Now, I am cautiously trying to avoid accusations of churlishness etc,
but I want to know why there is an assumption that a mid-life change of
career will bring about dialogue - or not, in the case of people who
have apparently abandoned their former interests - 'burn'out' was the
word, I think. Because it seems to me that the notion of 'dialogue'
across the gap has a kind of dialectical underpinning, or perhaps the
concept of the unity of knowledge - a very mediaeval view that in the
end, all knowledge being the creation of one Being, it must have an
internal logic. I would think that Foucault discussing the formation of
disciplines rather suggests that they are constructs located in a time,
place and culture, and therefore not open , necessarily to this kind of
universality. It may be that there simply is no way that you can
reconcile being a Presbyterian theologist with being a physicist.
Perhaps. This might be an instance of Lyotard's 'differend'...
Certainly if the connection is by way of analogy, I think it is very
dubious, and yet it is common. The biologists' notion of evolution has
been applied to economics, with in my opinion disastrous results, the
notion of the individual has yet to be unravelled from Hobbes
watchspring or whatever it was - analogy creates infinite work for
genealogists.
Nesta
but I want to know why there is an assumption that a mid-life change of
career will bring about dialogue - or not, in the case of people who
have apparently abandoned their former interests - 'burn'out' was the
word, I think. Because it seems to me that the notion of 'dialogue'
across the gap has a kind of dialectical underpinning, or perhaps the
concept of the unity of knowledge - a very mediaeval view that in the
end, all knowledge being the creation of one Being, it must have an
internal logic. I would think that Foucault discussing the formation of
disciplines rather suggests that they are constructs located in a time,
place and culture, and therefore not open , necessarily to this kind of
universality. It may be that there simply is no way that you can
reconcile being a Presbyterian theologist with being a physicist.
Perhaps. This might be an instance of Lyotard's 'differend'...
Certainly if the connection is by way of analogy, I think it is very
dubious, and yet it is common. The biologists' notion of evolution has
been applied to economics, with in my opinion disastrous results, the
notion of the individual has yet to be unravelled from Hobbes
watchspring or whatever it was - analogy creates infinite work for
genealogists.
Nesta