Re: [xmca] Hume on ID : Activity Theory ?

From: Tony Whitson (twhitson@UDel.Edu)
Date: Wed Dec 21 2005 - 17:40:54 PST


Thanks for the museum link.

Sounds like you have also written on shipbuilding using CHAT ... is there
a citation, file, or link that you can share? I, for one, would be
interested.

-- Tony

On Thu, 22 Dec 2005, bb wrote:

> Hume did not understand ship building. More than a carpenter was involved, and activity theory is definitely what I would use (have used) to understand when/how/why/by who/ a ship was built. Here's one of my favorite resources not far from me.
>
> http://www.essexshipbuildingmuseum.org/museum.html
>
> Shipbuilding (and even canoe making) today is quite amazing in it's development.
>
> bb
>
>
> -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Tony Whitson" <twhitson@udel.edu>
>> Here's David Hume on "Intelligent Design"
>> (from his DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION )
>> Am I wrong, or is this not Activity Theory ?
>>
>> But were this world ever so perfect a production, it must still remain
>> uncertain, whether all the excellences of the work can justly be ascribed to
>> the workman. If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the
>> ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful
>> a machine? And what surprize must we feel, when we find him a stupid
>> mechanic, who imitated others, and copied an art, which, through a long
>> succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections,
>> deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving? Many worlds
>> might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system
>> was struck out; much labour lost, many fruitless trials made; and a slow,
>> but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of
>> world-making.
>>
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Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716

twhitson@udel.edu
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