Paradigm shift?

Ron Gatrelle gatrelle at tils-ttr.org
Fri Feb 9 17:58:59 EST 2001


Of course paradigm shift now applies to changing brands of tissue. As with
butterflies - so with language. There are those who just lump words and
meanings and those who search out the nuances. As a hyperbolist I usually
fluctuate between a word splitter and lumper depending on the editorial
theme.

It is unfair to bring up spelling. My paradigm shift there would be to find
that I actually spell anything write. I knew that sooner or later you would
have to embarrass me by talking about the size of your state.

Ron.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenelm Philip" <fnkwp at aurora.alaska.edu>
To: <gatrelle at tils-ttr.org>
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2001 4:34 PM
Subject: Paradigm shift?


>
> Ron:
>
> I see you are following the gospel according to Saint Thomas (Thomas
> Kuhn, that is), who popularized the term 'paradigm shift'. I prefer
another
> approach to these matters, described in the book 'On Human Understanding'
> by Stephen Toulmin.
>
> This business is not enough for a paradigm shift. Do you have a
> paradigm shift when you find you have been misspelling a word for some
> years? It will not change the way I have been operating, for one
important
> reason: the butterflies of the Alaskan tundra are not impacted by human
> development at this time. And if oil drilling is carried out in ANWR,
that
> will not affect the butterflies. They're still doing fine at Prudhoe Bay,
> and any ANWR drilling would be done with a much smaller footprint than
> was used at Prudhoe Bay. There _are_ some local b'fly populations in
> Alaska, but none of them, to my knowledge, are in the tundra. Everything
> there, like most arctic organisms, is widespread.
>
> There's been a lot of talk about drilling in ANWR destroying the
> Refuge. That's nonsense. ANWR is huge, and any drilling would be in one
> corner of it. Also, brief inspection of any recent map showing National
> Parks, State Parks, and National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska will show
> that ANWR is only a small portion of the protected wilderness land in the
> state. Tundra butterflies up here have nothing to fear except global
> warming (or the next ice age, whichever comes first).
>
> Just for the record, there are around 210,000 square miles of Nat-
> ional Park, National Wildlife Refuge, and State Park lands in Alaska.
This
> is more area than the total area of any other US state except Texas
(262,000
> square miles). I don't think Alaskan butterflies will be vanishing soon.
>
> Ken
>
>
>


 
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