lpetrich wrote:But it's interesting to see what such stories feature.
The stories themselves are pattern-matching exercises, but omitting the task of reality-checking in a systematic way. Stories are for entertainment, not edification. It's the religious nuts who claim that stories educate you.
The classification of stories is also a pattern-matching exercise, but then once-removed from reality-checking. How is it that someone purports to tell me what content I should find in a story? After we've read a few stories ourselves and dabbled in a little literary criticism, we don't need their fucking help, so the conclusion is that literary critics are just entertaining one another.
I got her telephone number. How d'ya like them apples?
Suggesting that the modern theories of science match up against ancient myths, is, well... don't make me state it explicitly. I'll just say that some people have meta-theories that the theories of science are also just 'narratives', but I don't think the term 'reality-checking' much impresses them.
This kind of pud-yanking plays both ends against the middle of establishing the content of stories, and is for folks who want to be impressed by the very last clever thing they've read.
lpetrich wrote:That aside, successful new paradigms tend to include old paradigms. Steven Weinberg may be right that Kuhnian revolutions in the strict sense may be rare. A new paradigm often extends an old paradigm, and sometimes marks out its limits of validity.
How much do you want to beat this fragile horse? You might break it, and then you'll have a horse suitable for herding cattle.
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