If that is your view of railroads you are sorely mistaken. The railroads are carrying more freight than ever at a cost per ton-mile far less than truck. The lights would go out in many cities without the hundreds of unit trains of coal be hauled from the Power River Basin to eastern power plants. Thousands of containers of freight are moved daily across the country. Units trains move the corn and wheat harvest to market. Certainly nation-wide passenger service by rail is a shadow of what it once was because of the Americans love affair with the automobile but rail commuter service is critical in many cities, especially in the east.

I won’t go on, you can research the subject yourself and learn about the state of this vital industry around the world.

If you define paradigmatization so that it is “impossible to escape in any society”, you miss my specific point. I was speaking of a specific development since WWII. (More here: http://haquelebac.wordpress.com/attendant-lords/) The self-conscious making-explicit of methodology and the authoritative prescription of methodology within each discipline nationally and internationally are fairly new. The transformation has not been total, but in my opinion it’s been excessive and counterproductive).

Methodologization is more or less the same as paradigmatization — I was using barbarous words for literary effect. It means the prior imposition of a method, and the judgement of results on the basis of methodological correctness rather than the basis of successful result (especially in economics and philosophy, which glory in the elaboration of models without empirical reference).

There really have to be two standards — a standard for results, and a standard for methods, with the latter subordinate to the first. When methods become autonomous in a scholastic sort of way, which I say has happened, the discipline becomes disconnected from the actual world. The bias of academics is for sophisticated thought, but the “results” test is actually less sophisticated than the “methods” test and can be of the naive “the emperor has no clothes” level of sophistication. Economics specifically has no clothes.

I take it that “paradigmatization” is what Kuhn described, and, in my understanding at least, pretty difficult to escape in any society. I am not sure what “methodoligization” is — the requirement that any conclusion can only be the result of employing a given methodology?

So in B my translation would be “helps them without making them into lacckeys/ attendants / eunuchs” and in E my translation would be “helps them without taking control”.

Just noticed that I wrote 始 for 宰.. in one place above, which I will correct..

I find B. 為而不恃 (*dəʔ) “Helps them without making them dependent” a bit questionable. Isn’t it odd that here it is said that Dao 為? “Without making them dependent,” is odd, since we often find statements that all life depends upon the Dao, or success depends on being aligned with it, (e.g., Laozi 34 says of the Dao: 萬物恃之以生). The Heshanggong commentary speaks often of the sage (following the Dao?) “does not rely on recompense” (不恃其報 / 不恃望其報), so the lack of “dependency” could be the reverse of what you’ve got (unless you are implying that as well).

This is a fantastic blog.