Foucault - Chomsky #2
This post runs from the "initial question posed" in the last post up to the point where Elder is pushing Foucault on answering the personal questions that Foucault sees as irrelevent. (More on that subject in a future post, most likely anyway.)
In this section they start off talking about creativity, and proceed into the question of whether there are limitations on human theories. I think one's answer is going to depend a lot on where one falls in the Marxist critique of Hegel on how differently human minds are capable of seeing the world from one time and culture to another.
At one level i believe this is an open neuroscientific question ... about plasticity of brains in the human species. It seems likely that the level of possible plasticity in the human brain has been constant for about the last 40,000 years, though the manifestation of that plasticity is probably greater in cultures with greater stress. That is ... necessity breeds invention in the new upcoming generation. This is likley true for survival as well as in scientific and social paradigms.
But this was not available knowledge in the early 70s, and even 30 years later is is mostly conjecture ... so ...
I think the point Chomsky is trying to get across is merely that we humans use a lot of shortcuts in analyzing situations. Take the chess example, even the most novice adult, provided he understands the game at all, is unlikely to move his rook back and forth one space, over and over, during a large portion of the game. A high-powered computer, on the other hand, has to run through such possible moves. It has no "rational" limitations when it considers moves.
The George Smith (Tufts University) question in terms of physical theory is related to this ... it is about how potential hypotheses are constrained (in practice) and what are the affects of this constraint on science. Smith believes understanding this notion is key to understanding why Descartes induction (mentioned by Chomsky) is merely 'occult force' while Newton's Universal Gravity is not. A lot of what Foucault is saying goes into this distinction too ... about the history of knowledge which allows us Smitheans to say that Newton was making a deduction about UG and not an induction ... "standing on the shoulders of giants". Contradicting Chomsky's statement ... it wasn't that Newton was able to eventually mathematically prove UG while Descartes was somehow unlucky in being unable to prove his induction ... Newton did the math first, initially resisted and continued to resist the notion of UG, up until the point he had no choice but to accept it. (How this all worked out is a long history ... i suggest B. Cohen's translation and guide to 'The Principia' as well as Smith's own notes about Newton in the 'Cambridge Companion to Newton" which he edited.)
Now, that said ... UG was to a large extent possible only because of some lucky coincidenses in the way our solar system is formed. A lot of small differences could have made Newton's approach impossible ... as predicting the moon's orbit mathematically was such problem (until well into the 19th century) ... due to the 3-body problem in UG when things are close together.
How this all gets long so quickly ...
... but i also want to talk a bit again about "data underdetermines reality". Foucault brings up the notion of 'grille' for the first time in the debate in this section. It is certainly not deniable that his notion cetainly occurs, and often. The question at hand is ... is it always so? ... and are there good reasons for sometimes doing so?
Take the once seperate field theories of eletricity and magnetism. Each worked for for the people that used them, but they eventually were brought together under one common theory ... Maxwell's electromagnetic field theory.
Now ... each by themselves might have (in logic) been made the core theory of physical theory and everything else reduced to one in one world and the second in another world. That is underdermination in a nutshell. Both, however, in this world were brought under (reduced to) further unified theory by Maxwell ... because ... well ... we humans seem to like unified theories. I think this fits in well with the 'grille' as well as underdetermination.
... sigh ... i lost the thread i had when i started this ... i shall try again soon.
In this section they start off talking about creativity, and proceed into the question of whether there are limitations on human theories. I think one's answer is going to depend a lot on where one falls in the Marxist critique of Hegel on how differently human minds are capable of seeing the world from one time and culture to another.
At one level i believe this is an open neuroscientific question ... about plasticity of brains in the human species. It seems likely that the level of possible plasticity in the human brain has been constant for about the last 40,000 years, though the manifestation of that plasticity is probably greater in cultures with greater stress. That is ... necessity breeds invention in the new upcoming generation. This is likley true for survival as well as in scientific and social paradigms.
But this was not available knowledge in the early 70s, and even 30 years later is is mostly conjecture ... so ...
I think the point Chomsky is trying to get across is merely that we humans use a lot of shortcuts in analyzing situations. Take the chess example, even the most novice adult, provided he understands the game at all, is unlikely to move his rook back and forth one space, over and over, during a large portion of the game. A high-powered computer, on the other hand, has to run through such possible moves. It has no "rational" limitations when it considers moves.
The George Smith (Tufts University) question in terms of physical theory is related to this ... it is about how potential hypotheses are constrained (in practice) and what are the affects of this constraint on science. Smith believes understanding this notion is key to understanding why Descartes induction (mentioned by Chomsky) is merely 'occult force' while Newton's Universal Gravity is not. A lot of what Foucault is saying goes into this distinction too ... about the history of knowledge which allows us Smitheans to say that Newton was making a deduction about UG and not an induction ... "standing on the shoulders of giants". Contradicting Chomsky's statement ... it wasn't that Newton was able to eventually mathematically prove UG while Descartes was somehow unlucky in being unable to prove his induction ... Newton did the math first, initially resisted and continued to resist the notion of UG, up until the point he had no choice but to accept it. (How this all worked out is a long history ... i suggest B. Cohen's translation and guide to 'The Principia' as well as Smith's own notes about Newton in the 'Cambridge Companion to Newton" which he edited.)
Now, that said ... UG was to a large extent possible only because of some lucky coincidenses in the way our solar system is formed. A lot of small differences could have made Newton's approach impossible ... as predicting the moon's orbit mathematically was such problem (until well into the 19th century) ... due to the 3-body problem in UG when things are close together.
How this all gets long so quickly ...
... but i also want to talk a bit again about "data underdetermines reality". Foucault brings up the notion of 'grille' for the first time in the debate in this section. It is certainly not deniable that his notion cetainly occurs, and often. The question at hand is ... is it always so? ... and are there good reasons for sometimes doing so?
Take the once seperate field theories of eletricity and magnetism. Each worked for for the people that used them, but they eventually were brought together under one common theory ... Maxwell's electromagnetic field theory.
Now ... each by themselves might have (in logic) been made the core theory of physical theory and everything else reduced to one in one world and the second in another world. That is underdermination in a nutshell. Both, however, in this world were brought under (reduced to) further unified theory by Maxwell ... because ... well ... we humans seem to like unified theories. I think this fits in well with the 'grille' as well as underdetermination.
... sigh ... i lost the thread i had when i started this ... i shall try again soon.
posted by Thomas F. Schminke at 8:45 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home