George:

quote:

In both cases (and this is me speaking), I think I disagree mildly with your position. Humans tend to flatten, to simplify, and to misapprehend at times. It's part of our physiology to extract patterns from observations at the cost of some detail.

The process of evolution--of physical change from one generation to the next--is much more frenetic than you suggest. It's far from a "direct line of progression." Life on earth is amazingly diverse--and often evolutionary changes can be observed geographically as well as temporally. It's not an intuitive idea, but it's documented.

I said, it seems to be a "direct line of progression". The next paragraph was intended to argue against this position, but obviously, I didn't get that across. So, second try:
Imagine the evolutionary timeline, strechting from some billion years ago to now. Stand in the now and look back: You already know the outcome, you can trace all the evolutionary steps back to single cells. So, looking back, you can construct a "direct line of progression".
Now, stand at a point some million/billion years in the past. Look around you - you will see a wide variety of life forms, all competing, struggling and surviving as best as possible. Even with knowing the principles of evolution, there's no way you can possiby say which species will be successul or even how the evolutionary changes will continue in the future.
And this seems to be mirroring Kuhn's point of view in regard to scientific development: Looking back, all past knowledge lead straight to our present paradigms.

quote:

He's not saying "two plus two is sometimes five," but he is saying, in context, Ptolemy was right for his time. The theory held for hundreds of years. He wasn't disproven; just superceded.

And what Ptolemy was saying was not only something that fit the observations, it was intrinsically right. Given the context, it was a scientific truth, plain and simple.

Well, Ptolemy was like a dinosaur: Exactly right for his time.
I'll think, I'll buy Kuhn's theory, wrap it in.
Honestly, it's quite easy to point out flaws in past argumentations because they seems so obvious to us. This does make it very difficult to accept that in the past these arguments were state-of-the-art science. But, to qoute Paul Scheele :"You can only do what your current awareness permits." And that goes not only for individuals, but for our species as a whole, for culutures and societies.

I hope, I got it across this time. I really think we're saying more or less the same.

Waiting for (dis)approval,

Jens