Faith seeking truth

Recently, I did a presentation for our university's pre-seminary students.  Here are some clips:

I want to talk about truth tonight – the search for knowledge.  This is the connection between learning and faith, or as Augustine put it: “faith seeking understanding”.  In the title of this talk I have put it as “faith seeking truth”.   I will also tie all of this in with libraries, vocation, technology and evangelism – all in under forty-five minutes!... 

For me, libraries have always held some real fascination.  All that information – I dare say knowledge – in one place.  I loved going to libraries when I was little.  And libraries go way back – the earliest libraries we know of were storehouses of religious “knowledge”, and were connected with the religious temples (in Egypt, for example).  Later on, all manner of learning were sought by the cruel Assyrian conqueror Ashurbanipal, who, oddly enough, was at once the leader of the world’s superpower and one of the world’s first librarians.  When he said “Shh”, you took heed....

From a simple worldly perspective, I can think of a variety of reasons persons might seek truth:  

Truth is something we just want to know....

Truth is valuable in a practical sense...

...it is good to seek the truth, even if the truth is not always good...

We actually suppress the truth.  

We have nothing to fear from a robust conversation with the world (they, alternatively....).  All real truth and knowledge are of Divine origin.  The people of God have always been about learning, and hence, literacy, universities, and libraries have taken hold in areas influenced by Christianity... 

Just remember though "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief" (Ecc. 1:18).  But we are to imitate Christ, the Man of Sorrows – who also knew great joy... 

Image credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ashurbanipal_by_Parhad.JPG

Library tutorials I'm proud of

I am a librarian by day.  I’ve recently produced some video tutorials that deal with issues related to searching, research, and the nature of authority – and I think their applicability goes beyond our library (Concordia St. Paul).

I put a bunch of time into them and thought I'd keep track of them here.

So, if you are interested...

My favorite (discusses how to determine which sources are good for research and academic work. It includes information about the nature of authority / reliability):



This one goes along with it (discusses practical tips that can be used to help locate and evaluate quality web sites that are appropriate for your research and academic work):


This one is my second favorite (an introduction to doing research):



This one (on Advanced Searching) is is almost my second favorite (understand how the nature of language and the structure of databases can affect your search):



 ...and this one goes with it (advanced search features databases have in common that help us to search efficiently, effectively, and specifically -- getting great control over our results):



Finally, a video on Copyright Law (for educators- to supplement the SOPA mania from a few days ago):

Just to make sure I still remember how to do this....

Obviously, I do not have time to do this blog.  Good intentions indeed.

That said, I came across something I had written a while back that I think is kind of fun.

Getting PERSONal: MyAssumptions. YourAssumptions?

• We exist! (or: “I exist. You exist” [kind of like "I'm OK. You're OK"])    
• We share a world out there. 
• Despite all the messiness, there is some order out there to be discovered (particularly in the minds of other persons).
•  It makes sense (is worthwhile) to try to learn about this world  
• Our "epistemological equipment" (senses and reason) also "makes sense", so we can rely on it to learn about the world out there.  
• Our experiences of reality are analogous to other healthy persons (i.e. those who have received appropriate socialization - love).
• People are universally endowed with at least some shared concepts: e.g. “thirsty”, “clouds”, “tears”, “sad”, “food”, “mother”, “father”, etc.

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, preface to the second edition (c) [1951]

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Preface, 2nd ed. (c)


See last post in this series.  This, I think, gets rough.   

Since the Positivists "substituted syntax for the forms of perception, and scrapped the things as otiose [me: useless]", introducing words or phrases which appear to stand for the "thing itself", it should have been clear that syntax (rules for making sentences) would end up ruling not only by substituting for forms of perception (i.e. appearances, or phenomenal "things") but also when it comes to the things-in-themselves, or the "noumenal" [me: so there is no confusion, in Kant's philosophy, this is "an object as it is in itself independent of the mind"].  Since the mind seems to be such a real-world thing, Gilbert Ryle was able to conclude that it is an illusion that the mind is "an autonomous agent, distinguishable from the body" ("the ghost in the machine"), based as this is on "a confusion arising from men's misunderstanding of the 'rules' of the very language they themselves have made" (20). 

Ryle goes on to criticize words like "experience" and "consciousness" as "smacking of this illusion" and denies altogether... "the hallowed antithesis between the public, physical world and the private mental world", concerned as he is to "deny that there is such a thing as private experience at all". According to Ryle, the reason you can't say you feel the pain in my foot is not because you are excluded from the "peep-show open only to me," but because it "would make no sense to say that you were in my pain".  Barfield has some fun here, saying that for Ryle, "the theory is, that what is self-evident may for that very reason be profitably ignored" - here the palpable is dismissed by writing off the language in which it is affirmed as tautologous!  The mind as agent is said to not exist on grounds considered to be semantic. (21)

At this point, Barfield comments (in 1927) that he does not think the particular doctrines of linguistic analysis are likely to be a live issue, although he thinks what drives them will continue.  This is because:

Between those for whom 'knowledge' means ignorant but effective power, and those for whom the individual imagination is the medium of all knowledge from perception upward, a truce will not readily be struck.... Before he even begins to write, the Logical Positivist has taken the step from ‘I prefer not to interest myself  in propositions which cannot be empirically verified’ to ‘all propositions which cannot be empirically verified are meaningless’. The next step to ‘I shall legislate to prevent anyone else wasting his time on meaningless propositions’ is unlikely to appear either illogical or negative to his successor in title. Those who mistake efficiency for meaning inevitably end by loving compulsion, even if it takes them, like Bernard Shaw, the best part of a lifetime to get there. (22)

Barfield says that he respects Shaw, but points out his "mania" as regards his "reform" of spelling.  "I think that those...who are driven by an impulse to reduce the specifically human to a mechanical or animal regularity, will continue to be increasingly irritated by the nature of the mother tongue and make it their point of attack" (23)




My summary: Barfield says it best: "Between those for whom 'knowledge' means ignorant but effective power , and those for whom the individual imagination is the medium of all knowledge from perception upward, a truce will not readily be struck....".  In short, I think we can say that what drives this is the underlying belief that all language is simply a contextually-determined useful fiction.  This, however, as Barfield points out, does not logically satisfy... 
 

My critique/comments:  More comments will be in next post.  

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations, chapter 1(d): On the sources of knowledge and ignorance

NOTE: the hope is to do one post/week in the coming months. 

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations - the growth of scientific knowledge (1968, c1963)

Chapter 1(d)

Popper begins to discuss Bacon's induction, mentioning his distinction between "anticipatio mentis" (attempts to "interpret what is manifest in nature in the light of non-manifest causes or of hypotheses"-Popper's words, 14) and "interpretatio naturae" (which Popper translates: "the (true) reading of nature").  The latter, Popper says, is "the spelling out of, the book of Nature" (me: basically, Nature is a book and we study its essential parts of God's language, the letters that it is composed of).  "Interpretation" here is not meant to be subjective (all understandings of "interpretation" in the modern sense here should be avoided), but a simple reading of the objective text of nature.  Popper says its original meaning was: "reading aloud for those who cannot read themselves".  Today, a judge interpreting the law implies a certain latitude ; not so in Bacon's day: one applied it in the one and only right way.  The latitude allowed is no more than that of a sworn interpreter translating a legal document (13, 14).

Popper further notes that for Bacon, his method of induction results in certain knowledge (episteme) and not in conjectures or hypotheses (me: What is manifest in nature can only be interpreted by that which is manifest).  Regarding "anticipatio mentis" Popper quotes Locke: "men give themselves up to the first anticipation of their minds", which leads to guesswork and a misreading of the book of Nature (doxa).  It is basically "prejudice" or "superstition" (related to 'anticipatio deorum", harboring naive or primitive or superstitious views about the gods).  Evidently, Bacon himself (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) introduced the verb "to prejudge" ("to judge adversely in advance") in the English legal context.   

Popper now states that what Bacon rejects, he accepts: a method of interpretation ; of conjecture, or hypothesis, that is.  Bacon says that we must purge our minds of false beliefs, or idols, and this includes all anticipations, conjectures, guesses and prejudices - for these distort our observations (Nov. Org. i, 68, 69 end, 97) - our ability to discern "the kind of thing whose true essence or nature we wish to ascertain".  For our souls "to face the eternal light of essences or natures" (Augustine, City of God, VIII, 3), "our impure prejudices must be exorcised by the invocation of counter-instances" (Nov. Org. ii, 16 ff).  Then, we can begin to diligently spell out the open book of Nature, the manifest truth.  Popper says that fundamentally, Aristotle, Bacon, Socrates (maieutic), and Descartes (systematic doubt) are all similar: destroying false prejudices in order to get at the "unshakable basis of self-evident truth" (14, 15).  

Popper collapses their views into one by saying that the natural state of man is an "innocent eye which can see the truth", and state of ignorance due to the injury of the eye has to do with man's fall from grace, which can be partially healed by this purification.  Therefore, this optimistic epistemology - "not only in Descartes' but also in Bacon's form" - "remains a religious doctrine in which the source of all knowledge is divine authority".  He does note that "one might say that", "encouraged by the divine 'essences' or divine 'natures' of Plato, and by the traditional Greek opposition between the truthfulness of nature and the deceitfulness of man-made convention, Bacon substitutes, in his epistemology, 'Nature' for 'God'" - which may be why when our minds have been purified , even our sometimes unreliable senses (for Plato hopelessly impure) will be pure (15).    
 
My summary: Socrates, Aristotle, Bacon and Descarte all believed that one could determine essences, and arrive at "the unshakable basis of self-evident truth".  This is a religious doctrine rooted in divine authority: the source of all knowledge.  Popper's method of conjecture or hypothesis is different, he says.  

My comments/critique: Popper evidently sees himself as being an advocate of a more secular epistemology - one not rooted in divine authority.  Again, it is interesting that so much good has come from these religious folks.  Popper does talk about how it is very difficult to get to the truth - but evidently, the method he will discuss will have little to do with "purification" in the sense he sees these men holding to it.  I wish that he would have said more about how all of these men - who undoubtedly had many differences - specifically advised people to purifiy themselves.  Was this an intellectual, or a mind-emptying kind of purification?  Was it a purification that took place by looking to something inside of man or outside of man?  I think this especially interesting because a man like Bacon, for instance, who evidently believed the Bible, also believed that when it came to the earth's natural history, the Bible should not control our inquiry at all.  At the same time, I am guessing that turning to God and His truth may have had something to do with His purification (although I am somewhat familiar with the teaching of "idols" Bacon used where he critiqued common superstitions or biases men had).  Or maybe not.  Inquiring minds want to know - and I suppose this may mean reading Bacon.   

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, preface to the second edition (b) [1951]

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Preface, 2nd ed. (b)


Barfield says that "in the days of Locke and Hume it was felt that science was the newcomer, requiring a foundation in philosophy; but since then the two have changed places".  Despite the "ever-changing assumptions" of science, modern philosophers do not try to question the scientific assumptions of the day (seeing them as "given"), but seek to "justify the ways of science to man".  Who can argue with success? 

He notes that there is one assumption of science that has remained unchanged longer than the rest, and that is that the real world is a "somewhat" in "the construction which the mind of man does not participate; of which it is purely a detached observer" (here, Hume's philosophy is relevant).  "It is of course in attempting to describe more precisely the nature of the 'somewhat' that science both parts company with the man in the street and keeps changing its ground".  In the 19th century the real world was assumed to consist, in the last resort, or things.  These things kept getting smaller and smaller, but they were at least there, and if you ad a powerful enough microscope, for example, you'd be able to see them (18).  In like fashion, Hume had been content to say that the "'impressions' which were the material of knowledge were produced in the senses by 'objects'" (19).  

20th century science though, complains Barfield 

"has abolished the 'thing' altogether; and twentieth-century philosophy (that part of it, at least, which takes no account of imagination) has obediently followed  suit.  There are no objects, says the voice of Science, there are only bundles of waves - or possibly something else; adding that, although it is convenient to think of them, it would be naive to suppose that the waves or the something else actually exist.  There is no 'referent', echoes the philosophy of linguistic analysis deferentially, no substance or underlying reality which is 'meant' by words.   There are only descriptions, only the words themselves, though it 'happens to be the case' that men have from the beginning so persistently supposed the contrary that they positively cannot open their mouths without doing so" (19).  

Barfield then quotes Logical Positivist A.J. Ayer saying "that we cannot, in our language, refer to the sensible properties of a thing, without introducing a word or phrase which appears to stand for the thing itself as opposed to anything which may be said about it."  


He goes on:  "Kant erected the Forms of Perception as a kind of impenetrable screen between the real world of 'things in themselves' and the mind of man.  The Positivists have substituted syntax for the forms of perception, and scrapped the things as otiose" (19).  


My summary: Barfield seems to be on the verge of concluding that given scientist's skepticism about finding out what is really real - and positivist's corresponding expulsion of the referent in language - we are stuck with not really being able to know anything (i.e. if we take their presuppositions to their logical conclusion).  

My critique/comments:  When Barfield talks about how twentieth-century philosophy has abolished the "thing" altogether, I think his qualifier, "that part of {20th c. philosophy], at least, which takes no account of imagination" is more important than ever.  Again, it seems to me that we have come a long way from the Logical Positivists.  I think many persons want to make Karl Popper into one of these, for example, but I do not think that we can do that so easily, as his thought does take account of the imagination and he does not seem to insist that philosophical naturalism is true.

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, preface to the second edition (a) [1951]

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Preface, 2nd ed. (a)


He says the book "claims to present, not merely a theory of poetic diction, but a theory of poetry: and not merely a theory of poetry, but a theory of knowledge.  It is as such, I see, that it must be judged.  Apparently, the author was determined that the title should at least be unassuming" (14).


The current generation of people, Barfield notes (23 years after the first ed.), is not quite so interested in the "various theories of language, life and literature" that Barfield was concerned to address (rationalizing his own observations in terms of these) when the book was written.  This is because it now regards them as "irrelevant to its own more maturely skeptical philosophy".  It is confidently asserted of Kant, Berkeley, and Locke, for example, that they were not so much wrong, but "asked the wrong questions" (14, 15).  He says that if he were doing the book today, he would criticize Hume and his more recent disciples in the Appendices instead, "not the less so because [now] the fashionable method is to analyse language itself - which is the heart of my matter" (15).


He notes that any readers coming "fresh to the subject" may at this point want to start reading at Chapter One, coming back to the Preface later (you have been forewarned!)  It becomes clear why he says this: he gets into very philosophical territory.  He discusses and dismisses the ideas Dr. I. A. Richards and the Logical Positivists, starting with this:

"Now in a footnote to page 113 in this book it is pointed out that 'logical judgments, by their nature, can only render more explicit some one part of a truth already implicit in their terms'.  And in another, to page 131, that the logician is continually seeking to reduce the meaning of his terms, and that 'he could only evolve a language whose propositions would really obey the laws of thought by eliminating meaning altogether'" (16). 

He goes on to say that "I do not think it too sweeping to say that the doctrines of linguistic analysis, or as it has sometimes been called, Logical Positivism, are no more than an extensive gloss on this principle".  The Logical Positivists basically said that "all propositions except those from which some observation-statement can be deduce are, it is averred, meaningless, either as misuse of language, or as tautologies" (16, 17), (me: therefore eliminating the claimed importance of religious language, for example, which they believed was completely unverifiable)


Barfield then naturally moves on to talking about Locke and Hume, who attributed great importance to observation, or sense-impression, and dismissed any notions of "innate ideas" or innate thoughts.  For Hume, he notes, "man, as knower, is above all a passive recipient of impressions [or ideas, which for Hume are the perceptions].  Such is also the assumption on which the edifice of physical science is erected" (17).


My summary: The whole idea of science has (so far at least, when he is writing this) been based on the idea that we can, through the power of our sense impressions and the careful use of descriptive language, "pin things down" (I say: to capture and use the truth).  In order to do this, they often have to reduce the meaning of the terms they use.  Furthermore, Logical Positivists insist that this is the only kind of real knowledge there is.  

My critique/comments:  It seems to me that since Barfield wrote this much has happened.  Looking at individuals like Karl Popper, Michael Polanyi, and Thomas Kuhn, science is much more nuanced now about how our observations work hand in hand with our ideas, or presuppositions.  In addition, persons like Popper, although embracing some of the Logical Positivists points, distinguished himself from them, and it is much more nuanced views like his that hold influence.  That said, the indented quotation above is fascinating.  I wonder if I am right in saying that if one can really understand Barfield  here, one will get to the heart of his work and concern.  It seems he is speaking to the idea that we often want to pin things down, clearly and distinctly defining them, and then universally applying these definitions to our entire range of experiences and circumstances - and this, he seems to be saying (whatever the feasibility of such a project) comes with a cost, namely the loss of the meaning in our language.  There is much more to be said here, but that will need to wait for later. 

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations, chapter 1(c): On the sources of knowledge and ignorance

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations - the growth of scientific knowledge (1968, c1963)

Chapter 1(c)

The idea that our intellect is a source of knowledge because God is a source of knowledge "has a long history which can easily be traced back at least to Homer and Hesiod.  Plato also "plays a decisive part" in the pre-history of this doctrine, which was Descartes' starting point.  The sources of knowledge for the Greek poets were divine.  They were the Muses, and they guaranteed the truth of the stories.  The philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides made similar claims, and Parmenides' god even says that in order to distinguish between truth and falsehood, he must rely on the intellect to the exclusion of the senses of sight, hearing, and taste (also similar to Descartes) (9,10).


Plato sharply distinguishes between the "divine frenzy of the poet" and the "divine sources or origins of true knowledge".  He "grants the inspiration to the poets but denies them any divine authority for their alleged knowledge of facts".  On the other hand, Plato's idea  is that each man is in some measure granted the possession of divine sources of knowledge (amemnesis), i.e. the essence or nature of a thing "rather than of a particular historical fact".  At birth, our immortal soul forgets what it knew (this is an "epistemological fall" of sorts), but if we "see the truth again [we shall] recognize it.  All knowledge is therefore re-cognition - recalling or remembering the essence or true nature that we once knew" (here, think of Socrates' story about Meno's slave boy being taught to recall the Pythagorean theorm).  Even here, we can see the idea that the truth is manifest (which Popper opposes, 10).  


Plato describes his teaching as one which "makes men eager to learn, to search, and to discover", but his optimism seems to have waned in the Republic.  Here, we find the parable of the cave, and with it, the idea that obtaining true knowledge ("the divine understanding of the real world") and passing it on to others is exceedingly difficult.  Here, "truth may be attained by a few - the elect", something that Popper says is "more wildly optimistic than even the doctrine that truth is manifest".  Here, optimistic "anti-traditionalist, anti-authoritarian, revolutionary and Utopian rationalism" gives way to pessimistic "authoritarian traditionalism". 


Popper thinks that in Plato's story of the cave (and maybe also the story of the fall of the city, "when the Muses and their divine teaching are neglected" also in the Republic) one can see an echo of "Parmenides' doctrine that the opinions of mortals are delusions, and the result of a misguided choice / convention (Popper also thinks this may come from Xenophanes' doctrine that all human knowledge is simply guesswork, with his own theories being merely similar to the truth).  Parmenides essentially says that even though the fall affected all men, "truth may be revealed to the elect by an act of grace - even the truth about the unreal world of the delusions and opinions, the conventional notions and decisions, of mortals: the unreal world of the appearance that was destined to be accepted, and to be approved of, as real...: a few may reach certainty about both the unchanging world of eternal reality and the unreal and changing world of verisimilitude..." (11, 12).   This, Popper believes, was Plato's inspiration for his philosophy.  


What Popper is really interested in though are the more optimistic ideas of Plato's.  He thinks that Plato's more optimistic epistemology (pre-Republic) contained the roots of Aristotle's theories of induction (and later, Bacon's), as well as the "germs of Descartes' intellectualism".  He thinks that when Aristotle said that Socrates was the inventor of the method of induction, he was referring to the "Socratic method", i.e. the idea that judicious questions can help us to remember or recapture the forgotten knowledge of the soul (possessed in its pre-natal state of omniscience).  He thinks that Both Aristotle and Bacon meant by "induction" "not so much the inferring of universal laws from particular observed instances" as a "method by which we are guided to the point where we can intuit or perceive the essence or the true nature of a thing", which is precisely the aim of Socrates' method, or art of midwifery (or maieutic).  Therefore the aims of maieutic and induction were the same (12). 


Socrates' method basically asks questions with the intent to destroy prejudices, or "false beliefs which are often traditional or fashionable ; false answers, given in the spirit of ignorant cocksureness".  Socrates himself does not pretend to know, but aimed to teach us to "doubt our own convictions.  Fundamentally, the same procedure is a part of Bacon's induction" 13.

My summary: - What underlies Bacon's method is really the Socratic method, which Plato subscribed to early on, only to fall into epistemological pessimism later.  Aristotle, Bacon and Descartes all used this method to arrive at the discovery of essences.  

My comments/critique: First, I think it is telling that the idea that the "intellect is a source of knowledge because God is a source of knowledge" is as much a Greek idea as it is a Jewish or Christian one.  I am also curious to know what Socrates thought about the "essence of things" and to what extent we might be able to discover these.  He certainly was interesting, insisting that he did not know....  I think that it makes sense to draw the connection between Socrates' method and Artistotle's and Bacon's inductivism, although it seems to me that the idea that Divine Laws could be pinpointed in the process was pretty clear in Bacon at least.  It also seems to me that traditionally philosophers may be pessimistic about man's ability to know because of the disasters that have come upon man in this or that age.  Likewise they tend to be more optimistic when times seem somewhat better, showing improvement.  In either case, the idea seems to be that if we really knew more, we would be more successful in creating a better and more just world.  The Christian points out that there really is much that we do know but suppress (the kind of "conspiracy theory of ignorance" Popper decries), even as there is much that we do not know.  Finally, all knowledge and wisdom are ultimately found in Jesus Christ, who will bring all things to fulfillment, and redeem and renew the whole creation.   

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations, chapter 1(b): On the sources of knowledge and ignorance

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations - the growth of scientific knowledge (1968, c1963)

Chapter 1(b)

Popper warns that our political hopes and Utopian dreams might often affect our search for truth, therefore, "it may be our best plan to start by criticizing our most cherished beliefs" (6).  


He says that the implicitly accepted idea that truth is manifest (i.e. "we have been given eyes to see the truth, and the 'natural light' of reason to see it by", 7), at the heart of both Descartes' (rationalist) and Bacon's (empiricist) teaching, gives rise to the "curious" conspiracy theory of ignorance (see last post).  For Descartes, "what we clearly and distinctly see as true must indeed be true; for otherwise God would be deceiving us".  For Bacon, Nature is an open book that only an impure mind can fail to read correctly (7).  


According to these lights, it is only prejudices and powers (spiritual and earthly), for example, "our sinful refusal to see manifest truth" that are to blame.  Marxism seized upon this and ran with it in a certain way - it is completely unoriginal.  The "priest who keeps the people in ignorance was a stock figure of the eighteenth century", and Popper believes was one of the inspirations of [classical] liberalism.  Earlier yet: "protestant belief in the conspiracy of the Roman Church", and "Plato's uncle Critias" (7)  


Popper says that "this curious belief in a conspiracy is the almost inevitable consequence of the optimistic belief that truth, and therefore goodness, must prevail if only truth is given a fair chance" (8).  He says a tolerance based on an "optimistic faith in the victory of truth may easily be shaken", and this is liable then to turn into a conspiracy theory (which in the main was [is?] a myth as well).  


He goes on: "The simple truth is that truth is often hard to come by, and that once found may be easily lost again" (8 - he speaks of erroneous beliefs with great staying power in science and medicine in particular).  And yet, he says 

"perhaps the strangest thing in this story is that this false epistemology was the major inspiration of an intellectual and moral revolution without parallel in history.  It encouraged men to think for themselves.  It gave them hope that through knowledge they might free themselves and others from servitude and misery.  It made modern science possible.   It became the basis of the fight against censorship and the suppression of free thought.  It became the basis of the nonconformist conscience, of individualism, and of a new sense of man's dignity; of a demand for universal education, and of a new dream of a free society.  It made men feel responsible for themselves and for others, and eager to improve not only their own condition but also that of their fellow men.  It is a case of a bad idea inspiring many good ones" (8, italics mine)

But, he says, this idea also led to disastrous consequences as this theory is "the basis of almost every kind of fanaticism" (including the idea that those who don't "see manifest truth must be possessed by the devil").  "Only those who have every reason to fear truth can deny it, and conspire to suppress it."  


Popper summarizes at this point by saying that "since "truth is not manifest, as a rule", an optimistic epistemology then also leads to authoritarianism, although "perhaps less directly than does a pessimistic epistemology".  "The allegedly manifest truth is therefore in constant need not only of interpretation and affirmation, but also of re-interpretation and re-affirmation", and the authorities required to do this may "learn to do so arbitrarily and cynically".  Finally, "many disappointed epistemologists will turn away from their own former optimism and erect a resplendent authoritarian theory on the basis of a pessimistic epistemology (Plato)" (8,9)

My summary: - Popper teaches as he does because he - through good parenting, hard work, education, and knowledge of the ways of scientific discovery (he didn't say this [yet at least!]) - is able to see that it is manifestly true that it is not manifestly true that truth is manifest. 

My comments/critique: For me, this seems relatively simple: sometimes truth is clearly manifest (i.e. there are things that absolutely everyone can agree are true), and other times it is not (do I need to prove this?).  Contra Bacon, not only an "impure mind" might read "Nature" incorrectly.  And of course, Christianity does explicitly say that we hold down, or suppress, the truth (I would say, the truth we can and do know) in unrighteousness, and therefore, I think the idea is not a bad one with good consequences, but a good one with mostly good consequences.  I find it interesting that Popper seems to assume that if we can know the truth, we will tend to live according to it (kind of like the Gospel of John: "the truth will set you free").  As this pertains to morality (and Popper must be concerned about this as he talks of politics above) I think the Apostle Paul, writing in Romans 7, is instructive.  Here, he talks about knowing what was good and yet not doing it (I believe good exegesis demands that we see Paul writing this as a Christian who is struggling with sin, while others say this took place before he was a Christian - in either case, I think it is something that "natural man" can i.d. with).  That is an interesting point to consider, I think.  

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations, chapter 1(a): On the sources of knowledge and ignorance

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations - the growth of scientific knowledge (1968, c1963)

Chapter 1(a)

Popper asks, “How can the absence of anything have sources?”  Popper says that he means, through the phrasing of the title (i.e. the “sources of ignorance” part), to direct attention to a “number of historically important although unrecorded philosophical doctrines, and among them, especially, to a conspiracy theory of ignorance which interprets ignorance not as a mere lack of knowledge but as the work of some mischievous power, the source of impure and evil influences which pervert and poison our minds and instill in us he habit of resistance to knowledge.” (3, italics his) 

He begins by saying that he thinks that both the “empiricists” and he “rationalists”, understood respectively as those saying the ultimate source of knowledge is observation or “the intellectual intuition of clear and distinct ideas”, are both wrong.  “I shall try to show that neither observation nor reason can be described as a source of knowledge, in the sense in which they have claimed o be sources of knowledge, down to the present day” (4)

He notes that the “belief in the possibility of a rule of law, of justice, and of freedom, cannot well survive the acceptance of an epistemology which teaches there are no objective facts.” (5)  He says that “the great movement of liberation which started in the Renaissance” “was inspired by an unparalleled epistemological optimism: by a most optimistic view of man’s power to discern truth and to acquire knowledge.” (5)  “Modern science and… technology [were] inspired by this optimistic epistemology whose main spokesmen were Bacon and Descartes” (5).  Despite their differences, both men believed “each man carried the sources of knowledge in himself” (5).

Indeed, Benedictus de Spinoza may have said that truth manifests itself, and John Locke that “every man carries about him a touchstone… to distinguish… truth from appearances” (3), but as Popper will go on to say, they were wrong: truth is not evident, revealing itself or being revealed to us by the removal of its veil… And it is not true that “once the naked truth stands revealed before our eyes, we have the power to see it, to distinguish it from falsehood, and to know that it is truth.” (5)

Popper also talks about an epistemological pessimism, which he says is rooted in a distrust of man and his reason… his power to discern the truth.  It is, he says, linked historically with a doctrine of human depravity, which usually leads to the demand for powerful traditions and authorities to keep people in check.

So if Popper does not endorse the kind of epistemological optimism (or pessimism!) he describes, in what way does he believe “man can know: thus he can be free”, and therefore remain an advocate of the ideas of classical liberalism (i.e. “rationalism” in a wide, good, sense), which has always “claimed the right of reason and of empirical science to criticize, and to reject, any tradition, and any authority, as being based on sheer unreason or prejudice or accident?”  More later…

My summary: -

My comments/critique: First of all, let me point out that Popper is a gifted writer and communicator – I think this book, given its topic matter, is relatively easy to understand.   That said, I will hold my tongue for a while longer before commenting.   

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, preface to the first edition [1927]

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Preface, 1st ed.

Barfield notes that the form of the book is in one sense autobiographical, and that it progresses from his own aesthetic and psychological experiences to general principles, which are applied to the various problems of literature (esp. “poetic diction” in its narrower sense).  The “general principles”, however, take on the form of pictures and metaphors instead of propositions, for reasons that will become clear in the book. (11)

The author recalls his early perception that “poetry reacts on the meanings of the words it employs” which was “followed by a dim, yet apodeictically [me: evident beyond contradiction] certain, conviction that there are 'two sorts of poetry'; and a series of unsuccessful events to rationalize these and other aesthetic experiences in terms of the various theories of language, literature and life, with which the author happened to come in touch, resulted in the present volume.” (12)  

He also thanks a man named Rudolf Steiner, for inspiring his thinking, while being careful not to “father upon him many of the views on poetry which I have expressed”.  Barfield says his work would be valuable to anyone “engaged on either the theory or practice of any art.” (12, 13).  He also mentions with approval Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West (“a profound and alarmingly learned study of the historical – as opposed to the literary – relation between prosaic and poetic”—italics his).

Finally, countering those who say his theory of poetry “takes no account of feeling”, he says the kind of “inspired thinking which I have attempted to depict, assumes the utmost intensity of feeling as a necessary pre-requisite.  There could be no other way of reaching it.  It can only begin when feeling has become too powerful to remain only personal, so that the individual is compelled by his human nature, either to THINK in reality, or to find, more of less instinctively, some suitable device for dimming his consciousness.” (13)

My summary: -

My critique/comments:  This is all very interesting.  I look forward to hearing more about his journey of discovery.  I do need to find out more about exactly what poets mean when they talk about theories though.  : ) Finally, regarding his comments about feeling, I must say they resonate with me, and I look forward to seeing what kinds of insights are inspired by, this conviction, and how those insights serve to reinforce the conviction.  I do believe that life, at bottom, is fundamentally personal – and this cannot but inspire strong feeling…

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, foreward b (by Howard Nemerov)

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927) 
 

Forward (con't)

In Shakespeare’s time, poetic diction really belonged to the study of rhetoric, and most of what was emphasized were common sense techniques (practice, imitation, reading) for creating persuasive speakers.

Nemerov goes on to write: "In the 17th and 18th centuries it would appear that prose and poetry which had formerly been rather close together in their choice of language, were decisively differentiated from one another , and there gradually grew up a kind of language special to poetry and not admissible in prose except on the most exalted occasions." (5).

Hence, the concept of “poetic diction” is born. 

Me: This seems very interesting.  Still, to say “decisively differentiated” is to acknowledge that there had always been a bit of a differentiation here, right?  In other words, the chasm, likely due in part to the success of the experimental sciences - and their emphasis on the “objective” – simply got wider.  A distinction became a complete separation in the minds of many… 

Back to the book: Originally, Nemeov avers, as this occurred people did not seem to realize this was happening, and regarding questions of the past, attention was focused on things people could clearly see: like the historical works that Homer, who taught “that language of the Gods to men” (Pope), composed.  What this part about the Gods and their language might have really meant did not require explanation… (5, 6)

But now, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries we observe that when we try to say what something is (see Darwin and Freud) we “go back and talk about how it got to be the way it looks now” (6).  With Genesis losing influence, new scientific mythologies had to fill the void.

The Romantic movement rebelled not only against poetic diction in the technical sense (vs conventional language) but against “the belief about the world and the place of mankind in the world that produced the [intolerable] technical conventions”.  (The rebel makes his own creation myth if he pursues things to the end).   

Blake decried “systematic abstraction, priesthood, scientism, the loss of the good of the imagination”.  Wordsworth talked about how poetry had been corrupted by intellectualizing imitation of the “supposed practice of the earliest poets [of all nations]”, who he says “generally wrote from passion excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men: feeling powerfully as they did, their language was daring, and figurative.” (7) 

“For the great Romantics, then, poetic diction becomes a subject of the first importance, because out of their efforts to reform this highly specialized diction and reach back instead to ‘nature’ arose the deeper question of the extent of the imagination’s role as creator of the visible and sensible world.  For Blake that extent was total: Imagination is the Savior.  For Wordsworth the relation was a more tentative and balancing one, in which the world and thought were mutually adjusted to one another…” (8)

This idea of the primacy of imagination was a “point of considerable anxiety” as well, given the “[evidently triumphant] view of a universe of independently and fatally moving things” (“scientific materialism”) (8)

Nemerov goes on to say that it appears that recurring outbreaks of “modernism”, regarding themselves as anti-romantic, actually are variations on “superficial aspects of the Romantic Movement”, “while something submerged and unfinished about that movement remains largely untouched” (8).  Nevertheless, poetry and criticism today seems “enthralled by the false realism of the reason [and] spellbound to the merely picturesque”…it is prevented “from dreaming deeply or other than the common dream” (9).

My summary: -

My critique/comments:  This is all very interesting, and I don’t find much to criticize or question yet.  I have no reason to think that he analysis is not sound.  Still, although I am “willing to open this question of imagination again to a candid exploration” (9) I am uneasy and a bit skeptical about this journey.  When it comes to the way of the scientist, is our biggest problem that people uncritically reify, thinking that, for instance, "extended things" have intrinsic characteristics like "length, breadth, and depth" in the same way that, for example, elephants have intrinsic characteristics like tusks, trunks, and hair (or is talking about elephants in this way even permissible, as any such observations and descriptions cannot be conceived as arising from general human curiosity and a non-insidious desire to label?)?  Or is it an even bigger problem that people would think that there are no "joints" to reality whatsoever – and that it can be "carved up" in any way we like?  In other words: that there are no limits to our interpretations of reality or to what our imaginations can construct and build?

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning, foreward a (by Howard Nemerov)

Barfield, Owen ; Poetic diction: a study in meaning (1973, 1952 [2nd ed.], 1927)

Forward

“Among the few poets and teachers of my acquaintance who know POETIC DICTION it has been valued not only as a secret book, but nearly as a sacred one; with a certain sense that its teaching was quite properly esoteric…”

Continued:

“…not as the possession of a few snobs but as something that would easily fail of being understood by even the most learned of those jugheads whose mouths continually pour forth but whose ears will serve only for carrying purposes.” (1)

“Two main ways of taking poetic diction as a subject of study”:

1. Technical matter belonging to the art of poetry.  More: How could it ever have appeared seemly, appropriate, natural, to a poet, in his character of angler, to call fish “the finney prey”? (today, [1973] if someone did, he’d not only feel silly but be silly).  A reflective poet may realize he has been using words as if were natural, “as if the words really belonged to things, as if the words were really the ‘souls’ of things, their essences or Logoi, and not by any means the mere conventional tags they are said to be.” (2)

Leads to...

  
2. Poetic diction as a psychological, metaphysical – and extremely problematic – subject.  More: The poet may go from thinking that the fact that words change from age to age and even from context to context is interesting because it is a nuisance to thinking more critically about what this means.  This may become “the question of primary perception, of imagination itself, of how thought ever emerged (if it did) out of a world of things” (3).

For a poet who thinks about these things “their want of formal [philosophical] training may be not altogether a disadvantage” (“irony of Socrates”: he could only afford the one-drachma course about the correctness of names) (3,4)

My summary: -

My critique/comments:  Not much to object to here.  How could I, not being much of a poet?  Perhaps I would note that although it “may become ‘the question of primary perception, of imagination itself, of how thought ever emerged (if it did) out of a world of things’” (3), it may not as well, depending on what one believes about God – or on what one believes men ought to believe about God, given the evidence… Also, will be thinking about the “finney prey” thing for a long while I think…

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations, preface i and ii

Popper, Karl ; Conjectures and Refutations – the growth of scientific knowledge (1968, c1963)

Preface

Thesis : we can learn from our mistakes ; this book puts forth a theory of knowledge and its growth.

"...conjectures are controlled by criticism; that is, by attempted refutations, which include severely critical tests.  They may survive these tests, but they can never be positively justified: they can neither be established as certainly true nor even as “probable” (in the sense of the probability calculus).” (vii)

Me: there are many “problems” we don't have in common – and problems, like aims [see below] can change…

“As we learn from our mistakes our knowledge grows, even though we may never know – that is, know for certain.”

Me: evidently we can we know for certain that a theory is wrong, or at least incomplete, though...

According to Popper, the fact that a theory can be falsified is what makes it scientific (it has not been proved, but it has not been disproved…):

“those among our theories which turn out to be highly resistant to criticism, and which appear to us at a certain moment of time to be better approximations to truth than other known theories, may be described, together with the reports of their tests, as ‘the science’ of that time.  Since none of them can be positively justified, it is essentially their critical and progressive characters – the fact that we can argue about their claim to solve our problems better than their competitors – which constitutes the rationality of science.” (vii)

Popper also applies this "rationality of science" widely: to "the problems of the philosophy and history of the physical sciences and of the social sciences to historical and political problems" (viii)

Preface to second ed.

“all our knowledge grows only through the correcting of our mistakes” (ix)

Popper goes on to say that our aims (me: goals) can be changed by trial and error as well.

Me: But don't we sometimes, especially when we are young, simply learn new things as we are exposed to them, apart from any mistake correction? (not to preclude the possibility that children have not only an instinct for induction, but also a disposition to form certain judgments and ideas, i.e. that our minds anticipate this acquisition of knowledge)  If that is not growth in knowledge what is it?

My summary: -

My critique: Right away, we see some problems with the discussion of problems.  Surely, some situations we can agree are problems, more or less: diseases for example.  But other things, like figuring out the exact "structure of reality" (construed as impersonal a priori) is not going to be a problem that all share.  It also seems plain wrong to say that all of our knowledge grows *only* through mistake correction. 

~Nathan