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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Damn, he's left out Plate Tectonics. But never mind, I will embark on an analysis tomorrow.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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And this is typical of the list as a whole. Woolly to a fault. Take the start:
16th–17th Century
Scientific Revolution / Empiricism (c. 1543–1687) — Copernicus, Galileo, Newton; knowledge derived from observation and experiment rather than scripture or ancient authority. |
I'd much prefer Claude getting down to cases. The paradigm shift is the replacement of Ptolemy's geocentric universe with its cycles and epicycles by Copernicus's (not very accurate) heliocentric one. It was Kepler that came up with the shapes of orbits -- thereby getting rid of the Holy Circle as the fount of all things -- but he doesn't get a mention.
In any case, none of this was due to 'observation and experiment'. Ptolemy's model is based on a minute observation of the movement of heavenly bodies. It is entirely empirical. Nor does the Ptolemaic System derive from 'scripture'. Ptolemy wasn't even a Christian, for Chrissake.
I'd like to have heard what Galileo and Newton contributed, surely it amounted to more than just name-checks. And let's not forget that Newton believed in scriptures that predated The Scriptures.
Rationalism (17th c.) — Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza; reason as the primary source of knowledge.
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What rubbish. Reason is always the primary source of knowledge. The authority for believing the knowledge is always carried in 'scriptures'. What does Claude think academic papers are?
| Mechanical Philosophy — the universe as a machine governed by natural laws. |
Really? What is the Ptolemaic universe? Looks awfully like a machine to me. More later.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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18th Century
Enlightenment Rationalism — systematic application of reason to politics, ethics, and society. |
I would not expect Claude to be aware of my discovery in Rev Hist that The Enlightenment was a figment of later French boosterists, but I would expect Claude to have the nous to understand there was nothing special about the eighteenth century, it was a bit livelier than the seventeenth and bit less lively than the nineteenth.
As for 'systematic' anything, you could have fooled me. Still, let's see if he's going to be a bit less generalist when getting down to cases:
| Political Economy — Adam Smith and the study of markets, labour, and wealth as a scientific discipline. |
I think that's fair enough. Reasonably epochal. Though whether anybody 'in trade' read him is doubtful. Descriptive rather than prescriptive.
| Taxonomy / Natural History — Linnaeus's systematic classification of living things. |
Again, I'll drink to that. And that, according to Claude, is your lot. Out with the Louis, on to the Victorian Age...
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The pace is really hotting up. Is this because paradigms were being discovered/ changing more often or is it a function of getting closer and closer to our own time? This is one of the difficulties of Paradigm Studies: we've only got the one set to study.
19th Century
Historicism — understanding phenomena through their historical development (Hegel, Ranke) |
Whenever I see an -ism, I can't help thinking it can't be a paradigm. Not in the sense I want, 'theories that changed everything.' And Hegel, Ranke is definitely a bogus list. I can accept a list of two, in this context, but not if one is a philosopher and the other is a historian. But do go on...
| Positivism — Auguste Comte; social and human sciences should mirror the methods of natural science. |
Despite being an -ism this is more acceptable. When I see the phrase should + an action I know we are at least being offered something concrete.
| Evolutionary Biology — Darwin; species change through natural selection, reshaping biology, anthropology, and beyond. |
Now that's what I call a paradigm.
| Marxism / Historical Materialism — class struggle and material conditions as drivers of history. |
That's what I call a failed paradigm, but a paradigm nevertheless. P. S. Surely Hegel goes in with Marx not Ranke.
| Germ Theory — Pasteur, Koch; disease caused by microorganisms, transforming medicine. |
Full marks on every front. Which reminds me, I'm supposed to be overthrowing Germ Theory, where's that got to, Mr Harper?
| Classical Philology & Hermeneutics — rigorous textual criticism and interpretation (Schleiermacher, Dilthey). |
Nah, that's more of the same only made compulsory. But I haven't heard of either dude so I might be doing them an injustice. Come to think of it, I've never quite grasped what philology is and I have never learned what hermeneutics is. (Are?)
| Experimental Psychology — Wundt; psychology as a laboratory science distinct from philosophy. |
I hadn't realised it used to be considered a branch of philosophy.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Early 20th Century
Psychoanalysis — Freud; the unconscious, repression, and the structure of the psyche. |
Freud himself might have been a little bit charlatanish and psychoanalysis might be little more than codified Jewish neuroses, but I accept his work is truly paradigmatic. Changed the way we look at and treat many psychiatric disorders. Though not, on the whole, via Freudian psychoanalysis.
| Logical Positivism / Vienna Circle — meaning grounded in verifiable propositions; influenced philosophy of science enormously. |
Just another branch of philosophical blather.
| Structural Linguistics — Saussure; language as a system of signs, laying the groundwork for structuralism. |
Oh yeah, and what happened to strucuralism?
| Quantum Mechanics & Relativity — Einstein, Bohr; overturning classical physics and reshaping philosophy of science. |
This is a genuine paradigm shift, and a biggie.
| Behaviourism — Watson, Skinner; psychology limited to observable stimulus–response behaviour. |
I'd give this a reluctant pass.
| Functionalism (Sociology) — Durkheim, Parsons; society as an integrated system of interdependent parts. |
Dunno. Never understood it sufficiently to offer a judgement.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Mid 20th Century
Structuralism — Lévi-Strauss, Jakobson; underlying structures govern culture, language, and mind. |
I thought we'd done structuralism. Oh well, it can't have been much cop if they've had to do it all over again.
| Systems Theory / Cybernetics — Wiener, Bertalanffy; interdisciplinary study of systems and feedback loops. |
This sounds more like it. Though I have a professional scepticism about the word 'interdisciplinary'. If you have to boast about it, it suggests you've just discovered it because of pushback from another discipline. Still, I'll give this one an E for Effort.
| Cognitive Science — reaction against behaviourism; mind as an information-processing system. |
I don't think a reaction can ever count as a new paradigm, can it?
| Genetic/Molecular Biology (DNA paradigm) — Watson & Crick; biology reframed at the molecular level. |
Ditto 'reframed'.
| Game Theory — Nash; rational decision-making under strategic interaction. |
Better than irrational decision-making. Also, ditto 'interaction'. But I liked strategic. You can't have a tactical paradigm shift.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Late 20th Century
Post-Structuralism / Deconstruction — Derrida, Foucault; critique of fixed meanings, power embedded in discourse. |
I'm not sure whether post-anything can truly be a paradigm shift but since I don't know what structuralism is, I may be wrong about post-structuralism. It may have something to do with building on brownfield sites. Those last two phrases sound a bit AE.
| Postmodernism — rejection of grand narratives and universal truth claims across the humanities. |
Ditto. Again, that last phrase is exceptionally promising for us. But not in a good way for them.
| Feminist Theory & Gender Studies — systematic analysis of gender as a social and political construct. |
I think this is fair enough. I don't myself think women are sufficiently different from men to warrant separate treatment but they've been underperformers for so long they needed a gee-up.
| Postcolonial Studies — Said, Spivak, Bhabha; critique of colonial legacies in knowledge production. |
I would have been more comforted if there had been one or two WASP names included.
| Cultural Studies — Hall, Williams; culture as a site of power and contested meaning. |
I agree with Hermann Goering. 'When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning.' Though I prefer T S Eliot.
| Chaos Theory & Complexity Science — non-linear dynamics and emergent phenomena. |
I may not understand chaos theory--or indeed any of the other terms here--but I'd include this in, if some of the others qualify.
| Evolutionary Psychology / Sociobiology — human behaviour explained through evolutionary adaptation. |
Important, yes; paradigmatic, maybe.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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21st Century (emerging)
Digital Humanities — computational methods applied to humanistic inquiry. |
Do me a favour.
| Science and Technology Studies (STS) — how social, cultural, and political factors shape science and technology. |
Oh right, the old STS. Taken over from Media Studies as the skiver's degree.
| Network Science — study of complex networks across biology, sociology, and computing. |
Is Claude having a laugh?
| Big Data / Computational Social Science — large-scale data analysis reshaping social science methodology. |
And that's his lot. I'm a bit surprised he didn't mention AI but no doubt he has his reasons.
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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Late 20th Century
Post-Structuralism / Deconstruction — Derrida, Foucault; critique of fixed meanings, power embedded in discourse. |
This one - Deconstruction - is the most laughable of all. It is indeed an "academic paradigm," because it was very popular in academia. Ever try reading Grammatology? You are constantly suspicious that you're reading an elaborate hoax.
[I started to write that there's a meta-paradigm for the late-20th century's various nonsenses (e.g., Deconstruction, Abstract Expressionism, and ______), but when I couldn't think of a third, my bogus-list detector went off. The meta-paradigm is probably already called "Post-Modernism," but adding "post-" to something can't be a paradigm.]
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Pete Jones
Site Admin
In: Virginia
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Modernism and Post-Modernism is clearly a bogus list. They are both one thing. Both are Nietzsche-ism. Transvaluation of all values. I think he meant the overturning of all Christian values, suggesting that maybe its a sort of Neopaganism (I can't read him again).
But I firmly believe that Christianity and Paganism is a bogus list.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Pete Jone wrote: | | But I firmly believe that Christianity and Paganism is a bogus list. |
But useful as antitheticals. Originally for the Christians, then for our modern-day pagans. "I'm a pagan," constrains you far more to a dogma now than "I'm a Christian" does.
PS I only learned relatively recently that pagan meant 'someone who lives in the countryside'. But I suppose all Religions of the Book must be urban-based.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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So how are we to judge Claude's List in the round? Perhaps it was my fault for not specifying I wanted a list of specific paradigm theories but then again I would have thought that goes with the territory.
Claude clearly disagreed. Although he put in a few of these he was content to describe movements, fashions, post hoc rationalisations, philosophers' beefs, historians tidying up. Anything that has attained the status of 'important' when looking backwards over the last five hundred years of non-stop development in everything except the human brain.
That's the point. Life changing is not the same as life being changed. It's something to do with the Great Man Theory of Knowledge. Applied epistemology (I think) subscribes to it, Claude doesn't. But what does he know?
More if I think of anything. But I don't want to risk plunging into metaphysics.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A nice illustration of the workings of AE occurred yesterday on Countryfile. The gang were investigating the chalk streams of the Chiltern Hills to the north and west of London.
I was the first to point out that chalk streams are limited to southern England and Belgium, even though chalk landscapes and streams occur in profusion all over the world. That, I argued was an anomalous situation crying out to be investigated. I waited to see how our experts (or rather their experts) would deal with the situation.
They started promisingly by saying there were just three hundred chalk streams in the entire world. Very good. Not everybody knows that (including me as a matter of fact). Then they added, "Eighty-six per cent of them occur right here in the chalklands of southern Britain." Also good, though it would have helped if they had told us where the other fourteen per cent were.
But after that, 'careful ignoral' reigned. They did not bother themselves, or us, as to
* why there are so few chalk streams in the world, nor
* why they are concentrated in Countryfile's backyard, and above all
* what are chalk streams?
'Sright, folks, the BBC devoted a whole programme (less Adam's piece on how his rare animal breeds are getting on) on something without telling us what that something was. And don't ask me. If I knew, I'd be halfway to explaining this maybe important/maybe not anomaly.
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