0100,0100,0100On 15 Mar 2001, at 22:33, Scott Chase wrote: 7F00,0000,0000> > > > > >From: "Wade T.Smith" < > >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk > >To: "Memetics Discussion List" < > >Subject: RE: Toggling nature's auto-erase > >Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2001 21:06:26 -0500 > > > >Hi Joe E. Dees - > > > > >isn't that what specialization's all about? > > > >Yup. Learning more and more about less and less until we know it all > >about nothing, to use that little phrase.... > > > >Yes, though, specialization is an evolutionary trick too. > > > >But, I again look at the topic, and remember why I posted that > >article in the first place. > > > >What about the triggers of forgetting? > > > > >there can be a > > >trading off of breadth for depth. > > > >Or a narrowing of focus due to the walls caving in.... > > > > > There is a recent republication of Ernst Mayr's _Systematics and the > Origin of Species_ which I'm planning on delving into now that I > finally finished Robert Gallo's _Virus Hunting_. The "Foreword" was > written by Theodosius Dobzhansky and strikes a chord about the > specialization versus generalization issue. > > Gallo's book was fascinating, not just for the overview of HIV's > discovery itself, but in relation to the political nature of science. > I'm not all that familiar with the interpersonal chemistry and history > between Gallo and Luc Montagnier or between NIH and the Pasteur > Institute over the HIV issue, but after reading books by both Gallo > and Montagnier, I'm intensely curious. > > A possibly "memetic" side isue would be some of the undercurrent > surrounding HIV as a causal agent in AIDS. The name of Duesberg comes > up here and it makes one wonder how far people will run with > unconventional ideas which go against the grain of established ideas. > Here is a quote from the editors' (James conant and John Haugeland) introduction to the recently published (2000) collection of essays THE ROAD SINCE STRUCTURE by the late Thomas S. Kuhn, celebrated author of THE STRUCTURE OF SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTIONS and THE ESSENTIAL TENSION: Kuhn reiterates his view...that science is a cognitive empirical investigation of nature that exhibits a unique sort of progress, despite the fact that this progress cannot be further explicated as "approximating closer and closer to reality." Rather, progress takes the form of ever-improving technical puzzle-solving ability, operation under strict - though alays tradition-bound - standards of success or failure. This pattern of progress, in its fullest realization exclusive to science, is prerequisite to the extraordinarily esoteric (and often expensive) investigations that are characteristic of scientific research, and thus to the astonishingly precise and detailed knowledge that it makes possible. Kuhn develops further the theme...that science is fundamentally a social undertaking. This shows up especially in times of trouble, with the potential for more or less radical change. It is only because individuals working in a common research tradition are able to arrive at differning judgments concerning the degree of seriousness of the various difficulties they collectively face that some of them will be moved individually to explore alternative (often - as Kuhn likes to emphasize - seemingly nonsensical) possibilities, while others will attempt doggedly to resolve the problems within the current framework. The fact that the latter are in the majority when such difficulties first arise is essential to the fertility of scientific practices. For, usually, the problems can be resolved, and eventually are. In the absence of the requisite persistence to find those solutions, scientists would not be able to home in, as they do, on those rarer but crucial cases in which efforts to introduce radical conceptual revision are fully repaid. On the other hand, of course, if no one were ever to develop possible alternatives, major reconceptions could never emerge, even in those cases in which they genuinely become necessary. Thus, a social scientific tradition is able to "distribute the conceptual risks" in a way that would be impossible for any single individual, and yet is prerequisite to the ling-term viability of science. Kuhn spells out and emphasizes the analogy...between scientific progress and evolutionary biological development. In elaborating this theme, he plays down his original picture, which had periods of normal science within a single area of research punctuated by occasional cataclysmic revolutions, and introduces in its place a new picture, which has periods of development within a coherent tradition divided occasionally by periods of "speciation" into two distinct traditions with somewhat different areas of research. To be sure, the possibility remains that one of the resulting traditions may eventually stagnate and die out, in which case we have, in effect, the older structure of revolution and replacement. But at least as often in the history of science, both successors, neither quite like their common ancestor, flourish as new scientific "specialties." In science, speciation is specialization. 7F00,0000,0000> _________________________________________________________________ Get > your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com > > > =============================================================== > This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the > Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission > For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) > see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit > > =============================================================== This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing) see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit