Below I have written detailed responses to and expounded on the writings of Frenchman Michel Foucault, American Thomas Kuhn, Frenchman Jean Lyotard, and German Max Weber. Enjoy and please be sure to cite my work (John Kuczmarski as author), if you use any of these as resources of your own. You can find PDF files of these pieces at www.spyderbyte.org/mission.html.
The Fusion of Weber’s Protestant Ethic and Tri-Partite Classification
John Kuczmarski
July 3, 2004
Philosophy Independent Study: Post-Modernity & Modernity
Professor Hernandez-Lemus
The Fusion of Weber’s Protestant Ethic and Tri-Partite Classification
In the fall of 1897, Max Weber, after staying up until 1:00 am in the morning writing “publications that filled several pages and ranged from the agrarian history of Rome to the deficiencies of the German stock market” had a nervous breakdown (Kolbert 1). After the breakdown, writing, lecturing, and even sleeping became too much of a burden for him. He gave up teaching completely in October of 1903, six years later. Only a year afterwards, however, he recovered, discovering his newfound strength from his ascetic duty and wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
A large component of Protestant Ethic is intertwined with Calvinism. Because the Calvinist religion claims wealth is a priori evidence for being among God’s “elect”, protestant ethic aims to cultivate religious sanctions that acquire wealth. Protestant ethic aimed to motivate individual’s to accumulate enough wealth to appear as one of God’s elect. Weber found similar potential for economic expansion and capitalism in many pre-industrial societies. He observed that such societies possessed the necessary technology, economic preconditions, and necessary infrastructure, but lacked the initiative to abandon their traditional ways. The method of relinquishing old habits and moving towards economically expansive capitalism was to develop the positive sanctions of the Protestant ethic on a societal level.
Weber’s historiography cultivated the necessary studies of methodologies, principles, and historical research and presentation to comprehend and portrayal of the spirit of capitalism, despite its difficulties of conceptualization. Through the very attempt of explaining and analyzing an investigation of the spirit of capitalism one discovers that a conceptual definition cannot be formulated. Therefore, an “indispensable” provisional definition is the solution to this definitional dilemma. Weber conquers this quandary by transforming the ambiguous definition of “spirit” towards a document of “almost classical purity” (Weber 52). It’s proximity to a classical, as apposed to religious, interpretations liberates the definition from preconceptions, generating a lucid definitional process.
The equivalency between time and money is incredibly lucid with Weber’s formulaic relationship between the two commodities. If has the capacity to earn twenty dollars a day, but they, instead, choose to “[go] abroad, or [sit] idle” for half of that day, even if they spent a paltry amount, they have really discarded ten dollars, making the emphasis on potential extremely poignant (Weber 52). Here, the potential of earning ten more dollars, but choosing not to earn that amount, is exactly the same as actually spending those ten dollars. A discourse of severe distinctions like the one made between time and money is also found in The Objectivity of Knowledge in Social Science and Social Policy, where Weber argues that scientific objectivity and all objects of value should be strictly separated. It seems vital not to necessarily transcribe Weber’s ideology, adopting his relationship between time and money and other extinctions, but to, rather, develop our own relationship between distinctions and to extrapolate Weber’s model and apply it to our personal life.
Another clever distinction that can be made is the equality between having a reputation of paying and actually possessing the money. This is extrapolated from the adage, “he that is a good paymaster is Lord of another man’s purse” (Weber 53). Just as the “earner” who chose not to earn half of what is potential could produce really “spent” that money, a “loaner” who has flawless credibility has already generated his desired finds. This credibility allows a man to “at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare” (Weber 53). But this credibility can be tarnished by one’s habits -- by “the most trifling actions”. If your creditor here’s your typing away on the computer at four in the morning or hears you working in the factory into the evening, those trivial interactions generate evidence for your integrity. However, your trustworthy can be dissolved as quickly and as simply as it was instantiated if, for example, the creditor overhears you talking foully to a fellow employee, or you arrive with alcohol on your breath for one day. These sound like rash repercussions that could not even fallaciously reflect the natural disposition of a person, but, at times, we shape our reality, to the reassurance of the skeptics and idealists, on perceptual illusion. Although not arguing for or against this illusion, Weber illustrates that the sensations of individual trifles shape the entire perception, and, thus, the credibility of an individual. All the more reason to have an individually lucid set of morals: so you avoid creating “trifling actions” that tarnish one’s reputation and/or credibility (Weber 53).
To understand Weber’s comprehension neglecting to earn money as a failure of duty, one must understand the causation of money’s existence. Money can be best understood in correlation with Aristotle’s four causes of the operation of individual substances in the natural world -- the material, formal, efficient, and final causes. The material cause, composing money’s existence, obviously, is the copper, the metal alloy for the coins, and the paper and inks for the paper currency. The formal cause, the pattern or essence of the money, is the design of the currency to have, for example Washington’s profile on the single dollar bill, Lincoln on the fives, and Jefferson’s portrait on the nickels. The efficient cause, which combines the material and formal causes to actual produce the matter, would be the printing press, minting machines, and currency analysts that apply the formal cause of the currency’s design to the actual material. Finally, a purpose for all this causation, considered the final cause, is necessary. The final cause for money is to generate a tangible medium that can be exchanged for goods and services and to create measure of values in the market. While money satisfies the four causes, it is very unlike most other substances because money implies not “a means of making one’s way in the world, but a peculiar ethic” (Weber 54).
While not everyone possesses this overly intimate relationship with money, the connotation of ethic is made clear as Weber surmises the philosopher, Kernberger. Kernberger said, “They make tallow out of cattle and money out of men” (Weber 54). While this phrase seems to degrade the nature of men down to the bovine level, Weber uses it as a framework, illustrating one’ duty to increase his or her capital. Instead of the pursuit of wealth being a mean, it is an obligation: the infraction of its rules is treated not as foolishness but as forgetfulness of duty,” giving the pursuit of wealth, an ethical connotation (Weber 54). When we associate the accumulation of wealth to ethics, we are establishing a framework for problems. Materialistic accumulation of money does not operate at the high ideal of ethics. Focusing on the essence and not the accident of money is key. People so easily get absorbed in the side effects of money -- the potential power, hoarding, and greed that can arise from the substance -- when its essence is a very simple device. Money should be examined indifferently as a device for commerce, not a personal ethos. Unfortunately, as Weber illustrates, “the essence of the matter...is not mere business astuteness, that sort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos” (Weber 54). While the duty and obligation to pursue wealth is destructively materialistic, Weber’s discussion of the duty of truthfulness holds a seriousness that demands investigation.
The pathway to truthfulness, according to Weber is only by means of an all-round methodical investigation by non-partisans...any other procedure may have consequences”, and consequences can be the enemy of truth when one is trying to generate solid states. If something defined as truth generates a consequential cause that destroys that solid state, the definition is no longer reliably truthful. The duty of truthfulness, then, is the connection to solid, inconsequential states.
The accumulation of capital is not only looked at as a duty, but an adventure. As a duty, one sets themselves up for nearly direct confrontation with greed and debilitation, and as an adventurer all ethical limitations are laughed at. The balance, it seems, is still to consider capital accumulation with apathy. To generate what is needed but not to congest capital with a spirit of ethics, such an entanglement of wealth and ethos is only asking for destructive uncertainties. The pathway to clarity is the separation of ethics and personal moral from the materialistic egocentric emphasis on wealth. Weber warned that with certain economic investments in efficient but over-rationalized bureaucracies, one’s individual freedom could be lost. This consequence should be avoided at all costs.
When balance exists in economy, the employer tries to “secure the greatest possible amount of work from his men” but, as discussed in Politics as a Vocation, it is not just the employee, but also, the employees who hold power, because power, according to Foucault, power operates reciprocally in addition to operating with resistance and relationally. That is, if someone wants a lot of food, and a person gives out a little food, that person has power based on small-to-large reciprocation. An employer holds power because they can control the wages, hire, or fire people. But workers have power because they can leave, work with more or less diligence, or group together or fall apart. Power always operates reciprocally, but with equal reciprocity. Foucault's idea of belief systems having power through people, instead of just on them, is vital because it shows that these belief systems have power. Deconstruction often reveals hidden power structures and relationships that could be emphasized or rebuilt for greater stability or for new types of illumination. Understanding the reciprocity, relative, and reciprocal attributes of power are vital to dismantling power. Relational means there are always two people involved in power, so no one has power by himself or herself. They must rely on others who gave them authority, or work under them, for power. Reciprocal power means you always have some sway over the person eliciting power above you. If the employer controls the wages, the employee controls the work ethic.
The wage-labor correlation, entirely subjective to the laborer, is divulged by understanding Weber’s correlation. Weber’s discussion establishes a correlation of wages with labor efficiency. The concept is that from a “quantitative point of view the efficiency of labour decreases with a wage which is physiologically insufficient, which may in the long run even mean a survival of the unfit.” When one is paid less, typically, this causes a psychological sensation of insufficiency to which the person responds with sub-par work ethic. But depending on how the worker is “psychologically wired”, a sub-par paycheck could be an incentive to work harder to acquire the desired pay.
Power is obeyed out of fear while authority is obeyed out of respect. In the 1792 the two counterparts of the French National Convention, the Girondins and the Jacobins, brutally betrayed their promise to promote “Fraternity and assistance to people who want to recover their liberties”, tarnishing any respect of the two parties, resulting in the destruction of authority (Palmer 213). Two years later in France, 1794, during the Reign of Terror Robespierre did not hold authority -- there wasn’t even enough structure during the chaotic feuds of Jacobins and Girondins to define authority-- but held power based on fear because he guillotined so many people. Typically, if deranged consequences, like decapitation, are involved in a form of domination, the source of control is usually fear-based power and not authority. The source of authoritative respect is divulged with Weber’s tri-partite classification of authority.
The obedience in a power relationship between a an employer and employee, leader and follower, master and slave, or chief executive and simple consultant, that does not involve fear is revealed by understanding the source of authority. It is incredibly interesting that Max Weber’s surname in German means “weaver” and weaving was exactly what he accomplished by integrating these three authoritative roles into distance classifications. The classification of these forms of authority allows one to identify the specific source of respect and possess more control through choice, rather than instinctive reaction, when interacting with a person holding authority. Discussed with unique sociological insights, Weber prompts the question “Why do men obey?” (Weber Politics 2). The justification to obedience, or the legitimization of dominance, depending on your interpretation of the relationship, lies in three types of authority -- legal-rational, traditional, and charismatic.
With its historical foundations, traditional authority, or authority of the “eternal yesterday” is the least intractable form of authority, although certainly not the most powerful (Weber Politics 3). It derives its roots in habits and traditions of “unimaginably ancient recognition and habitual orientation to conform” (Weber Politics 3). This traditional authority has a paltry amount of volition involved because, with its base being primarily intractable history, the habituated response leaves little room for alternative. Examples of traditional authority would be obedience to a king because of his inherited title or hereditary bloodlines or a priest.
The emotionally charged (if not primarily based on emotion) charismatic authority offers a far greater amount of volition with those who interact with it, because it is based on an “extraordinary and personal gift of grace (charisma)” (Weber Politics 3). Because of the mercurial and capacity to leave a large impact with emotions (the implement of the person charismatic authority figure), charismatic authority offers, simultaneously, the most potential for monumental impact and the greatest possibility of fleeting authority. The leader who offers intense “personal devotion and personal confidence in revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership,” like a prophet, intense musician, demagogue, elected warlord, or plebiscitary ruler, possesses this emotionally charged (if not primarily based on emotion) form of authority (Weber Politics 3).
In contrast to the depersonalized framework of legal-rational or traditional authority, based on rules and heritage, respectively, charismatic authority is the most authentic because its domination calls for an essential interaction with each individual person.
Finally, the legal-rational authority, based in logical assessment of one’s competence, creates “domination by virtue of legality” (Weber Politics 3). In other words, domination occurs from a wielder of legal-rational authority because of pre-established validity in the person’s functional competence, based on created rules. Because the domination is derived from a framework of rules, rules that can be altered through a process of amendment. A person with legal-rational authority has the a mediocre degree of stability in their domination -- more intractable than the fleeting emotionally-based charismatic authority but more fluctuant than the ancient heritage supporting traditional authority.
Examples of the combined roles of legal-rational and traditional authority have a presence in the 16th century Spanish occupation of Mexico. One could argue that forms of control like the institution of the first Spanish viceroy, Antonio de Mendoza, in colonial Mexico is an example of combined traditional and legal-rational authority. The Spanish would traditionally have authority and could have established a set of rules, establishing legal-rational authority, but the fact that the Spanish occupation was the result of a conquest in 1535, after the fall of the Aztec capital in 1519, suggests that their dominion was, instead, based on a foundation of fear and power, not authority.
Although a purely American example, the three types of authority can be found in the three key commanders in the 1836 Battle of Alamo. Lieutenant Colonel William Barret Travis commanded the Texan regular army forces after being assigned to defend the old mission. Because his control of the army was based on the idea that, logically, he was functional and competent enough to command the troops, his authority is legal-rational, based on the rules of war and the virtue of his lieutenant title. The next commander, Jim Bowie, with his renowned Bowie knife fame, was put in charge of volunteer troops because of his historical tradition as being a reliable figure in Southern America. Finally, Davey Crockett, being a congressman and legend, wielded somewhat of a combination of all three forms of authority, commanding the Tennessee Mounted Volunteers. He held charismatic authority, because of his legendary status, traditional authority, because of his history as a frontiersman and reputation, and legal-rational authority, because of his former status as congressman.
The all degrees of Weber’s tri-partite classification can be found in religion. Priests, with their sanctified historical practices possess traditional authority; their domination is based on the fact that throughout religions traditions, a priest knows what he is talking about, and his credibility is based on this historical pattern. The Roman Catholic Church exemplifies legal-rational authority because its domination is based on a functional and established set of rules about governing a specific sect of religion. Finally, a leader like Jesus Christ holds authority because of his gift of charismatic grace and revelation in the qualities of leadership. The heritage-based or bureaucratically defined power of priests and the Roman Catholic Church holds a lot of sway, but appears congested when compared to the blatant authority of Jesus Christ.
The exceptional role of charismatic authority calls for expansion because of the involvement of a required “calling”. “Devotion to the charisma of the prophet, or the leader in war, or to the great demagogue in the ecclesia or in parliament, means that the leader is personally recognized as the innerly 'called' leader of men” (Weber Politics 4). This deep inner calling holds a stronger, monumentally more robust impact on the charismatic leader to the extent that it actually makes the legal-rational and traditional forms of authority look flimsy. The other forms of authority are inferior because the men who obey those figures superficially obey either the rules or the history. Very little obedience and authority is based on the individual themselves. It is obedience based on a label. Charismatic authority wields so much impact because it harnesses the foundation of belief. The men do not belief in his virtuous traditions or beliefs. Instead, men believe in the charismatic figure themselves, because the leader lives and strives for the causes of his work.
Overall, Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic surmises a definition that “cannot be defined according to the formula genus proximum, differentia specifica, but it must be gradually put together out of the individual parts which are taken from historical reality to make it up” (Weber 51). Because his definition is based on a sum of the parts equals the whole ideology, dissecting the individual components of time, money, the time-money relationship, and authority reveals the efficacy of this ethic. When any form of authority has a presence, the ethical component of work has already been rewarded. If one ascetic approaches with work a vehement, duty-bound, unwavering, ethic, with the intention to live the lifestyle of the predestined elect, having the title of authority, regardless of its means because additional proof of this successful predestination. The acquisition of capital is undoubtedly a Calvinist sign of being amongst the predestined elect. But, in the modern world, people have less reverence for simple capital because it is a common occurrence. Authority has become the new currency for determining a modern predestination. The possessing of authority and accumulation of capital both, however, call a Protestant ethic to acquire, maintain, and perpetuate these tokens – symbols – of modern elected predestination. This modern predestination is open to anyone able to acquire capital or hold authority. Those entities are the qualities that shine out, radiating one’s “predestined qualities”. Of course “predestination” is a misnomer because anyone can acquire the status of an elected by very “unpredestined” qualities – simply holding authority or accumulating capital.
After dissecting the idea of how wealth accumulation is a virtuous act, the specific equivalency of money-making potential, and actually acquisition of capital, the sum of the parts have been successfully detailed, and the whole, understood. From this comprehension, one understands that the major institutions of modern capitalism provide us with money, but also, with something more important – ascetic fulfillment. “We all accept the notion that our jobs ought to be more than just a way to sustain ourselves and acknowledge working to be our duty” (Kolbert 2). Weber found his duty and ascetic obligation in the study of rationality.
But Protestant Ethic is a means, not an end. The point is not to toil away effortlessly without complaint, doing ones work as if already a member of the faithful elect, but, rather, to use the ethic and discipline to approach work with such faithful commitment that it banishes the doubt of a non-elect predestination altogether. Whatever profession we choose, we must pursue it with vehemence and understand not how it is a sum of parts, but how our vocation is a component of a collective destiny.
Similarly, we must comprehend not our financial obligation to acquire capital, but our religious duty to pursue our work with fervency, despite the agitation work can produce, on occasion. Weber pointed out that the nuances of predestination are quite irritable at times: “It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but appall him who surveys a section of it” (Weber Protestant Intro 28). He also states through comparison, however, exactly how much of a nuance those appalling sections are to the grand spectrum and portrait of one’s destiny. Weber writes, “but he will do well to keep his small personal commentaries to himself, as one does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains” (Weber Protestant Into 28).
The father of the Renaissance, William Shakespeare, acknowledged that in whatever profession we choose – whether we are working at a toll both or a top business CEO – we must put up a façade and act our role. He said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.” With our entrances and exits, we are all simply players, actors, and entertainers in this enormous, spherical stage – the world. Recognizing this as fact is important because it can allow us to choose a profession that allows us to acquire the most adaptive form of emotional integrity and liberation. This adaptive integrity is exactly the direction that Max Weber has aimed his rationalized aspirations.
Works Cited
Jackson, Harvey, and Rice, Bradley. American History: A Survey. 2nd
ed. Connecticut: McGraw-Hill Humanities Pub, 2001.
Provided information on the Alamo and the leadership roles of
Davey Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Travis.
Kolbert, Elizabeth. “A Hundred Years of Protestant Ethic.” The New
Yorker. Nov. 2004.
Palmer, R.R. Colton, Joel, and Kramer, Lloyd. A History of the
Modern World. 9th ed. Connecticut: McGraw-Hill Pub. 2002.
Provided useful information on the French Revolution and the
relationship between the Jacobins and Girondins.
Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other
Writings. Trans. Peter Baehr. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.
Provided the bulk of the Protestant Ethic references.
Weber, Max. “Author’s Introduction.” The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of
Capitalism. New York: Scribner's Press, 1958, pp. 13-31. http://www.cla.wayne.edu/polisci/kdk/seminar/sources/weber2a.htm
Provided the resourceful introduction by Weber to his famous piece.
Weber, Max. Politics as a Vocation. (l921), pp. 396-450. Munich:
Duncker & Humblodt, 1919. pp. 396-450. http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/Weber/polvoc.html
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A Leap of Faith in Kuhn’s Evolution of Paradigm
John Kuczmarski
July 28 2005
Philosophy Independent Study: Post-Modernity & Modernity
Professor Hernandez-Lemus
A Leap of Faith in Kuhn’s Evolution of Paradigm
During his seventy-four years, from 1922 to 1996, Thomas Kuhn made an extraordinary impact on the history of science and the philosophy of science. Even though many ideas for The Structure of Scientific Revolutions evolved from Norman Russell Hanson’s Patterns of Discovery (1958), the relationship between normal science and paradigm shifts was uniquely the work of Thomas Kuhn.
Science to Kuhn is not a steady, cumulative acquisition of knowledge. Instead, it is a series of peaceful investigations punctuated with abrupt and visceral changes. These revolutions are the tradition-shattering counter-components to the tradition-bound activities of “normal science” (Kuhn 4).
Although a “convinced believer in scientific progress”, it is unclear whether Thomas Kuhn possesses a strictly scientific outlook (Kuhn 206). His “book seems to wax and wane between pro and anti-scientific sentiments” (Hoyningen-Huene 6). Although Kuhn’s vacillation does not provoke lack of clarity in his descriptions -- the nature of normal science, paradigms, and response to crises among others -- his inquiry and relationship to science is certainly not “normal”. Because of its originality, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is “one of the most influential academic books in history” (Hoyningen-Huene 7). It uniquely defines and analyzes the patterns of revolutions, precisely the thing that annihilates patterns themselves. The beauty of Kuhn’s work, however, is expectations for greatness. He knows his work is big and writes with the foreknowledge that his very book will create a shift where "a scientist's world is qualitatively transformed [and] quantitatively enriched by fundamental novelties of either fact or theory" (Kuhn 7).
Naturally, the study of revolutions and discovering evidence and formulas for behavior that ruptures pre-existing patterns and formulas has a recursive element to it. Instead of looking at this element of recursion as a problem, as one of the "restrictions that [bind] the admissible solutions to theoretical problems," this element of recursion should be a solution (Kuhn 39). There are always quasi-metaphysical involvements to consider, but understanding that the pursuit of patterns from scientific findings that disrupt patterns, calls for a unique investigation process. Ironically, Kuhn’s revolutionary work may set off an entirely new paradigm that alters the worldview of the way Kuhn saw science, altogether. When the teacher’s students alter the way the teacher thinks, something big is happening. However, it is very challenging to create a new paradigm that is completely unbiased from the older one.
Verifications are, according to Kuhn, inadequate when it comes to deciding between conflicting theories because they, themselves, are the product of the current paradigm. The quest for objectivity -- when someone not part of any paradigm, successfully judges and mediates between conflicting theories and picks the most truthful and “correct” one -- remains the underlying agenda of science. Observations, Kuhn criticizes, have a tendency to be a part of their surroundings, leading to biases that taint their validity, even if they intend to falsify statements.
The idea of paradigm shifts seems to revolve around falsifiability. If there exists a credible source that falsifies a known theory, the theory has the potential to be falsified. When a paradigm shift occurs, the schoolbooks are rewritten and the previous theory is certainly falsified.
According to Karl Popper, a theory must be able to be proven wrong; the theory must have the potential to be proven wrong (Popper 35). The criticism of falsifiability is that theories are never falsifiable because you can always add an “ad hoc” hypothesis to save it from falsification. The theory “all trees have leaves” would be falsified if one found a tree with pine needles. This falsification could be avoided by creating the ad hoc hypothesis of “all trees have leaves except firs, which have pine needles”. Understanding falsification is key to comprehending the nature of scientific breakthroughs. Usually, these discoveries occur through induction.
Many theories produced through induction, create a more forma, universal, theory or law from the observations. An example could be “ many leaves are green; some leaves are light green; all leaves are a shade of green”. Deduction is simply the reverse: moving from a broad general concept to a small isolated specific concept, using the universals created from induction, first. An example of deducing would be, “all leaves on trees are a shade of green; this leaf is on a tree; this leaf must be a shade of green.
Induction must come before deduction because deduction works from the products -- the theory -- of induction as its first and primary stepping stone to arrive at specific details.
Induction and falsifiability avoid problem of criterion, where any assertion in a theory must be justified. Induction uses real life facts -- observations -- to over come the problem of criteria, and therefore, can truly justify the assertion or fact, not with more justifications, but with facts and observations, or laws.
Kuhn denied the possibility of ever isolating new theory from the influence of the old theory under which the observations were conducted. The impossibility of isolation should be respected, however, because it creates a constant flow between theories. There may be abrupt theories or earth-shattering paradigms, but there is never a disconnected shift in theory. All new theories or paradigms have a grain of the previous paradigm, regardless of how disjointed or abrupt the growth seems. That grain of the old in the new supports faith in continuity. Amidst this continuity, a lot of new theories simply are problematic, but that quality is precisely what sparks the scientific process.
A major tenet of Kuhn’s argument is based on the idea of problem-creation. He argues that the “famous classics of science”, like Aristotle’s Physica, Franklin’s Electricity, Newton’s Principia, and Ptolemy’s Almagest, “served for a time implicitly to define the legitimate problems and methods of a research field for succeeding generations of practitioners” (Kuhn 10). These remarkably unprecedented achievements of science, known as “paradigms”, created such a long-lasting impact because of two vital components of each breakthrough. Each breakthrough was unprecedented enough to cause practitioners of the time -- contemporary scientists -- to gravitate away from “competing modes of scientific activity” and completely focus on this new paradigm (Kuhn 10). Secondly, these paradigms left an open-ended breakthrough that, like the thread that is pulled to unravel an all-new intertwining complexity, opens up an entirely new can of worms “leaving all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve” (Kuhn 10). It is clear the large role problems have in the evolution of scientific paradigms by diverting scientists from old problems to new ones.
Kuhn’s worldview operates from the perspective that people need problems to survive, or at least for science to endure. Indeed, this is partly true; a new problem leads to question, which leads to answers, which then produces breakthroughs. However, these paradigms exploit this problem-obsessed culture by not only distracting scientific practitioners away from competing theories, but then also ballooning out a whole new host of inquisition. This diversion sparked by the unprecedented breakthrough, coupled with the enticement of new problems, creates a tidal wave of relativistic change that leads to an entire eras -- Aristotelian dynamics, Newtonian, or Ptolemaic astronomy -- based on that paradigmatic breakthrough. These eras are then the gateway to practice that specific form of science, and the “study of paradigms...is what mainly prepares the student for membership in the particular scientific community with which he will later practice” (Kuhn 11).
Whatever the paradigm the scientist adheres to he must have an aim. The aim of science according to Kuhn is to create a theory -- a model or law -- that will account for as many observations possible in a coherent framework and to create a theory (model or law) that will account for as many observations possible in a coherent framework. Coherentism doesn’t rely on individual statements, but, rather, the idea that one theory can be justified by being part of a coherent system. This idea accepts the whole package -- the full system as a theory of beliefs. If the theory “all tree leaves are green”, is true, then theories in that same coherent system, like “all trees have brown bark”, must be, according to coherentism, also true.
The entire career of a scientist is puzzle-solving, and scientists pursue it with vocational tenacity. The current paradigm is truly tested within the limits of its scope. In the presence of anomalies -- failures of the current paradigm to explain the observed phenomena -- is where faith comes in. This is the transition in the paradigm shift. In order to continue remaining a scientist, you must have faith that the paradigm shift will occur and these new observations will be explainable. The anomaly created the “crisis” which gives way to scientists embarking on the phase of revolutionary science, which leads to the paradigm shift. The differences in theory between the time before and the time after a paradigm shift cannot be compared because they are so incredibly different.
It’s interesting that post-modernity is itself a paradigm that does not simply alter the methods, applications, generalizations, and rules of philosophy, but touches every discipline, from literature to astronomy to physics. Despite the fact that these seemingly unprecedented, disruptive, and explosive paradigms seem to come out of the blue with such revolutionary force that it seems impossible for them to have any ties with previous inquiry, these paradigms are simply punctuated epicenters of scientific growth. These new ideas are based on historical analyses. Kuhn says, “more profound awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory” (Kuhn 67). This awareness building off pre-existing theories is found in many areas. Kuhn cites examples of how Galileo’s theories of motion could not have arose if Aristotle’s theory had not been present for critique, or that Newton’s wave and light theory was based on the fact that pre-paradigmatic theories could not “explain the length of the spectrum (Kuhn 67). Even the extremely revolutionary concept of thermodynamics was simply a summation -- a product “born from the collision of two existing nineteenth-century physical theories” (Kuhn 67). Collisions, problems, and difficulties in explaining seem to be the ingredients for, or the very seed itself, an entirely new paradigm. The point is that while these paradigms seem to be major ruptures in thinking, they are the rational emergence of a solution. Usually, these solutions have been the long-sought answer to large-scale scientific problems.
You can’t have solutions without answers. Furthermore, the prerequisite for answers is the right question. Therefore, paradigmatic solutions arise out of qualitative inquiry. The appreciation of this inquiry makes the true scientist. Scientists must appreciate inquiry because effective inquiry generates tolerance for crisis. When a scientist fails to cope with crisis, they abandon science: “some men have undoubtedly been driven to desert science because of their inability to tolerate crisis” (Kuhn 78).
Many times people respond to crises by sheer reaction, which leads to irrational rejection. A reaction is irrational when there exists no segue, no alternative plan. Kuhn writes, “to reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself” (Kuhn 79). People need explanations if they have questions, and the answer to those questions is the purpose of paradigms -- to supply some explanation of reality. The abandonment of such a paradigm after pursuing answers is simply rejecting the process, which is a reflection “not on the paradigm but on the man” -- in this case, a man who easily gives up (Kuhn 79). To avoid this abandonment, one must adhere to the intellectual pursuit of science.
Paradigms are required with the commencement of intellectual pursuit, scientific problem-solving, and expansive questioning. The one exception to the necessity of the explanatory paradigm is before this question process. During these pre-paradigm periods, a paradigm is not needed because the scientist never sparked the sequential inquiry that would lead to a resulting paradigm. In other words, a scientist doesn’t arrive at the destination because they don’t know they should be traveling or the get lost and turn around. Therefore, if a scientist is seen without a paradigm for something he either never bothered to question a conflicting occurrence or simply abandoned a paradigm with discontinuity. While colleagues of the former may consider the man naive or too nonchalant towards difficult concepts or anomalies of science, the colleagues of the latter will definitely agree that he is “the poor carpenter who blames his tools” (Kuhn 80).
Conclusively, the great scientists -- the originators of paradigms, like Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton -- observe the normal science “puzzles” as major counterinstances, resulting in crisis (Kuhn 79). Kuhn describes how Copernicus refuted Ptolemy, how Lavoisier denounced Priestley’s “essentially solved” puzzle of phlogiston theory, and how Einstein considered the Lorentz and Fitzgerald’s slight “puzzles of articulation” major counterinstances (Kuhn 73).
The common link between all of these great scientists is the ability to distinguish between a trivial puzzle and a major counterinstance by taking the intrepid step to approach the problem from a different perspective. Kuhn elaborates on the need to observe from alternative viewpoints: “every problem that normal science sees as a puzzle can be seen, from another viewpoint, as a counterinstance and thus the source of crisis” (Kuhn 79).
After all, the vital component to revealing the counterinstance that starts the chain-reaction effect is the insinuation of a crisis. The crisis loosens the rules of conducting “normal science” research, creating a crisis-provoking anomaly that is responded to with either 1) normal science, where all returns to “normal”; 2) re-labeling, where the problem presumably persists because of a lack of tools and the problem-solving is, therefore, delayed for a future generation with more advanced tools; or 3) “the emergence of a new candidate for paradigm” and the ensuing transformation of the paradigm in crisis to a new paradigm actually solves the problem. The counterinstance is merely the camel that breaks the back of some inexplicable problem in some out-dated paradigm.
Simply approaching the perspective that illuminates counterinstances takes confidence. However, taking the alternative perspective that launches of an entirely new way of thinking, while others simply revert back to antiquated methods or maladaptively “re-label’ the problem, requires faith in science. Taking the perspective that could plausibly lead to a counterinstance requires courage, and those great scientists heroically committed themselves to realizing that crisis.
After the presence of a crisis has been officially “declared” (i.e. no re-labeling or reversion back to normal science will occur) the old paradigm is only declared invalid if a new one is present to take its place. This is true, obviously, because scientists “don’t blame their tools” and there always must be some kind of paradigm present (Kuhn 80). The transition from the paradigm in crisis to the new paradigm is not cumulative; rather, this “transition” is a reconstruction of the fundamentals. This fundamental reconstruction results in entirely new generalizations, completely original and new rules, and alterations in methods and applications.
The “paradigm transition” can be equated to an old fashioned roller coaster car, which merely executes a simple loop repetitively, that attaches onto the main coaster-train that does spins, loops, helixes, and dips. First, a connecting car (new paradigm) must be present for the old coaster-car (crisis-ridden paradigm) to evolve into a new coaster. The transitory step of connecting the old car, which simply looped circles, to the new coaster-train of the new ride completely reconstructs the fundamentals of that single coaster-car. Its general course (generalizations), regulations for riders (rules), coaster architecture (methods), and intensity of turns and loops (applications) is completely altered.
The medieval philosopher and monk William Ockham states the essentiality behind being clear and succinct with new paradigmatic theories. Ockham writes, “plurality should not be posited without necessity” (Thorburn 2). A new construct can and should only replace an outdated one if it is concise and necessary. The concept of Occam’s Razor could apply to Kuhn’s theory of paradigm transition. Where, given a theory A and a theory B, an augmentation of theory A defining similar material, the excess descriptive components should be “shaved” off, leaving us with only theory A --the basic, simple, direct approach. When it comes to new paradigms, one should simply observe which theory is most basic and that becomes valid paradigm.
Even though the choice over which paradigm is sustained by logical process, it could actually come down to which “portrait” one prefers (Kuhn 34). In the 17th century the general population much greatly preferred the geocentric universe model, and it took a lot of proof and scientific view of Copernicus to catalyze the paradigm shift, resulting in the truthful heliocentric universe. The heliocentric concept seems counter-intuitive, but it is true. Intuition and science are not polarities, but often share friction betwixt each other.
The anomalies that arise make old theories incommensurable and the “competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proof” (Kuhn 148). But the relationship between past and previous paradigms shouldn’t be a battle, but a certifying connection of the nascence of new truth with old truth. Both sets of theories, temporally (in their own time) were certifiable truths, after all. Kuhn reminds us that respect, not “battle”, should arise from each paradigm comparison, even if the theories from each are, as he puts it, “incommensurable” (Kuhn 83).
The interesting question -- the inquisition upon which science is based -- to ask is what certain beliefs are false in our universe? Everyone at the time of geocentrism wouldn’t believe anything else. There are, no doubt, many illusions we consider fact, like geocentrism. This does not insinuate our scientific method is flawed, but it does insinuate that we must continue with our scientific method to shatter veils of illusion and acquire a more valid sense of truth and clearer perception of reality. Getting closer and closer to reality with every new theory, by pealing off illusions, science is remarkable in crafting not our perceptions, but in removing any perceptive filter, allowing one to truly observe things as they exist and authentically embrace reality.
Even though the scientific process peels of layers of illusion, chaos and order still have omnipresence. These contradicting forces are not impediments, but, rather, dichotomous activity found in the balance of science, and even in politics. The Presidential term for Abe Lincoln, for example, started April 30, which was the same year the French Revolution peaked with the storming of the Bastille on July 14. The two instances were two and a half months apart This shows the balance of liberating order and chaos -- structured government and rebellious disorder -- on a globalistic scale. The U.S. citizens are implementing and solidifying the structure and design of the entire framework of their government with the election of Honest Abe, while, simultaneously, France's governmental design and structure is being dismantled and destroyed by the National Assembly. France is going through a paradigmatic transition as the ways of “normal science” governing are being fundamentally disrupted, while the reconstruction of the American new paradigm has just implemented its completing keystone. This could be examined as mutualistic harmony between the two nations -- an equilibrium in the reconstruction and deconstruction of political paradigm. This equilibrium is found even when one backtracks to the beginnings of the new nation and the origins of the French revolution.
Ironically, when the chaotic National Assembly was occurring in France, a body of order and discipline, George Washington was introduced in American government. Two weeks after George Washington was elected, on June 17, the Third Estate -- the Bourgeoisie and peasants, who differed from the First estate of clergy and Second estate of nobility -- declared themselves The National Assembly in Versailles, which became the rebellious National Constituent Assembly less than a month later on July 9. Six and a half months after Americans held their first presidential election on January 7, 1789, the National Constituent Assembly and bourgeoisie stormed the Bastille on July 14, indicating of a strongly destructive and chaotic climax in France. Kuhn was aware that competing paradigms were incommensurable and “practice their trades in different worlds” (Kuhn 150). However, these different, polarized worlds can be compared through their assuredly polarized evolutions -- one producing an argument and the other producing the counterargument. In the above example, the reconstructing permanence and stabilizing activity of the new America counterbalanced France’s deconstructing and chaotic activity.
“Even in the area of crisis, the balance of argument and counterargument can sometimes be very close indeed” (Kuhn 157). Congruence can be found in the equilibrium by understanding the not the differences in counterarguments and arguments, but the effective balance acquired in the presence of these two polarities. At times the actual contradiction between polarities can be used to create a more stable argument.
The source of Thomas Aquinas’s method of reasoning -- stating the question, then antithesis, followed by the thesis and supporting arguments, and finally the arguments refuting the antithesis – is derived from the balance between opposing ideas. In his method, however, the dissolution of opposing argument ends up supporting and further validating the thesis argument. It seems that science takes a similar approach with its progression from old paradigm to new paradigm.
Kuhn says that an inquiry begins with a random collection of “mere facts”, where researchers confront and interpret phenomena in completely unique ways, so that a pre-paradigmatic school occurs (Kuhn 17). This sounds incredibly loopy, almost like Foucault’s ideas of discourses trapping us, because a paradigm transforms a group into a disciplined profession. In this way the effects of a paradigm could be linked to Foucault’s idea of the carceral system, delinquents, and even the discipline of penitentiaries because of the nature of a paradigm research, which puts force on the “pre-formed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies” (Kuhn 24). The idea of science being puzzle-solving is interesting because research is often aimed to discover what is known in advance (proofs), just like puzzles have predetermined solutions.
The avenue to the solution, is the purpose of the research, not the product; kind of a journey emphasized over the destination, idea. Paradigms create revolutions because paradigmatic differences cannot be reconciled -- they are that extreme and the existing paradigm fails to fit. A scientific revolution is a developmental occurrence or episode where an older paradigm is completely replaced in whole or in part by a new paradigm that is somewhat incompatible until the revolution occurs. The Copernican revolution was revolutionary because of the resistance to completely replace the former geocentric paradigm with the new solar-centric paradigm -- which was incredibly mind-boggling at the time. A political revolution commences with a growing sense in members of a community that institutions or policies have inadequately helped the environment. The result of successful creative work is progress, and this progress, at times is revolutionary, but always beneficiary in the long run.
Kuhn’s paradigm, most certainly, must be treated with utmost care and conviction for fear of “future shock”. Put forth by American Alvin Toffler, future shock is “the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time” (Toffler 31). This abrupt rupture of orientation and order almost can occur with monumental paradigm shifts. But Toffler’s definition is flawed because abrupt introduction to new and complex material can provoke more than stress and disorientation; it can inspire momentum that otherwise could not be produced. Giving someone a jolt of information that is “too much to handle” can cause them to sort it out on their own, which possibly activates independence, personal motivation, as well as curiosity. Those three qualities right there are essentials to creating permanent and lasting happiness in one’s life
John Steinbeck says, “this monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me”. In other words, Steinbeck identifies with the gigantic global changes, connecting with the idea of global patterns reflecting patterns of his own lifestyle. The macrocosmic changes are germinations of changes in one’s own lifestyle. Kuhn examines the entire dynamic where a paradigm provokes massive macrocosmic future shock and change. However, Mark Twain suggests, “get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please”. While none of the scientists of whom Thomas Kuhn spoke were trying to generate distortion of factual information, they did end up distorting the laws of normal science by successfully “rewriting” the facts. Instead of simply reverting back to the old and flawed method, or mislabeling the problem, they forged ahead.
Obviously the idea of a “normal science” solution or a “normal science” label sounds much simpler than the monstrosity of evolving out of old methodology and into a new paradigm. Keying into the counterinstances also reveals an enormous potential for worldwide scientific, historical, or political changes to occur. Because of these myriad potential changes, the step that great scientists take is controversial and confrontational, but a decidedly necessary, leap of faith.
Works Cited
Campbell, Neil A. and Reece, Jane B. Biology, 6th Ed. New
York: Benjamin Cummings Publications, 2001.
Provided information on punctuated evolution (paradigmatic evolution) as
compared to gradual evolution.
Hoyningen-Huene, Paul. Reconstructing Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn’s
Philosophy of Science. Trans. Alexander Levine. Chicago: Chicago U P, 1993.
Provided analysis of Kuhn’s work as a theory and as an intellectual text.
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd ed.
Chicago: Chicago UP, 1996.
Palmer, R.R. Colton, Joel, and Kramer, Lloyd. A History of the
Modern World. 9th ed. Connecticut: McGraw-Hill Pub. 2002.
Provided useful information on the French Revolution in comparison to the growth in the emerging United States.
Popper, Karl. Conjectures and Refutations. London: Routledge and Keagan Paul
Publishing, 1963. pp. 33-39.
Provided definition of the concept of falsifiability with Popper’s
original words.
W.M. Thorburn, "The Myth of Occam's Razor," Mind 27:345-353 (1918).
A simple, but resourceful account of William Ockham and some of his phraseology.
Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. New York: Bantam Books Publishing, 1971.
Described the concept of future shock.
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Foucault’s Account of the Punitive and Disciplinary Evolution
John Kuczmarski
August 3, 2005
Revision August 16, 2005
Philosophy Independent Study: Post-Modernity & Modernity
Professor Hernandez-Lemus
Foucault’s Account of the Punitive and Disciplinary Evolution
When the French hunger strike ended in January 1971, Michel Foucault and other reformers submitted to the French press an announcement for the formation of a new political movement, the Group d’Information surs les Prisons, or the GIP (Caduff 4). The GIP became the catalyst for Foucault to visit numerous prisons in France and America. During his investigations he spoke in many cities and wrote pamphlets and journals about what he had seen, describing the quality of the prisons and explaining the conditions of the prisons in terms of power in society. During this time, he was influenced by the philosophers of his time. After Nietzsche freed him from the prison of “Hegelian philosophy and the existentialism of Marxism and Sartre” and after he discovered the structuralist system of language, Foucault utilized his chronicles of prison life findings and compiled them in his renowned book, Discipline and Punish (Sheridan 321). What sparked Foucault to write Discipline and Punish was the warped and immoral origins of the modern prison system:
Not the good will and humanity of reformers and changes to criminal law, but the emergence of a disciplinary society and a consequent new articulation of power gave rise to the prison” (Lechte 113).
The disciplinary society and the hierarchy associated with the power structure of prisons compose most of the Foucault’s research and analysis of his book.
Discipline and Punish is a historical account of how the modern penal system came about.
By investigating power relations with punishment and torture, by describing the crucial role of the audience in public execution ceremonies and by elaborating on the established power roles, Foucault shows that punishment is directly linked to power in many contexts. The 18th century showed a reform in the nature of punishment, but the reformers -- those who changed and altered the nature of punishment -- weren’t concerned about the prisoners. Rather, they aimed to bring in a representations and signs where punishment would be an obstacle to law breaking.
The usage of punishment as a symbol to stymie crime strongly resembles Jean Baudrillard’s Simulations and Simulacra, which discuss the break of signs and simulations from what they represent so that society operates in a bubble-like hyper-reality. However, the penitentiaries and forms of punishment that Foucault discusses are not mere hyper-realities. Instead the punishment “was seen as a technique for the coercion of individuals; it operated methods of training the body -- not signs -- by the traces it leaves” (Foucault 131). The fact that these punishments of the late eighteenth century leave trace scars made them very real, and the fact that they and have a “coercive, corporal, solitary, secret model of power” was a unique breach from the representative, scenic, signifying, public, collective model” (Foucault 131).
In the past, Foucault makes it clear that in “ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people” (Foucault 57). Like the actor who performs his final show without audience, “an execution that was known to be taking place, but which did so in secret, would scarcely have any meaning” (Foucault 57). Gallows were erected in public squares and “the corpses of executed persons were displayed” as an instigation of fear and as a reminder (Foucault 58). Seeing the gallows, the corpses, the aftermath of wrongdoing provoked fear. The people “must be made to be afraid,” Foucault writes; “they must see with their own eyes” the consequences and punishment of wrongdoing (Foucault 58). But the exhibition of the public punishment system also served as a reminder, demonstrating the people’s two-fold right to “be the witnesses, the guarantors, of the punishment” and that the people had the right to, in “innumerable ways”, humiliate, insult, and attack the criminal (Foucault 58).
This revenge of the people provided assistance to the king when the king avenged enemies, “especially when those enemies were to be found among the people” (Foucault 59). The process of verifying the king’s punishments was a “scaffold service” owed to the king. When the people were called upon “to manifest [their] power”, they appear to predate the criminal “prey” to the extent where the criminal must be “protected from the crowd” (Foucault 59). All of this, in turn, supports the power of the sovereign because it becomes a sign of allegiance. It is remarkable the intricacies of power dynamics interwoven into a heckling crowd and a condemned criminal.
The public punishments were all a process of revealing and making crimes visible through atrocity: “atrocity is that part of the crime that the punishment turns back as torture in order to display it in the full light of day” (Foucault 56). The atrocity of the punishment is the retributional whiplash of the crime, disclosed with an agonizingly grandiose spectacle. Through the overt and revealing display of a crime through the atrocity of torture, the crime is highlighted and divulged, and the criminal’s behavior, publicized.
The essence of being put on display and exhibited becomes the very punishment itself in Foucault’s Panopticon. Before Panopticism, the role of punishment “gradually ceased to be a spectacle” until, eventually, “punishment [tends] to become the most hidden part of the penal process” (Foucault 9).
Panopticism marked an apex in the evolution of the prison because of its inverse developments betweens operators and controlled criminals through simple architecture. The design of a “tower pierced with wide windows” perfected the operations of power by decreasing the amount of necessary discipliners, while simultaneously increasing the potential amount of people to control (Foucault 200). In this Panopticism the “pomp of sovereignty”, which was vital to 18th century punishments, involving the atrocity of the guillotine and gallows, was no longer necessary. Instead, the “necessarily spectacular manifestations of power” were “extinguished one by one in the daily exercise of surveillance”, and vigilance became the atrocity in the panoptic prison (Foucault 217).
The prisoner of a Panopticon is free of the typical prisoner’s physical punishments and lifestyle restrictions, but they do not share the privacy of a free man. Instead, they experience an agonizing exposure, which becomes their prison and their punishment. Within their panoptical prison all freedoms of privacy are exploited with the center tower, making public the lives of all prisoners. From this tower, voyeurism becomes a weapon for punishing the prisoners through mere exhibition.
While the involvement of necessary spectacle diminished with the Panopticon, the punitive power of society actually increased with Bentham’s invention. Before a “dark room into which individuals spied”, the institution of punishment was transformed into a transparent building in which the exercise of power maybe supervised by society as whole (Foucault 207).
Transparency often has a therapeutic connotation. While the role transparency plays in the Panopticon was not directly meant to be therapeutic, the Panopticon does mark an evolution out of degrading and futile punishments towards productive attempts at evoking better behavior. 20th century cognitive psychologist, Carl Rogers -- a contemporary to Foucault, who died in 1987, only three years after Foucault’s death – invented a client-centered therapy under which a main distinctive feature was congruence. Congruence was when the “counselor’s outward responses match their inner awareness and feelings; that they are genuine, real, open, authentic and transparent” (Coyle 28). Although the transparency in client-centered therapy and the transparency of the Panopticon are not directly analogical, the Panopticon does have a much more therapeutic method of punishment than the spectacle of torture from the pre-18th century. Therapy is the most civilized method of instigating reform and punishment is most abrasive, uncivilized, and possibly ineffective; the discipline of Panopticism falls somewhere in between these extremes.
In a way, however, the surveillance in a Panopticon is simply a more sophisticated form of the crowds heckling and throwing tomatoes at the condemned criminal on the way to the gallows. However, the subtlety and blatant exposure of how society uses its power to punish causes the Panopticon to “strengthen the social forces” in society and “raise the level of public morality, to increase and multiply ” (Foucault 208).
This multiplication and amplification of power associated with Panopticism makes it an ideal form of discipline. Foucault says, the chief purpose of discipline, “’strict discipline’” is “to train, rather than select and levy” (Foucault 208). Truly effective discipline “does not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to multiply and use them” (Foucault 179).
Different from punishment, which has an element of humiliation and an occasional aim of destruction for the perpetrator, discipline “’makes’ individuals”, transforming them from “moving, confused, useless multitudes of bodies and forces into a multiplicity of individual elements” (Foucault 170). Discipline individualizes and mobilizes, while punishment merely mitigates and condemns the wrongdoer. Discipline is an effective instigator of reform with the power dynamics, strongly associated with punishment systems, extracted out of the process. If the goal of any kind of penalty – direct torture, punishment, or discipline – is to transform a person’s destructive conduct into industrious behavior, discipline may not be the most responsive method, but it certainly results in the most securely-sustained changes in the mannerisms of the wrong-doer.
The prison aims to not only limit freedom, but to reform its subjects. The penitentiary -- a prison that deprives freedom and also makes them work, and treats them in a hospital – offers limited and controlled work to its participant. Schools, factories, and the army could be looked at as subtly possessing certain elements of penitentiaries. Using the school analogy, freedom (time during class) is limited and controlled by work (homework, tests, and assignments) and in some educational institutions there even exists an on-campus hospital to complete the “penitentiary equation”. Schools obviously aim to help students grow and are anything but prisons, but they do, at times, incapacitate freedom.
The discipline that schools produce aims to create healthy boundaries so that freedom isn’t squandered, and the individual is actually freer because of increased focus and productivity. However, when any institutions simply discipline for the sake of disciplining -- instead of creating healthy boundaries -- they quickly start to look and feel extremely similar to an “institutional penitentiary”.
The problem with an actual prison, however, occurs when the prisoner habituates to being a prisoner. In the prison habituation, “the process of filtering out large quantities of inconsequential stimuli from the environment,” becomes very dangerous because the prisoner soon becomes less and less sensitized to them being a prisoner (Rue (97). Soon, the prison-life behind bars is accepted as the norm for the prisoner, and this acceptance blinds the prisoner from their potential to effectively reform. Fortunately, the penitentiary, while still problematic, doesn’t leave as damaging effects to its subjects after habituation sets in.
The true penitentiary doesn’t house “prisoners”, but “delinquents”, defined as an “abnormal” lower class group of hardened criminals who are controlled by the carceral system (the architecture, staff, and regulations of discipline of the prison or penitentiary). The delinquent is easier to control than the criminal because a small, isolated group is easier to contain than a large roaming pod of brigands. Again, the improvements in efficacy of very few controlling very many that resulted from the Panopticon --less necessary surveyors in the tower and more potential people to be controlled -- are clearly present in the penitentiary, as well.
It is interesting that the relation of prisoner to delinquent is similar to the relationship between delinquent and a worker of a defunct factory. These workers, like delinquents, are disciplined and isolated in a small controlled group, bound by regulations, staff, and architecture of their institutions. “Schools, factories, and the army” are all examples of disciplinary systems that seamlessly lead to the “birth of the prison as the main form of legal punishment in the 19th century” (Lechte113). This is not vilifying education, industry, or military, which are vital to human existence and growth in the mind and spirit of mankind, but merely pointing out that, while schools, armies, factories and other disciplinary institutions may ideologically contribute to the idea of prisons, this connection does not mean the disciplinary institutions must be prison-like.
Defunct institutions -- similar to penitentiaries -- simply must vanish; their inert and incapacitating impact limits the mind, when it should be expanding it. The evocative schools and other institutions truly evoke sincerities of individualization and prosperous tendencies for greater happiness in the individual. The prisons and carceral system create delinquency to control crime, and Foucault says eradicating prisons is a failure to notice how embedded prisons are in modern society prisons. While they do exist, the bleakness of a penitentiary does not have to seep into atmospheres of every disciplinary institution institutions.
Even though Foucault considers disciplinary institutions and prisons to be hand in hand, the prison actually exploits discipline by using simple and incessant surveillance as a form of punishment. Although this is much less gruesome than the tortured and publicly mutilated body of the condemned from the 18th century, it still warps the positive benefits of discipline and self-discipline because, being in bubble-like prison, they are removed from society.
In addition to aspirations for different and improved behavior, a lot of the drive behind self-discipline is Irving Goffman’s impression management: “when an individual appear in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize his activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interest to convey” (Rue 153). In a prison, however, no respect is rewarded for effective impression. The fact that prisoners don’t have to be considered with impression in prison makes them somewhat suspicious characters transitioning out of prison, if released into society. A rough transition is expected, when thrust into world where impressions are highly regarded and the lack of values quickly results in recidivism.
Foucault also discusses the logical precedents for power as being resistance, reciprocity, and relationships (Foucault Ethics 267). Power can only occur with resistance (Foucault Ethics 167). Without resistance, power is absent because there is no control mechanism in operation. In the movie, Schindler's List, Schindler discusses how a boy who committed a crime approaches an emperor that instantly kills anyone who has committed the slightest error. Begging for mercy, the boy is expecting to die for certain, but the emperor chooses to pardon him, revealing the emperor’s true power. Self-control, like the ability to control one’s habits or tendencies, is immense power, too. This idea of restraint being a component of power leads to the relational role of power. “In the relations of power”, at least two people are always involved (Foucault Ethics 291). Additionally, with the idea that a great power is the choice to execute or restrain one’s own influence, you cannot say someone has "power" without detailing the social relationship of whom that person has power over, through, or with.
What is very interesting is how power operates reciprocally in addition to operating with resistance and relationally. If someone wants a lot of food, and a person gives out a little food, the distributor has power based on how much they wish to sell and what prices they use, but the buyer provides the business, so clearly they have power, too. Power through reciprocation operates almost universally; an employer holds power because they can control the wages, hire, or fire people. But workers have power because they can leave, work with more or less diligence, or group together or fall apart. In other words, the manager controls the wages, but the worker controls the work ethic. Power always operates reciprocally, and with equal reciprocity.
Foucault's idea of belief systems having power through people, instead of just on them, is vital because it shows that these very belief systems have power. Deconstruction often reveals hidden power structures and relationships that could be emphasized or rebuilt for greater stability or for new types of illumination. The three R's are vital to dismantling power. The fact that resistance is needed, allows you to dismantle power by not resisting, not by being passive, but simply actively adapting and addressing your needs through non-resistance. Relationships in power means there are always two people involved in power, so no one has power by himself or herself.
Knowing that one person can never have power alone helps to dismantle the idea of power because it supports the impossibility of a true totalitarian dictatorship or a truly omnipotent prison; there are always at least two people involved with power. The “have” and a “have-nots” are never immutable roles and these labels can be swiftly shifted with ease, regardless of how subservient one is to a form of discipline or punishment. Finally, reciprocal power ensures one always have some sway over the person eliciting power above them. One always has complete power or no power with these terms. If one uses them advantageously they will realize that they are always endowed with some kind of power, but if they get overwhelmed with such pre-conditions, one quickly becomes imprisoned by power.
The prison system, ultimately, is power through punishment. Using mere punishment as a power source is a fragile, unreliable reference because of the way power is based on reciprocity, resistance, and relationships. In the days of 18th century gallows the king and the people possessed a punitive power, but it was based on fear and chaos. The people were afraid of the consequences and they haphazardly humiliated the condemned. Discipline, however, proves to be the most effective resource for reform because “it arrests or regulates movements; it clears up confusion; it dissipates compact groupings of individuals wandering about the country in unpredictable ways” (Foucault 219). From this discipline, especially self-discipline people have more access to their personal strengths. While the shift from open, signifying, and public displays of punishment to the more discreet Panopticism is beneficial for civilizing prisons, discipline remains the best way to access clarity through regulation and the dissolution of confusion and aimless wandering. From this centered state, one generates compassion. Compassion demands authentic virtue, so in possessing it, one is endowed with the authentic connection of empowerment through discipline.
Works Cited
Caduff, Carlo. “Foucault’s Motion.” EspacesTemps.net, May 2005.
http://espacestemps.net/document1164.html.
Served as an introduction to Foucault’s major ideas and theories.
Coyle, Breeda. The Use Of Person-Centred Counseling in Guidance and Counseling
Practice in Schools. Georgia: Georgia U P, 1992.
Expanded on the distinctive features of Rogers’s client-centered therapy, namely congruence.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Modern Prison. Trans. Alan
Sheridan. New York: Second Vintage Books, 1977.
Foucault, Michel. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. The Essential Works of Foucault: 1954-
1984. Ed. Paul Rabinow. Vol. 1. Paris: The New Press, 1997.
Lechte, John. Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Postmodernity.
Cornwall: Routledge Publications, 1994.
Provided an extremely useful synopsis of major post-modern/modern philosophers or philosophers that immediately proceeded post-modernity.
Rogers, Carl. Counseling and Psychotherapy: New Concepts in Practice. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1942.
Detailed Carl Roger’s client-centered therapy which discussed transparency which is analogical to the transparency of the Panopticon
Rue, Loyal D. By the Grace of Guile. New York: Oxford U P, 1994.
Useful potpourri of information including impression management and habituation.
Sheridan, Alan. Entretiens avec Le Monde. Vol. 1, Philosophies. Paris, Découverte,
1984.
Provided an interview between the translator of his book, Sheridan, and Foucault regarding facts detailing Foucault’s Nietzschian influence and freedom from Hegelian philosophy.
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The Expediency and Grace of the Postmodern Language Game
August 5, 2005
Final Revision August 15, 2005
Philosophy Independent Study: Postmodernity & Modernity
Professor Hernandez-Lemus
Expediency and Grace of the Postmodern Language Game
From the layman to the distinguished philosopher, the mere definition of postmodernity is daunting. Is it “beyond” modernity or does it abandon it? Does it build off concepts of the modern, or does it discard them entirely? The best method for comprehending modernity is through its founders. Jean Lyotard definitely became a partial father to the movement when he wrote The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. In his postmodern analysis, Lyotard puts forth the role of language games and presents a discussion of metanarratives such as the “whole unites the parts”, “every society exists for the good of its members”, and Durkheim’s idea of society being an organic, holistic unicity (Lechte 246).
Two major influential metanarratives that have received a great deal of contemplation, research, and reflection from the modernist thinkers are “the idea that knowledge is produced for its own sake and that knowledge was produced for a people-subject in quest of emancipation” (Lechte 246). However, just as a new paradigm completely replaces the old paradigm with a new set of truths, the postmodern paradigm replaced the modernist emphasis on truth-seeking in general.
Zygmunt Bauman, a British sociologist of polish descent, drew strong parallels between modernity and totalitarianism. While Bauman did not create any of these distinctions, he conducted a very serious comparative analysis between the tendencies and beliefs of modern and postmodern philosophers. For example, modernists believe in the necessity of natural and social laws, but postmodernists simply believe in “contingency and chance” (Bauman 449). The postmodern solution offers more flow and evolution because the modern emphasis on necessity quickly can become a fixation that stymies expansion. Additionally, modernity advocates universality, while postmodernity says that one can only know their own experience, thus, favoring “locality and particulars” (Bauman 448). Similarly, modernity adheres to truth and reality, while postmodernity criticizes such “tradition-bound analysis” (Bauman 448).
Postmodernity affirms “no ultimate proof is available for settling disputes of these goals” put forth by modernism (Lechte 246). Why bother trying to find non-existent proof of a goal that will remain relatively unsettled when a new paradigmatic shift occurs? At first, this appears to be an organized form of copping out, but in reality, it is connecting interesting research—“phonology and theories of linguistics, problems of communication and cybernetics, modern theories of algebra and informatics, computers and their languages” – with its innate linguistic roots instead of wasting time trying to find some all-pervasive pattern (Lyotard 3). This is definitely not saying that truths don’t exist.
Truths have veracity and are not fallacious within their respective paradigm. Truths only have validity within their own paradigmatic realm, which is similar to most definitions. The word “set” at a swimming pool tells the swimmers to get ready to start the race as in “ready, set, go”, in math “set” refers to a set of numbers, like the set of all real numbers, in film-making the “set” is where the movies is shot, and in cards, a “set” could be a sequence of cards like all “hearts”, for example. There are countless synonyms, and the definition of the word set is “true” in each of these areas, but its veracity is categorized. This categorization is similar to how truths are categorized respective to their specific paradigm, to the paradigmatic era in which the truth occurs. Geocentrism was “true” until the Copernicus revolution came about and the text books were re-written for heliocentrism. And within the respective paradigm of geocentrism (Medieval Times thinking), geocentrism is still not a fallacy. Obviously, the need to compare paradigms and go with the most “recent” certainty is the recipe for ideological growth, new scientific frontiers, and general evolution. Clearly, postmodernism isn’t saying truths don’t exist or that truths are fallacious, but rather, that there exists many truths. Truths must simply be registered in their specific paradigmatic compartments, and these compartments have their own patterns and evidence.
With postmodernism, the discovery of patterns still occurs, but these truths are additional bonuses and not the obsession of the movement. As Weber so eloquently anticipated, major events in the 20th century like World War Two “have shifted the emphasis from the ends of action to its means” (Lyotard 37). Focusing on the end truths causes the researcher to want to skip over the research process, the means.
This modernist tendency of adhering to the ends and neglecting the means is detrimental to science because so much of science is based, not on the singular paradigmatic transitions sparked by a crisis-inducing counterinstances, but the pain-staking process of “normal science” (Kuhn 4). In a sense, the respect of the “normal science” process is part of the essence of postmodernism.
By embracing the process, or the means, postmodernity gives way to a research method that has much more patience and reward associated with it because the process becomes the bulk of the research, so more of the actual goal of the research is acquired. In contrast, the modernist goal of the final discovery occurs very infrequently, so modernist research seems more often stagnant or unsuccessful than booming with goal achievements. There is an old phrase, “you should always keep score because you could already be winning and not know it”. Postmodernism has a twinge of that adage in its “blood” because it focuses on the process of science as the rewarding part, and because the process – the painstaking research – occurs so often in science, accepting and embracing it is an extremely simple, but redeeming and inspiring way to go about “normal science” and research. Appreciating the means is not only logical and practical but also more satisfactory of the researcher.
Being obsessed with the ends, after all, in a field like science where the end of research is reached only on rare occasions, would be like painting a picture with the purpose of trying to fill the white space of the canvas. If the researcher’s only motivation is a modernist aspiration to “paint in empty space” and reach the final product, they will not get nearly as far as the postmodernist scientist who “paints for the sake painting” and comes across major truths in his process. With the pace of modern science and the high “turnover rate” of theories and discoveries, a scientist will rarely remain grounded in a specific theory, considering it truth, for more than a short duration. In other words amidst the expansiveness and mutabability of the research process, a researcher stays at the “destination”, or the end result, for a very short time during a very “long car trip”, or scientific process, so why not enjoy the journey and respect the means?
The problem with being obsessed, and only focusing in the ends, is that one becomes hung up on conclusions and either misses the larger picture or misses the fact that this “end’ is simply an eventual stepping stone for some new growth. Lyotard refers to major leaps in science to illustrate this: “quantum theory and microphysics require a far more radical vision of the idea of a continuous and predictable path” of research (Lyotard 56). Quantum theory and microphysics, like heliocentrism from geocentrism, appear as final certainties, provoking the rare satisfaction of the modernist. However, just as geocentrism was once a “certainty”, these paradigms will no doubt become visible not as the beginning of the river of knowledge, but part of the flow itself as new discoveries are made. When these final “certainties” get built on, they become part of the means and the process. Eventually, it becomes clear that the entire scientific endeavor is a large process with short miniscule respites of supposed certainty where new theories, like microphysics, are formulated.
The postmodern emphasis on process is a win-win situation because, by examining the means, one can experience the “underlying method as a whole” (Lechte 247). Given the sequence of this procedure, one could still plausibly find a “grand narrative”. However, the fixation with the unlikely all-encompassing narrative, which detrimentally stymies the scientific process, is not emphasized (Lechte 247). Postmodernism is all the good stuff of modernism with the inefficiency removed. Obsession and fixation on end theories were a problem with modernism, so they were replaced with a postmodernist variation of Wittgenstein’s “language games” (Lyotard 10).
The de-emphasis on truth and will and the increasingly importance on philosophy of language in Wittgenstein’s “games” , would have been revered by Nietzsche who felt that will was highly over-rated: “the inner world is full of false pictures and spooks, and the will is one of these. [At best] it merely accompanies what goes on, and can even be absent” (Nietzsche 5). Just like a definition cannot contain the defining word itself (a recursive definition), the limit of language and language games cannot be formulated within language. Language cannot be used to define the limits of language. However, resemblances of overlapping connotations of words can ambiguously shape glimpses of a grand truth, “grand narratives no longer have credulity, for they are part of a language game which is itself part of a multiplicity of language games” (Lechte 247).
Postmodernity, therefore, does not neglect truth, but actually focuses on a more direct relationship with truth. In other words, if a modernist philosopher is seeking oranges (truth), they will simply seek the orange. They will look in clothing stores, city streets, the ocean, farms, etc. – every place without discrimination – for that orange. But the postmodernist who also seeks oranges (truth) does not seek the orange specifically, but keeps an eye out for groves (the language of truth) from which he will find his orange. Postmodernism still has faith in finding a grand narrative (orange), it just goes about the same pursuit with greater awareness in the source and substance of veracity -- language games. For the purpose of legitimizing as much knowledge as possible, “science is now best understood” with these language games (Lechte 247).
Without an explicit quest for truth, these games seem to be free for alls without guidelines, hectic epicenters of chaos lacking any kind of structure. However, Lyotard points out three key “observations” regarding language games (Lyotard 10). Firstly, he points out that the rules of the game “do not carry within themselves their own legitmation,” and the rules of a game are an “object of a contract” between the players (Lyotard 10). The players do not invent the rules, but, rather, create a framework for agreeing upon the rules. Secondly, any game needs the presence of rules to be a language game, and the nature of these rules is extremely sensitive. Even the most miniscule “’move’ or utterance that does not satisfy the rules” of its corresponding game, the small utterance could completely “alter the nature of the game” (Lyotard 10). Finally, Lyotard observed that, whether it creates a framework of agreement, satisfies or does not satisfy the game rules, every utterance “should be thought of as ‘move’ in the game” of agonistics (Lyotard 10).
The nature of these rules, then, is that they are not legitimized and, instead, held together by a contract designed by its players. While the nature of the rules does reflect that contract, these rules are mutable. Furthermore, the mutable rules held together by the conflict between the two players are extremely sensitive and suggestive to influences or utterances. This sounds exactly like water in a bowl. The bowl, or the contract, binds the water, the rules of the game, but the water (rules) is extremely suggestive to the movements (the utterances or “moves”) of the bowl. The water, like the rules, takes the shape of bowl, or the game contract, but it is extremely sensitive to outside influences. This is not saying a postmodern language game is trivial because it lacks no foundation, but, rather, that the nature of the game has tremendous flexibility and nearly boundary-less constraints, making it a very complex and fascinating game.
The games emphasize that “to speak is to fight, in the sense of playing” (Lyotard 10). This is not suggesting that language games are quarrels, which would degrade them to animals playfully tackling each other. The games do not abandon the quest for truth. Instead, they are actually completely open to the discovery of truth; they are just not engrossed with finding certainty. The language games bring about “the sheer pleasure of [a move’s] invention” without the need to win.
This satisfaction of creating witty “turns of phrase, words and meanings” is at the “expense of an adversary”. The success at the expense of an adversary should not produce conflict because of the second principle of games, which ensures that all players have access to influential “moves”. The presence of such influential moves creates a “social bond” between the players of the game (Lyotard 11). Because of the extremely loose and broad definition of the language game and the fact that any utterance in general becomes a “move”, speaking at all automatically becomes a gesture indicating participation in this language game.
Of the people who are aware they are playing a language game, it seems that there are three types of players. First, there are the “contemplative players”, who put tremendous weight on every utterance, or “move”, and approach speaking delicately as if playing a long, slow, contemplative gigantic chess game. They believe a false move could produce irrevocable damage and every move is vital to the game’s development Chit-chatting, if such a thing is possible, with a “contemplative player” is similar to reading the editorial section of a newspaper; the article presents ties in factual information but its presentation has been pondered greatly and peripheral thoughts and theories (opinions) have been woven into its delivery.
`Then there are the “impetuous players ”, who realize that in the grand picture of a an eternal game of language, there are no winners and losers and thus, speak on whim. They aim to play as many games as possible, learning through experience without regret or even the belief in such a thing as a “false move”. Their choice to learn through experience makes them constantly rifling through games. Talking with an “impetuous player” would be like reading baseball statistics or the stock quotes in a newspaper; each little quotation or statistic is trivial, but bulk of that information is quite informative.
Finally, there is the happy median between the two extremes of impulsivity and contemplation, the “deliberate players”. The “deliberate players” realize that there are no winners or losers (siding with the impetuous players) and don’t over-analyze their utterances when they speak, but they also treat each game with a certain degree of reverence (siding with the contemplative players) and avoid haphazardly rifling through games. Speaking with a deliberate player would be similar to reading the front page of a newspaper; the topics are important and not trivial, but they haven’t been brooded over for large periods of time. So, a front-page columnist, sportswriter, and editorialist – there you have all three categories of language game players, each possessing its own dynamic of involvement, meaning and use of words, methods of showing and saying, and “autonomy of grammar” (Lechte 246).
Political philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, after adopting a concept put forth ancient Greek poet Archilochus, divided the world Russian writers into hedgehogs and foxes, saying “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” (Berlin 5). A fox, like Tolstoy, is a master of evidence-gathering but hasn’t yet mastered induction. Because they can’t build upon patterns to arrive at encompassing theories, foxes see “a multiplicity of things without fitting them into some universal framework” (Stengel 1). In contrast, a hedgehog, like Dostoevsky, chooses to “relate everything to a single, all embracing principle”. Their problem is that they are glued to, fixated upon, induction and only see things as all-encompassing concepts, the fruits of much philosophical contemplation and theory (Stengel 1). Clearly, the relationship between “contemplative players” --who contemplate each move of his language game to arrive at, in terms of interwoven concepts, an editorial-like grand concept – and the hedgehog is fairly obvious. On the other hand, the “impetuous player”, with the sportswriter-like affinity for facts and statistics, but lacking in universal truths, is similar to the multiplicitous fox. Obviously, the best compromise between the excessive contemplation of the “contemplative player” and the ceaseless evidence-seeking of the “impetuous player” is the “deliberate player”, the hedgehog-fox hybrid, who equal distributes meditation and research to generate copious universal truths.
If all scientists or all people for that matter, could aim not for just one all-encompassing metanarrative, but instead –without, simultaneously, getting swept up in the quest for grand resolutions and enjoy the “fun of the game” -- accept the possibility of the presence of myriad truths, science and our personal evolution would cover new frontier and experience new paradigms very quickly and efficiently. With expediency and grace that the bulky, modernist expedition for pure truth could never have achieved, tremendous progress in discovering truth is made through the clever, postmodernist language games.
Obviously, transforming the modernist pursuit of truth into a language game puts a lot of importance to the any element of speech. Indeed, Lyotard points out the dual nature of speech acts: “speech acts relevant to this form of knowledge are performed not only by the speaker, by also by the listener” (Lyotard 21). Because speech in general has received so much recognition and “play time” in the creation of these new games, the role of the listener and the speaker have become equivocal. The recognition of the mutualistic importance of both the speaker and the listener is an example of a postmodern value put into practice.
However, there still exists the remains of many modernist practices that have veracity in modernism, but only clog postmodernism. Amidst the strong prominence of speech in the postmodern quest for truth, lies the remnants of modernist narratives, “splinters of potential narratives , or molds of old ones, which have continued to circulate on certain levels of the contemporary social edifice” (Lyotard 22). Like the “splintered” debris from a dam that has burst in a river, the narratives and narrative molds of the modernist framework litter and congest the flow of the postmodern discourse. While postmodernism aims to eradicate grand narratives, the splinters of past narratives remain because “in their prosody can be recognized the mark of that strange temporalization that jars the golden rule of our knowledge: ‘never forget’” (Lyotard 22).
The pattern of intonation and versification behind the modernist axioms and metanarratives taught us to never forget the narrative mold. After all, at the peak of modernism, such narratives were considered to be the end all be alls.
To the modernist, such metanarratives are the ultimate ends, the fruits of endless research. Metanarratives should be dissolved because they are not the ends of ends but mere stepping stones in the perpetual discovery of truth. While postmodernist, however, realizes that “endless research” is indeed endless discovery -- that grand metanarratives are not all-encompassing conclusions because they will quickly be washed over by new findings, once again giving heed to the significance of process and not product – the installation of the modernist metanarrative architectures was very effective and through that “strange temporalization” that causes “splinters of potential narratives” to continuing circling the social structure, fragments of them are still around. Like a building whose debris scatters the building postmodern building site, the old modernist ways are terrific within the realm of modernism, but outside of it, they simply congest the postmodern process.
Unlike an archaeologist who digs up fossils of the past, hoping to link pieces together to get a grand picture of the whole, the postmodernist is aware of the presence of a grand picture; the modernist was painting that grand picture with metanarratives. The postmodernist isn’t as concerned with filling that body of knowledge of discovery and findings, but teaching it to the learner. He asks “who transmits learning? What is transmitted? To whom? (Lyotard 48). As with any utilization of Socratic method, the answer to these questions become the structure enabling an institution to effectively instruct: “the desired goal becomes the optimal contribution of higher education to the best performativity of the social system” (Lyotard 48). Clearly, contributing to the performativity of the social system is beneficial and highly praiseworthy.
However, many times decision-makers and technocrats erroneously claim that “they ‘know’ that society cannot know its own needs since they are not variables independent of new technologies” (Lyotard 63). Because it is made up of the very dynamic components that have those necessities, like education, industry, and business all having distinct needs, society itself is not aware of its expansively changing and adapting integral needs, so the claim of these decision-makers that they “know” what “society designates as its needs” certainly cannot be trusted and must be registered not as a prediction but merely as a sign of arrogance ((Lyotard 63).
Some decision-makers claim to be in a position where they “identify themselves with the social system conceived as a totality in quest of its most performative unity possible” (Lyotard 63). Associating oneself with such a highly idealistic identification is certainly meritable, but such an identification is impossible according to the “pragmatics of science” (Lyotard 63). After all, a scientist’s job, also hinted at by Kuhn, is to open things up and discover its integral parts: a scientist “does not prejudge that a case has already been closed or that the power of ‘science’ will suffer it if is reopened. In fact the opposite is true” (Lyotard 63). The attempt of the decision-makers to associate themselves with the performative unity of society as whole is admirable, but the assumption that “a research project, or the aspirations of a researcher” detracts from the “performance of ‘science’ as a whole” is simply an erroneous conjecture. It is the utilization of the fallacious assumption that research inhibits scientific performance and the claim they “know” society, which defines “the arrogance of the decision-makers” (Lyotard 63). Even without arrogance, however, a scientist still must earn approval in his or her respective field.
While a lot the emphasis on approval within the realm of science is replaced by calculations, date, and inductions, “for science to progress, the individual scientist, or group of scientists, must win the approval of all other scientists in the same field” (Lechte 247). As Kuhn pointed out, the “study of paradigms...is what mainly prepares the student for membership in the particular scientific community with which he will later practice” (Kuhn 11). The membership in that community requires the approval of other scientists amidst the complex research process and formulation of proof. A lot of this approval is earned through performance in language games.
Clearly these games are not combative, but benign dialectics enmeshed in the fabric of the pursuit of knowledge. From this placement in the pursuit of knowledge, such language games play a large role in performativity. Technology follows the principle of performativity: “maximum output for minimum input” (Lechte 247). A person has high academic performativity if he or she can calculate and act upon exactly the minimum amount of time it will require to write a paper or study for a test, to get the maximum grade in the paper or the test. The idea of an ideological fusion between a “contemplative player” (hedgehog editorialist) and a “impetuous player” (sportswriter fox) and acquiring the maximum amount of veracity has an element of performativity in it, and such a centered state of deliberation would bring forth a great amount of efficiency in these games.
A lot of the basis for technology in scientific research has drifted from good old-fashioned, rudimentary investigation towards high caliber funding: “although inexpensive, pure research in search of truth is still possible, expensive research is becoming the norm” (Lechte 248). In order to get funding, the long-term relevance of the funding must be clear and substantiated. The process of justifying how certain expensive research will have long-term relevance is based on the language game of performativity. Although it seems counterintuitive that performativity could be considered a gateway to truth, “once performativity dominates, truth and justice tend to be the outcome of the best-funded research” (Lechte 248).
Truth and justice – probably the two most vital aspirations of any research, scientific or not – are, therefore, consequences of the funding set up by effective mastery of the performativity language game. This seems a little indirect, almost like saying that the performance of a tennis player is based on how tightly their racket is strung and not their finesse, but the necessity for research funding and a site for research is inarguable vital to the truth-revealing research process. After all, the net, the court, and the racket are not technologies that directly lead to finesse in a tennis player, but those technologies certainly increase the potential finesse (potential for “truth”) of a tennis player. Similarly, the funding for research and the technology for experiments does not directly lead to truth and discovery, but the technologies of science are essential for increasing “one’s chances of being just and right” (Lyotard 47).
Nietzsche credited the inner world to be full of false pictures and spooks and those inner spooks and false pictures is precisely what science aims to eradicate. However, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out, many times science, in the process of dissolving illusions, actual replaces one veracity with an entirely new framework – an entirely new set – of truths in a paradigmatic transition, which result in new truths. While postmodernism is somewhat the antithesis of modernism, through further dialectic, a synthesis between extremes could be formed, just as the synthesis of “deliberate player” was formed between the extreme methods of the “contemplative” and the “impetuous” player. The language games used to support the performativity in research are the catalyst that can set off the sequence of steps of funding, hypothesis, scientific research, and data analysis that lead to the new “pragmatics of scientific knowledge” (Lyotard 23). The pragmatics of scientific knowledge are completely rewritten if a fusion between hedgehogs (one universal truth) and foxes (many facts) ever occurred. Being open to the possibility of copious large-scale, paradigmatic discoveries is the avenue towards increased efficacy of science and the embarkation of a totally new frontier of philosophical discourse.
Works Cited
Bauman, Zygmunt. Legislators and Interpreters: On Modernity, Postmodernity,
Intellectuals. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987.
Detailed and lucid distinction between modernity and postmodernity.
Isaiah Berlin. The Hedgehog and the Fox. Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks,
1993.
Described Berlin’s idea of hedgehogs and foxes (originally Archilochus’s idea).
Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3rd Ed.
Chicago: Chicago UP, 1996.
Used for reference to paradigmatic shifts replacing truths entirely; different from revealing illusions shrouding truth.
Lechte, John. Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers: From Structuralism to Postmodernity.
Cornwall: Routledge Publications, 1994.
Provided an extremely useful synopsis of major post-modern/modern philosophers or philosophers that immediately proceeded post-modernity.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge.
Trans. Geof Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minnesota: U of MN, 1984.
Nietzsche, Frederick. Twilight of the Idols. 1889 in Danto, Arthur. Nietzsche as
Philosopher. New York: Columbia U P, 1965.
Used for reference to Nietzsche’s distaste of the will, which he considers unreliable and full of illusion.
Stengel, Richard. “When Foxes Pose as Hedgehogs.” Time. Oct. 1996, Vol.
148, No. 17. http://www.time.com/time/international/1996/961007/viewpoint.html
Detailed how Berlin plugged in the hedgehog concept into Russian writers and how he adopted it from Archilochus.
