Hmm. Yes, there seems to be a resurgance of sorts in Khunian notions
lately. Must be all those 'paradigm changes' everyone is running on about.
There was a recent discussion about Peter Wegner over on that other list;
Wegner being a very eccentric (to put it mildly) guy, who believes all our
troubles are Alan Turing's fault, and if only we'd follow him in a scientific
revolution (a la Kuhn) away from Turing "algorithms" and towards Wegner
"interactions" we'll all be saved.
Try http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/pw/ for more on weirdo-Wegie
Anyway, Wegner aside, we are clearly in 'revolution' mode. Everything these
days is a major 'paradigm shift'. People who've never heard of Kuhn use
the buzzspeak - and why not? It's catchy, and it's relatively accurate.
I first got interested in the whole 'philosophy of science' thing as a 1st
year
undergrad (what you guys call a freshman, right?). I took it as an arts
elective. Turned out to be one of the most influential courses I ever took.
The text for the book was a paperback by Alan Chalmers called
"What is this thing called Science?"
I checked now in Amazon; the original version I used as a text back then
is the out of print cottage-published 1977 version. It became popular
enough, apparently, that it's now been republished in a 2nd ed, 1995:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=087220149X/
--and Adam, I'll stick on the 'ForkrecommendedA' gunk when *you* put
a link to the reading list from the FAQ, or some place where I can find
the silly thing. Deal? --
It's a good, gentle, intro book. Chalmers covers Karl Popper falsification,
Kuhn Scientific Revolutions, and the mid-way Imre Lakatos, always the
bridge-builder, arguing that progress is somehow both evolutionary
and revolutionary. Methinks Lakatos may have been on the right track....
The golden mean.....
Fun stuff.
Ron.