From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Tue Nov 08 2005 - 00:07:59 EST
>Hi Rakesh > >Will get around to trying to address your points. But first: > >> >They don't understand the unique features of scientific >> >labour. So the concrete labour of astrology is not much different from >> >the concrete labour of an astronomer. >> >> >> Caricature! But perhaps the myth/science distinction is not always >> so clear. Darwin for example. > >Not so long ago, Paris' Sorbonne University passed a doctoral >dissertation, in sociology, that employed postmodern ideas to argue >for the validity of astrology. Wasn't astrology what the entirety of Indian cosmology dismissed as? Perhaps there was some orientalism in the very charge of astrology to all non Western cosmologies. Perhaps they had some validity and surely were often based on accurate measurements without which what you would call science would have been impossible. I think Amartya Sen (no postmodernist) may have a chapter on this in his Argumentative Indian. Don't know. But your point does not settle this for me. Rakesh >-Ian.
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