Fiction

The Bottle

Peter Colbourne tells us a tale of lost philosophers.

Three philosophers of science – a positivist, a post-modernist and a relativist – were on their way to a conference aboard a small plane. Because their views were so radically at odds the three had been arguing incessantly throughout the flight. The positivist insisted not only that an objective reality existed, but that scientists could formulate and test theories that would, in time, explain all phenomena fully. The post-modernist, on the other hand, held that there were a multitude of explanations for every phenomenon, dependant on the context and the cultural milieu and methodologies utilized. He insisted that scientists could fully explain all phenomena through a range of narrative methodologies that, in time, would complete our understanding of humans as actors in a universe bounded by metaphor.

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