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

[Alan Kay]

Hi Subbu,

No, I meant Francis Bacon, who lived in the early 17th century, and was a contemporary of Shakespeare (and some like to claim that he *was* Shakespeare, heh heh). Check out "Novum Organum", "The New Atlantis", etc.

The word "scientia" -- meaning knowledge -- is Latin and is old. And the use of the word "science" to denote the gathering of knowledge is also old. The big problem is that the 17th century inventors of modern science didn't pick a brand new word, but tried to overload the old one with new meanings. This has not worked well.

The point is not that paradigms got and get shifted, but the qualitative power of the "modern science paradigm". So, while one can make a list of people and movements that have shifted the way people think, to me (at least), what is more interesting is how well certain ways of thinking work in finding strong models of phenomena compared to others. So, if we get pneumonia, there are lots of paradigms to choose from, but I'm betting that most will choose the one that knows how to find out about bacteria and how to make antibiotics.

Best wishes,

Alan




________________________________
From: K. K. Subramaniam <subbukk at gmail.com>
To: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Cc: iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 10:31:03 AM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] Comments on David Kokorowski, David Pritchard and "Mastering"  Educational SW

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



      
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