Date: Thu, 9 Jan 1997 03:11:21 -0800 (PST)
From: LH Engelskirchen <lhengels-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: BHA: idtd


The American Heritage Dictionary:
 
"neologism":  "A newly coined word, phrase, or expression, or a new
meaning for an old word.  b.  The use of new words, phrases, or
expressions or of new meanings for old words."
 
"transitive":  "Expressing an action that is carried from the
subject to the object . . . ."
 
Thus an intransitive verb is independent of a direct object. 
Nothing is carried from a subject to an object.
 
 
* * * 
 
RTS, 21:  "Let us call these, in an unavoidable technical
neologism, the *intransitive objects of knowledge*."
 
* * * 
 
RTS, 21  "The *transitive* objects of knowledge are Aristotelian
material causes.  They are the raw materials of science -- the
artifical objects fashioned into new items of knowledge by the
science of the day.  They include the antecedently estalished facts
and theories, paradigms and models, methods and techniques of
inquiry available to a particular scientific school or worker.  The
material cause, in this sense, of Darwin's theory of natural
selection consisted of the ingredients out of which he fashioned
his theory.  Among these were the facts of natural variation, the
theory of domestic slection and Malthus' theory of population. 
Darwin worked these into a knowledge of a process . . . ."
 
For a social scientist of biology, Malthus' theory of population is
an intransitive object.  For Darwin fashioning a theory, it is a
transitive object from which he fashions knowledge of a process.
 
Suppose I build improve and refashion the telescope.  Is the
telescope I supercede transitive?
 
* * * 
 
If I write a history of jazz, Thelonious Monk is in the
intransitive dimension.  If I try to reproduce the juxtapositions
of sounds I hear him play in a piano or saxophone or poetic riff of
my own, then Thelonious Monk is an Aristotelian material cause --
which is one of the funny ways we learn to talk on this list.  
 
In the first instance he is what he is regardless of what I make of
him.  In the second instance what I do is what it is because of
what I make of him.  In the first instance nothing is carried over
>from the subject to the object; in the second instance everything
depends on what the subject does in remaking the object.
 
* * * 
What about this:
 
1.   Anything that is material is intransitive.  This is because
matter exists in any form independent of us.  We transform matter,
but transform it according to laws we do not transform.  The
telescope is intransitive.
 
2.   Anything which causally intervenes in the material world is
intransitive.  But such intervention need not actually take place. 
That is, anything which possesses the causal power to intervene,
whether exercised or not, is intransitive.  Thus the social
relations of race or marriage are intransitive because they cause
the world to be different than it would otherwise be.  The relation
of king to subject is intransitive.  Overthrowing the king is
causally intervening and is an act in the intransitive dimension.
 
3.   Referential detachment involves not only monitoring what we
do, but monitoring the monitoring of what we do:  
 
RTS, 239:  "Foremost among the powers necessary for science and, as
far as we know, distinctive of men is their power of intentional
action, which enables them to act self-consciously on the world;
that is not just to monitor and control their performance, but to
monitor the monitoring of their performance; to plan, to act and so
to make an anticipatory commentary come true."  
 
Overthrowing the king self-consciously still seems to be an act in
the intransitive dimension.  
 
Asking Lenin what he meant by what he just said also refers to an
object in the intransitive dimension.  
 
Lenin interrogating what he meant by what he just said is no
different.
 
Lenin interrogating what he meant by what he just wrote in order to
self-consciously express what must be the character of a
proletarian party refers to an object in the transitive dimension. 
It is like Darwin reworking Malthus or Thelonious Monk reworking
"Criss Cross" or Shakespeare reworking the sources of Hamlet.  
 
4.   The transitive cannot include anything material as a
consequence of the first proposition above.  Stated positively,
anything in the transitive dimension is meaning abstracted from its
material embodiment.  What is left of music when you take sound
away?  The telescope is in the intransitive dimension, but the idea
of the telescope may be transitive.  If a scientist refashions a
theory, it is not any particular embodiment of the theory which is
the raw material of the refashioning, but the meaning that is
refashioned.  
 
5.   The transitive objects of knowledge are not only meanings, but 
meanings which are the Aristotelian "material" cause of new
knowledge, that is they must be the raw material of a process of
refashioning. The knower must be involved in the process of
transforming the meaningful object.
 
6.   Whether the object of referential detachment is intransitive
or transitive depends on whether the meaning-object is an
Aristotelian "material" cause for the subject or an independent
object of investigation. 
 
Howard


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