tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post3355630203641380665..comments2023-11-03T08:02:25.369-04:00Comments on AmericanScience: A Team Blog: Errol Morris' Whiggish History of IncommensurabilityDavid Roth Singermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12841041983824755867noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-33781030226392302412011-03-17T15:11:17.031-04:002011-03-17T15:11:17.031-04:00Hey Peter, thanks for the input. The links were su...Hey Peter, thanks for the input. The links were supposed to be blue, and yet you're right: they are red on each individual post page. It looks like a blogger bug that we'll try to fix.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05217832960135325575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-85905505018341375362011-03-16T23:18:49.931-04:002011-03-16T23:18:49.931-04:00This is interesting guys, but you gotta do somethi...This is interesting guys, but you gotta do something about the web design. Links are indistinguishable from normal text to my protanopic eyes. Probably anyone with any of the common red-green color vision anomalies will have trouble.<br /><br />The font is kind of scary too...Peterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12008031568467006349noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-45604310288863609202011-03-16T20:26:19.277-04:002011-03-16T20:26:19.277-04:00Hank, I'm using Whiggishness in the same way t...Hank, I'm using Whiggishness in the same way that we see Kuhn (via Morris) use it in the essay: it means doing teleological history, which includes that imagining that because an idea has some effect in the world it must have been always destined to have that effect. In this case, I think that Morris starts from the fact that some post-modernists appropriated Kuhn's ideas of incommensurability and tells a story in which incommensurability always had to become a tool of post-modernists, and was basically such a tool even in Kuhn's hands. In a similar way, Maxwell developed the idea of the displacement current in its "ur-" form even before he developed the idea of the displacement current---or so I gather was young Morris' working assumption.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05217832960135325575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-45230193743943727702011-03-16T13:13:24.189-04:002011-03-16T13:13:24.189-04:00Hi Dan: Could you clarify, just a bit, where the &...Hi Dan: Could you clarify, just a bit, where the "Whiggishness" in your title applies? Is it that Morris reconstructs the intellectual history of Kuhn and his ideas whiggishly, or that he rejects Kuhn's purported anti-Whiggism - or both? And, whichever it is, maybe you could just clarify what *you* mean by Whiggish, so I get a better sense of what's at stake here (beyond your problems with Morris' tone, his debate tactics, &c.). Thanks!Hankhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02841787256060612291noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-2916431026476881972011-03-16T13:06:45.818-04:002011-03-16T13:06:45.818-04:00PS: I actually misspelled the name of the Kripke-W...PS: I actually misspelled the name of the Kripke-Wittgenstein monster: traditionally, it's "Kripkenstein," not "Kripgenstein." See http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Kripkenstein.Timhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13026955797817424956noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-44205545551874715562011-03-16T12:32:50.960-04:002011-03-16T12:32:50.960-04:00Kripgenstein---that's funny. It suggests an en...Kripgenstein---that's funny. It suggests an entirely new genre of names based on the mash-up of two philosophers, who combined become a famous monster of Romantic literature.<br /><br />In that spirit, I offer Morruhn, as in "the Island of Dr. Morruhn," or even better, "the Astray of Dr. Morruhn."<br /><br />More seriously, I like your diagnosis of Morris' approach. I can even understand why Morris might make the leap from incommensurability to intranslatability---it isn't right, but it's understandable. That's one reason I so much like the mathematical metaphor from sqrt(2). Sure, there's no simple rational number to translate to, but we can get to a decimal approximation with whatever level of precision you ask for. There may not be perfect translation, but you can get something good enough to build a rocket, etc.<br /><br />Kuhn's ideas about progress in science also raise Morris' hackles and lead Morris to over-shoot Kuhn's point. Kuhn asserts that progress happens in normal science, by definition. But he claims that transitions between paradigms may or may not lead to progress. He leaves open the possibility that no progress occurs, but Morris reads this as a dictate that scientific revolutions deny progress.<br /><br />In the continued spirit of fairness, Morris is hardly the only person to make these leaps and his essay might be read as an indictment less of Kuhn and more of the Kuhn constructed by all those who made these leaps (and applauded them) in the past. If the essay had been actually written as such, I might have liked it more.Danhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05217832960135325575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1030220433025894048.post-30951401372481208832011-03-15T23:44:17.493-04:002011-03-15T23:44:17.493-04:00Very nice post, Dan. I was disappointed with Morri...Very nice post, Dan. I was disappointed with Morris's series, too, especially the way in which in Morris's account, Kuhnian "incommensurability" gets permuted into "untranslatability," the impossibility of even understanding in any language what another person means. <br /><br />There's no evidence that that's what Kuhn means, even between scientific practitioners working in different "normal science" paradigms, and very good evidence that it's not. The best evidence is that Kuhn thinks that the history of science is possible -- but Morris uses that as evidence of Kuhn's God complex. In short, Morris invents incommensurability as an impossibility, then shouts "tu quoque" at Kuhn for thinking he can overcome an entirely imaginary impossibility.<br /><br />Also, Morris's account of Kripke's philosophy and why he thinks Kripke is important are just as unrecognizable to me as his account of Kuhn. Kripke sometimes gets teased in philosophical circles for his book "Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language" for inventing a version of Wittgenstein that isn't quite the historical Wittgenstein and very much like Kripke himself, so much so that the Wittgenstein in Kripke's book is sometimes called "Kripgenstein." There isn't a natural portmanteau for Morris's version of Kuhn, but I think the same criticism applies.Timhttp://snarkmarket.comnoreply@blogger.com