Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 09:10:15 -0500
From: Reg Lilly <rlilly-AT-scott.skidmore.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: A theory about theory [was Anyone get Gass?]


Howard Hastings wrote:

> 
> But doesn't Foucault's distinction arise from a recognition that one does
> not have "facts" outside of specific discourses?  Or to put this another
> way, one does not have a vantage point from which to view facts which is
> itself a disinterested vantage point.  Foucault certainly thought it
> important to "look at the data," but he was also supremely aware that data
> was not just "data" by itself.

	Yes, and I of course agree with Foucault here.

> 
> I may have misunderstood Pat, but it does sound like she is talking about
> data separable from theories and theories separable from data in a way
> Foucault would not.  In fact, much of what she writes sounds to me like
> old-fashioned positivism.


	If that's the case, I'd have to disagree with Pat.  But (I can't believe I'm
saying this) there may be something healthy in positivism -- even Foucault
called himself a 'happy positivist' -- namely, positivism is (an grotesquely
exaggerated) response to a certain demand that data places on all theorizing, a
demand to return 'zu den Sachen selbst' even if we will never arrive at them in
all their purity.  I think you can acknowledge the 'there's nothing theory-free'
as well as this demand (I don't know how else to express it at this hour of the
morning) placed on thinking and theorizing to 'look again.'


> 
> E.g, the point of the anecdotes about the dentist who was impervious to
> "facts" and the psychoanalyst who wanted to talk about Greek art without
> looking at it seem to posit "data" which are outside a theory and upon
> which it depends for guidance.  These are much like the apocryphal stories
> which arise with the birth of experimental science (e.g., Galileo dropping
> differently weighted cannon balls from the leaning tower of Pisa while
> his professors walked by, refusing to look.)
> 
>  People either do or do not look at the "facts" in these anecdotes. The
> facts are either "there" or "not there."  And disagreement over the facts
> can be traced not to a different frame of reference but to hardheaded
> refusal to look.
> 
> There is no worry about facts which can be "there" but still can mean very
> different things in conjunction with very different theories.

Or sometimes theories preclude a priori facts/data from appearing, something
that should always make theories a bit nervous.  The history of modern physics
(as well as other non-hard-sciences) is replete with examples of this kind, so
am I disagreeing with you when you say 

>  There is no
> worry that facts "there" when viewed from some theoretical perspectives
> might not be there when viewed from others.

   ... or is your 'there is no' an acknowledgement of the phenomenon?


> 
> I.e., there is no worry here about how the data are already "disclosed"
> within a very specific kind of "Gestell" or enframing which might
> pre-determine which interpretations or theories they could validate and
> which they could not--even when the facts are indisputibly "there" and
> people are choosing not to look away from them.
> 
> So when Pat distinguishes student "bullshitting" from "the theorizing of a
> well-informed person", it seems in reference to facts--a quantity of
> data-- not itself mediated by any particular class or cultural
> perspective.
> 
> And she asserts that for teachers, "The first order of business is to
> expose students to the data," and "How the data is classified is
> secondary."  

	Perhaps Pat is pointing out a trivium, that if students don't read The
Republic, they don't have anything but bullshit to say about it, that, as GT
says, theories emerge into explicitness through one's encounter with the
phenomena?  Or at least I hope so.

>
> So I think the issue here IS whether facts are theory free or not.  I
> think Pat thinks they are.  If I am mistaken I hope she will demonstrate
> this and not presume that I am just "not looking" at what she is saying.


	Here's a 'pith-issue': I don't think that facts are theory free, but I also
don't think that facts are mere by-products of theory -- elaboration or
ornamentation, as it were.  I think that the coherency and homegeneity of theory
can and often is disrupted by 'facts' that don't fit; it strikes me that there
is a certain 'theoretical surplus' that is constitutive of facts.  But I have no
theory about this at the moment!

> hh
> 
> Sorry to be discussing you in the 3rd person Pat.


Me too Pat.

Ciao, 
Reg


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