The Joyce of Science

It's amazing what people come up with. From a discussion on an email list for the history of the philosophy of science:

Counter-examples to Kuhn. I've deleted the original email, but here are a few highlights, the first three being from Steve Fuller:

With all due respect to Paul [Hoyningen-Huene, who proposed the original question], the main problem with Kuhn's model is that it's not clear that it was designed to be tested in some straightforward empirical manner... So, good luck cherry-picking the history of science to keep Kuhn alive! Yours in discourse...

A question about Merton drew this response:

Merton definitely has 'wit': he knows how to mark some thing brilliantly, and the systematic v. historical approach to a science (drawn from theology) is a good example. The more historical the approach to a science, the more critical you're likely to be of how much present has made over the past. In contrast, the systematic approach tends to make it look like everyone is contributing pieces to the same puzzle. Kuhn, in his uncanny vagueness, straddled this, and you can see historians and philosophers of science trying to draw him in one or the other direction. Paul Hoyningen-Huene would like to enable Kuhn to out-Kant Kant; others think time is better spent elsewhere.

Some more references to Merton, Sorokin and Myerson, then:

Are we in Finnegan's Wake country, here? Merton + Sorokin = Meyerson?

After 20 more emails in less than 24 hours (these "Hopoi" are rather hyperactive):

It is Finnegans Wake, as even people
know who haven't read it but have
only glanced at the title.

F.A. Muller
Amsterdam

(Too many syllables, but otherwise it looks like a haiku!)

And then this (from Jon Bennett), including a fascinating link:

What better example of a parallelism of ideas in science and literature than Finnegan's Wake - indicating a larger cultural metaparadigm - unless it would be the other works of Joyce. Proust is a good example of Einstein's ideas applied to literature. Here is a popular discussion of Joyce and science.

I just think it's amazing what people come up with. And I feel so inadequate. I barely finished The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man!