Friday, April 24, 2009
Know-how
Science, meaning, reasons sought,
Knowledge, wisdom:
Search for naught.
Seeking one true fundament?
Write a novel testament.
Theos? Answers? (Wrinkled brow.)
Knowing's merely knowing how.
for Read Write Poem: how-to
re scientificus/technikos, my first attempt to deconstruct the notion that technicians, pragmatic "appliers of knowledge" are supplements to scientists, discoverers of "foundational knowledge", or how knowing is not, in any real sense, more than knowing how (see also Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Quine)
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Coming from a science background, I write poetry to know the knowings.
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of dogma is that?
This set me thinking in many directions...
A key paragraph, from Quine:
ReplyDeleteAs an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries -- not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. Let me interject that for my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.
(In a word: pragamatism.)
yikes...i play wed nite among others..a retired scientist...retired mathamatician...they always lose...strictly usi9ng calculatins..theories etc etc...psychology?? whats that...imagination??? whats that...and they never change their approach and never win...that tech stuff way 2 conusing for this guy...god ive blabbered on again...sorry...keep up the great writing though
ReplyDeleteDead good! you can baffle me anytime!
ReplyDelete