Tuesday, August 01, 2006
attribution
scientific history is full of misrepresentations/lies/incomplete information .. things end up being attributed to individuals ignoring the evolutionary path that have led to their existence. people should cease to attribute inventions to anyone -- its a tremendous injustice to the many nameless faces that may have contributed non-trivially.
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5 comments:
Your arguement could then be extended with day to day action of ours, why restrict it to the scientific history only ? Every action is a byproduct of a long learning process which is influenced by innumerable faces around us. Does this mean that we hold all these faceless people responsible for our actions ? Which induvidual or group do we blame/credit ? Does this mean that we no convict a criminal cos his action is a result of a long evolutionary path undergone by the society that he is surrounded ?
point5: definitely .. i think theres a slight difference because in the case of inventions/discovery the gain that the person attributed to the invention/discovery is infinitely greater than those gained by the nameless contributors. its the almost all-or-nothing nature of this that makes the injustice even more pronounced.
on a tangential note the concept of conviction is rather arbitrary. its just a case of not fitting within the arbitrary rules of a society which may or may not have a rational basis and of which there is no universal set of rules.
I think this point is again debatable. The fame of some great scientists could easily be compared with notoriety of some criminals...If we discredit Edison of his light bulb invention, we can also unmask the face of terror off Osama Bin Laden....
probably, the way to look at it would be - off millions of ppl exposed to this evolutionary path, only Edison was successful in inventing the bulb...this distinction certainly merits credit !!
dude u still think justice is the thing that drives everything? ppl want a name to things or havent u seen the advertising association's ad.. its too much to ask that everybody know everything behind all there is.. and science is no better than religion or anything else that might be easier to see is full of misrepresentations/lies/incomplete information - religion preyed on ppl's hearts, science on their intelligence
point5: i dont think you could have picked a worse example than edison!
madatadam: in religion it is easy (at least acc to me) to see that everythings a lie .. less so in science which makes it even more heinous a crime
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