Rorty scheidt het kaf van het koren

(Rorty)

Edifying philosophers

"Great systematic philosophers, like great scientists, build for eternity. Great edifying philosophers destroy for the sake of their own generation. Systematic philosophers want to put their subject on the secure path of a science. Edifying philosophers want to keep space open for the sense of wonder which poets can sometimes cause - wonder that there is something new under the sun, something which is not an accurate representation of what was already there, something which (at least for the moment) cannot be explained and can barely be described." (Rorty 1979, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, p. 370)

Meet John Searle

"The other point that Tom [Thomas Kuhn] made, this is frequently cited, is that he says that after a scientific revolution scientists live in different worlds, that the world of Aristotle is a different world from the world of Newton. Now that is not right. I have actually been to Greece and it's not a different world. The world that Aristotle lived in—actually I've been in both countries, England and Greece—and I can tell you it is a mistake to say that they are different worlds." (Searle 1999, Rorty v. Searle, At Last: A Debate)