[snip all]
I would like to recommend (once again) Stephen Toulmin's
book: _Cosmopolis: The hidden agenda of modernity_.
Briefly,Toulmin's argument is that there was at least
one other path to modernity than the one that
in fact was taken, which can be in a cliched
way associated with Descartes (and, *I* would add, with
Galileo's less than either prudent or noble conduct).
This alternative is defined by such figures as
Erasmus and Rabelais, who were at least as rigorous critics
of all forms of hocus pocus as the self-styled
"scientists", but whose horizon of critique extended
to include all of [what Edmund Husserl would in our time
call:] the lifeworld (i.e., all our being and doing),
rather than just the single regional ontology of mathematically
abstracted objectivities (even more specifically: time
factored motion).
We are still largely in the Middle Ages as far as our
social life is concerned (well, that may be a bit of
poetic hyperbole which unjustly denigrates the
cultural period before Descartes). As Husserl argued:
the Galilean sciences of nature are only equivocally scientific
because they do not reflect methodologically
appropriately upon their own praxis.
Toulmin's book is short, inexpensive and written in
highly readable style.
To paraphrase Bruno Latour: We have never yet
really examined ourselves (with some exceptions which
have often not even enough social force to keep themselves
in print in Northwestern University Press and other
such low-volume editions)....
"Yours in discourse...." in which points are
neither earned by or deducted from any participant but rather
in which the participants together make all points, i.e.,
in which each is a measurer rather than
something measured.
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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