new orientation (& Ortega)

.. and now I will try to connect with Michael's ideas:

(dearly thanking him for both the personal acknowledgement and for the
dedication to compose his thoughtful essay in these hectic days of course
termination)

Wouldn't the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset find quite interesting
your piece? I mean, he strongly advocated during the 20's 304s and 40's
about what he called "perspectivism" --the impossibility of any global
comprehension by any observer, and of course the impossibility of any
subsequent complete "rationalistic" logical account. Unfortunately the
circle of Spanish intellectuals and philosophers following him was more
humanistic and literary than scientifically inclined. And there were not
enough English translations of all his books (unfortunately his scientific
doctrine was disseminated among quite a few of them). You have developed
ideas, rather germane to his, addressed from a more rigorous scientific
background, perhaps physically inclined (this is precisely the interesting
thing!). My own way (rather biological) to understand this matter was the
principle of "limited prehension", sketched in the BioSystems issue to
appear.

Sorry for the long intro--the point is that, joining Deborah Conrad in the
sense that your principle of "philosophical relativity" will immediately be
misinterpreted as another defense of "relativism", I take the freedom to
suggest the inclusion of it, as a central scientific-theoretical tool,
within the perspectivistic framework. But I do not know wether
"perspectivism" nowadays is suitable as a global term for philosophers,
perhaps it could be even worse than relativism.

The final advocation of yours as a principle of tolerance, is shared. And
it gives a nice cue to connect with previous discussions--assuming that the
systems of the sciences is working as a global brain, as a nervous system
of sorts for the sake of the whole social organism. Then my little
controversial question is this: INDIFFERENCE, lack of a real "soul" in the
nervous system of the sciences, instead of tolerance, could be the central
malady afflicting our sci. system. Sadly, specialized sciences have worked
as power-focused instruments, without sufficent concern for the sentient
being. The story of nuclear physcis is quite eloquent. Lewis Mumford put it
quite forcefully: the historical alliance between industrialists,
developers, politicians, the military, and scientists... has become the
blindest and most dangerous social experiment ever.

best greetings

Pedro

---------------------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuan. FAX 34 976 761861 and / 762111. TEL / 761927
Dept. Ingenieria Electronica y Comunicaciones
CPS, Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza 50015, SPAIN
email: marijuan@posta.unizar.es
---------------------------------------------------------------
Received on Fri Jun 5 14:04:44 1998