Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: "Horganism"???? Perfect!!



Anderson goes on to say:

My own diagnosis is pretty much identical to the ones implied in the
letter [above]. The members of our profession - and particularly those
who have responsibility for hiring and for funding research - are
infected with "Horganism", the belief that the end of science (or at
least of our science) is at hand and that all that is left to do is to
grub away at Kuhnian "normal science" following the accepted paradigms.
They believe that there are no mre scientific revolutions possible, and
that we are now in pursuit of nothing but the next decimal place...

Interesting! This is precisely the views of physics at the turn of the
century. Yes, we couldn't quite explain the emission spectrum -- and yes,
there was this weird photo-electric effect -- but this was thought to be
relatively trivial and by and by some menial technician would find the
answers. But by and large physics was thought to be complete -- this, 100
years ago.

Jim Green
mailto:JMGreen@sisna.com
http://users.sisna.com/jmgreen