Re: re Grand Unified Theory

(no name) ((no email))
Fri, 04 Nov 1994 17:31:22 -0500 (EST)

Devi, and other PCP networkers:

I, for one, can understand your willingness to decide that
there must be something humourous about a constructivist who is trying
to find a GRAND UNIFYING THEORY. And I can understand your semi-
failed effort to inject a particular humourous angle into the discussion.

A joke, however, works only if the auditor does use the construction
system which the jokester attributes to him/her. You have had much practice
with constructivism. Thus, you seem to assume that the person addressing
a PCP net with questions about a GRAND UNIFYING THEORY must be engaging
in a joke.

In a previous note I wondered why the issue has provoked so much
discussion. I also tried to cogitate on why a good part of the discussion
seemed to take a sardonic tone.

Perhaps -- to try to cut through the long-winded foreward -- we
would have a much clearer idea of the basic approach of constructionist
thought if we had an explanation of why the search for a GRAND UNIFYING
THEORY prompts a bit of a smirking smile -- which really has little to do
with hubris, or whatever!!!

Jim Mancuso