Re: Kuhn

From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Sat Jun 24 2000 - 00:54:58 MDT


In a message dated 6/23/00 11:19:08 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au writes:

<< This entertaining speculation also appears, as an over-the-top sarcastic
 retort, in Greg Egan's latest novel TERANESIA.
 
 (BTW, I discuss Egan's writing at some length in my new book TRANSREALIST
 FICTION: WRITING IN THE SLIPSTREAM OF SCIENCE; I've just received my first
 copy from Greenwood Press in Conn. Alas, the wretched thing costs $US65.00.)
 
 Damien >>
I read Teranesia and kind of lost my may 1/2 way through it--I ceased caring
about the now forgotten characters and didn't seem to see any cool
'fleshing-out' of nouvelle bio-science concepts into Egan's work. As for
Trans-Realist, I am not sure what that is except as Rudy Rucker has said; its
a fantasy of one's life.

On another matter, your analysis of the future, The Last Mortal Generation,
was good, but I want to see it expanded upon. I mean the material is so
'scalable' that conceivably, you might have used a do it yourself timeline
and sketched in the next 10,000 years or so. I wonder what makes Kuhn so
respected by science writers. Is it really true that something has to be
falsifiable to be of use? For example, technology existed milenia before
science, it had value, yet generally was not falsifiable as people used it if
it worked.



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