Zusammenfassung der Ressource
“Knowledge within a discipline
develops according to the principles of
natural selection.” How useful is this
metaphor?
- Principles of Natural Selection
- Organisms produce offspring with different traits, which can be inherited
- Organisms produce more offspring than can survive because the world has limited resources
- Offspring whose traits are best suited to their environment survive and pass on those variations to their offspring
- Usefulness of a metaphor
- Metaphors serve the purpose of comparing a familiar topic to a topic that we are not very familiar with
- Accurate comparison of the two topics that are being mentioned
- Area of knowledge
- History
- Conspiracy theories
- JFK Assassination
- Principles of Natural Selection applied to
- Only 1 truth can be accepted, but various conspiracies are created
- The false conspiracies act to strengthen the validity of the 'truth'
- The 'fittest' truth (conspiracy) survives
- Ways of knowing
- Memory
- Memory is reconstructive
- Reason
- Proof for the one-man theory
- Emotion
- Conspiracies generated from fear, uncertainty and doubt
- Historians vs. Average people
- Historians disregard the conspiracy theories
- 61% Americans believe it was a conspiracy (gallup poll)
- Natural sciences (Biology)
- Natural Selection vs. Spontaneous generation
- A single theory can be accepted, but numerous hypotheses were generated
- One theory survives
- Ways of knowing
- Reason
- Louis Pasteur's experiment
- Imagination
- Beginning of Life
- Religion denying natural selection, insisting that spontaneous generation occured
- Division within the discipline
- Scientists with a political agenda?
- What qualities of knowledge within a discipline make it the 'fittest'?
- Proof?
- Agreed upon by the majority?
- Approval from authorities?