TRAGEDY THEN FARCE

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Tragedy Then Farce is focused on constructively battling the illnesses our age through creativity, curiosity, and communication. If you want any higher quality copies of my photographs to download, just let me know and I'd be happy to oblige. Welcome.

A Philosophy and Photography Blog

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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Plurality in the Sciences


The common mission of modern science, with increasing scope, ability, and insights into a systemic understanding of the natural world, is now on the precipice of unification. The existence of a single universal wave function from which the frequency at which all mater vibrates  is a derivative of is a seriously discussed topic in the scientific community today. The notion is commonly held that science will eventually be reducible to one cohesive study, reserved to itself, built upon the absolute foundations of biology, physics, chemistry, and mathematics. 
The idea that a pure science can be distilled somehow out of these various fields is a mistake; I posit that physics and chemistry are no more parallel than philosophy and biology, or astronomy and history. The fields of study, all developing, certainly influence each other, guide each other, and shape each other, so to see all academic study as one overlapping tapestry is not necessarily inaccurate. To think that there is a single trajectory that this pluralistic, melioristic, unfinished tapestry is aiming towards is dangerous- to believe that a certain isolated area of the sciences can indeed be 'finished' is a fallacy. As Kuhne tells us, scientific research operates in a specific paradigm, with specific terminology, lexicons, modes of understanding, and rubrics for what counts as valid. Each scientific field operates both within the paradigm of its time, and the paradigm established by its content; ichthyologists, anthropologists, and theoritcal physistics are all scientists but operate by radically differnet standards.
If we really want to talk about the overlapping interpenetrating unity of science, we need to not only reserve the recognition of interpenetration to the sciences. We need to go all the way. An examined look at the structure of scientific revolutions, development, and technological trajectory yields a picture of scientific progress not wrought from cold calculation, but from a melioristic tapestry of sociological, economic, historical, and ultimately philosophical conditions. Let's talk about all these conditions, qualitative or quantitative, on a level ontological playing field.   

As always, more pictures to cool the mental palette.


  



9 comments:

  1. I love thought provoking stuff like this. Followed!

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  2. Keep it up man, it hurts my brain but is opening my mind!!

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  3. Such a nice post, yet my brain is too simple to understand it. And the pictures helped a lot. Will follow

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  4. There's some pretty interesting things in this post. Was a good read and I learned something!

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  5. As inspiring as ever Jack. Is there some principle that could link all aspects of science together? If there is, it is beyond all current comprehension. However, everything does play by some underlying rules, mostly covered in physics. Mass generates gravity, etc. From that I can see why scientists are searching for something more unifying, that can explain the behavior of things on the widest scale possible.
    And as always, great pics to wrap it up.

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  6. Great read.
    The pictures are awesome too.

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  7. Do you have any info about the picture of 4th picture (church or school?) I'd like to see a high-res version.

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  8. I can tell you've been at this for a while... your PRO!

    check us out: www.themanscave.org

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