Talk:Larry Laudan

Needs revised to reflect Larry's passing

Larry passed away August 23, 2022 in Lexington KY. The article needs modified to reflect his death. I will be happy to do this edit soon. Link to obituary written by his wife, Rachel: https://larrylaudan.com/larry-laudan/obituary/ (note: I am his son in law)

fan

Damn! I really am a fan of Laudan from reading him. The following is from "Science at the Bar- Causes for Concern" by Larry Laudan, from Science, Technology and Human Values 7, no. 41 (1982):16-19, reprinted on pages 351-355 of Michael Ruse's _But Is It Science_. It refers to McLean v. Arkansas, the famous Creationism trial:

    "At various key points in the Opinion, Creationism is charged with being untestable, dogmatic (and thus non-tentative),  and unfalsifiable.  All three charges are of dubious merit.  For instance, to make the interlinked claims that Creationism is neither falsifiable nor testable is to assert that Creationism makes no empirical assertions whatever.  This is surely false. Creationists make a wide range of testable assertions about empirical matters of fact.  Thus, as Judge Overton himself grants (apparently without seeing its implications), the creationists say that the earth is of very recent origin (say 6,000 to 20,000 years old); they argue that most of the geological features of the earth's surface are diluvial in character (i.e., products of the postulated worldwide Noachian deluge); they are committed to a large number of factual historical claims with which the Old Testament is replete; they assert the limited variability of species.  They are committed to the view that, since animals and man were created at the same time, the human fossil record must be paleontologically co-extensive with the record of lower animals. It is fair to say that no one has shown how to reconcile such claims with the available evidence- evidence which speaks persuasively to a long earth history,among other things."
    "In brief, these claims are testable, they have been tested, and they have failed those tests."

LODA shala matherchoot.

Edited a couple of bits in the page which didn't really make logical or grammatical sense. Not being too familiar with LL, I hope I've got it right.

Fundamental revision needed

It is a shame that one of the best epistemologists of our time is portrayed here as a mediocre figure with some average achievements. All who have read Laudan would agree. He is obviously the only surviving dinosaur of the golden era of epistemology, the era represented by Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend and, of course, Laudan himself. Here I'd like to outline a draft plan of what should be said about Laudan:
1. His problem-oriented epistemology in more detail. Comparison with Kuhn and Lakatos. (Progress and its Problems, 1977)
2. His reticulational model. (Science and Values, 1984)
3. His metaepistemology. The VPI project: testing the rules of scientific change. (Scrutinizing Science, 1992)
4. Laudan after VPI project: legal epsitemology.
This is very raw. Todo: elaborate.
Jackbars (talk) 02:43, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Is he a dinosaur? Not a titan? Nevertheless you may be right, sagacious creatures aside, but the article needs citations upon citations, sources upon sources. The article as it is now, is not much more than a stub. ... said: Rursus (^mbork³) 15:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Controversy section and why removed

This section was deeply flawed, due to relying on WP:PRIMARY sources, many of whom did not even mention or single out Laudan like the text they were used for tried to (WP:SYNTH), and ultimately in devoting WP:UNDUE length to a matter which is only a very minor aspect of Laudan's career and in which he played a relatively minor part.

• [1] - This is a set of student-newspaper clippings from 1990-1991, consisting mostly of opinion articles and letters to the editor, laying out the original controversy about a certain Joey Carter's opinion article, Haunani-Kay Trask's response (among others), and the ensuing back and forth involving many people. Laudan appears here among many others in the Philosophy Department with the same view, not as a sole or major player in the controversy. These are not WP:SECONDARY sources.

• [2] - This is a 21-minute video of Trask herself speaking. Again, a primary source.

• The next note is Series 5: Box 4A1(2):71, Jon Van Dyke Collection, The Archival Collections at the University of Hawaiʻi School of Law Library - Clearly a primary source, again.

• [3] - This does not mention Laudan at all, and is from UH Hilo, not UH Manoa where Laudan was.

• [4] - This is used in two different footnotes (17 and 20 in the last version), but again, does not mention Laudan at all, and focuses on the Philosophy Department as a whole.

• [5][6] - Again, these do not mention Laudan, only the department as a whole.

In sum - If any text about this incident were to be included, it should be from secondary sources that are specifically talking about the subject of this article. Even if such were to turn up, I can't imagine more than a sentence being warranted, however. Crossroads ^-talk- 23:07, 2 September 2024 (UTC)