On Wed, 14 Feb 1996, chris rickey wrote:
> Modern science overcame this Aristotelian distinction by finding a means to
> describe movement mathematically.
[...]
> Why would a scientist want to do this? In order
> to achieve mathematical precision in a science that has the changing as its
> object. But why precision at all? It makes sense only if the only kind of
> knowledge that qualifies in a rigorous sense as knowledge is that knowledge
> which is unchanging (and that is its source of precision), i.e., a theory
> of being as the unchanging, the Eleatic thesis.
So affection for precision arises out of a desire for knowledge to be
unchanging?
Two moves made:
a. This desire for unchanging laws is rooted in a fundamental ontology
biased toward the Eleatic thesis.
b. This desire for static knowledge manifests as a love of precision.
Please correct me if this is not what you meant to say.
On a.: Can't this desire be grounded in something more mundane--like
shifty laws are hard to work with if our goal is to predict and control?
But, you may then say, people don't want to just contain it like that,
they want these laws, and this methodological stance, to supercede all
other _ontologies_, and make claims about what is real. So perhaps what
began as a methodological commitment became an ontological one,
not the other way around. Is a 'destruction of the history of ontology'
really needed that goes back to the Greeks? Perhaps it goes back to Bacon.
(assuming it is a problem at all!).
b is not an obvious statement, but I will think about it.
What would a 'plastic knowledge' be like? It seems the second we begin
trying to frame it, it becomes static, and anything you say will be
subject to self-destruction. Would tacking the caveat, "And this is open
to revision" onto all statements be enough? I know the answer is no, but
why?
Naively,
Eric
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