Harmonia Philosophica

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IEP, Parmenides and the Dictatorship of “peer review”…

Religion-Science Philosophy articles series

peer_review_james_yang

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP) is asking for articles on specific subjects (see here). However do not be too enthusiastic: you can only submit an article if you are a philosophy professor or (and this is an exception) a graduate student of philosophy. Modern civilization is based on the notion of “peer review”. You can never write something novel or fresh, since you must first provide bibliography. You can never write something different than the mainstream philosophy of our time, since you must be be accepted by other “peers”. And you certainly cannot write anything “too innovative” – the fact that you must first be educated in philosophy (i.e. brain washed with the main ideas that are philosophically interesting and/or accepted) makes that certain.

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Parmenides did not have any sources.

Parmenides was not an accredited philosophy professor.

In other words: Parmenides could not submit an article to IEP! 🙂

Try to think freely! Do not try to think like the others near you! Only then will you be yourself. Only then will you fullfil your existence to the fullest extent.

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  1. Sam

    Spiros and you guys, it’s time to admit science the way we know it failed. It’s been around for thousands years and what do we know? Nothing. Did it explain the world? No. Not even close. Did explain Man? No. Not even close. Isn’t it time to think of a replacement?

    1. skakos

      I agree that science today has not answered the big questions of man. What we need is science as it used to be before the 18th century: science mixed with theology and philosophy.

      1. Sam

        Looking back will not answer the question nor satisfy the demand. We need something unprecedented, that never happened before. We need to start science (includes philosophy) anew. The principal change is change of method. Not analytical method anymore, but synthetic method which would enable us to start with the world as a whole. Details will come later. The whole world… Isn’t it the subject worth fighting for?

      2. skakos

        We used to follow the “synthetic” method. In the days of Heraclitus and Parmenides, people has a more holistic way of thinking. This is were we must go to again…

      3. Sam AKA Semen Gazarkh

        I believe it’s time to unite science and philosophy. Science was actually born as philosophy and then branched off from it. All branches are just partial specifications of philosophy. And philosophy is still The Science. It’s the only Whole Science that sees and oversees not only all its branches but also what’s between them and what they are missing. And such philosophy could be a powerful instrument of cognition of the world as a whole. I kindly invite Mr. Skakos and all dear colleagues here to visit me at http://www.fundamentalsoftheworld.com/ and tell me your revered opinions.

      4. skakos

        Indeed the basis of all thought is philosophy. Everything starts with aporia and ends with us acknowledging our ignorance… I will try to check out the site you mention.

      5. Sam AKA Semen Gazarkh

        Thank you very much.

  2. Lucho

    Peer review is an example of a circular process. But, unlike many other persons that see anything “circular”, as irksome or erroneous, be they arguments or girlfriends, I think circularity is a characteristic very much compatible with our human nature or whatever you may call it, which is very much contradictory anyway, to say the least. Peer review, to work better, has to be substantiated by many experiences. It is possible that peers have been unjust with one’s article once. But if twenty or more peers reject your writings in different journals on a dozen or more occassions, maybe the problem is you. And the same goes in the opposite case: if you have been published many times, either you write things that are worth reading, or you are a helluvah pal and host to a lot of editors who worship you as the life of the party, and are ready to publish even poetry by you in journals of Hydraulic Engineering of Farm Veterinarian Sciences.

    1. skakos

      Our very nature (consciousness) is auto-anaphorical. So yes, self-reference is indeed part of our existence. And yet we must and should acknowledge that. Peer review is a very circular self-referencing process and we need to understand that and show that in order to keep it under control…

  3. skakos

    OK. But then what you say may apple to anyone. However the fact that a poem (and not a “paper”) has survived of Parmenides, gives us a clue that he might be truly a genuine thinker and not a “bibliographical copycat”…

  4. Pascal Lapointe

    In fact, we don’t know if Parmenides did not have any bibliography, because we don’t have much left of the writings of that time, and we have even less about the oral teachings of that time. For all we know, Parmenides could have been a plagiarist of some great teachers of his time, and maybe he was better then they were to make his own teachings survive in the minds of the public.

  5. skakos

    Not at all. What is your site about?

  6. Michael

    I really like your drawings, do you mind if I steal one for my site?

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