Dear Marion,

It's 11:45 a.m. With a hand-me down laptop computer of Klemens'
on my knees, I'm sitting in a deep, soft very comfortable armchair
at the foot of Margrit's fully motorized hospital bed.  From a pole
to the right of her head, dangle five plastic bags of intravenous
fluid only two of which are connected.  To monitor the outflow,
the plastic tubing is attached to two electronic controllers. These
launch into a tirade of vigorous beeping whenever they detect a
bubble of air.  Margrit just woke up. She rubs her eyes, and says:
"This is a bizarre institution.  It's not my style. I want to get
out of here." I tell her that I'm sympathetic, that I am on her side
and will do what I can to get her to Belmont as soon as possible,
but that the medical problems she now has, are beyond my capacity to
manage at home, if only because I have had such difficulty finding
veins for drawing blood samples or for giving intravenous infusions.
On the covers of the bed are two fabric bags, attached by means of
plastic tubes to a small pump that is suspended from the footboard
of the bed. These bags are gaiters, designed to be wrapped around her
legs to prevent deep venous thrombosis.  Now ridiculously disposed on
the sheets of the bed, they suggest white plastic sausages rhythmically
inflated and deflated to no obvious purpose, toys for the amusement
of invisible children.  

Margrit has again fallen asleep. She hasn't eaten for a week and has
been pleading with the nurses for a sip of water, for ice to cool
her parched mouth, for jello. But in this matter, the nurses have no
discretion. They are following orders from above. Above, in this case
not being the "attending physician" who is nominally responsible but
who hasn't bothered even to talk to his patient post-operatively.
He delegates this task to the chief surgical resident, a woman who
probably examines Margrit once a day, but has not done so while I was
around. I suspect that the relentless withholding of even small amounts
of food in this situation is a ritual, a practice based on convention,
but hardly on experience. To me all this is vivid evidence of the
corrosive effect that institutional organization has on individual
responsibility, initiative, imagination and common sense.

This is what I wrote by Margrit's bedside. I fell asleep, having
gone to bed too late and roused, by Klemens' telephone call, too early 
to get a good night's sleep. After I woke up, there were too many
interruptions, snatches of conversation with Margrit, visits by nurses
and technicians and cleaning ladies appearing to fulfill their various
functions, to permit me the opportunity to concentrate on my writing.
I gave up, and started to read various items of literature that I
had installed on my little computer: a collection of Schiller's
poems, many of them unfamiliar. After the poems, I started to reread
Schiller's play "Kabale und Liebe", which I think I last looked at
for my German course in high school sixty four years ago. As the
afternoon wore on, Margrit seemed to become more comfortable, and more
accepting of the circumstance that she will probably stay in the
hospital several more days. Her dehydration has been much ameliorated
by the intravenous fluids, and she looks much better than she did when
I met her at the airport.

Thank you for your letter, and especially for taking seriously my
interest in the theory of knowledge. I hope it doesn't disappoint
or even offend you, when I write that I think our respective
considerations about knowledge are quite different. I suspect we
are using the same words to address separate issues, and I don't
know whether it is polite for me to reiterate my point of view.

Let me begin, gently, by reminding you of Goethe's insight:
Das Hoechste waere zu begreifen, dass alles Faktische schon Theorie ist.
It's most important to understand, that facts are already theories.
I suspect here is one point of disagreement between us:

You would admit that some "facts" are inferences from theory, and are
therefore not empirical, but you would argue that many, if not most
"facts" are reflections of experience and are essentially empirical.

I interpret our difference as one of definition. My preference is to
stipulate as theory all symbolic expression, everything which is
described in words (or in mathematical formulas). To my mind, facts,
inasmuch as they are verbal propositions, "protocol sentences", are
inherently theoretical, and it is theory which is the target of my
doubt.  I define experience as the pre-verbal, pre-conceptual encounter 
with nature.

By this definition the Armenian genocide issue is now pure theory,
- as is the history of the Holocaust. To argue that some sequence
of events in the past is "pure" theory, is not the denial of its
reality. On the contrary, to recognize the Armenian genocide or the
Holocaust as theory, as history, is to acknowledge a reality which is
inaccessible to us; while to claim that I have "empirical" evidence
of the Holocaust is to mock the experience of those who suffered,
by faking a claim to experience which was never mine.

The epistemology of Margrit's hernia is also, for me at least, not
so simple as it seems. What I experienced myself, Margrit's emaciated
appearance in a wheel chair at the airport, her somnolence and weakness
here in Belmont the following day, her refusal to eat and her very
limited intake of fluid, the blood pressure measurements I obtained
and the lump in her groin which I palpated, these are the only truly
empirical elements of her disease. The various verbal reports are
for obvious reasons appropriate subjects for doubt: Margrit's own
account of her nausea and vomiting are unreliable, a) because her
memory is poor, b) she habitually conceals what she wishes to deny,
and c) in the recent situation she had ample reasons both to exaggerate
and to minimize her troubles. I have no way of knowing the reality of
what transpired. The Konnarock physician's Dr. Peters' findings of 
blood in the vomitus was almost certainly in error, as was Margrit's 
report of tarry stools, and so were her friends Jeane Walls'
and Anna Wilsons' observations that she was getting better.

We have every reason to be grateful to the surgeon who spent two
hours of the night of October 19, operating on Margrit, every
reason to believe that he is a physician of great skill and
integrity. For purposes of epistemological analysis, for purposes
of determining what I may assume I "know" about Margrit's operation,
I must dismiss the "ideal" surgeon and ask about the "empirical"
knowledge I could obtain from the report of a "generic", of an
"average" surgeon, who would be powerfully motivated: a) to confirm
the preoperative diagnosis by "finding" what he was looking for;
b) to make a diagnosis which would optimize his payment from the
insurance company; c) to make a diagnosis which would deflect
criticism from him in the event of an unsatisfactory outcome.
Accordingly the average surgeon's operative report would have
only limited evidentiary value.  In the end, I am left with an
assortment of memories, with a set or verbal or written accounts,
which are, by my definition, theoretical, and, of course with a
set of financial statements for the required deductible and copayment.
These are statements of theory, which, I admit, have powerful
empirical consequences, but nonetheless I hesitate to claim that 
I know - or can know - what is really going on.  All these
considerations leave me no choice but to accept the assessment
of Saint Paul, that "now we see through a glass, darkly", but 
by the same token, I'm very receptive to any enlightenment you 
might offer.

Jochen