> Jerry Monaco wrote:
> > On 5/31/08, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
> >>But our accumulated scientific knowledge is a collection of theories!
>
> > It is simply not true that our scientific knowledge is produced by
> > theories. Most of our knowledge is non-theoretical and even most of our
> > scientific knowledge is non-theoretical.
>
>
> Miles Wrote: Philosophers of science from Hesse to Hanson to Kuhn have
> made
> compelling arguments debunking the notion that there is any
> "non-theoretical" scientific knowledge. Theories are the foundation of
> scientific practice; without theories, we cannot even measure anything!
Well they were mostly wrong. Most scientific knowledge simply comes from the craft of science. Theories are late developments. The fetishism with theory is quite divorced from actual scientific practice. Theory is important but people like Kepler and Galileo were pre-theoretical in their knowledge and all attempts at theory failed in the pre-Newtonian era. All that there were at this time were failed attempts at theory. And yet there was plenty of knowledge.
What is often confusing is that Kuhn ( and he has said so himself in his later writings ) often confuses theory and "paradigm" and what Engels would have called "world view" or what might be called the "ethos of thought." Even from an orthodox "Kuhnian" p.o.v. "paradigm" is not equivalent to theory though a paradigm shift would lead inevitably to a theoretical revolution. I think that Kuhn's narrative is interesting but I don't think he is correct historically but that story is too long to go into here.
Any criticism of Norwood Hanson would be along the same lines. The idea is that all observations are "theory laden". But this simply makes no real sense at all. At least no historical sense. What he does mean is that all observations have some kind of (more or less) deep "structured assumptions of thought." This I take to be uncontroversial. It is as true of Epicurus (who developed no theories but made many acute observations) as it is of the post-Newtonians who mistakenly tried to apply the Newtonian paradigm to the emerging field of chemistry.
In writing this I don't mean to devalue Hanson's contribution to the philosophy and history of the sciences. His book "The Concept of Position" was formative for me when I read it as an undergrad. It is a brilliant book. But where he saw the power of theory he did not see its limits and its historical thinness. In other words what happens to all of that knowledge that is simply pre-theoretical? Where does that come from? Why is it that scientific theories are late historical developments and in fact are even late scientific developments? If you argue that observations that are "pre-theoretical" are also "theory-laden", then what you are arguing is that "world view" or "way of thinking" or what I am calling "assumptions of thought" are all "theories." Then in effect "theories" are multitude in this sense.
>
>
> >
> > But most scientific knowledge is simply descriptive and observational.
>
> --And this is the crux: we need theories to effectively observe the
> world and describe what we observe. Logical positivists tried to create
> nontheoretical "protocol sentences" that describe observations devoid of
> theoretical content, and they failed miserably.
See the above. I am not a logical positivist though I respect the tremendous failure of their project. What we have that underpin our observations of the world are assumptions not theories. We need to develop theories and proto-theoretical hypotheses in order to ask better questions and to discover the problematic of questions we would not have even thought to ask otherwise. Theories give us an edge of certainty, but historically, psychologically, and scientifically they are late comers. People such as Kuhn have things turned on their head.
>
> >>I think this hinges on different definitions of "theory". Put most
> >>simply, a theory explains the observed relationships among two or more
> >>variables. I suspect Jerry is working with a different definition.
> >
> > Your suspicion is correct. Your definition is so minimal as to make
> > absolutely any observation a theory. This definition is fine with me but
> if
> > so we will have to find another definition for the kind of "theory" that
> > Chomsky discusses when he says that "universal grammar" is more a
> "research
> > program" than a theory; or the kind of theory that S. J. Gould discussed
> in
> > his long chapter One of "The Structure of Evolutionary Theory." Or the
> kind
> > of discussion about theory that revolved around the scientific debates
> over
> > the meaning and theoretical basis of the periodic table that took place
> in
> > the first forty years of the 20th century.
>
> Following Carrol, try this on for size: just like any other word, the
> word "theory" can have different meanings in different contexts. Above,
> I provided a simple definition of theory in the sciences, but that is
> not the only way the word theory is used in our society. If I use the
> word "culture" one way in microbiology and other way in anthropology,
> it's silly for me to get indignant because anthropologists use the word
> differently than microbiologists do. --And just so with the word theory.
I don't disagree with this completely. I am not arguing here. I have played chess for a long time. And when ever I play a game against a master and we analyze it afterward, he will often point out about certain opening moves, that "this is theory" and "this is not-theory." What "theory" means in this case is "an opening move used in grandmaster practice, that has been analyzed to some unknown extent. I don't argue with this use of theory. It is simply the chess communities way of saying something. But its history is interesting and revealing to our case, so bear with me Miles, because the history also provides an implicit critique of "the uses of theory." (N.B. A "critique" is a result of a "method" not a "theory." Many discourses that would have been called "criticism' or _critiques_ in the middle of the 19th century are not called "theories." Why is that? Is there no ideological assumption here? Are there any institutional reasons for this change that should also be critiqued? )
Before the middle 1930s no one used the notion of "opening theory." Studying the chess openings was called just that "opening study" and nothing more. It was not until the Russian grandmaster, and later World Champion came along, Botvinnik that the idea of "theory" in chess was introduced. The idea of chess "theory and praxis" was an idea that he used by analogy to Marxist theory and praxis and was part of his bid to institutionalize chess in the Soviet Union by claiming that it could be put onto a scientific basis. The Botvinnik chess school was the most powerful in the world and before the age of computers had thousands and thousands of index cards on various openings. What was once simply "study" became "theory" as part of this institutionalization process and anyone who can studies the soviet Chess school 1945 - 1972 can see the ideological reasons for the change nomenclature.
I tell the above story because it is easy and short. But the same is also true with the institutionalization of disciplines like anthropology, politics, law, and literature. The invention of the modern law school in the U.S., and of modern "legal theory," (and the insistence that there should be something called "legal theory") shows the exact same pattern, but complicated by the power struggles of ruling class politics. Somebody should write a book with the first sentence "There is no such thing as legal theory, and this is its history" because that about summons my attitude to such ideas as theories in anthropology, politics, law, and literature. Why use the term "political theory" instead of "political philosophy?" Obviously because "theory" is some how more "hard nosed" than "philosophy." And if you have a theory it is easier to exclude people from your special expertise than with something less rigorous. Why use the term legal theory and not legal philosophy? Because it is easier to pound the table with the club of "theory" than with something as nebulous as philosophy. It doesn't make the theory any more theoretical.
But when I am at the Marshall Chess Club, I use the term "opening theory" just like everyone else, even though I have an historical critique of its use.
Jerry
>