Sociology of Scientific Knowledge – Normal Science
Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions began life as a monograph entry in the 1962 edition of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.
Later that year the University of Chicago issued Structure in book form. In 1962 Structure sold 919 copies. In 1963 it sold 774. Some 90,000 hardcover and paperback copies had been sold by 1971; by then the 1969 edition (with a 30-page supplement) had taken over sales. By 1987 over 650,000 units had been sold as Structure had become required reading for many Sociology, Philosophy and History students. (1)
The current (2012) edition is introduced by philosopher of science Ian Hacking. Millions have read Structure. Kuhn hoped Structure would: “produce a decisive transformation in the image of science.” Mission accomplished, according to Hacking.
Although it would soon be overthrown by bio-tech and computer-tech, in 1962 Physics ruled the sciences. Forever the physicist, Kuhn took Physics as his model. While chronicling worldview-transforming scientific theories, Structure spares but half a page to Darwin.
Math papers are like eggs – if they’re part bad, they’re all bad. (2) Humanities papers can be erroneous yet redeemable. Structure is a case in point. The book: a) is overwhelmingly about Physics which Kuhn presumes is indicative of all science; b) uncritically relays internal narratives about early 20th century “revolutions” in Physics; c) does not discuss the impact on science of social forces external to science; d) neglects changes to higher education over the past 400 years; and e) defends the scientific status quo.
Nevertheless, what Structure says about “normal science” is more germane now than in 1962.
Kuhn describes normal science as: “a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by a professional education.” (3)
And:
Mopping up operations are what engage most scientists throughout their careers. They constitute what I am calling normal science… No part of the aim of normal science is to call forth new sorts of phenomenon; indeed those that will not fit in the box are not seen at all. (4)
And:
Normal science… suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments. (5)
Aristotle used “paradeigma” as a synonym of “exemplar.” Paradigms were fitting scenarios; teaching aids. The Romans translated paradeigma into “exemplum.” Structure is saturated with the term. One scholar tabulated 22 nuances of paradigm in Structure.
A paradigm is a set of analogies, equations, applications, experiments and observations related to a specific hypothesis. Paradigms form the foundations of scientific traditions. They are the standard models facilitating professional communication and assessment. They are the working hypotheses unifying schools. They are the foci of scientific consensuses.
Paradigms are conceptually inseparable from “scientific communities” i.e., those thought-collectives that can number fewer than 100 scientists but are usually magnitudes larger. Scientific communities revolve around paradigms.
Successful paradigms spawn puzzles. Science education, which Kuhn calls “indoctrination,” consists of making students solve the puzzles listed at the end of textbook chapters. These questions require students to demonstrate an ability to manipulate a paradigm’s core algebraic equations (e.g., F=MA or E=MC2). Students learn to spot paradigms inside a range of phenomena.
Paradigms are the Alpha to Omega of normal science:
“Without commitment to a paradigm there could be no normal science.” (6)
Normal science: “aims to refine, extend and articulate a paradigm that is already in existence.” (7)
Normal research discovers what it is expected to discover. Normal scientists (“hacks”) grind away on selected puzzles:
…in normal science, the research worker is a solver of puzzles, not a tester of paradigms. (8)
Normal science journals contain: a) re-determinations of significant facts, b) matchings of new facts to the paradigm, and c) further articulations of the paradigm, usually in algebraic treatises. (9) Normal scientists pile stone upon stone in tribute to the almighty paradigm.
“Scientific revolutions” debuted in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1787). Kant espied two scientific revolutions – one occurring when Greeks transformed Babylonian mathematics into proofs from postulates; and the other being Galileo’s debut of the experimental method and the laboratory. Moderns identify the Scientific Revolution as a 1543-1687 drama starring Bacon, Galileo and Newton.
Kuhn penned The Copernican Revolution in 1957. Soon after he toyed with an entirely separate revolution situated in the early 19th century when the study of heat, light, electricity and magnetism became mathematized. This episode is better described as an advance in measurement and instrumentation. Mathematization (algebraization) of these fields awaited Maxwell’s 1860s doodlings.
While normal science cannot change paradigms it can, according to Kuhn, generate anomalies that lead to crises which in turn cause paradigm shifts (scientific revolutions). This sequence emphatically never happened before the Einsteinian or Quantum “revolutions” in early 20th century Physics. Kuhn’s ulterior motive for writing Structure was to elevate these “revolutions” to the status of the Copernican-Heliocentric, and the Oxygen-Combustion, revolutions. The exemplar of Kuhn’s own paradigm is a Big Lie.
Pre-revolutionary periods (“crisis science”) witness proliferations of dueling articulations. Scientists talk past one another. Words take on new meanings. Limits to what proponents of opposing theories can communicate to one another are reached. “Incommensurability” reigns. A scientist’s rejection of one paradigm is simultaneously the embrace of its rival. Transfers of allegiance are “conversions,” not rational choices.
Post-1962 “paradigm” appeared ubiquitously in academic literature. Kuhn sought to clarify paradigm’s meaning in a 1974 paper but eventually lost control of the word and abandoned it.
Kuhn became the darling of science studies scholars despite disdaining Sociology. Various sociologies of science blossomed after Structure, nourished in part by the book’s success. Kuhn pooh-poohed this.
Footnotes
- Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; University of Chicago, 2012. Data on book sales etc. are from Ian Hacking’s 30 page introduction to this volume.
- Collins, Harry & Pinch, Trevor. The Golem: what you should know about science; University of Cambridge Press, Second Edition, 1998, page 154.
- Kuhn, page 5.
- Ibid, page 24.
- Ibid, page 5.
- Ibid, page 100.
- Ibid, page 122.
- Ibid, page 144.
- Ibid, page 24. See also Hacking’s introduction in same volume.
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Herb Rose
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When someone commits years of study and thousands of dollars on the pursuit of a goal, they have gone all in and cannot forsake that goal without losing all. They will defend orthodoxy despite any evidence and all contradictions at all costs because emotionally they cannot lose that part of their identity. They are ruled be emotion, not reason. When physicists decided they could abandon reason and create theories based on no evidence, they became the priests of physics, not scientists.
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William Walter Kay
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I basically agree with what you are saying Herb. Where you see an emotional motive, however, I would stress purely opportunistic careerism. We have to keep in mind that we are dealing not so much with individual scientists but with large structured scientific organizations (foundations, faculties, associations, journals etc.) Once a paradigm has been installed individual scientists, certainly not young aspiring ones, are not at liberty to be contrarians – that would be career suicide.
I agree with you Theoretical Physics (by 1923) had become pseudo-science; but what external social forces acted upon Physics that caused the degradation?
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Herb Rose
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Hi William,
We may want to believe that we are ruled by reason but the reality is that it is our emotions that are masters.
A mother on seeing the body of her child will often deny that it is her child, despite the evidence. So much of her identity consists of being mom that to lose that would destroy who she is. Better to deny reality then to perish.
Who we are is a combination of the concept of ourself and the identity with our tribes (family, profession, social, religious). The need to be part of the tribe is as esential to self preservation as the need to defend ourself. So the question is how much of ourself are we willing to sacrifice to retain the membership in the tribe?
I wrote a book, The Great Prize, (not worth reading) about a physicist who wins the Nobel Prize only to realize that the work he did to get the prize was wrong. The dilemma of conforming to the tribe and accepting the honor versus the integrity standard he holds as part of his individual identity results in a nervous breakdown where he disconnects with reality.It takes a lot of courage and belief in oneself to abandon your tribes.
Herb
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Sol
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Thank you for the article, but that was science then and this is science now, in the “new normal”.
A new normal in which we are all turned into an Alice in wonderland .
Science, word once used to describe a discipline which according to the dictionary, was to translate into “the speculative philosophy of the origins of creation and of the universe, as become transformed into the religion of the “government approved” narrative.
A religion which sees philanthropists as the new saints of its cult, eugenics as its main doctrine, technocrats as its priests/witch doctors, and the brainwashed transhumanists as its /lab rats, and disciples.
Sheep/lab rats, ready to offer their children to be sacrificed on the alter of experimental science.
Slaughtered by junk food, injection, or by mobile’s radiation, as their parents, believers in money power, war politics, television’ medical journals and greed, sign up contracts to free their killers from liability.
Television its temple, wikipedia as its bible, politicians as its merciless warriors, the police as its inquisitioners and the army as its executioner.
A new religion which wants humanity to forfeit its rights to privacy, freedom, and informed consent, in exchange for a supposed protection from its self, and which demands the complete trust of its subjects, in a system in which understanding should be replaced by blind belief in its speculative assumptions.
Baptized by vaccine, with a cell phones as its star of david, crescent moon or cross, hanging from its neck as new symbol of belief and compliance, mankind is asked to bow to the billionaires, now, new cardinals, bishops, mufti and rabbis of its new age religion.
Sacrificing the innocents on the altar of experimental medicine, pretending to purify society by demonizing nature and questioning voices, and erasing sexuality, morality and common sense now replaced by legal apartheid, sickness and perversion.
Logic as a hate crime, understanding and dissent as a violation of its principles and supposed ethics, the religion of science, set to destroy humanity with its medicine, physics, biology history and mathematics, to replace it with its dictates of supposed woke culture and its unholy transhumanism absolute rule.
Under its new slogan “The new normal” the religion of science, wants to impose its insanity, as if humanity would have no other choice but to accept its dictation, as scientists, politicians and news agencies, lined up to collect their fundings, shout out on the microphones of news agencies and television the insane messages of their procurers and clients/sponsors.
Prostituting their image and voice, for power and greed, selling tickets to their new virtual digital paradise, proclaiming to know as fact, what in reality is assumptions at best, the disciples of chaos, masked, standing in their white coats,.
Scientists/which doctors, the mew surgeons of spiritual mutilation, pharmaceutical apartheid, medical marshal law and rape of humanity, giving out out their gospel of terror and fearporn as they violate the principles of logic and dictate the ones of immorality and belief.
And as the madness of its gospels of insanity, terror and fear are being disseminated by its mass media presstitutes, and nobel price winners, the world comes to face the monstrosity which rules it.
Lockdowns, social distance, censure, institution of insane laws, forced inoculation with experimental gene therapy falsely called vaccine, imposition of a digital dictatorship and of medical martial law, erasure of history, morality and ethics, for the supposed safety and freedom that corporate science deems suitable.
A safety sold as if to save us from our selfs, and a freedom to be digitized and digitally enslaved, all in the name of science and the right “for some” to be a billionaire and to legally watch others starve and die in poverty and misery..”.
Science, a mew classist religion which divides the people in to those who know its hidden scripts like doctors, politicians and reporters, and those whom are also forced to blindly follow them.
Doctors, its new official ministers, like always since the 1910 introduction of the flexner report, pushing their masters’s experimental chemical concoctions.
Reporters, serving as its face and voice, divulging and propagandizing the narratives they are fad by the templars of doom, “scientists”, and their children, new heads of industry, politicians and actors, enforcing and promulgating the rule of their saints, the good philanthropists of digital empire and population reduction
Everyone else, will be the under class, “scientifically” forced into the slavery of digital dictatorship in which them self will become the remotely operated transhumant machine, controlled by the technocrats’ and voodoo witch doctors of pigpharma’s modified gene technology and its population reduction psychopaths/eugenists.
All should be controlled by a gigantic quantum computer which will be their god, and which in turn will be running the “scientists’s”designed software and algorithms, set to calculate the ultimate equation of life, along with the exact value and life span of every under class citizen.
Social credits to enslave the pore, carbon credits to control the industry, sanctions for rebel nations, and bonuses to keep the pre selected status quo in dominant position.
And of course designer vaccines/digital platforms to keep the scientifically digitized human machines well updated and tuned in to the gospel of science, fearporn, terror and medical martial law.
So while governments, captured by the industry of doom, instals laws which deprive humans of their right to privacy and to fair existence in a free society, one is left to wonder’ how long time will pass, before those unconstitutional and insane laws, will become “in the name of “holy science”, worldwide militarily enforced upon humanity.
After all, everyone can now see how despite the overwhelming amount of evidences pointing out to the danger posed by the gene altering technology of the so called experimental vaccines, every government is criminally pushing for the inoculation of even children, now offered in schools to take the injection without their parents consent, as if they should have now, reached the legal age to commit euthanasia.
Captured governments with their “scientific” dystopian nightmare, plastering the world with warning signs and issuing lockdowns of entire nations, as if this should be something needed to protect the entire world from harm caused by a lethal pathogen that could wipe out humanity, neglecting the fact that its established rate of mortality is inferior to the 1% and that at its worst “for people in their past eighties” like a commune flue, as an estimated recoverability of over the 98%.
And so yes, the religion of “science”, is now on everyone’s face as under its flag of supposed only truth, humanity is being muzzled with toxic masks, deprived of its most basic rights, and pushed to pharmaceutical suicide.
Because forcing track and trace on innocent people, would appear to be a way to enslaving them under dictatorial rules, volunteer Track and trace is by it masked as mean for protection.
And even if logically it means forfeiting the freedom of, not only oneself, but also, that of its future generations, becomes portrayed by its ministers as the one of the heroes which in the name of its holy scientific belief, sacrifices its freedom for the health of others.
It seams obvious to the truly awoken and knowledgeable mind that the agenda behind this new religion is the one to subdued the masses, as with its psychophysical false flag operation, its holy saints, are now installing a digital dictatorship, governed by the algorithms ghostwritten for a cabal of psychopaths, which in the name of their new religion of “science”, have found the way to control society from its personal portal/tablet.
Running a program designed to enrich the few, and maintain everyone else chain to a digital world in which every action is analyzed and reported, and every thought is coerced and induced.
In a system in which the machineman will be reworded with social credits, or punished with their deletion.
A system in which the control of the government/machine over the people, would be extended to allow it to decide what you will be able to “in the name of science” buy or not to buy with your digital money.
In a world in which the have will be less, and the have not will have to buy the right to exist and to proliferate, and will by default/programmable-injection/Modified RNA/biotech vaccine, prematurely die, all in the name of saving the world from global warming, over population and of the one and only fact checked religion “Science”
And so, in the age of the new normal, and under the word of its holy religion you should now and forevermore believe in its gospel, as accordingly, you will own nothing and be
happy.
Alice must wake up from the digital wander land in which had fell, and pull the plug from the wall before her brain will become completely fried
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JaKo
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Wow — Sol,
A bit long winded, but a very good prediction of our near and distant future indeed — that is, if, as likely, we do nothing and let “them” to decide and run/ruin our world.
It was a great timing for the PSI to run this allegorical article — good for us all!
Cheers, JaKo
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William Walter Kay
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On the topic of timeliness, Jako: when I finished this piece I noticed that if one deleted the references to Kuhn and then replaced the phrase “normal science” with phrases like “climate science” or “Covid science” – readers would think the article was entirely contemporaneous.
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JaKo
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Yes William,
Ever since one of the most famous and celebrated scientists (Onerock) plagiarized works of others (e.g. Lorentz, Poincare etc.) one can’t have any respect to the “normal” anything associated with humans — it may sound strange, but I sometimes think, that we don’t deserve anything better than this planned Great Reset.
Cheers, JaKo
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Sol
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Thanks and sorry for the miss spellings and hard to read parts, I accidentally posted the wrong “uncorrected” page I wrote, the full page was actually a bit longer and becoming a bitt personal so I stoped there.
I agree with you, it is time to take action.
According to my personal Science, this tecno/pharmaceutical monster octopus relies on a technology which needs us to carrie 24/7 with us spying and trace and tracking devices. “S.M.A.R.T.” “Cell” phones, as in by acronym “self monitoring, analyze and reporting technology” cell or perhaps “prison phones”.
It is in fact so that if we all drop them home or at the office, and instead of keeping them on us at all time, we would switch back to our pre blue tooth technology mobile phones for to comunicate with each other, we would be able to sever this monstrous octopus’s tentacles.
An other practice that we should also become accustom too, its the one of changing television channel, not just when news/propaganda is being broadcasted, but also every time we see someone on it wearing a mask.
We are all in this thing together and together we should act if we want to put an end to this technocratic and pharmaceutical coup.
Sol
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Lunatictoctarian
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S.M.A.R.T.
Secretive Miltarized Armaments Residential Territories
Don’t you like the ring to that?
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Sol
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No, I think its true meaning is self explanatory enough.
S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) !
Such “technology” is in everything which runs a sd card or hard drive.
Ever wondered why your new mobile phones have multiple giga processors?
Now is up to you to figure out what self monitoring and analysis means, and to who its your “smart” device is reporting.
I think the rest should be quite easy and logically consequential.
Open the drawer, and pull out your old phone.
If you, and not your phone, is the smart one, Pull that plug
Lunatictoctarian
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“Ever wondered why your new mobile phones have multiple giga processors?”
Of course, excess, greed, upgrades, background shit, etc.
I don’t have any phone though.
Lunatictoctarian
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And from what I see, SMART is actually for Secretive Militarized Armaments Residential Territories.
Every aspect of SMART “communication” is a weapon. As many towers as possible, literally using frequencies and methods for causing damage.
That’s an enormous amount of very specific energy being used to kinda degenerate people. Obviously has many compound effects with other ubiquitous toxic factors. Coz homogenization is what borg is all about.
Lunatictoctarian
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The “data transfer” and constantly projected need for “more faster newer” is essentially like a cover for basically being attacked more blatantly.
With it you have tracking, constantly projected propaganda, etc.
Sol
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Good for you if yo do not keep a cell phone.
About millimeter waves of the new “cell towers” they are designed to “among other” work as a radar system with the capability to, beside rendering a 3d scan of the area in which they operate, a kind of x-ray ability for moving objects.
In some countries the army have used it for to monitor the state of ammunitions being transfer in and out of their bases.
But that is something .”they” would like people to not know before the time of 7G by which time they will tell you that you are being microwaved for your own safety.
William Walter Kay
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Sol that is far too much information for me to address. I think we’re on the same page regarding “Science” being used as a propaganda cover for highly dictatorial inhumane policies. It is very hard to separate “good science” from “bad science.” Some people will never question the scientific authorities. Some throw out too much. We have to use our brains. We have to be judicious and discriminating.
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Sol
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Discriminating ?
I think you hit the spot there “ Some people will never question the scientific authorities ”
Scientists should be philosophers and not corporation witchdoctors playing the part of the “authorities”
My grandfather warned me about the danger and catastrophe that would have result if some day medicine should be overtaken by science.
And guess what?
It happened.
Computer models, Cov-Id, Pcr, track and trace, injectable gene altering biotech platforms and loads of business for the pharmaceutical industry, selling tons more medicine than ever before to their new vaccinated clients which just don’t want to die
All thanks to science which claims to no better than medicine.
Some time we have to take some steps backwards, if we want to go forward without falling off the cliff.
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Sol
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Correction of typo
“All thanks to corporate science, which claims to know better than medicine”
Also, William, perhaps we should make the distinction between a science for good, spring board for the greatest discoveries and achievements in mathematics, physics, mechanics, medicine, and modern technology, and the science for greed, tool for destruction of true philosophy and science, along with the one of humanity in it self, and pedestal for the actuation of the dystopian and horrific design of its insane sponsors.
In the case of the later, I think we can now confidently call it “corporate science” .
Also, since they like to constantly invent new words for to justified their concepts, perhaps we should think of new words to describe its transhumanists ministers and spokesman.
What about “the voodoo witchdoctors of technocratic/pigpharma” or perhaps “the voodoo witchdoctors of the age of dystopia.
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LLOYD
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Science has become a word to beat your political opponent over the head with rather than a word used to discover knowledge. Like Organized Religion, Main Stream Science has become a huge bureaucracy based on funding, talk show appearances, face time pushing an agenda, and personal popularity. SAD.
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Lunatictoctarian
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“Like Organized Religion, Main Stream Science has become a huge bureaucracy based on funding, talk show appearances, face time pushing an agenda, and personal popularity. SAD.”
Since it’s been like that for quite some time, when would you say it “became” that? Considering those institutions (religious included) are seemingly all linked, parallel structures, reliances, etc. And seemingly kinda associated with “freemasonry”.
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William Walter Kay
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Funnily enough, I’m in the midst of reading a book on the Masons (and the paranoia surrounding them). In their 1780s-1850s heyday various Lodges did exert notable influence; often in a positive way. Today its a gross over-simplification to view the Masons as monolithic or relevant. In most of North America they are basically goofy frat-boys clubs. The last sinister adventure I can associate them with was Italy’s P2 lodge (early 1970s). Conspiracism will forever zero in on one “secret society” or “ethnicity” or “elite gathering” and magnify its importance beyond believability. When one tallies up the dozens of potential culprits; and acknowledges the divisions inside them, one is forced to abandon notions that any particular entity is the driver of history.
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Lunatictoctarian
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Uh yeah, I know collusion and the legion of lillith well enough hey.
That you don’t notice it currently, try to play apologist is kinda…hey do you remember Cernunnons?
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Lunatictoctarian
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What happens if I mention 47?
Lunatictoctarian
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Totally random reference.
http://stjameslodge47.org/
That would be the morningstar lodge or something like that?
Lunatictoctarian
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https://wonkhe.com/blogs/freemasonry-and-universities-a-bit-like-facebook/
Wait wait, since religion and academics are related, which particular version of “freemason” scripture is your favourite?
The Qu’ran, Talmud or KJV?
Lunatictoctarian
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Other than Cernunnos, what about Esus? Apparently he liked the birds and wasn’t as friendly as slavers tried to suggest. But then again, the previous time I mentioned the Morrigu (as a joke), JP Morgan had a ship with like 17 tons of cocaine or something seized.
William Walter Kay
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I concur with what you’re saying but it may reflect what sociologists of scientific knowledge call “internalism” i.e., the view that science is autonomous and self-sustaining. Kuhn’s critical weakness was his refusal to examine the influences forces external to the scientific community were having on scientific content.
Take a paradigm like the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis. This was not something scientists concocted to hit people over the head. This was something powerful external actors concocted to push through the coal and oil phase-outs (i.e., the energy transition). The branch of science, Climatology, was fashioned into a bludgeon by external agents.
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Lunatictoctarian
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Remember, it is a well known scientific consensus fact of truth that wireless EMF is safe and doesn’t actually do anything physical at all.
“Evidence for a Connection between COVID-19 and Exposure to Radiofrequency Radiation from Wireless Telecommunications Including Microwaves and Millimeter Waves”
https://osf.io/9p8qu/
“Conclusion
We conclude that RFR and, in particular, 5G, which involves densification of 4G, has exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic by weakening host immunity and increasing SARS-CoV-2 virulence by
(1) causing morphologic changes in erythrocytes including echinocyte and rouleaux formation that may be contributing to hypercoagulation;
(2) impairing microcirculation and reducing erythrocyte and hemoglobin levels exacerbating hypoxia;
(3) amplifying immune dysfunction, including immunosuppression, autoimmunity, and hyperinflammation;
(4) increasing cellular oxidative stress and the production of free radicals exacerbating vascular injury and organ damage;
(5) augmenting intracellular Ca 2+ essential for viral entry, replication, and release, in addition to promoting pro-inflammatory pathways; and
(6) worsening heart arrhythmias and cardiac disorders.
In short, wireless communication radiation is a ubiquitous environmental stressor, and evidence presented here suggests that it is a contributing factor in the COVID-19 pandemic.”
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