tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post424831584449483161..comments2024-03-28T06:07:03.667-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: CATCHING UPRobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-5344125476974460572015-01-28T02:47:37.856-05:002015-01-28T02:47:37.856-05:00My friend responds:
"Mentioning the Greeks ...My friend responds: <br /><br />"Mentioning the Greeks is a cheat since they're the most plausible society outside of post 1492-Europe for engaging in science. Thousands of other societies in the past 100k years don't come close.<br /><br />'social, religious, economic and other factors explain why the distinctive explosion of knowledge that we identify with modern science is a very recent development' - This could be mostly correct; it's an extremely difficult issue. <br /><br />A central problem with the approach is that then scientific reasoning plays only a small role in explaining 'the distinctive explosion of scientific knowledge'. My view is that that probably speaks against a classification of hunter-gatherer and scientific cognitive processes that types them as highly similar. <br /><br />There's certainly an appeal to highlighting the similarities -- they're both inductive and abductive inferences based on available evidence. But that doesn't mean there aren't fine-grained distinctions that potentially should be emphasized by accounts of scientific reasoning. Hunter-gatherers didn't formulate highly general regularities in the language of mathematics via idealization and abstraction, Galileo did. <br /><br />The issue also depends on how unique social conditions in post 1492-Europe were compared to other societies in which science didn't arise. China in the middle ages is particularly puzzling in this regard. Lots of information, communication and travel opportunities available, the upper classes had leisure time and nobles supported intellectual pursuits, etc. Yet no science. <br /><br />Of course anybody trying to understand the scientific revolution faces problems of how and why it developed, and why it didn't develop elsewhere. But I think placing lots of emphasis on social/cultural/economic factors while downplaying differences between scientific and non-scientific cognition has unique difficulties."Carlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02998793914690685677noreply@blogger.com