Re: Shared Vision Tough Spots LO870

Michael McMaster (Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 21 Apr 1995 18:11:43 GMT

Replying to LO843 --

This line of inquiry of stories and theory is intriguing. Recently
someone took serious exception to my calling their "scientific truth"
stories because it was obvious to him that he wasn't talking about the
same thing. I suggest that just as you might call anything "poetry",
there are certain kinds of poetry that require very specific structures
and if those structures don't exist, it isn't that _kind_ of poetry (ie. a
sonnet). I remember spending most of my youth certain that it wasn't a
poetry if it didn't rhyme.

The "stories" of science have to follow certain rules or they aren't
"scientific stories". These rules have a value. The stories have a
particular value because of the rules. But they aren't therefor
necessarily more true nor, more importantly, necessarily more valuable.
Its just that you have to know the rules to play, to be accepted, to
participate.

Lyotard and some other of the postmodernists are directing us away from
the "grand theories of things" and toward the concrete. The use of
stories may accomplish this by creating a concrete and allowing various
theories to be made from them without presenting the "grand theory"
itself. And the same story can usually be used to challenge any grand
theory that is made from it.

This is not a call for throwing out the stories of science nor the rules
for their stories. Its a call for elevating other stories to a status of
equality. That is, recognising the usefulness of different domains of
stories for different uses.

Mike McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>