On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 2:55 PM, Nicholas Ruiz III <editor at intertheory.org> wrote:
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> --- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote:
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> "The so-called theories in these areas are simply
> ideological justifications that have little to do with
> the attempt to produce knowledge."
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> and...
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> "If anything Galileo's insights were 'theologically
> laden' and not 'theory laden.'"
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> 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"?
If you had read what I wrote, I insist that much of human knowledge is pre-theoretical and experiential. There is probably more of human knowledge that we derive from the experience of poetry than from the non-experiential, but more "certain" forms of knowledge we obtain from theory
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> A hypothesis: knowledge as a 'word' is probably not
> synonymous with terms like "science" or the
> "scientific method"...
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> 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"...
The term "theory laden" comes from Norwood Hanson, a philosopher of science I much admire. Miles brought up Hanson because he contested my notion that scientific knowledge could be pre-theoretical. I believe that much scientific knowledge derives from the ethos of the "craft" and not the paradigm of the theory. I use the term "theologically laden" as a rhetorical flourish, perhaps, but mainly because of all I have thought about recently reflecting on Redondi's book "Galileo Heretic." Also I have been thinking about Galileo's anti-Aristotelean committments and thinking about such committments through some of Heidegger's writings. As you probably know theology in Galileo's time was infused with what they though was "Aristotle". Galileo's anti-Aristotelian commitments led him and his science toward thought-experiments that were directly aimed at this theology. In other words Galileo was forced to take a theological stand in order to counter Aristotle's physics and ideas of motion and change. Thus I used the term "theologically laden."
Does this answer any of your apprehensions?
Reply to Voyou
On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 2:22 PM, Voyou <voyou1 at gmail.com> wrote: On Mon, 2008-06-02 at 13:41 -0400, Jerry Monaco wrote:
> 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.
Voyou: I doubt anyone who studies political theory or literary theory would disagree with your contention that "economics, politics, history, law, literature, are humanistic endeavors and are not ready, and may never be ready, for scientific theory making." This makes your "anti-theory" position in this thread seem like a non-sequitur, at least to me. Your objection seems to be to the scientific pretensions of present-day social science; but I don't see what that has to do with "theory" in the sense it's used in "Theory's Empire," which is a phenomenon of the humanities and the less scientistic parts of the social sciences.
JM: It makes me wonder if anybody on this list has actually read anything in the book "Theory's Empire" or did they just read the review of the book. Shag tells me I am not discussing "Theory's Empire" because the book is about how theory is used in "Critical Theory". Now Voyou tells me I am not discussing how the word is used in "Theory's Empire."
Well I have actually read some of the essays in the book and the Chomsky essay specifically talks about the status and limits of theory in some of the terms, I discuss above. I was unaware that we were limited in our discussion to a rather silly and insulting review of the book and not to other aspects that are actually contained in the book. The book is after all a collection of essays with more than a dozen authors with many point of views, some of which could even be termed post-modern.
Besides that Robert brought up some very interesting questions for me and I thought I would actually take an hour out of my day and reply to him.
Jerry
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