Pouncing on a little snippet of what Mike posted if for no other reason
than to show I haven't slipped into some other state of consciousness . .
. . at least yet!!
Mike quotes a message that in turn quote Dewey saying something that
seems from my post-modernist eyes rather odd. Dewey writes:
> All friendship is a solution of the problem.
The succeeding sentence makes it clear that Dewey has something very
different in mind from the standard computational account. Yet it does
nothing to explain we should think of friendship as a problem.
> Friendship and intimate affection are not the
> result of information about another person even
> though knowledge may further their formation.
> But it does so only as it becomes an integral
> part of sympathy through the imagination.
The reference to friendship as a problem reminds me of Sir Edward Elgar's
"Enigma Variations" Some interpreters suggest that Elgar was referring to
the Enigma of friendship; perhaps it is in this sense that Dewey intended
the phrase: problem. However, I cannot help but wonder to what extent we
all are shaped by the cultural paradigms that we find in our world.
Certainly by Dewey's time, the triumph of science was considered rather
complete.
I take a certain amusement in seeing how science permeates even the arts
and religion. After all we have "science fiction," Horror films now seek
to be more "realistic" (scientifically plausible?) and the art of special
effects is an art mimicking scientific imagery. More amusing is the
systemizing of religion. We now all need our own spirituality (as if
religion could be dispensed like a multi-vitamin.) There is renewed
interest in the healing power of crystals and other matters of alchemy
(proto-science.) There is a search for mechanisms like energy flows and
psychic power. Even in our attempt to break out of the mold of science,
we sheepishly cling to some of its precepts.
Certainly some food for thought. If we can't break away from a paradigm
it is our most urgent goal, what chance do we have when we seek to
straddle the line between critiquing the scientific paradigm and
conducting scientific inquiry?
Edouard