The Apple Does Not Fall Far From The Tree

Newton tried to explain the apple falling from the tree.  Verlinde clarified this.  I am trying to explain what knocked it off the tree in the first place…

A change in an accepted paradigm generally does not occur because of an observable anomaly. A worldview has never easily been transformed. There seems to be a virtual “comfort zone” into which scientists of a given time and place settle down, and there must be a serious rattling of their conceived universe to even begin to start a change of worldview. This “rattling” is what Thomas Kuhn refers to as a “crisis.” As he observed,

• “So long as the tools a paradigm supplies continue to prove capable of solving the problems it defines, science moves fastest and penetrates most deeply through confident employment of those tools. The reason is clear. As in manufacture so in science– retooling is an extravagance to be reserved for the occasion that demands it. The significance of crises is the indication they provide that an occasion for retooling has arrived.” (Kuhn 76)

Therefore, if there is no crisis, there is no change in accepted paradigm. In recent history, we have become entrenched in certain accepted paradigms that are based on our technologically assisted observations. However, inaccurate paradigms based on accurate observations are not unprecedented. In fact, Robert Klee writes,

• “It is a deep and important truth that a false theoretical account of a phenomenon can nevertheless be completely consistent with its observable appearances. The history of science is full of such cases, so full that this feature of our epistemological lot in life was openly recognized by philosophers of science and dubbed the underdetermination of theory by observational data.” (Hawkins 104)

The fact that traditional Chinese medicine works is an impossibility in the accepted paradigms of modern Western medicine. Without a mechanistic explanation that conforms to the accepted cosmology, the anomaly of its efficacy is irrelevant.

Chinese (and generally Eastern) academicians have been more receptive of the advantages of Western medical advances. This is largely due to the fact that Eastern thinking has continued to be more geared toward integration. However, the situation is far from problem-free.

Phenomenon Definition:

A phenomenon (Greek: φαινόμενoν, from the Greek word ‘phainomenon’, from the verb ‘phanein’, to show, shine, appear, to be manifest (or manifest itself)),^[1] plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence.^[2] Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as ‘appearances’ or ‘experiences‘. These are themselves sometimes understood as involving qualia.

Scientific Translation: What in hell was that?

Godspeed

References
Copyright 2012 Stewart D. Simonson All Rights Reserved

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