why Jnyusa agreed with this. Because I was responding to the question, "what do we mean by 'material'?" I would accept a five-senses definition of the word 'material,' if what we are talking about is the 'materia...

Related to this, we could ask “what does ‘material’ mean?” You do not draw in anything beyond your five senses. If the data available to empiricism are what we are discussing, then I would adopt River’s definition. That’s a working definition, not necessarily exhaustive. Scientists aren...

I'm pretty sure I could have got through a lifetime in astrophysical research without needing to know I was "deducting in the inductive direction". Doubtless. And that's a really good argument why those who are interested should not be permitted to discuss it on the internet. For a short ...

But what is the ultimate point of saying there is more than one scaffold? If one has a philosophical scaffold there is no point debating with you - because anything goes in your world. No, not everything goes. That is the whole point. Jadeval (and myself) is/are not arguing that scientific mytholog...

Excuse me for double posting but I don't seem able to stop myself on this topic :Duck: There is also this tendency to view empiricism as self-evidently modern, and all other ways of gathering knowledge as self-evidently more primitive. I don't think this is accurate either. If empiricism is the comp...

Ax and Iavas, Sorry you guys, but the more you post the more I disagree! :D We never actually reach the discussion of what alternate frameworks look like because you keep relegating it to faeries and denying it has value, without being willing to hear what it is. So far we have not gotten beyond the...

Just for fun ...

http://xkcd.com/32/

I spent the past hour reading that thread on Manwe and realized, I think for the first time, how extensive is the tendency to deify science! Odd that I never noticed it before. But most of the on-line discussions about Creationism in which I've participated have involved explaining what the scientif...

No, it is a wavelength first, and the properties of the word green come purely from the effect that materials that reflect at this wavelength have on the quality of human life. Iavas, I think what Jadeval was getting at was that when we discuss the color green, there is first of all the human being...

Jny, when people talk about biological structures my thoughts immediately turn to large molecules, not necessarily large assortments of large molecules. You'll find symmetry in macromolecules, but not necessarily fractals. Furthermore, the behavior of molecules themselves is not an either-or deal. ...

Thanks, River. Except that I misspoke, lol.

We do see fractal construction in the circulatory system, and I guess in the nervous system as well ... though it is asymmetric ... obviously more than one thing going on to shape the system.