althusser redux

[christian a. gregory]

"it is this problematic character, this hesitation [about the
mathematization of the human sciences] that is expressed in the -wish- for
interdisciplinarity and in the expression 'interdisciplinary exchange.' the
notion of interdisciplinarity indicates not a solution but
a -contradiction-: the fact of the relative exteriority of the disciplines
placed in relation. . . . as we go on asking questions, we finally arrive at
the conclusion that this exteriority expresses and betrays the -uncertainty-
which the majority of the human sciences feel concerning their theoretical
status. the -generalized impatience- to embrace mathematics is a symptom:
they have not attained theoretical maturity. is this simply an 'infantile
disorder,' to be explained with the relative youth of the human sciences? or
is it more serious: is it an indication that the human sciences, for the
most part, 'miss' their object, that they are not based on a true
distinctive foundation, that there is a sort of misrecognition between the
human sciences and their pretensions, that they miss the object that they
claim to grasp because, paradoxically, this object . . . does not exist? all
these questions are supported by the real experiences from which Kant, in
another time, had drawn the lesson: *there may exist sciences whose objects
do not exist, there may exist sciences without an object* (in the strict
sense)."

--"philosophy and the spontaneous philosophy of the scientists," 1967.