[IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and "Mastering" Educational SW

[K. K. Subramaniam]

On Tuesday 30 Jun 2009 5:42:29 pm Alan Kay wrote:
> ..There I should have said "modern science" to denote the kind of science
> that Galileo and a few others
> started, which Bacon discussed so well as a debugging process for what is
> wrong with our brains/minds, and which Newton first showed how different
> and incredibly more powerful it could be from all previous forms of
> thinking.
You mean Roger Bacon, the 13th century philosopher and teacher? If so, then 
the term 'science' itself is relatively modern :-), a post-Newton era term.
> (b) that qualitative leaps are changes in kind not just
> degree, changes in outlook, not just in quantity of knowledge gathered.
There have been qualitative leaps (paradigm shifts) before too, esp. in 
south/east asia where philosophy developed without interruptions for thousands 
of years[1,2]. Patanjali's treatise [Yoga Sutras] on psychic processes is 
highly regarded even today. You can see applications of its theory in 
documentaries like "Ring of Fire" by Lawrence Blair [3]. I see people like 
Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Feynman, etc. as part of a long line of paradigm 
shifters.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_science
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indian_science_and_technology
[3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGnsMIvp1v0

Subbu