o.k., I’m now convinced that the mysterious Jesus and Mo artist reads this website. Or is this discussion of opposing Kuhnian paradigms just a coincidence?
Jesus ‘n’ Mo on Kuhn
February 11, 2010 • 8:42 pm
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Actually, they had it first. I guess you both use the same news sources… and think alike.
The strange thing is, that cartoon also went up before the Guardian/Taylor piece came out, or at the very least would have been drawn before that, so the cartoonist is a prophet!
AND he probably reads this blog…
Yeah, he/she obviously reads the freethinking blogs — and is perhaps here at this very moment.
Do-do-do-do ….
It’s a great comic, isn’t it?
What make you assume that the cartoonist is male?
Ah yes, the barmaid as an authomorphic device. These cartoons are cleverer than I imagined. Good stuff.
Yes, an assumption based on little to no evidence. I think there was a cartoon a while back that made me think it was a dude, but that’s not a strong argument.
He’s said as much in comments on the site many times.
Also, he’s not the barmaid; it’s an open secret that I am! And I’m not a male.
Oh it is all just a coincidence since we all know atheists cant think. Or maybe its just a miracle – praise jaysus – the end times r a’cumin.
Ophelia B. has a good comment on the topic over at B&W, fwiw.
I haven’t had time to read that. But my summary from Benson’s post is:
Vernon sucks, plural of anecdote isn’t data (“they test it against their lives”).
Kuhn suck big time, as evidenced by say Deutsch pulling down the pants and delivering a major spanking on him in “The Fabric of Reality”:
“This Kuhnian view of science [paradigms, “normal” vs “revolutionary” science] seems natural to many people. […] The idea of a paradigm itself is unexceptionable. […] But considered as a description or analysis of the scientific process, Kuhn’s theory suffers from a fatal flaw. It explains the succession from one paradigm to another in sociological or psychological terms, rather than having primarily to do with the objective merit of the rival explanations. Yet unless one understands science as a quest for explanations, the fact that it does find successive explanations, each objectively better than the last, is inexplicable.
Hence Kuhn is forced flatly to deny that there has been objective improvement in successive scientific explanations, or that such improvement is possible, even in principle: […]
So the growth of objective scientific knowledge cannot be explained in the Kuhnian picture. It is no good trying to pretend that successive explanations are better only in terms of their own paradigm. There are objective differences. We can fly, whereas for most of history people could only dream of this. [Alluding to thermodynamics of balloons and aerodynamics of planes. My bold. pp 322-324, Penguin 1997 paperback.]”
Kuhn may be good for telling, untested and so likely untruthful, bedtimes stories among sociologists. Not so good, actually detrimental, for discussing science.
Hmmmmmmmm …
Hahahaha –
No, I keep telling you – I’m reputed to be the barmaid, and I wouldn’t dream of denying it, but the Toonist is someone else! I don’t deserve the credit for J and M.
Anyway – Jerry, I’ve told you a thousand times – of course he reads this blog! He’s a big fan of B&W so why would he not read WEIT? He’s not a member of some weird Cartoonist species that doesn’t read atheist websites. In fact if you go by the drawing he’s not a cartoonist at all…