On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 5:42:29 pm Alan Kay wrote: > ..There I should have said "modern science" to denote the kind of science > that Galileo and a few others > started, which Bacon discussed so well as a debugging process for what is > wrong with our brains/minds, and which Newton first showed how different > and incredibly more powerful it could be from all previous forms of > thinking. You mean Roger Bacon, the 13th century philosopher and teacher? If so, then the term 'science' itself is relatively modern :-), a post-Newton era term. > (b) that qualitative leaps are changes in kind not just > degree, changes in outlook, not just in quantity of knowledge gathered. There have been qualitative leaps (paradigm shifts) before too, esp. in south/east asia where philosophy developed without interruptions for thousands of years[1,2]. Patanjali's treatise [Yoga Sutras] on psychic processes is highly regarded even today. You can see applications of its theory in documentaries like "Ring of Fire" by Lawrence Blair [3]. I see people like Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Feynman, etc. as part of a long line of paradigm shifters.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_science [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indian_science_and_technology [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGnsMIvp1v0 Subbu _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
