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such a subgroup needs to hold such and such knowledge) and a distribution of memory in time (such and such a memory will only be recalled if a given occasion arises). |
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Classification systems provide both a warrant and a tool for forgetting at the same time as they operate this distribution. To take an overview of this process, consider the case of the classification of the sciences. Auguste Comte wrote about this in the first volume of his course of positive philosophy wherein he lays out a new classification of all the sciences in hierarchical order, each science having a statics and a dynamics. He argued that it was only at the current state of advancement of science that a true classification system could emerge since only now were the forces of religion and metaphysics sufficiently at bay that a true picture of the nature of knowledge could emerge. |
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At the same time, the sum total of scientific knowledge was sufficiently great that it was inconceivable to learn a science by mentally tracing its history. There were too many wrong turns, blind allies, or vagaries. (Just as one does not want to remember where one's keys are by tracing the series of actions that one has made in the past several hours). With the new classification system, knowledge could be arrayed logically and naturally. One would lose chronological order but gain coherence. Indeed, only in this way could science be logically taught; thus: ". . . the most important property of our encyclopedic formulation . . . is that it directly gives rise the true general plan of an entirely rational scientific education" (Comte 1975 [183045], 50).
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What is left in Comte's work is the positivist calendar, where certain great scientists have their days, just as the saints had theirs in the age of religion. Serres annotates this passage with the observation that the formation (training) of scientists covers up and hides the formation (production) of scientific knowledge (51). |
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Indeed, Comte sets in train a double motion. On the one hand, you will only learn science if you forget its history; on the other hand, you will only understand the history of science if you look at the entire history of humanity: |
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This vast chain is so real that often, to understand the effective generation of a scientific theory, the mind is led to consider the perfectioning of some art with which it has no rational link, or even some particular progress in social organization without which this discovery would not have taken place. . . . It follows therefore that one cannot know the true history of any science, that is to say the real formation of the discoveries it is composed of, without studying, in a general and direct manner, the history of humanity. (52) |
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