Um sex árum síðan, fjögurra ára sonur minn og ég vorum uppi að horfa á Discovery Channel "shark attacks" sérstakt (hugsanlega þetta). He was very young at the point and I was always worried what he might see on a show like this and how he might take it. I didn’t want him to develop, til dæmis, allir sérstök ótta að vatni eða blab eitthvað óviðeigandi við vini sína og hugsanlega valdið barn vin net sitt til að koma hrun niður.

Discovery handles these kinds of subjects very well. It’s not about creating a ótti við eitthvað, but rather to show how unusual it is for sharks to attack humans.

Svo, we’re watching it and there is this one particularly scary attack involving a small girl. As Discovery is building the drama of the attack, sonur minn (sem hefur alltaf verið mjög jumpy samt), is getting very excited. I make some noises about how unusual it is for sharks to attack people, and how bad the poor girl must feel. I’m trying to explain that people recover from these events and become stronger for it. Hins, I had misinterpreted his excitement. He was not worried about the girl at all. Staðinn, en clapping hendur hans, hann segir mér, "The sharks love it! It’s terrific. It’s wonderful. Its a DREAM COME TRUE!"

Ég hélt að þetta væri fyndið, but also very disturbing. On the one hand, Ég var fegin — jafnvel smá stolt — að hann gæti hafa sterkar empathic tilfinningar, cross-species though they may be. As humans, we need to develop our "empathic muscles" svo tala eða þú munt á endanum eins og þessi strákur 🙂 On the other hand, he was feeling cross-species empathy toward a species who was exhibiting behavior inimical to his own. I was really struggling with this when the narrator used the word "paradigm". My son picked up on that and asked me what that meant.

Það er ekki svo auðvelt orð til að lýsa til fjögurra ára, but I gave it a try. When I think of the word "paradigm", Thomas Kuhn is never far from my thoughts. Ég las Uppbygging Scientific byltingum aftur á Lafayette og fyrir betri eða verri, the word "paradigm" is pregnant with extra meaning for me. (Sort of like the word "contact" eftir að hafa heyrt Sími Movie rödd segja mér hvar ég gæti séð sem bíómynd [Ég hélt að bókin var betri]; Ég segi alltaf við sjálfan mig, "CONTACT!" whenever I see or hear someone say "contact").

Engu að síður, Ég er að reyna að útskýra fyrir honum Kuhnian skýring, that it’s "a historical movement of thought" and that it’s a "way of thinking with a number of built-in assumptions that are hard to escape for people living at that time." Auðvitað, þú getur ekki talað eins til fjögurra ára, so I’m trying to successively define it to smaller pieces and feeling rather proud of myself as I do so. (Ég bara vissi að einhver utan háskóla myndi hugsa að ég hefði lesið Kuhn!).

I’m just warming to the task when he interrupts me. Waving his hand almennt átt minn og aldrei taka augun af öðru grimmur hákarl árás, hann segir bara, "Yeah, já, já. Blah, bla, blah.".

So much for that 🙂

At that point, I decided to run away, rhetorically speaking, sit back, and enjoy watching sharks attack humans with my son.

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