tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post1595840200491591605..comments2024-02-12T23:25:09.583-08:00Comments on Overweening Generalist: Imre Lakatos: Another Favored Hungarianmichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-61967131311642415432012-06-18T14:03:01.940-07:002012-06-18T14:03:01.940-07:00@Andrew Crawshaw: Yea, I think Popper seems more o...@Andrew Crawshaw: Yea, I think Popper seems more of a non-Positivist by the end of his life. Quine did try to rescue the Positivist program, but in doing so he undermined it, knowingly and ironically, ending in something much more firmly like Pragmatism. His examples about different languages and "mapping reality" one-to-one was thrilling for me: it doesn't work. No matter how "good" we get at it, no matter how hard we work, there is no One category that all the languages conform to, and we ought not try too hard to get there.<br /><br />WVO Quine ended up as a pragmatist, and a Reagan Republican.<br /><br />I see the models that attempt to verify, using induction, as viable; they simply aren't the ONLY models.<br /><br />One of the reasons I love the sociology and philosophy of science is that it's soooo RICH: I'll never exhaust it. And for me, it's never a dull moment. There's just too damned much to understand before even being able to see where Hume, Kant, Popper, Mach, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend, Latour, Gardner, Wittgenstein, etc...are arguing from. <br /><br />I had the book you linked to in a pile of library books once; I recall perusing it, but I think it lost out for concerted attention to some other books and had to return to the book-room in the city.<br /><br />I'm gratified that you lurk and appreciate your comments, Mr. Crawshaw. Please: no ned to apologize!michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-90755632680100935562012-06-15T09:39:25.690-07:002012-06-15T09:39:25.690-07:00I think positivism was robustly discredited by pop...I think positivism was robustly discredited by popper, with a simple statement that the varifiabilty principle itself can not be varified (WVO Quine tried to save it by saying something like the principle is part of a logical "meta-language" this is what I was lead to believe by a philophy of science student, I might have misunderstood). the things popper shares with positivists are there philosophical roots, but positivisms reliance on varifiability and inductive reasoning which define the positive enterprise is what popper disagreed with, which makes him only a positive by association and not in "creed" (for want of a better word). <br /><br />The book i read is here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kuhn-Popper-Struggle-Soul-Science/dp/1840467223<br /><br />Sorry I took so long to reply I haven't been lurking here for a while.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-53289702029383853932012-05-30T23:15:13.064-07:002012-05-30T23:15:13.064-07:00@Andrew Crawshaw: I still see a lingering positivi...@Andrew Crawshaw: I still see a lingering positivism in Popper - by no means am I a top-notch reader of Popper (yet!) because the falsifiability retains - to my way of thinking - that flavor of logical positivism. But by and large, I think Popper, Godel and Wittgenstein went a long way towards taking the shine off the pants of the Vienna Circle. <br /><br />I still see value in positivist thinking as a model.<br /><br />Do you remember the title of the book you read on Popper and Kuhn?<br /><br />Great thinkers seem more often "misread" than the not-as-great; Popper's thought was so fecund and changed over the years; there's plenty of room to give creative misreadings of him, I think...<br /><br />I love that David Deutsch has embraced/argued for the Everett/Wheeler/Graham model. Deutsch is one of those Wiggy thinkers I've followed for a long time. He literally wants to concoct the best TOE (Theory of Everything) in the world, and the reason I haven't written about him in this blog yet is that I don't think I've adequately grasped his TOE. <br /><br />Thanks for bringing him up in connection with Popper!michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-18112184314260715412012-05-30T06:24:13.562-07:002012-05-30T06:24:13.562-07:00I have recently read a book about Popper and Kuhns...I have recently read a book about Popper and Kuhns influence on science, it was very interesting how popper seemed to be put in the Postivist camp, though he actuallt though the "positivist" theory was self-defeating; I think that was just because he came out of the austrian group though. I still think Popper is misread, the best contemporary defender of Popper is david deutzche, who is also incidentally one of the best contemporary defenders of The Many Worlds Hypothesis.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-4715153594333928012012-05-29T14:56:28.589-07:002012-05-29T14:56:28.589-07:00Hot dog. I hope you enjoy I, Wabenzi. I sure did...Hot dog. I hope you enjoy I, Wabenzi. I sure did.<br /><br />I finished reading Goethe's Faust, Part One yesterday, along with finishing rereading Ulysses. I picked up a David Thomson book on Warren Beatty today from the shelf, and I ordered the new Charles Rosen book. Ah, summer.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-18655450748711709882012-05-29T14:50:08.070-07:002012-05-29T14:50:08.070-07:00@Eric: no Netflix for me. I do have a DVR, but unl...@Eric: no Netflix for me. I do have a DVR, but unless they do a Big Bang Theory marathon from show #1, I probably won't catch up unless they release the entire series on DVD and my local library buys it.<br /><br />At some point in the year 2012 I'll write on Rafi's novel.<br /><br />Polya ain't for everyone. X-ray it and see for yourself?michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-19385179748617091642012-05-29T13:22:35.248-07:002012-05-29T13:22:35.248-07:00Hi,
I have a quick question about your blog, do yo...Hi,<br />I have a quick question about your blog, do you think you could email me?<br />DavidDavid Haashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08616835462804462281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-90489970071717006202012-05-25T13:38:38.084-07:002012-05-25T13:38:38.084-07:00Do you have a Netflix account? I highly recommend...Do you have a Netflix account? I highly recommend watching "The Big Bang Theory" from the beginning.<br /><br />If you read I, Wabenzi, I will read How to Solve It.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-79021138312453138552012-05-25T13:25:33.070-07:002012-05-25T13:25:33.070-07:00I really need to watch a few eps of the Big Bang T...I really need to watch a few eps of the Big Bang Theory. Recently someone told me I would've really liked NUMB3RS, which I never saw. <br /><br />I tend to fall much closer to your lines about what Nature herself (tself?) would shout. That's why I enjoy Lakatos so much: he's an incredibly stimulating intellectual, with very many ideas, and yet on another level he reminds me a satire on intellectuals that RAW might've written. <br /><br />I just think his intense desire for "rationality" in human workings is a Fools Errand. And the ironies pile up: persecuted by fascists and then communists, he escapes to a haven of relative sanity and free thought, then at one point, in his essay in the book collected as In Memory of Rudolf Carnap, he asserts that adherents of "degenerating research programmes" (those people working under a theory that is covering up it lack of progress, basically) should not be allowed to publish their results! Why?Well, because these papers only contain solid iterations of their positions or attempts to "reabsorb counter-evidence by ad hoc adjustments." Additionally, they should be denied funding! (I inserted the link at the end of my blog to Nick Herbert's blog, which links to a Scientific American paper, in attempt to quietly drive a wedge into Imre's over-neatness. I tend to mostly agree with Feyerabend: Imre's overall search for the inner logics of scientific discovery, over long periods, was itself something of a degenerating research program - which I find hilarious, but Imre didn't see it that way - and furthermore, Imre ended up far far closer, by default, to Feyerabend's "anything goes" in methodology. Nick's gedankenexperiments about FTL in the quantum theory, derived from Bell, were refuted, but the core idea led to fruitful discoveries, and i think quantum cryptography is going to be a Huge Deal. Not bad for a LSD-dropping hippie physicist!<br /><br />I think at moments Imre became a tad unhinged, but he probably never appeared that way, as I think his intellectual demeanor was probably closer to Chomsky's, but with more jokes, smiling, laughter, and self-deprectation. But Chomsky would NEVER advocate that a fringe group that he saw as whack be denied the right to publish; in fact, Chomsky's rather famous for doing the opposite of that. If ony Chomsky the rationalist had Lakatos's sense of humor...<br /><br />There is so much in Lakatos's thought that seems to me outrageous and extreme, but he came at it from what seems to me an earnest,intellectually honest angle. I just think he's one of William James's "tender-minded" temperaments of special sort; Feyerabend seems quite the model for James's "tough-minded": these two complement each other well...<br /><br />After the war, Imre got a job translating the great Hungarian mathematician (and one who was scared of John von Neumann's abilities) George Polya's book How To Solve It, back into Hungarian! You may have read that book at some point.<br /><br />Imre considered sociology a pseudoscience, which opens up an entire can of worms for me, and leads to those sorts of cosmic giggle-factor ironies that RAW saw in so many places. Perhaps I'll get to this one day...michaelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13526042582094867513noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1178284085080580526.post-41713525290633244582012-05-25T07:45:25.000-07:002012-05-25T07:45:25.000-07:00Great post. I'd like to have the characters o...Great post. I'd like to have the characters on The Big Bang Theory discuss this blog.<br /><br />One might say Nature doesn't shout, or if it does it doesn't shout "Inconsistency!" Rather, it shouts roses + concrete + clouds + birdsong + human chatter + bumperstickers + eyesight + cognition + breathing with some pollution, etc.Eric Wagnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04312033917401203598noreply@blogger.com