Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 11:05:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: RE: Bourdieu: realist, materialist...?


At 10:05 AM 9/7/98 +0200, S.Pines-Martin-AT-iaea.org wrote:
>It is up to Bourdieu to develop his
>science, and it is up to those of us, who are not in that position, to
>improvise on it, with due - preferably irreligious - respect for his
>admonishments.
>
>I feel that Bourdieu's work is, or should be, practicable in an
>extra-scientific way. This is my ideal, that his discourse may be
>somehow understood and applied, productively, by people not in a
>position to engage themselves in the production of scientific knowledge
>on which it depends. But it can only be productive as long as there is
>clarity about the difference between these often opposed practices, and
>as long as there is there is communication between them.

Well, it will be interesting to learn about your extra-scientific
applications. The question is, to what field?  There is an inherent and
maybe even intentional humor if the field in which you want to intervene
extra-scientifically is the sociology of knowledge itself.  What a delicious
paradox!

Outside of that, there are obvious differentials between scientific fields.
For a field highly esoteric, mathematicized, high-tech, and highly
centralized, such as particle physics, the possibilities of making a
scientific contribution are nil, though the philosophical questions raised
by such research engages the amateur mind like no other department of
science.  (Also a topic for investigation!)  I believe there are still
independent scholars in certain decentralized, highly empirical areas of
scientific research, such as entomology.  But in this day and age, the
possibilities for such interventions are almost nil.

The social sciences are closer to or farther from the natural sciences,
depending on the type of research you are talking about.  You've got to be
trained to do experimental psychology, statistically based social science
research, econometrics.  The ideological biases embedded in such activity
can be criticized from the outside, but in order to do it yourself you've
got to be trained in  it.  It's not likely that such skills will get
developed as a hobby, not beyond a certain point, anyway.  Then there are
the humanities (human sciences?). There are levels of technical knowledge
involved there too, but there are certain areas inherently more accessible
to non-professionals than others.  One may have to do a lot of reading, but
must one be a rocket scientist to do literary criticism?  (Of what kind?)

Anyway, what interests me at this juncture is philosophy itself as a field.
While sharing certain properties with other fields, the defining
characteristic of philosophy is that it is reflection upon reflection
itself, as well as upon the most basic and fundamental abstract categories
of one's universe, beyond the specificity of any given part of the empirical
world.   How is it possible, or impossible, to make a "scientific"
contribution in this area?  Also, given the area of competing and opposing
schools of thought (not unique to philosophy, but relating to philosophical
questions no matter what the field), what exactly constitutes progress?
Does progress advance the level of conceptualization and argumentation
irrespective of school or specialized interest, or is there only progress
within a certain school of thought, which may be irrelevant to another? Is
progress completely dependent on other recognized contributions to a
recognized area of discourse, i.e. analysis of established texts, using
commonly accepted terminology and mindful of the accepted problems
recognized by the specialists involved?  Is anything else doomed to be
eccentric or amateurish popular philosophy?  

And, in the realm of popular philosophy, is there a specific kind of habitus
that generates the same kinds of popular philosophy over and over again,
that determines and limits what this popular philosophy can do and the types
of problems it addresses?  In my next post, I want to give a couple of
examples of popular philosophy to illustrate my point.

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