Re: [Critical-Realism] Neologisms in Critical Realism

["Dave Taylor" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Karl here says something like what I was trying to articulate as I sought to
broaden the scope of Mervyn's very helpful comments under a modified
heading:

"Neologistic PHRASES in the articulation of insight: an example".  

Ruth of course has chipped in with a nice Bhaskerian example, "primal
squeeze", but the one I had in mind involved CR's four levels of
[abstraction, ways of seeing] reality, thereby extending the scope of the
discussion to include the decoding of information in mathematics and visual
gestalt as well as in the case of conventional words.  

Besides Shannon's Information Theory articulating the decoding process, I am
drawing on Donald Michie on the difficulties of articulating tacit
understanding for the creation of "Expert Systems", Jacques Hadamard on the
articulation of insight in "The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical
Field", and as usual G K Chesterton (before gestalt) getting to the heart of
the problem using the simplest of words, as "seeing  a thing a thousand
times and then on the thousand and oneth time seeing its significance
differently for the first time".
 
The problem I have been grappling with for years, having worked with typed
logic, was how to convince Tony Lawson that what is wrong with economics is
not its fixation on mathematical modelling so much as its using the right
type of maths.  I could have done with one of Michie's expert interrogators
to dig out what was in the back of my mind, but in reflecting earlier on
"Clear Writing" I found I had written "neologisms" which captured in a
phrase the linguistic and critical realist aspects of the problem I had been
trying to get across.  I wrote

>The following lemma [to Einstein's comment on simplicity] also seems to me
extremely relevant to CR's aims: 

>"Issues should if possible be resolved by representing them in their
simplest form, but no simpler" 

>(e.g. as mathematics including rather than excluding structure; as
topological geometry rather than algebraic arithmetic; in terms of the logic
of ongoing flows within structures, not in terms of rationality conceived in
terms of ratio and equilibrium, i.e. finite and static outcomes.   Arguably,
for understanding one needs to simplify by abtracting number rather than
structure, and for description of cases of known structure, one can
eliminate that by using an appropriate type of algebra).<

The key phrase is "topological geometry rather than algebraic arithmetic".

I had hoped it would be obvious from algebra being arithmetic without number
that the meaning of topology as geometry without rigid structure would
become obvious.  The conclusions this led on to seem to me extraordinarily
significant, and I am surprised not to say disappointed no-one has noticed
and commented on them.

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:critical-realism-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Karl
Maton
Sent: 01 December 2007 02:53
To: Continuation of the Spoon Bhaskar List
Subject: Re: [Critical-Realism] Neologisms in Critical Realism

Hi all,

Just a quick one, as at conference, but surely the question isn't 
whether concepts are neologisms but their structure.  For anyone 
interested in the form taken by concepts, and the work they do in 
theories, there's some work in systemic functional linguistics that 
looks at the role of what they call 'grammatical metaphor' in the 
technicalisation of a discourse, such as in science.  And there's work 
in the sociology of knowledge developing Bernstein that explores 
concepts in terms of what he termed their 'internal grammar' (degree of 
interrelatedness) and 'external grammar' (relation to correlates beyond 
the theory), as well as what's known as their 'semantic gravity' (or 
degree of context-dependency).  Many theories in sociology, for example, 
have a strong internal grammar but weak external grammar, making it 
problematic when one tries to use them in practical social research.  
They can often either exhibit overly strong semantic gravity, locking 
them into a context such as a particular object of study, or overly weak 
gravity, making them unrelated to anything beyond the theory.  

Whether something is a neologism or not is, I'd suggest, not the central 
issue, though it may be initially daunting to a reader.  .... of course, 
another issue that I think is jumbled up in this debate is the question 
of the style of writing deployed. 

-- 
With best wishes,

Karl

----

Dr Karl Maton
Department of Sociology & Social Policy
Faculty of Arts, University of Sydney

http://www.KarlMaton.com

Editorial Board, Journal of Critical Realism
General Secretary, Australasian Association for Critical Realism

'This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time'


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