Kirsti Mtt��nen kirstima at saunalahti.fi writes:
Dear Eugene,
Thanks for an inspiring mail. The idea of a progressively broadening
social conception I find a very fruitful one, enriching the idea of a
logical ordering. This, together with your exhilarating
thought-experiment with an evolutionary-historical progression,
definitely made some thoughts I was not quite in the clear with, more
clear.
But I cannot see that the social should be excluded from the method of
tenacity in the way you state:
��A tenaciously held belief is still social, as any habit is. Yet the
social is excluded from the method of tenacity. What you believe by
tenacity may also be social and learned, or perhaps social and
instinctive, but believed in because you simply continue to believe in
it, regardless of others' beliefs.
Take for example the way things are nowadays in scientific communities,
which is no way really furthering finding out truth. It's arranged
according to the belief that maximal competition (between individuals)
ensures that the 'best ones' win. Well, 'the best ones' in that view
may win, but the truth certainly is not a winner. - Anyway, the method
of tenacity is bound in this context to become one individuals with
some success are pressed to resort to. Because if anything fundamental
to the work of that individual is convincingly questioned, and so
threatened, the whole career may be at stake. It does not make any
difference, whether the person in question has primarily the truth as a
personal motivating aim, or the just the aim of a fine career, winning
others presents itself either as the means, or as the aim.
In Economy of Reseach (or thus titled in CP) Peirce sees the only way
of really furthering the finding out of the truth in the practice of
just funding generously a lot of people. With a rational HOPE, but
nothing more sure, that some of them, but some ones which cannot be
identified in advance, will produce something worth funding the whole
lot.
Well, it's a long time since I read that piece. But I've had the
opportunity for a good many years to be a part of a (quite small)
research institute with absolutely no problems with funds. Within a
short time it became internationally acknowledged as the leading
institute in the field, as well as highly appreciated outside the
special field. Then various things happened, and with them the 'normal'
scarcity of funding started. Within a VERY short time followed a deep
decay in level of research.
I also had the opportunity to discuss with one of the persons in charge
of the so called 'golden coller' department in the Finnish company
Nokia, which some you may know, before the stupendous success the
company later achieved. The principles were the same, except somewhat
less rational. They acted on a principle based on spending money on
individuals, based on decisions made in upper departments in the
hierachy. So they were just sloshing around money, irrationally. At the
institute I was a member, all decisions were discussed. But there was
no pressure to make them look like reasonable to the outside.
One of my favorite quotes from that particular piece used to be the
metaphor by Peirce: Burning diamonds instead of coal to produce heat.
Thanks again,
Kirsti
Kirsti Mtt��nen
kirstima at saunalahti.fi
Dear Kirsti,
If I understand your criticism that the social should not be excluded from the
method of tenacity, you are saying that much research today goes on under
Darwin-like survival of the fittest rules: research by tenacity in a
competitive social milieu, individuals forced by the game to stick to their
prior thought which gave them their success. It seems to me somewhat similar
to the description of Isolato tenacity I gave. Are you saying that through the
competitive social milieu, in pushing individuals into tenacity, the social is
thereby ingredient in the method of tenacity? Or that methodically tenacious
individuals, in aiming for competitive social success, thereby reveal the
social within the method of tenacity? I'm not sure. It seems to me such
individuals can be characterized as aiming for power through whatever means,
and would fit the method of authority. I characterized it in my previus post
as: 2 You believe what you are forced by social power to believe or can force
on others to believe.
By force here I would include social legitimation, the power politics of
cliques, peer reviews, etc., and not only police.
Or maybe I should soften what I said in previous post to viewing the social as
only indirectly involved in the method of tenacity? Tenacity seems to me to be
about imposing one's way on experience.
I am also familiar with the funding approach you describe, through some
encounters with the MacArthur Foundation way back. I spent one evening with
Jonas Salk and Rod MacArthur (shortly before he
