 
                         20051006.00

           Structure of Scientific Revolutions - 1

     Thomas Kuhn's book, which I have read in a desultory
manner, has become the nidus of my reflections about
epistemology, about the discontinuity between public and
private knowledge, about science as communal as distinct from
individual knowledge.

     Universal knowledge exists in the mind of God.  Indeed,
the need for a repository of knowledge is one of the main
reasons why God must be discovered or invented.  The
presumptions of science preclude the concept of private
knowledge.  It does not arise.  By definition, anything that
I can know must also be intelligible to and knowable by (any)
other human beings in a manner identical to that with which I
know.  The quality of scientific knowledge is not dependent
on the person who posesses it, is not dependent on the
knower.  Awkward though it sounds, it must be said that
hypothetically, anything known by others is knowable also by
me, at least potentially.  Practically, of course, my
knowledge is only a fraction, and a very small one, of the
universal knowledge which historically has been ascribed to
the mind of God.

     But before going further, it is perhaps worthwhile to
point out that questions such as these can be considered only
in the light of at least a tentative determination of what
knowledge is.

     It may prove to be a useful functional definition of
science vs non-science, that science purports to be communal
knowledge, and relegates cognition that is not communal, or
to the extent that it is not communal, to the categories of
non-science, poetry, fiction, fantasy.  However, this
definition entails obvious and pressing problems:
1) A scientific assertion begins with a communal postulate,
but ends, inevitably, with private intuition.  Indeed the
process of becoming scientific, of acquiring scientific
knowledge, may be described as the subjectification of
objective knowledge, as the transformation of objective into
subjective knowledge; e.g. the ability to solve a
differential equation is clearly subjective: the validity of
the solution, however, is objective.
2) There is a propensity, an innate necessity for the
individual to give to his subjective intuitive experience
objective expression.  Most primitive the guffaw of laughter,
the ouch of pain.  Linguistic expression, language is the
transformation of feeling into an objective construct; and
conversely, listening hearing, reading is the assimilation of
the objective construct into subjectivity.
3) Science is the disciplined translation of subjective
experience into objective representation. The giving of
directions, the drawing of a map is a simple example. But the
directions, the map are never totally accurate; the
directions are ever subject to misinterpretation.  To be
applied, they must be subjectively assimilated.
4) The discipline of science is far from absolute; if it
were, scientific knowledge would be ultimately conclusive,
would not be subject to emendation or improvement.  Many
instances may be cited where the discipline of science was
insufficient, was unable, was incapable of filtering out the
subjective elements, whose translations into valid
objectivity were spurious or failed altogether.  Indeed
closely examined:
a) all scientific truth contains elements of subjectivity.
b) objectivity is an ideal which is never achieved.
c) fictions can also become objective, in that they are
accepted as subject to demonstration and proof.  Consider
both secular, and most importantly, religious mythology.

     If epistemology is not about science, there is no point
to it.  For if epistemology is about anything at all, it is
about knowledge; and in our culture, in our language, science
is knowledge, purportedly science is the real knowledge, the
only knowledge.  That, of course, may or may not be true,
may, in the end turn out to be a falsehood.  But meanwhile it
will be necessary to ask what we mean by scientific
knowledge; and if it means less than we thought, then to
redefine what we mean by science, or to free ourselves to go
on to something more valid.  But in no case, in no event, can
we afford to ignore what passes as science.

     Kuhn has rendered a substantial service by identifying
normal science as distinct from scientific innovation.

     The extent to which the paradigm of natural science has
preempted our intellectual lives, intellectual existence, the
notion of positive philosophy promoted by Auguste Comte.  or
John Stuart Mill, writing about "Moral Sciences", on the
implicit premise that science was all there was, that to be
meaningful everything had to be integrated into, had to be
interpreted in the light of (natural) science; even history,
literature and art. The same, of course was Wilhelm Dilthey's
premise.

     But given the reliance on technology, the extent to
which technology supports, controls, governs our lives, isn't
it absurd to the point of dishonesty to argue otherwise, to
deprecate or deny the validity of science? In the end this
argument, like all others, proves to be an argument about
words. To argue about, to challenge, to deny the conventional
image (view) of science is far from denying science itself,
it is merely asking what that science is, what that science
accomplishes and how that science accomplishes what it does.
What is denied is the conventional interpretation of the way
science develops and the way science works.  What is
necessary (essential) is not the upholding of the
conventional view of science, Kuhn's, Conant's or anyone
elses.  All that is necessary is a clear understanding of the
forces (factors, determinants) of our contemporary lives, by
whatever names we call them.

     But even that may be too pretentious.  All I should try
to do is to consider just what the specific scientific
knowledge is that I may rely on as I sit here in this chair
at 12:30 a.m. on October 12. 2005.  As if I were sitting down
for an examination, and the question were asked of me, What
do you know; and I recounted what I knew of what I thought I
knew ...  making some provision for what I have forgotten.

     Compte's, Mill's and Dilthey's efforts in regard to
moral sciences or Geisteswissenschaften are of course only as
valid, cogent as the concept of natural science, as the
reality of natural science, as natural science itself.  An
interesting way of looking at (reading) Kuhn's book is to see
the sense in which, rather than interpreting history as
science, he interprets science as history, (although he
doesn't know it).

     The divergence of moral and natural sciences is
ultimately untenable.  There is obviously a point which
neither Dilthey nor Kuhn reach, where the roots of natural
and moral science coincide or converge in the nature of the
human mind, or in the nature of the world, or in the nature
of both.  And that is the point toward which I am aiming,
whether I reach it or not is another matter.

     Neither individual nor communal knowledge can be
projected - or reduced - to unambiguous limits.  That whose
limit are blurred is undefined, What is undefined is unknown,
and what is undefinable is unknowable.  Individual knowledge
is ultimately unidentifiable because the subjective
consciousness in which that knowledge inheres is intangible
and undefinable and because individual knowledge is
inconceivable as separate from the community, e.g. the
phenomenon of language.  But communal knowledge is
unidentifiable in an analogous manner, if only because the
textbook or encyclopedia is, by its nature, never conclusive
or definitive.  The scientific textbook, since knowledge is
in flux, can never be "up to date".  Even more important:
Even the textbook which purports to be inexorably objective,
will unavoidably require to be read, to be interpreted, to be
understood, to be explained, will, in other words, require
subjective interpretation.

     Human science is no more accessible to us than the
course of fishes in the ocean or the flight of birds through
the air.  Only the parameters are accessible to us.

     Thus, at the foundation of his argument, Kuhn must gloss
over the unidentifiability of knowledge.  To proceed at all,
Kuhn must postulate an entity that is known, a commodity
transferable by formula and by text.  This postulate is the
prerequisite to Kuhn's other assumptions, specifically to the
notion of the paradigm as a framework or pattern of
identified knowledge.  The postulate of idwentified knowledge
leads into an uncharted, and in fact unchartable ocean of
scholastic speculation.

     This lapse into unmanageable scholasticism can be
avoided only by disciplined cognitive abstinence: in the
Socratic spirit of being willing to confront the circumstance
that one knows nothing.  Such abstinence may be accompanied
by a careful and conscientious account and description of
what it is that one may claim to know, and an account of how
the legitimate claim to some knowledge predictably and
unavoidably mushrooms into clouds of cognitive fantasy.

     It is actually a most difficult enterprise to maintain
the assertion of ones ignorance in more than a superficial
way.

     In the end, it is more difficult to be come to terms
with not knowing, and to understand what not knowing means
than to maintain the proficiency in some cognitive paradigm a
proficiency that will inevitably be superficial, that
presents itself (masquerades) as knowledge.  Valid knowledge
is not knowledge of facts but proficiency in action, is not
in making statements but in pursuing paths; not inventing
concepts but discovering traversable avenues of thought.
Knowledge as mental skill.

     All knowledge may be understood in terms of two rubrics:
history and skill: what I can say: what I can make immediate,
present by saying, describing, relating it, representing it
in words, sentences, picture or melody; and what I can do:
and my skills, my ability, to alter my world or to make my
way through it, to thread my path through its labyrinth.

     More closely scrutinized, the two facets of knowledge
coincide after all: Knowing that some is or is not so, the
ability to tell a story, to give an account is an expression
of memory: and memory is the ability to remember, the "can
do" of mental representation.  By the same token, the ability
to find ones way home, the ability to circumnavigate the
globe or to set foot on the moon is but an alternate, and
logically equivalent mode of stating the geographical and
engineering specifications which make these accomplishments
possible.  THe interconvertibility and the ability to
interconvert one mode of knowledge to the other is integral
to scientific culture.

     Kuhn's error is his functional denial of the
subjectivity of knowledge.  his failure to account for, to
describe, to give an account of the subjective experience of
science.

     The key to epistemology is reflection and elucidation of
what it is that actually happens (to, in me) when I perform a
scientifically relevant or meaningful act.  In this
connection, the history of science hold a special place
because of the implicit claim of science to truth that
endures.  The truth of a non-scientific political or social
event is limited to the time of its occurrence.  The truth of
a scientific event, of the scientific paradigm which plays so
prominent a role in Kuhns thinking is assumed to have no
temporal limits.

     A previous assumption of mine was that when I understood
of a scientific fact or event I in fact elaborated a mind
set, an understanding, a pattern of thought which mimicked
that of the original situation: but I no longer think this is
(necessarily) the case. I still agree that such imitation,
such mimicking may be a good analogy, but it remains that,
because quite realistically, the original situation/event in
its uniqueness cannot be reached or even approximated.

     I must satisfy myself with the recognition that all my
reflection is an approximation, an imitation, and can never
be more, and to some extent is actually a synthesis, separate
and distinct from that which it purports to exhaust. The
conclusive element, the bottom line so to speak, is the
community of understanding, of intent, of purpose, of action
which the scientific presumption creates.  It is not that my
understanding approximates that of Copernicus, Newton,
Lavoisier, Maxwell or Einstein, but that their theories, my -
our - understanding, interpretation of their thought creates
and provides a point of reference for futher action, both
conceptual, theoretical and practical.

     History is the recitation of a story, is a telling of
what one remembers, a revelation, an unveiling of what is in
memory, eine Veraeusserung des Geistes.  The subjective truth
of history is what passes through one mind, what one thinks
as one tell the (hi)story,

     THe what is the book, the history book, the text.  It is
a composition, a synthesis, an invention.  It is something
which is constructed or made.  Surely memory goes into the
making of the book; memory went into the composition of
Homeric epics.  Memory enters into what I write (and read) in
a recursive way.  I read what I have written, or what someone
else has written, or I hear a story told, and this experience
stimulates my mind in two ways: I remember what I read; but
what I read also elicits and modifies my memories.

     And I think there is no fundamental difference betweens
the effect on memory of a scientific and a non-scientific
text.

     The ability to solve a mathematical problem.  This is
also an expression of memory.  The difference between memory
and other mental functions.

     It is an error to treat science as a commodity.xs, as
something that can be elaborated, converyed or understood
independent of the individual who interprets or elaborates
it.  independent of the individual who acts in consequence or
in conformity with it.  Knowledge in general and scientific
knowledge in particular must be understood as integral to the
individual who entertains, expresses, utilizes or conveys it.
Such an interpretation will, in itself, resolve the
incongruity of subjective objective knowledge; the inherences
(Innewohnen) of knowledge in the person will in itself
express the dual characteristic of knowledge as being both
individual and communal.

     Characteristic of the history of science, of the
description of science, as of the content (burden) of science
itself is the process (phenomenon) of completion, of filling
in and extending experience with the concepts that describe
it.  The concepts supplement and extend the experience, while
at the same time proving themselves unable to exhaust
experience.  Hence it is our nature to presume to know what
we do not, what we cannot know.  That is the psychological
basis of the Socratic admonition against the presumption of
knowledge.

     Ultimately one cannot write _about_ science.  One cannot
deal with science as if it were a commodity.  One can
appropriate science only by assimilating it.  One can
appropriate science only by becoming, by being a scientist.
Thus the suspicion of scientists about epistemology, about
philosophy is validated; the rejection of epistemology and
philosophy is validated.

     Such considerations appear to confirm the validity of
the Hippocratic method of medicine, which spurns theory and
rhetoric but relies on the physician'ss first hand
(immediate) experience of diseases quite unconsciously to
shape his judgment.

     If scientific knowledge were not over extensive, it
would be incomprehensible. The fragments of "truth" would be
so small and so scattered that they could not be assimilated,
interpreted or understood.

     The solution to the problem of epistemology, if it is a
problem, is that it must be a study of how we think.  It can
be nothing but introspective.  We cannot study, we cannot
observe, we cannot perceive how anyone else thinks, we have
no access to a foreign mental process.  I can understand only
the science which is familiar to me.  I can understand
science only to the extent that I am a scientist.  My
understanding of science can never be a substitute to my
being a scientist myself.  But arguably my being a scientist
myself subsumes the need to understand science.  For I cannot
be a scientist without understanding science.  It is
certainly plausible to argue that introspective analysis of
thought of thinking, of science is not enough, is inadequate;
but if this is the case, then we have no alternative but to
abandon the quest.

                          * * * * *
Copyright 2005, Ernst Jochen Meyer
