2007/06/17
Death, and/as Shift of Knowledge Paradigm
Got a email from a friend, who forwarded me the news of Rudolf Arnheim having passed away lately. (NYT obituary here) Yet he added a line: if I care to know. Well that's probably very true, for when Richard Wollheim died a few years old, I felt he has at least coined minimalism, but for Arnheim, I could only think of his Art and Visual Perception, and guess you all know that I hate to think of art in a visual way, but he did venture into visual as thinking beyond the stylistic, that's true.
Thomas Kuhn often for example refers to Gestalt theory in his idea of the paradigmatic shift. I on the other hand also learn one thing, and that is what is taught and passes on in the academy might not be as well rational as we like to think it is, and depends on what the teachers could offer, and what teachers are on offer (I guess Kuhn mentions it too, how one have to wait till all the professors in a certain paradigm is all dead, for the shift to be possible). As for my case, I took the last course in Anthropoplgy department on Structuralism, before the lecturer retired and went back to Taiwan. When no students pick this up and return to teach it, the acadmeic fashion of Structuralism is officially dead, as of a natural cause. That's however always stay as a part of me.
Thomas Kuhn often for example refers to Gestalt theory in his idea of the paradigmatic shift. I on the other hand also learn one thing, and that is what is taught and passes on in the academy might not be as well rational as we like to think it is, and depends on what the teachers could offer, and what teachers are on offer (I guess Kuhn mentions it too, how one have to wait till all the professors in a certain paradigm is all dead, for the shift to be possible). As for my case, I took the last course in Anthropoplgy department on Structuralism, before the lecturer retired and went back to Taiwan. When no students pick this up and return to teach it, the acadmeic fashion of Structuralism is officially dead, as of a natural cause. That's however always stay as a part of me.
