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laws. Long before Golan Trevize's role as the hero who makes a choice, the hero robots Daneel and Giskard puzzle over the question of how direction and "newness" can ever be inserted into a system of Law: |
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"You gave a perfect answer, friend Giskard . . ." |
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"It was the best answer within the compass of the Three Laws. |
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It was not the best answer possible." |
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"What was the best answer possible?" |
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"I do not know, since I cannot put it into words or even concepts as long as I am bound by the Laws." |
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"There is nothing beyond the Laws," said Daneel. |
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The problem, then, is the question of from where, eventually, the Fourth Law comes. A related problem is that if Law is done away with, allowing for random "newness," nothing in the way of historical development can be sure. Reading Asimov brings to mind such questions. |
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Donald Hassler, Isaac Asimov (Mercer Island, WA: Starmont House, 1991), pp. 100102 |
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Asimov does not systematically present the scientific concepts underlying the new science (of robotics). Instead, he works out the inherent verbal and situational ambiguities in the Three Laws, which provide him with the conflicts and uncertainties required for new stories. To Asimov's great relief, "it always seemed possible to think up a new angle out of the sixty-one words of the Three Laws." As (Thomas) Kuhn has demonstrated, the paradigm that provides the basis for a new tradition of scientific research never completely resolves all of its problems. In fact, resolving these puzzles and problems becomes the primary activity of scientists working within the paradigm. For Kuhn, as for Asimov, paradigms are constitutive elements of science, and the object of normal science is to solve a puzzle or problem whose very existence is assumed to confirm the validity of the paradigm. Normal science is, then, an enterprise that aims to refine, extend, and articulate a paradigm already in existence. According to Kuhn, one of the most important foci for research in normal science is empirical work (which may include the "instrumentation" of a theory in the field testing of scientific equipment) undertaken "to articulate the paradigm theory, resolving some of its residual ambiguities and permitting the solution of problems to which it had previously only drawn attention." |
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