Date:         Wed, 22 Jun 94 09:43:57 EDT
From: Rick Prouty <FLANEUR-AT-VM.TEMPLE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: the uses of theory
To: film-theory-AT-world.std.com


I've found the parallels between film theory and scientific theory
interesting. However, I think there is a very different standard of
truth in science and the humanities. As I understand it, the standard
of validity for a scientific theory is predictability: a theory must
consistently predict a given set of actions, regardless of who is
conducting the experiment. In the humanities, the standard of truth--
if humanities can even be said to have a standard of truth--is
consensus. This is why humanities people are a bickersome lot.

I've always thought that the difference between science and the humanities
corresponds roughly to Kant's distinction between determinate and
reflective judgment. Determinate, scientific judgment is concerned with
the adequacy of a concept to a percept. Reflective judgment, on the other
hand, is more self-conscious (or self-reflexive, if you prefer). Taking
our recent discussion of the term "character identification" for example,
one could ask, What, exactly, do I mean by character identification?
Where did I get that concept from, anyway?

For me, simply asking questions like these constitutes theorizing about
a signifying practice. You don't *necessarily* need Marx or Freud or anybody
named Jacques to theorize. However, very soon you run across the big theorists
because their ideas have so permeated our thoughts about culture,
society and ourselves.

Finally, there is one more difference between science and the humanities.
In science, the general goal is to explain as much phenomena as possible
under a single theory. In textual analysis, the idea is to specify one's
understanding of a text--to look for uniqueness, not generality. This is
why the most "scientific" of humanities theories, structuralism, has lost
favor: it made texts look too much alike.

Rick Prouty