[HN Gopher] The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the...
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The tragedy of the canon; or, path dependence in the history of
science (2021)
Author : Hooke
Score : 31 points
Date : 2023-11-27 20:43 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
| stareatgoats wrote:
| Interesting. As far as I can see this is part of the age-old
| attempt to try and moor the the history of science, and perhaps
| philosophy itself, in some sort of empirical framework. In this
| case the notion of a "canon" seems to serve as the equivalent of
| the lab experiment in physics.
|
| It could well be a useful concept, but even an amateur like me
| can see some obvious pitfalls. A canon among historians and
| philosophers of science can, and will, only be based on the
| paradigms of the day, paradigms that ultimately get thrown out
| the window in light of new developments in society (see Kuhn and
| others). So philosophy is, and should, primarily be critical of
| it's assumptions, not elevate them into canonical truths, with
| which to crush the critics.
|
| We actually need to get away from the trend of reducing
| everything down to the "true/false" dichotomy currently so
| popular among media factcheckers and others, that draws
| inspiration from falsifiable physical science hypothesis.
| Statements, narratives and opinions are so much more.
|
| With reservations stemming from not being able to read the whole
| paper - I'm not sure if the authors want to improve the "canon"
| as a useful concept, or ultimately want to disprove it.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| The use of the phrase "tragedy of the canon" does highlight the
| author's concerns. I sent this article to Dr. John Bickle, a
| philosopher of neuroscience, to review.
| glenstein wrote:
| >paradigms that ultimately get thrown out the window in light
| of new developments in society
|
| The problem with this way of looking into things is it runs
| into the relativity of wrong fallacy, the shortest version of
| which is:
|
| >When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When
| people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if
| you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong
| as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than
| both of them put together.
|
| And while it's popular to cite Kuhn just by name and move on,
| Kuhn himself would be the first to say his legacy was terribly
| misunderstood, and if I recall he analogized it to trying to
| hold on to the tail of an elephant that eventually escapes.
|
| The trouble is taking Kuhn's contributions and not turning them
| into an unconditional global skepticism of any and all
| knowledge, and so conversations tend to go in circles
| negotiating those boundaries (and those are the good ones! The
| worst ones uncritically cite Kuhn as if the very invocation of
| his name singlehandedly dismantles any concept of objective
| knowledge). The best updated, comprehensive assessment of
| conceptual change I would say is Paul Thagard's Conceptual
| Revolutions, which is at pains to integrate Kuhn with a notion
| of explanatory coherence that takes theory change seriously as
| more than a mere relativity of wrong issue.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| Rest assured I'm in no way proposing an "unconditional global
| skepticism of any and all knowledge" - just a sound
| skepticism which questions our assumptions.
|
| There is no doubt room for a nuanced discussion about Kuhn
| and paradigms here. I admittedly painted with a broad brush.
| But your objections doesn't seem to directly address the
| problem at hand: would you say that there is indeed a use for
| a "canon" in history and philosophy of science? and how would
| you in that case avoid the problem of paradigms that
| necessarily would tend to inform such a canon?
| glenstein wrote:
| Well for starters, I would like to think that responding to
| you counts as addressing "the problem at hand", unless you
| mean to say you were also not addressing it, and I joined
| you in being unresponsive by choosing to reply to you. But
| I would like to give you more credit than that.
|
| Regarding the notion of a canon, it's good to have a notion
| of history of conceptual change that identifies a series of
| major advances that we hold up as exhibiting our highest
| standards. I would say though that I completely agree with
| the premise advanced by this article that it would benefit
| from establishing some consistent norms. I can't see the
| full paper, but it seems to be building out a great theory
| on how this happens in philosophy of science, and I think
| the history of Kuhn and post-Kuhn philosophers of science
| have exhibited how messy and all-over-the-map it can be and
| how, perhaps culminating in its most extreme expression in
| Against Method. Which I think testifies to the need for
| building out the kind of norms that the paper is
| advocating.
| Archelaos wrote:
| History and science are both grounded in empiricism.
| "Empirical" means that a theory is based on observations (and
| not on private insights, revelations from God, etc.).
| Observations are not limited to experiments (if so, astronomy
| would not be "empirical"). In history, empirical evidence are
| usually observations of historical documents, artefacts and the
| like. They are then interpreted in the context of theoretical
| frameworks that are themselves based on a multitude of other
| empirical evidence. The lack of experiments does not make the
| construction of such theoretical frameworks unempirical, but in
| a way just harder.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| What you say is true, modern history relies on verifiable
| facts like documents, artefacts, etc. But there of always a
| narrative involved, which to a smaller or larger degree is
| based off human values and as such lack the objectivity of
| the falsifiable physical science hypothesis. This seems to me
| to be a source of a gnawing sense of insecurity among (many)
| scholars in the humanities - but it shouldn't. They should
| simply recognize this situation as a fact, and declare their
| assumptions (even the physical sciences could benefit from
| this many times).
| Archelaos wrote:
| I don't think that falsifiability is that much of a
| difference between the humanities and the sciences. No
| scientific hypothesis is falsified by a single isolated
| observation (such evidence could always be an error in
| measurement, faked data, an halucinating scientist, etc.).
| Instead, the particular professional community reaches a
| conclusion by evaluating new evidence in the light of
| established beliefs. If we think of falsification we
| usually mean the emergence of new evidence that is so
| striking that the community changes an established belief
| without much ado. But this might happen in history as well,
| if new valuable documents were discovered, an important
| artifact was given a new date, something crucial turned out
| to be a forgery, etc.
| karaterobot wrote:
| This page just goes into a captcha loop for me. I would have
| liked to read the article and see what problems they identify,
| and whether they distinguish between path dependence and creating
| a framework of knowledge that subsequent science can build on
| rather than starting from first principles every time.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| For a moment I thought this was about cannons and I got really
| excited.
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