carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.EDU (Richard Carnes) (06/17/87)
eric@snark.UUCP: >> To put forward an approach to the human sciences as a paradigm >> candidate requires that one accept the analogy to natural science >> according to which human actions can be fixed in their meaning by >> being subsumed under the law like operations of the epistemic >> subject. > >I'm not sure that last sentence even makes sense. It makes more sense if you read "law-like" for "law like". At the moment I haven't time to respond to the various insights and profundities in Eric Raymond's article. I was puzzled at first, until I recollected that he describes himself as a libertarian. Ah, now we're getting somewhere. In the meantime I would like to draw Mr. Raymond's attention to the *Philosophical Papers* (Cambridge U. Press, 2 vols.) of Charles Taylor, an advocate of the hermeneutic approach in the human sciences (this may be summarized very roughly as the claim that it is futile to search for ``natural laws'' governing the human world as distinguished from the natural world, and the proper approach is the interpretation and explication of meanings). A similar critique from Mr. Raymond of one of Taylor's papers, say ``Interpretation and the Sciences of Man'' or ``Atomism'', would be interesting and enlightening. Richard Carnes The highest to which man may aspire is wonder. --Goethe