Paul,
It is not so much an accepting or denying of "objectivity" but questioning what is lost in the
objective progression of knowledge that you outlined. I think history is important, but see it
more "historically specific" than "historically progressive".
So, where in your example there is historical progress with the Egyptions, Greeks and
onward - I question what is lost in what Foucault would call the fiction of progress. It seems
to me the triangle has a historical specifity to the Egyptions that differed from the Greeks and
so on.
I do however think your description of the triangle gets to the root of the issue with me, and
that is at what price does objectvity cost. What do we lose when we exclude all that is not
essential - to me what gets lost is the rich cultural-historical aspect of human experience. It
seems to me its essence would be shape, color, and size for the preschooler, angles and the
like when they get older etc. What is interesting to me about the triangle is I see them in
preschools, on sail boats, pyramids - and various other artifacts, and they were/are essential
for dividing plots, yet have yet to see one in the so called natural world. I mean a little child
may draw a leaf on a picture that looks like a triangle, but have yet to see a leaf that
resembles one.
My concerns with objectivity - and I mean scientific here - has a political twist. It seems the
left (what ever that is) has too long assumed if they could demonstrate truth objectively
everyone would fall in line. We see the right taking control and the left says "that's not
supported by research" - frankly no one cares. As one enviromentalist locally argued its a
moral not a scientific issue.
It seems to me there are countless examples of "objectivity" being used to naturalize cultural
experience and in that sense I think objectivity has a social function and here I mean a
function of power.
I am really looking forward to others ideas, I am more or less a cynic when it comes to
objectivity. I would also be curious to how mediation and language fit into the discussion. I
too have found the discussion interesting thus far.
Nate
> ** Original Subject: RE: Essence and objectivity
> ** Original Sender: "Paul H. Dillon" <illonph@pacbell.net>
> ** Original Date: 07 Jun 2000 17:05:34 -0700 (PDT)
> ** Original Message follows...
>
> Nate,
>
> You wrote that the aristotelian essence of a triangle or Spinoza's circles
> seem to be as much "cultural-historical as knowledge of the object per se."
> I think perhaps that the use of triangles and circles does more to reveal a
> universal basis to cultural-historical phenomena than it does to show the
> relativity , the absence of objective truth, that you seem to want to
> demonstrate.
>
> In particular the triangle. The triangle is the simplest figure that
> defines a plane but it's properties cannot be deduced from the properties of
> lines. Ilyenkov uses the triangle to illustrate the concrete universal, the
> essential, and contrasts it to Aristotles notion of an "empty universal" :
> " . . . the triangle is the first, the truly universal figure, which appears
> also in the square, etc., as the figure which can be led back to the
> simplest determination." The notion of two-dimensional figure is an empty,
> an abstract universal.
>
> Is it coincidental that Hegel singled out the triangle as the essential
> figure, the figure from which all other polygons can be constructed? That
> this figure is historically the first to have been fully analyzed,
> specifically in the form of the right triangle, from which all other
> triangles can be constructed. The discovery of the logical primacy of the
> triangle was preceded by the practical application of its properties. The
> Egyptians understood that the square of the hypotenuse was equal to the sum
> of the squares of the sides and applied this knowledge in their
> administration of property (a social relation of production). But they
> didn't understand why this was true, that would await Euclid. Certainly
> before the regularity expressed in Pythagoras' theorem was understood as an
> analytically given property of plane geometry it must have appeared to have
> some mystical power, some property inherent in the triangle as a
> physical/material object (Pythagorean numerical mysticism) rather than as
> the logical extrapolation of a given set of axioms. -- and this is an ideal
> object an object which is purely a cultural historical product. A
> transform of Egyptian cultural - historical products at the hands of Greeks
> a thousand or more years later. The subsequent history of mathematics has
> subsumed this universal understanding of plane geometry and there is no
> culture aware of its existence that doesn't recognize its objective
> existence independent of the particular systems of beliefs governing the
> other areas of their culturally specific life.
>
> The triangle is a splendid example of the logico-historical structure of
> cultural artefacts that yield objective knowlege.
>
> Paul H. Dillon
>** --------- End Original Message ----------- **
>
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