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alesnick's picture

ten thousand questions!

Hi -- Reading Mike's post bring so many questions to my mind.  Mike, I share some in earnest hopes of further conversation about these things, given how different our starting places, ideologies, and rhetorics seem to be for and about science.  I'm going to share some reactions in the form of questions in hopes of opening dialogue, rather than in hopes of arguing or persuading.  Here goes:

Is the term "demarcation problem" a term of art in your field? 

Why is demarcation the thing to do?  I've been thinking (apart from this context) about how so often in institutions, and academia, people set up categories, departments, programs and then spend so much time defining what is inside and what is outside of them.  In this case, demarcation is a problem, not a solution. 

What do we gain by thinking of actions apart from values, and what do we lose? 

Similarly, what do we gain from seeking, or prizing consistency in experience (including in the practice of science), and what do we lose?  Do you think there are senses and contexts (including those of concern to science) in which experiences, as such, defy consistency?

What can we see when we set off things from one another, and what can we see when we attend to their "grading into" one another (/exchange/node/6279#12).

Do you know Adrienne Rich's collection, 21 Love Poems (1974)?  In it is a poem called "Splittings," in which Rich writes, "I refuse these givens, the splitting / Between love and action . . . "  This is cryptic, I know, but I wonder if the idea of refusing splittings has something to offer us here.  Can there be forms, formal systems, that don't follow or cross lines?

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