Genius, right there.

It is very nice to make your acquaintance.

I feel I should make some sort of defense here regarding my Twain and Kuhn essay. But would it do any good? One wonders.

I read Kuhn, I don’t know, several times in college, and at least once after my matriculation. I was a philosophy student then; I think I was turned on to Kuhn in 1982, my sophomore year, when I enrolled in the course “The Philosophy of Natural Science.” I recall LOVING that fine work; I recognize that it remains a strong force in any discussion of the history of science.

My purpose in my essay was not to flesh out Kuhn in all his provocative glory. I merely wanted to iterate that Twain was clearly Kuhn’s predecessor; that Twain was not some odd and unconfirmed voice, but that Kuhn validated much of what Twain averred about “consensus.” My audience — clearly — is not your audience. So I did not think I needed to present Kuhn in any detail (and not that I could after 20 or so years since my last reading of TSOSR).

I find it curious that you should find it necessary to criticize my essay on racist facts. I would love to know where you find it faulty or deficient. Egads! Are you suggesting that I should have mentioned “semiotics”? Well, I notice you have not divulged to us all that you are engaged in semiotics in this essay; isn’t any discussion about the written or spoken word semiotic? But I nit-pick. However, I do not channel Sausarre at all, whoever the hell that is; I MIGHT channel Saussure, but that’s a stretch. The bone which I picked was with a particular radio talk-show host, who summarily dismissed a man who was straining to make a point. Are you suggesting that my undeniably accurate position on dictionaries somehow discredits me? And are you inferring that because I have attempted to empathize with those who believe in “racist facts” (I note you steer clear of my actual argument), I am somehow intellectually stunted, ill-equipped to apprehend the rarified air of global warming science? Would you not consider your presentation of my work as fallacious? Well, I would.

I think, if you look closely at my piece about Twain, you will see that I am not “pro-dissent,” as if I’ve just snagged dissent out of the warming air. I am actually suggesting that there is considerable evidence that the political opportunists in the global warming camp have leapt right over the conflict phase I believe Kuhn describes, and have seized “consensus” as a means to suppress discussion and to enact reforms that fall, politically, in their favor. Perhaps I do not suggest all of this, but I surely aver that what we are witnessing is what MUST happen: a fight between paradigms, if you will, or between one group who believes a forceful paradigm has emerged and one group that does not. I merely believe that those who tout “consensus” have been wildly premature. They may “have” a consensus, but unlike you, that consensus does not strike me as convincing. At the very least, I have found the doubters quite interesting.

Lastly, I had in mind just ONE reader of mine who believes that “consensus” ends discussion. And no, that reader is not Al Gore. So my draft was really rather pointed: I was attempting to help a man see that consensus is not always what it appears.

I pray this explanation goes some way toward clarification and understanding. I feel a bit like this apple has been compared to that orange. But perhaps I’ve got things wrong.

That’s no surprise.

Peace to you,

Bill Gnade

Notwithstanding that the Hugo is an anglophone SF award with a US bias, the Locus Award arguably does a far better job. Check it out year by year.

;-)

Imagine the Intergovernmental Panel on Physical Sciences (IPPS) decided in 1820 that the Consensus was Newtonian physics and that the physical properties of our world were settled once and for all.

Then not only Einstein, but all the scientists who preceeded him would have been silenced.

You ever wonder why it took so ffing long for the Ptolomaic system to be overthrown?

Anyway, I applaud your discussion of the misapplication of Thomas Kuhn, it is a private bugbear of mine, too. Besides the misapplication in ways that Kuhn wouldn’t have approved of, there is also the issue that Kuhn just isn’t particularly current philosophy of science, for precisely the reason that it poorly explains what most scientists do all day, and how a reasonably well established science generally advances. I prefer Imre Lakatos’ ideas, though my philosophy of science is over a decade out of date, perhaps there are more current accepted theories.