From: ccw94-AT-aber.ac.uk
Date: Wed, 03 Jul 1996 17:06:25 +0100
Subject: Reading Group. RTS: Preface.


To lend support to Doug's interpretation. I think we have to be careful here
to see examine what Bhaskar is about. On the one hand he is making, what I
consider to be, the perfectly valid point that any discourse on epistemology
- that is, what philosophy has been up to - prior to specification of
ontology is bound to be arbitrary. Put simply, the knowledge we might gain
of atoms differs from that we might gain of persons because they are
differing things, with differing properties. Try and answer the
epistemological questions first and you are actually anthropocentrising your
ontology and saying that ontology must fit into a predetermined
epistemological framework (we can see this at work in empiricism where
theoretical entities not fitting the epistemological framework are deemed to
be 'instrumental' but not real). Bhaskar objects to this. 

Equally, by examining the production of a specific form of knowledge -
science - as opposed to the more generic category, knowledge, Bhaskar has
located his philosophy firmly within history. That is, he is not claiming
that his philosophy holds good for all time across all space, but only that
insofar as a specific set of practices, again science, produce valid
knowledge then his theory is the best account he is aware of. At many places
he acknowledges that if a form of knowledge acquistion emerges that
supplants science then his philosophy may have little to say about it.

Also, I think we need to be careful not to get ahead of ourselves this is
indeed a preface and as Hans notes:

>This is a preface, and many things are only hinted at.

Their explication, one hopes, will follow in the text, and we should not try
and preempt them.

Thanks,





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"We stand at the end of the age of reason. 
 A new era of the magical explanation of the world is rising.
 (Adolf Hitler)

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Colin Wight
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DA

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