Trap

It is about time to rewrite the introduction to my other blog.

I was surfing around when I found out that The Economist ranks Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" as one of the ten best selling non-fiction books, after the book was published almost 40 years ago. I was totally surprised. It was very difficult for me to believe that these many people would buy that book to read. Since I am on vacation, I might as well find out what other people think about the book.

During my surfing of the comments posted on his book, I was even more surprised by the strong emotion concerning Kuhn, his book, and its popular influence. Although the reviews are mostly positive, there are quite a few people who are very negative toward him and his book.

I don't like that negative feeling at all. I can't read minds, so I don't know whether it is just jealousy. I am no philosopher, so I don't care about word plays. I am not a politician, so I don't give a damn whether Kuhn is a reactionary or not. I am especially not an academic, so I don't care about his standings among academics and fine differentiations among the people in the 'nomenclature'. And I have is an independent mind, so I don't care about what other people think about "paradigm shifts", "normal science", etc. I used these phrases because I believe programming is at the verge of changing itself in the near future.

Now that I found out these phrases have meanings other than those I care about, I will simply change my introduction. Hey, these are just phrases. My career does not depend on whether they mean I want them to mean.

I can't resist this, but the one comment I found so silly, was that Kuhn was not a scientist, and hence had no idea how it was done. I almost laughed out loud, if I had not been so disappointed by this kind of attacks on Kuhn.

I know I will steer clear of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and the history of science.

Added five minutes later.There. I removed the word "paradigm" from my introduction.