--- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
"The so-called theories in these areas are simply ideological justifications that have little to do with the attempt to produce knowledge."
and...
"If anything Galileo's insights were 'theologically laden' and not 'theory laden.'"
Sounds like "knowledge" equals "science" in your worldview--a worldview that precludes, I suppose, the 'theory' that science is a particular epistemic category of knowledge, no? So art, religion, even a concept such as 'love'--none of these things would have any 'knowledge' value...but are instead, "ideological justifications"?
A hypothesis: knowledge as a 'word' is probably not synonymous with terms like "science" or the "scientific method"...
And I'd really be interested in your 'ideological justification' (or would that be a cultural theory or criticism?) regarding the difference between phrases like "theologically laden" and "theory laden"...
NRIII
> On 6/1/08, wrobert at uci.edu <wrobert at uci.edu> wrote:
> >
> > > 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.
>
>
> 1) Economic theory, political theory, & legal
> theory, along with the
> institutions that support them, are the main
> "enemies" of
> theory-skepticism and anti-theory critique.
>
> Before I try to answer Robert's thoughtful comments
> I wanted to make
> one thing clear. I am not arguing against academics
> or professors or
> the university. The politics and economics of the
> university is part
> of any instituional critque of how humanist
> criticism and
> philosophical thought became various kinds of
> "theories" but the
> university itself is a subordinate institution and a
> late comer to
> this process.
>
> I thought it would be obvious to leftist that the
> main enemy on this
> front is so-called "economic theory" (not "Critical
> Theory" or
> negligible pomo gibberish). Economic theory,
> political theory, legal
> theory, and psychological theory and their
> institutional supports in
> corporations, think-tanks, advertising firms, and
> variious state
> apparatus are the main aims of a critique of "the
> uses of theory."
> Many of these so-called "theories" are
> pseudo-thoeries developed to
> justify oppression and the status quo. None of
> these "theories" in
> each respective field of study has ever developed
> around it a
> scientific consensus. They often are not only
> various contradictory,
> one to the other within each field, but, as various
> critiques have
> pointed out, they are often self- contradictory.
>
> Basically, I believe that economics, politics,
> history, law,
> literature, are humanistic endeavors and are not
> ready, and may never
> be ready, for scientific theory making. (Psychology
> (including the
> cognitive sciences) are in a pre-theoretical stage
> in my judgment.)
> The so-called theories in these areas are simply
> ideological
> justifications that have little to do with the
> attempt to produce
> knowledge. And to make clear again, my theory
> skepticism in these
> areas are not motivated by antipathy to the academy
> or with
> professors. Most of the (especially oppressive)
> effects of economic
> and legal theory do not come from the university and
> are not
> propagated by the university but by the state
> apparatus and allied
> institutions. These are material effects from the
> ideological level.
>
> > Robert wrote: I'm not terribly sure what you mean
> by 'pre-theoretical" knowledge,
>
>
> 2) Historically, theories are relatively recent
> phenomena: So what was
> the situation of knowledge, and even science, before
> theories?
>
> I mean by the notion "pre-theoretical" something
> historically
> specific, so in this case it is easiest to contrast
> pre-Newtonian
> physics with post-Newtonian science in general.
> Galileo (who I know
> most about) did not have a worked out theory. He
> had a general
> conceptual framework based on Copernicus and Kepler,
> and he had many
> hypotheses, most of them (inevitably) wrong.
>
> But Galileo's observations were not "theory laden"
> in Hanson's sense
> of the term, nor were they within any specific
> paradigm in Kuhn's
> sense. What Galileo did have was his humanist and
> anti-Aristotilean
> thought ethos. If you look at what Galileo
> actually did you will
> find that most of his best arguments were based on
> thought-experiments
> and counterfactuals and not on physical experiments,
> which were mostly
> designed after the fact, to "prove" expected
> results. These
> experiments came in a cultural context of rebellion
> against Scholastic
> and Aristotle influenced theology. There is a sense
> in which the
> Catholic Church hiearchy was correct about Galileo,
> he was a heretic.
> If you look at Galileo's thought-experiments they
> were as much
> designed from a counter-ethos, mant to undermine a
> certain kind of
> theological thinking based on Aristotle as they were
> from any
> particular set of scientific questions.
>
> I know it is not usual in the U.S., England and
> France to look at
> Galileo from a theological and philosophical
> context, but this is
> partially because of our fetishism of theory. Among
> Italian
> historians of science this context is well
> understood. If anything
> Galileo's insights were "theologically laden" and
> not "theory laden."
> But it is more accurate to say that Galileo's
> insight were
> pre-theoretical and that his anti-Aristotlean
> battles were part of a
> historical process to establish a theoretical basis
> for the physical
> sciences. In Althusser's terms this process would be
> called an
> "epistemological break." For an interesting take on
> some of these
> issues I would suggest "Galileo Heretic" by Pietro
> Redondi.
>
> (N.B. In a note Chris Doss guesses that I have been
> reading Heidegger
> and he is correct, though I think Heidegger would
> not like the uses I
> put his thought through. Yet, it is very strange to
> me that both
> Heidegger and Althusser have better insight into
> this historical
> process than either Hanson or Kuhn. After all
> neither Heidegger nor
> Althusser were historians of science and both Hanson
> and Kuhn were
> historians. In Hanson's case he even had specific
> training in physics.
> My guess is that both Hanson and Kuhn were too
> close to the blinding
> revolutions in physics represented by QM and
> Relativity Theory, to be
> sympathetic. to the non-theoretical aspects of
> physics pre-Newton,
> how governed by "ethos" and "culture" and not by
> "theory" or
> "paradigm" the science of the time was.)
>
> Let me emphasize what should be obvious: "Ethos" and
> "culture" are not
> "theory", and in a proto-scientific culture like
> Galileo's
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Dr. Nicholas Ruiz III Associate Professor Department of Humanities, Cultural and Studio Arts Daytona Beach College PO Box 2811 Daytona Beach, FL 32120-2811 Editor, Kritikos http://intertheory.org