BHA: Intransivity, Rationalism

[MSPRINKER@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

               State University of New York at Stony Brook
                       Stony Brook, NY 11794-3355

                                            Michael Sprinker
                                            Professor of English & Comp Lit
                                            Comparative Studies
                                            516 632-9634
                                            08-Jun-1998 01:58pm EDT
FROM:  MSPRINKER
TO:    Remote Addressee                     ( _bhaskar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx )

Subject: Intransivity, Rationalism

Colin,

My only point is that social structures, if they do indeed
possess some kind of intransivity, must be intransitive
in ways other than things in the physical world.  It seems
implausible on the face of it that sub-atomic particles
have changed their properties as a result of physics' discovering
and giving a theoretical explanation of those properties.
Electrons orbited hydrogen nuclei in the same we now understand
them to do in Aristotle's time.  It didn't require the
postulation of the Bohr atom and quantum mechanics to make
them what they are.

Nor, of course, did there have to be Marx's CAPITAL in order
for capitalism to come into existence.  But it's plain that,
unlike atomic structures, capitalism has undergone significant
mutations over historical time:  capitalism existed in Italy
by the 15th century, but it was quite different in form and
content than what Marx theorized, much less what we have now
(though certain features persist--the existence in the technical
sense of value, i.e., surplus value).

The fact that social structures are historical, that they
exist only in virtue of actions by agents (knowing or
unknowing) distinguishes them fundamentally, and makes wonder,
at least, what intransitivity could mean in this case.

I mean by Bhaskar's rationalism his tendency, very marked I
feel, to write as if in science (i.e., in the transitive
dimension of theory formation and so forth), the best argument
just wins out.  I don't think the history of science will
support such a view, but rather that scientific theories
are powerfully inflected by ideological factors, and that
what progress in the sciences there has been has resulted
often enough from social conditions surrounding the propagation
of scientific theories.  One, overly glib, version of this
phenomenon is the traditional view that without Huxley
to carry the ball, Darwinian theory would almost not have
won the day in biology as quickly as it did.  Nor is the
existence of a correct (if now somewhat modified) theory of
evolution by means of natural selection guaranteed to
triumph for all time.  The force of so-called "scientific
creationism," at least in the US is a very real threat.
Or as Althusser once observed, no epistemological is
forever.

Michael


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