18 November 2010

the rules of perspective

If we are too young our judgement is impaired, just as it is if we are too old.
Thinking too little about things or thinking too much both make us obstinate and fanatical.
If we look at our work immediately after completing it, we are still too involved; if too long afterwards, we cannot pick up the thread again.
It is like looking at pictures which are too near or too far away. There is just one indivisible point which is the right place.
Others are too near, too far, too high, or too low. In painting the rules of perspective decide it, but how will it be decided when it comes to truth and morality?

Blaise Pascal, Pensees

08 November 2010

all motivations working simultaneously

A psychological interpretation of science begins with the acute realization that science is a human creation, rather than an autonomous, non-human, or per se "thing" with intrinsic rules of its own. Its origins are in human motives, its goals are human goals, and it is created, renewed, and maintained by human beings. Its laws, organization, and articulations rest not only on the nature of the reality that it discovers, but also on the nature of the human nature that does the discovering. The psychologist, especially if he has had any clinical experience, will quite naturally and spontaneously approach any subject matter in a personal way by studying people, rather than the abstractions they produce, scientists as well as science.
  The misguided effort to make believe that this is not so, the persistent attempt to make science completely autonomous and self-regulating and to regard it as a disinterested game, having intrinsic, arbitrary chesslike rules, the psychologist must consider unrealistic, false, and even anti-empirical.
  ... Scientists are motivated, like all other members of the human species, by species-wide needs for food, etc.; by needs for safety, protection, and care; by needs for gregariousness and for affection-and-love relations; by needs for respect, standing, and status, with consequent self-respect; and by a need for self-actualization or self-fulfillment of the idiosyncratic and species-wide potentialities of the individual person. These are the needs that are best known to psychologists for the simple reason that their frustration produces psychopathology.
  Less studied but knowable through common observation are the cognitive needs for sheer knowledge (curiosity) and for understanding (the philosophical, theological, value-system-building explanation needed).
  Finally, least well known are the impulses to beauty, symmetry, and possibly to simplicity, completion, and order, which we may call aesthetic needs, and the needs to express, to act out, and to motor completion that may be related to these aesthetic needs.
  To date it seems as if all other needs or desires or drives are either means to the basic ends listed above, or are neurotic, or else are products of certain kinds of learning processes.
  Obviously the cognitive needs are of most concern to the philosopher of science. It is man's persistent curiosity that is most responsible for science in its natural-history stage, and it is his equally persistent desire to understand, explain, and systematize that generates science in its more theoretical and abstract levels. However, it is this latter theoretical urge that is more specifically a sine qua non for science, for sheer curiosity is seen often enough in animals.
  But the other motives are certainly also involved in science at all its stages. It is too often overlooked that the original theorizers of science often thought of science primarily as a means to help the human race. Bacon, for instance, expected much amelioration of disease and poverty from science. It has been shown that even for Greek science where pure unmanual contemplation of the Platonic sort was a strong tradition, the practical and humanistic trend was also fairly strong. The feeling of identification and belongingness with people in general, and even more strongly the feeling of love for human beings may often be the primary motivation in many men of science. Some people go into science, as they might into social work or medicine, in order to help people.
  And then finally we must recognize that any other human need may serve as a primary motivation for going into science, for working at it, or for staying in it. It may serve as a living, a source of prestige, a means of self-expression, or as a satisfaction for any one of many neurotic needs.
  In most persons, a single primary all-important motive is less often found than a combination in varying amounts of all motivations working simultaneously. It is safest to assume that in any single scientist his work is motivated not only by love, but also by simple curiosity, not only by prestige, but also by the need to earn money, etc.

Abraham Maslow, Motivation and Personality (2nd ed., 1970: 1-3)

05 November 2010

by definition without rule

Although Chaos can be studied in terms of antecedents in classical literature and philosophy, its appearance in [Paradise Lost] owes its problematic character to Milton's theology. Chaos is infinite, and filled by a ubiquitous God who has nonetheless withdrawn his creative will from chaotic matter (7.168-73). None of the categorical binaries established during the creation of Genesis inhere in Chaos. It is neither this nor that, "neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,/ But all these in their pregnant cause mixed/ Confus'dly" (2.912-14); therefore Satan, as he traverses this indeterminate space, confusedly mixes locomotions, "And swims or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies" (2.950). The "embryon atoms" (2.900) of Chaos are "the womb of Nature" (2.911), the pure potential that the Son first circumscribes with golden compasses when creating our universe (7.225-31) and will doubtless use again in creating new worlds (2.915-16). Chaos cannot be good until God has infused it with creative order. It is at least morally neutral, at best thoroughly praiseworthy, as a part of the process by which God makes and sustains all things.
  But alongside the language of atomism, Milton gives us a mythic Chaos, personified as the ruler of his realm, or rather its "Anarch" (2.988), since Chaos is by definition without rule. This Chaos, speaking for his consort, Night, and for a shadowy pack of Hesiodic creatures and personifications (2.963-67), expresses his resentment over recent losses (the creations of Hell and our universe) and supports Satan's mission on the assumption that "Havoc and spoil and ruin are my gain" (2.1009). We thus arrive at a paradox. Theologically, Chaos is neutral or better. Mythically, in terms of the epic narrative, Chaos is the ally of Satan.

Kerrigan, Rumrich, & Fallon, intro. to Paradise Lost (2007: xiv-xv).