ken,

i am glad your dictionary is not as bad as i thought, judging by what your
quoted from it.  from what you now say, you borrowed the authority of a
dictionary only to justify the meanings you intended, by ignoring how i used
the word "radical."   if you would have been uncertain about what i meant,
you could have asked me.  as the author i am the authority on what i wish to
say.  but i am not even deviating from the english etymology:  "radical" =
root, proceeding from the root or base, not yet seen (as are leaves). the
german meaning is much the same "radical" = grund, gruendlich, der sache auf
den grund gehen.   

you say: "The argument to evolutionary fitness offers one explanation for
this epistemology that I have not seen before, at least not in philosophy of
science arguments on whether we can know something "real" about the world."
well, you may want to familiarize yourself with radical constructivism,
which has made much progress during the last 30 years in developing an
epistemology from roots in piaget and vico.  it does not make the
metaphysical assumption of a world that can be observed without an observer,
that can be known without a knower.  it has managed to avoid the
epistemological traps you are struggling with.

klaus   

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken
Friedman
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 1:46 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: radicals and roots

Dear Klaus and Keith,

This is a language footnote: The sense of the word "radical" that you
describe is in the dictionary and I am aware of it. It's not a bad
dictionary. Neither have I selected a single preferred meanings as though
there are no other meanings. I selected the definition that illustrates the
meaning I intended. It is a common and non-pejorative meaning.

The use of definitions, etymology, etc., has purposes other than
"authority." They help us to break open words, their history, their meanings
and context. And, in this case, they exhibit one wide, common
understanding-in-use of a word. The other wide usages are that of getting to
roots and a political meaning.

The author is the authority on what he or she intends, but the definition
served to points. First it nicely summarizes one common meaning in crisp
language. Second, it shows that this is not a merely private language. If
intention alone were all that counted, I suppose we could use any word with
a metaphorical ring -- rather like a wine critic -- describing an idea as
"golden," "oaky," or "velvet" while intending by these words meanings of
other words.

Whatever my intended meaning, it would not be the same to write, "The claim
that 'the world we know is fiction' is velvet."

I could have added that I am aware you are making a radical argument,
attempting to reach the root of the problem to understand it. In that sense,
I also proposed what I saw as a radical argument, an argument to
evolutionary fitness. (The third answer was not critical realism. 
The concept of critical realism appeared in my conclusion.) The argument to
evolutionary fitness offers one explanation for this epistemology that I
have not seen before, at least not in philosophy of science arguments on
whether we can know something "real" about the world. That was my way of
attempting to brush the leaves aside. 
In this thread, we disagreed on what the root is.

As I wrote, I am not going to re-enter the main thread. The most visible
example of a reaction involving free radicals is combustion.

Yours,

Ken

--

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:35:38 -0500, Klaus Krippendorff
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

i too use "radical" in the sense of "going to the roots of an issue," 
avoiding being sidetracked by leaves  --  not necessarily eradicating the
problem, as you suggest, but understanding it.

ken's post is a good example of how the supposed authority of a dictionary
fails -- whether he quotes from a bad dictionary or selects the meanings he
prefers, i do not know, in any case without asking the user of the word what
he or she meant by it.  shouldn't the author be the authority on what he or
she has written? -  but we had this conversation before on this list without
effecting its flow.