273. Philosophy, science, and literature
Science, or ‘normal science’, as Thomas Kuhn called
it, takes certain primitive terms and basic premises for granted, often not
even consciously, as the rock bottom to build theories on and conduct
experiments. That is what makes it ‘hard’.
We might see it as the playing of a Wittgensteinian
language game.
In his ‘theory of scientific research programmes’,
Imre Lakatos proposed that a scientific theory consists of a fixed ‘core’ of
basic notions and principles, with a ‘protective belt’ of auxiliary assumptions
that may be adapted to protect the core from falsification, accommodating
misfits, thus ‘saving appearances’.
When contrary evidence becomes ‘excessive’ (Kuhn), and repair with auxiliary assumptions becomes too forced and contrived, there arises pressure for a more fundamental change of view, called a ‘paradigm switch’ by Kuhn, consisting of a breakdown and replacement of the core.
Here, I want to re-connect this with the ‘hermeneutic
circle’, discussed in several earlier items in this blog (see e.g. item 252). Along
the ‘paradigmatic axis’ words and concepts (‘paradigms’) are taken for granted,
are inserted in sentences/propositions, in specific contexts of action, along
the ‘syntagmatic axis’. Let me call that ‘the way down’. There, abstractions
are enriched, infused, nourished to life from practical life. And then, in
application, in the practical business of life, one sooner or later encounters
misfits or novel opportunities, where concepts seem forced, and this occasions
tentative shifts or replacements of
them, along the paradigmatic axis. Using words shifts their meaning. Let me
call that ‘the way up’.
That is the business, in particular, of literature, in
storytelling, where life is shown to be richer than theory. Conduct that
according to norms of normality are irrational or immoral are swallowed in a
‘suspension of disbelief’. Literature burrows
into individual experience that bursts the seams of abstraction. The most
telling case of meaning shifts is that of poetry.
Then, the difference between science and literature is
that between applying paradigms in application, in normal science, and using experience
to shift notions and meanings, in literature. Philosophy used to be seen as
belonging to the first category: using concepts to clarify experience. 20th
century philosophy rejected that and made philosophy more literary, narrative,
going from experience, from action in the world, to shifts of concepts. No
longer only the way down but also the way up.
Science is in crisis when it also needs to take the
way up, to craft a paradigm shift. Established abstractions are unhinged. Then
it becomes more like literature. Fundamental discovery is the poetry of
science. It remains narrative until innovators have put novel abstractions in
place, and normal scientists can again throng along the way down.
These days I am confronted with this as follows. I am
participating in a large project to transform economic theory and teaching. The
financial crises have woken up some economists to the inadequacies of their
science. In a recent meeting, new principles were proposed. They were discarded
by other economists as ‘mere story telling’, in betrayal of the established
rigour and clarity of their science. There, in defending and maintaining its
analytical strength science becomes a force of conservatism.
Elsewhere in this blog, I proposed a ‘cycle of
invention’, with an alternation between fitting experience into existing
theory, along the ‘way down’, in ‘assimilation’. In several stages this can
lead to a break into new theory, along the ‘way up’, in ‘accommodation’, and I
indicated the connection with the hermeneutic circle. The cycle of invention is
one guise, or form, of the hermeneutic circle.
In earlier work I used the term ‘discovery’, but that
literally means the removal of a cover from something that exists, lies there,
‘behind experience’, waiting to be dis-covered. The term ‘invention’ is better,
with its connotation of ‘creating by thought’.
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