Kuhn 1 & Kuhn 2

[Guest guest]

August 24,2002 Saturday 1:30 pm

 

Melbourne, Australia

 

 

Dear Al Stone ,Todd and List members,

 

Thomas Kuhn sees himself in dichotomy i.e. Kuhn 1 and Kuhn 2 . In Chapter 2 of his book Knowledge and Power :Toward a Political Philosophy of Science (Cornnell Universty l987), Joseph Rouse in emphasizing Kuhns contrubution in conceiving science as a " field of practice rather than a network of statements " elaborated on Kuhn's self-dissection' . Similar to your observation ,Al Stone, Kuhn 2 refers to " how he (kuhn) has been read by many of his philosophical critics " i.e. regarding science and its closely related cousin , biomedicine , as a " belief system. " According to Rouse " Kuhn 2 , treats science as the construction and appraisal of of theories that aim to represent the world. It is replete with words like " believe " , " accept " , " see " , or " observe " , " theory " , " counterinstance. " However Kuhn 1 sees this " belief system " ' as a field of practice " or " field of doing " or " field of action . Rouse concluded in the chapter , " " Kuhn 1 replaces representing and observing with constructing, tinkering, and noticing as examplars of scientific practice " .

 

Going back to the question of " correlating " " validating " Chinese medicine and biomedicine, I think Kuhn 1 can act as a " bridge " or as a " translating knowledge space " between Chinese medicine and biomedicine . This incidentally is going to be the topic of a paper I am going to present before the annual conference of the History of Science Society (HSS) on November 8th of this year at Milwaukee , Wisconsin. My presentation will be part of the session on " Medical Encounters Accros Asian Borders " . Interestingly enough, the conference also has a whole panel discussing about " The legacies of Thomas Kuhn. " Listmembers can access the abstract of my paper as well as of those who will be presenting on the legacies of Kuhn at :

 

http://www.hssonline.org/meeting/mf_annual.html

 

Regards,

 

Rey Tiquia

Phd Candidate

Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science

The University of Melbourne

Parkville

Victoria

Australia

 

 

 

wrote:

>

> http://www.emory.edu/EDUCATION/mfp/Kuhn.html

 

This author regards the biomedical perspective as a belief system, which

it is. Part of this belief system is a reliance, even an insistance on

research data.

 

I'm not anti-research. Biomedical research has led to advances that has

probably saved my life a few times. What I have a problem with is the

*requirement* that something be proven with research before it is true.

To me its like JAMA is The Bible and if it isn't in there, then it isn't true.

 

Perhaps it is necessary to help determine insurance costs and other

large scale socialogical phenomena, but gosh, people do like to hang on

to their pain till some magazine tells them that they don't need to

anymore. Strange, if you ask me.

 

--

Al Stone L.Ac.

<AlStone

http://www.BeyondWellBeing.com

 

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.