***

Tom, sometimes I fear that, “I have of late,–but wherefore I know not,–lost
all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed,
it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly
frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this
most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with
golden fire,–why, it appears no other thing to me than a
foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece
of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
faculties! in form and moving, how express and
admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension,
how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of
animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of
dust?”

Not that language alone can suffice to express these things, and the bard’s vision was occluded, we think, by a simpler perspective for while he — as a child of the enlightenment — was prepared to create metaphors hanging from the great chain of being, he had an audience of commoners that still believed in the mythological constructs surrounding the divine right of kings and of royalty who encouraged that belief. It would be another fifty years before the regicide would demonstrate that the world didn’t end when the people with the awful haircuts took power.

But you know all this.

I believe we do discover truth, not create it. Carbon existed, as one commenter said, even before we became aware of it.

Fish are unaware of and have no comprehension of the very water they swim in and cannot live without. And weaving that back into this discussion would take more time and ability than I have this beautiful morning in downtown Tennessee…

***

Tom, we can’t ask Weber, but Geertz is barely cold in the ground and we know he was into that seventies semiotics thing, so unless he was signifying… but maybe it’s you who’s signifying… do you disagree that man is an animal? How deep do you want to go into cultural definitions, detailed assessments of those “webs of significance,” which, since they are largely symbolic and not subject to laws of gravity need depend on nothing or from anything.

Right now it’s enough for me to appreciate the beautiful sentiment evoked by the “webs of significance” line. As for AKMA’s sense of meaning trancscending usual norms of verbality, I think that I closed the book and gave it away too soon, impatient with myself for my stubborn inability to accept what I was reading. Fortunately, my next copy just arrived yesterday, and I’ll pick it up again soon. The art appreciation parts, Kristeva and what-not, seemed simple and accessible.

I like Geertz’ breakdown, his distinction between the experimental science in search of laws, and interpretive science in search of meaning. Based on what little I’ve read and my imperfect understanding I’d definitely put AKMA on the interpretive side.

But I hope no one gets me started on so called “natural law.”

2.5 to 3 days (or whatever suits anyone’s fancy) traipsing around central Montreal, drinking, eating, watching, listening, talking, no winers, no presentations, no selling, no posing, women and men.

I can imagine the following partycipants … Bruce, Jeneane, George S., Ray S, Ray D., you, Ken Camp, RB, BMO, J. Alva, Tom M., the Tutor, Lohmann, me, Madame L., Winna, Shelley, Meg (in spirit), a number of Montreal bloggers I know, and others any of us might invite. South Africa is a long way away, but it would be great to invite Golby – we could start a fundraising drive to offer bursaries.

Fun place, know it like the back of my hand, and know lots of interesting people and places to whom such a gang could be introduced in order to play.

man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun

I think this is a beautiful sentiment. For it to be more, I would need to know what Geertz/Weber means by “animal” and “significance.” The rest of the words seem fairly straightforward.

And while on the subject, I think it would be misleading to put AKMA in the verbalist camp, as you seem to, tho’ I might be mistaken. In his recent book, Faithful Interpretation, he argues for dimensions of signification and interpretation that lie beyond words, or at least beyond the usual norms of verbality.

What I guess I’d ask Geertz, except I alas no longer have the chance, is what he thinks those webs might be suspended from.

The concept of culture I espouse, and whose utility the essays below attempt to demonstrate, is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical. But this pronouncement, a doctrine in a clause, demands itself some explication.

“Those over their heads seem more often to be philosophers than physicists.” Presumably physicists understand both physics and epistemolgy equally well?

Frank, I readily agree that some people puff nonsense out an unbecoming orifice. Some of them are politicians, some of them are philosophers, some of them are physicists, some of them are Anglicans, some of them are Friends, some of them are leaning up against the wall of the Quik-Mart, some of them have spcious offices with leather chairs. And some people in those positions actually have as good a handle on some “pretty deep stuff” as does Frank Paynter (and no doubt, better than AKMA).

I find it an endlessly interesting discussion.

The work isn’t over and the knowledge isn’t in a tidy box until the grunt work has been completed. Later a new theory will destroy the tidy box of course.

I think that if theoretical physicists can offer compelling reasons for a belief in the existence of dark matter, then among those reasons will be data that others can verify and that lead people who understand physics to agree that the theory is meaningful. Verification through experimentation and observation would move our knowledge of dark matter out of the realm of “theory” into the workshops of “applied science,” and yes — that is certainly important.

From a couple of theoretical physicists smoking a joint out back of Lawrence Labs high in the Berkeley hills, through the data gathering and formalization that follows that first stoned insight, through peer reviewed papers expounding theoretical concepts, to astrophysical observation and lab work that supports the theory to an application of the knowledge is a journey of discovery. A lot of information is created along the way nailing down a discovery.

And I think the information, the data and how it is interpreted, is perhaps a subset of the knowledge. This is pretty deep stuff, and there are schools of thinkers who may have gotten in over their heads. Those over their heads seem more often to be philosophers than physicists. People who dwell in more subjective realms have appropriated the language of objective science and created a lot of confusion.

To check my understanding: Are you saying that it is better to actually do the grunt work to verify that say, Dark Matter exists, as opposed to saying “theoretically, Dark Matter exists”?

If so, I say, “right on.”

But semantically, I think what you’re driving at is not how the knowledge is “created”, but rather disseminated, and more importantly, applied.

Yes? No?