Argumentation II
Normal inovation versus revolutionary inovation ...
Going back again to the Socratic dialetic, one of the elements noted was the propensity to attack assumptions.
In a logical or mathematical proof one writes out the givens and then proceeds to make deductions from them. The general notion of how to engage in a debate of this kind is not to merely deny the assumptions of others, but to either show that their conclusions do not follow from their assumptions, or to show that their assumptions lead to logical inconsistencies. (This latter is the classic Socratic reductio move.)
I could also simply deny that your assumptions are true. In most cases this means our debate is not going to go to far. If i ask you to prove them, you will probably say they are obvious. If you ask me to prove mine i am likely to just shrug and say that i don't know how, or say that they are "primitives" to be accepted or not, but not particularly up for debate in my world structure.
That is the state of play ... but what i want to focus on is the relation between this state of play and the notion of "normal inovation" versus "revolutionary inovation". One might also use the terms "within paradigms" and "across paradigms" to speak of the phenomenon.
(...)
Going back again to the Socratic dialetic, one of the elements noted was the propensity to attack assumptions.
In a logical or mathematical proof one writes out the givens and then proceeds to make deductions from them. The general notion of how to engage in a debate of this kind is not to merely deny the assumptions of others, but to either show that their conclusions do not follow from their assumptions, or to show that their assumptions lead to logical inconsistencies. (This latter is the classic Socratic reductio move.)
I could also simply deny that your assumptions are true. In most cases this means our debate is not going to go to far. If i ask you to prove them, you will probably say they are obvious. If you ask me to prove mine i am likely to just shrug and say that i don't know how, or say that they are "primitives" to be accepted or not, but not particularly up for debate in my world structure.
That is the state of play ... but what i want to focus on is the relation between this state of play and the notion of "normal inovation" versus "revolutionary inovation". One might also use the terms "within paradigms" and "across paradigms" to speak of the phenomenon.
(...)
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 8:32 PM
1 Comments:
I like the comparison you draw in the terms "between paradigms" and "across paradigms." One of the things that interest me is the division between paradigms. Why is it drawn at a particular point? Is it natural? Is it arbitrary? Is it political? Etc.
Then, what does the "revolutionary" mode imply about paradigms?
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