Jon, List,
Thanks much for this response.
With regard to the first question, since it is most likely not a
dualism between discovery and invention that JR had in mind, what
would be the alternative. He wouldn't have italicized "discovery"
had he not meant to contrast it with something else. Or, perhaps,
there is a better way to read this passage?
With regard to the second question, the logic/rhetoric distinction
you mention would seem to fit. Thanks for bringing this out.
Sally
Peircers,
Let me pick it up here:
SN: The main idea or "real issue" that JR seeks to present via Kleinman's
paper is brought out in paragraph 3: "whether scientific inquiry
is to continue to be recognized institutionally as a discovery
process, guided ideally by the norms implicit in such ideas as that
of truth, knowledge, reality, objectivity, and so forth, or is to
be controlled instead by the principles of persuasion and
accommodation that are used in negotiational and political
activity" (emphasis in JR's text). JR wants to argue in the rest
of the paper that scientific inquiry should be guided by said
norms. The either/or construction of JR's sentence seems worth
pondering, as is the emphatic formatting of the term, "discovery."
Two questions come to mind in this regard:
1) Why does JR put stress on this concept of "discovery"? What is
the implicit contrast to it (discovery/found vs inventive/made)? Is
this a reference to some idea of Peirce here?
2) Perhaps more important: Are the two different ways that JR
identifies of governing such discovery processes really,
fundamentally, discrete alternatives? are they as completely
separable and interchangeable as JR seems to think they are? In
sum, is this really a "Plan A or Plan B" situation? I'm skeptical
about it being accurate to think of discovery processes as guided
either (and simply) by "norms" on the one hand, or by "principles"
of the kind JR identifies on the other? I'm surprised to see JR
even use the term "principle" in relation to the strategies and
tactics of political activity he references (I'm not sure what JR
has in mind by "negotiational" activity). It sounds as though
JR's view of political life is very negative, lacking in norms
implicit in its own ideas of truth, knowledge, reality, not to
mention honor.
Perhaps JR is simply saying that science ought to be governed by
ideals that rise above the historical contingencies within which
any given practice must be situated, ideals that relate to subject
matter that is itself relatively enduring, general, and
transcendent. Any thoughts about how to sort out this passage?
For (1), I don't think we find the usual suspect dualism between
discovery and invention
in Peirce's account of the inquiry process. Haack made a recent
attempt to characterize
the pragmatic synthesis as "foundherentism", but I think it's better
to realize from the
outset that working in sign-relational framework means never having
to murder to dissect,
that the object-referent aspect and the sign-processing aspect are
mere projections from
the whole sign relation in which we are participating at any given moment.
For (2), I think this spectrum of difference reflects the classical
distinction between
logic (reasoning that proceeds independently of the peculiar
conditions of interpreters)
and rhetoric (reasoning that is tailored to the peculiar conditions
of its interpreter).
Jon
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