One of the important themes discussed at the beginning of the third session was Plato’s allegory of the cave in ‘Book VII’ of The Republic. The major concern was to revisit and clarify the classical questions regarding knowledge production. Our course instructor suggested that the allegorical character of our existence in the world, as Plato describes in the case of prisoners in the cave, predetermines an inevitable method to arrive at the truth beyond the realm of ordinary things. This journey, in Plato’s conceptual architecture, is again quite allegorical to the prisoner who happens to go out of the cave and experience the reality for himself. However, the prisoner is fatally bound to get back and live in the prison among others, and there arises the problem. He may not be able to convince others of his experience and exposure to truth. One of the possible interpretations of the passage is: this was an allusion to Socrates’ death. His fellow citizens who sentenced him were exactly like the prisoners who refused to believe the experience of the enlightened one.
Beyond the manifest nature of things and visible effects of natural processes, the path towards the ultimate knowledge for Plato is the path, allegorically speaking, that leads to the reality outside the cave. Whether it is a profound meditation on justice or any attempt to understand the deeper secrets of things in nature in the creation a technological artefact, one has to necessarily follow the same path. [However, while interpreting the allegory of Cave our instructor made many a contextual references to alternative readings of Plato including the feminist inversions.] The major conclusion of the discussion was that in the Platonic scheme of thinking there is hardly any possibility of separating sciences. A paradigmatic exposition of Plato’s allegory therefore shows one of the possible models of an integrated view on knowledge.
Another major text discussed was an autobiographical interview of Thomas Kuhn in The road since structured philosophical essays, 1970-1993 eds Kuhn,Thomas;Conal,James; Hangeland,John. Chapter ten of the same book was also discussed. Kuhn makes his reservations on the possibility of drawing a line between natural sciences and human sciences while responding to Charles Taylor’s paper entitled ‘Interpretation and Sciences of Man’ in Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985.
The discussion singled out one of the common grounds to which both Taylor and Kuhn agree. It is the possibility of sharing a concept between individuals without at the same time sharing any belief. This point was further clarified by invoking the classical relationship between knowledge and justified belief. Kuhn maintains that it is impossible to identify a tenable principle that bars human sciences from engaging in puzzle solving research like natural sciences. It also equally applies to natural sciences that “no lasting base for normal puzzle solving science need be available to those who investigate them; hermeneutic reinterpretation may constantly be required”.
Our discussion concluded that the line between the sciences is there in some areas with some modest variations in their contours.
This was however only an introduction to the Khunian idea of paradigm. The major exercise in the session thereafter was to arrive at a conceivable definition of paradigm. Our instructor led us to discover the two meanings of paradigm in Kuhn’s work. First one implies the ideas, methods and techniques collectively shared by scientists. These are fundamental to the constitution of a normal science which decides as to whether a particular case in question can be considered scientific or not. The second meaning of course is paradigm as an example, which stands for the general disciplinary matrix.
Beyond the manifest nature of things and visible effects of natural processes, the path towards the ultimate knowledge for Plato is the path, allegorically speaking, that leads to the reality outside the cave. Whether it is a profound meditation on justice or any attempt to understand the deeper secrets of things in nature in the creation a technological artefact, one has to necessarily follow the same path. [However, while interpreting the allegory of Cave our instructor made many a contextual references to alternative readings of Plato including the feminist inversions.] The major conclusion of the discussion was that in the Platonic scheme of thinking there is hardly any possibility of separating sciences. A paradigmatic exposition of Plato’s allegory therefore shows one of the possible models of an integrated view on knowledge.
Another major text discussed was an autobiographical interview of Thomas Kuhn in The road since structured philosophical essays, 1970-1993 eds Kuhn,Thomas;Conal,James; Hangeland,John. Chapter ten of the same book was also discussed. Kuhn makes his reservations on the possibility of drawing a line between natural sciences and human sciences while responding to Charles Taylor’s paper entitled ‘Interpretation and Sciences of Man’ in Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985.
The discussion singled out one of the common grounds to which both Taylor and Kuhn agree. It is the possibility of sharing a concept between individuals without at the same time sharing any belief. This point was further clarified by invoking the classical relationship between knowledge and justified belief. Kuhn maintains that it is impossible to identify a tenable principle that bars human sciences from engaging in puzzle solving research like natural sciences. It also equally applies to natural sciences that “no lasting base for normal puzzle solving science need be available to those who investigate them; hermeneutic reinterpretation may constantly be required”.
Our discussion concluded that the line between the sciences is there in some areas with some modest variations in their contours.
This was however only an introduction to the Khunian idea of paradigm. The major exercise in the session thereafter was to arrive at a conceivable definition of paradigm. Our instructor led us to discover the two meanings of paradigm in Kuhn’s work. First one implies the ideas, methods and techniques collectively shared by scientists. These are fundamental to the constitution of a normal science which decides as to whether a particular case in question can be considered scientific or not. The second meaning of course is paradigm as an example, which stands for the general disciplinary matrix.
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