Comments on: Does radicalism require deliberate rejection of learning?

By: C Stanley

C Stanley — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:04:05 +0000

Aren’t you guys assuming that the radicals are always wrong? What if a person holds a radical philosophy and learns information that forces him to rethink, but perhaps the information only alters his perception of the course to take, not the underlying philosophy. Arguably (because some will obviously think the underlying philosophy has been proven wrong), I’d throw out an example of a neo-con who’s rethought his beliefs and at least has shown the ability to learn from mistakes: Fukayama.

By: Jim Satterfield

Jim Satterfield — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 01:35:04 +0000

I think it does. I was watching a show on young Earth creationists and there was a geologist who was rejecting everything he knew and working as hard as he could to twist geology to match his new religious beliefs. I wasn’t impressed with his arguments.

By: George Sorwell

George Sorwell — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:11:14 +0000

I’m sorry I missed this yesterday.

Don’t radicals sometimes triumph? Isn’t the existence of the United States of America evidence of that? Triumphant radicals re-set the status quo. That gives subsequent radicals something different to react to.

A better question might be, Is human progress a slow and steady evolution, or is it punctuated by pressure wrought by radicals?

Another better, though unhappier, question might be, What happens when radicals gain power but procede to fail?

By: Gray

Gray — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 10:59:31 +0000

“Is it possible to remain a radical (of whatever stripe) if one does learn from information and does learn from the past?”

I think this question answers itself when you phrase it differently:
Do we know people who are still radicals, even though they have learned from information and/or from the past? Obviously, yes.
The problem isn’t that they don’t learn, it’s how they process the information.