Ian Hacking, citas sobre “estilos de razonamiento”

Ian Hacking, citas sobre “estilos de razonamiento”
Ian Hacking: Representar e intervenir (1983, edición española de Paidós-UNAM, trad. de
Sergio Martínez, 1996)
pp. 76-7, 93 y 152-3.
Los pasajes de interés se resaltan en color.
Ver también pp. 32-3, 65-6, 82, 93, 135, 157, 164-6, 252, e índice temático 317.
pp. 76-7:
3. Lo que aumenta no es el cuerpo estrictamente creciente la teoría (cercana a la
verdad). Los filósofos inclinados por las teorías se estancan la acumulación del
conocimiento teórico -una afirmación bastante dudosa. Muchas cosas sí se acumulan.
(a) Los fenómenos se acumulan. Por ejemplo, Willis Lamb está tratando de hacer óptica
sin fotones. Lamb puede erradicar los fotones, pero el efecto fotoeléctrico permanecerá
allí. (b) Las habilidades tecnológicas y manipulativas e acumulan, el efecto fotoeléctrico
continuará abriendo las puertas de los supermercados. (c) Algo más interesante para el
filósofo es que los estilos de razonamiento científico tienden a acumularse. Hemos
acumulado gradualmente una serie de métodos, entre ellos los geométricos, los
postulacionales, los relativos a la construcción de modelos, los estadísticos, los
hipotético-deductivos, los genéticos, los evolucionistas1, y quizás incluso los historicistas.
Seguramente hay aumento de los tipos (a), (b) y (c), pero en ninguno de ellos hay una
implicación acerca de la realidad de las entidades teóricas o de la verdad de las teorías
(76-7).
p. 93:
El discurso de Paracelso es inconmensurable con el nuestro, porque no hay manera de
contrastar lo que él quiso decir con nada que nosotros queramos decir. Lo podemos
expresar en español, pero no podernos afirmar o negar lo que se dice …
No forzamos la metáfora si decimos que Paracelso vivió en un mundo diferente del
nuestro. Hay dos fuertes correlatos lingüísticos de la disociación. Uno es que numerosos
enunciados paracelsianos no están entre nuestros candidatos a verdad-o-falsedad. El
otro es que estilos olvidados de razonamiento son fundamentales para su pensamiento.
En otra parte sostengo que estos dos aspectos están íntimamente conectados. Una
proposición interesante es por lo general verdadera-o-falsa si hay un estilo de
razonamiento que nos ayude a establecer su valor de verdad … Paracelso vio el mundo
como una red diferente de posibilidades, encajadas en estilos de razonamiento
diferentes de los nuestros, y a esto se debe que estemos disociados de él (93).
1
Omitido en la traducción española. Texto original en inglés (Cambridge University Press) p. 56
pp. 152-3:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Otros textos (opcionales, dado que están en inglés)
Ian Hacking: “Language, Thought and Reason” (1982), pp. 323-5
Every people has generated its own peculiar styles. We are no different from others,
except that we can see, more clearly from our own written record, the historical
emergence of new styles of reasoning.
I take the word 'style' from the title of a forthcoming book by A. C. Crombie: Styles of
Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition. He concludes an anticipatory paper with
the words:
The active promotion and diversification of the scientific methods of late medieval and
early modern Europe reflected the general growth of a research mentality in European
society, a mentality conditioned and increasingly committed by its circumstances to
expect and to look actively for problems to formulate and solve, rather than for an
accepted consensus without argument. The varieties of scientific methods so brought in to
play may be distinguished as,
(1) the simple postulation established in the mathematical sciences,
(2) the experimental exploration and measurement of more complex observable
relations,
(3) the hypothetical construction of analogical models,
(4) the ordering of variety by comparison and taxonomy,
(5) the statistical analysis of regularities of populations and the calculus of probabilities,
and
(6) the historical derivation of genetic development.
The first three of these methods concern essentially the science of individual
regularities, and the second three the science of the regularities of populations ordered in
space and time.
…
The existence of styles of reasoning does not immediately suggest relativism …
There are good and bad reasons. It has taken millennia to evolve systems of reasoning.
By and large our Western tradition has contributed more to this progress than any
other. We have often been narrow, blinkered and insensitive to foreign insights. We
have repressed our own deviant and original thinkers, condemning many to irretrievable
oblivion. Some of our own once-favoured styles of reasoning have turned out to be dead
ends and others are probably on the way. However, new styles of reasoning will
continue to evolve. So we shall not only find out more about nature, but we shall also
learn new ways to reason about it. Maybe Paul Feyerabend's advocacy of anarchy is
right. To compel people to reason in approved ways is to limit us and our potentialities
for novelty (323-5).
Ian Hacking: Taiwan Lectures, 2007,
Sitios web:
Conferencias 1-2:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCoQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthinker.ncc
u.edu.tw%2Fdownoad.php%3Ffilename%3D182_e3f6ac1e.pdf%26dir%3Dnews%26title%3D%25E8%258B%25B1%25E6%25
96%2587%25E6%2596%2587%25E7%258D%25BB&ei=JZyeT7KgAYK09QSziqygDw&usg=AFQjCNEVAFsVs8BS08j0VJIBLhfAouI
cyg&sig2=zV8OFCHGR_pkrvN52VheEg
Conferencia 3:
http://phdforum.im.ntu.edu.tw/961/PhD_Forum_Conference_Information_071109/The%20Laboratory%20Style%20of%20
Thinking%20and%20Doing.pdf
Conferencia 4:
http://phdforum.im.ntu.edu.tw/961/PhD_Forum_Conference_Information_071109/Realisms%20and%20Anti-Realisms.pdf
Lecture 1: “On the historical roots of scientific reason”, pp. 2-3.
1. Learning how to learn
My fundamental observation is that reasoning, finding out, and techniques of discovery
have a history. It is not just the history of facts discovered, theories proposed, and
technologies invented. We have not only learned an amazing amount about the world
and how to change it: we have also had to learn how to find out …
Cognition and culture are, then, two dimensions that provide the space in which to
understand scientific reason. We have many different cognitive abilities, and human
history runs on many paths. Not surprisingly, there are many ways to conduct scientific
research. For example,
• Mathematicians construct deductive proofs (among other things).
• We make theoretical models of aspects of nature in order to understand them or to
alter them.
• The laboratory sciences demand not just “experiment,” but also the building of
apparatus to elicit, and often to create, phenomena.
• Taxonomists classify living things according to principles of hierarchic structure,
although what those principles are, continue to be matters of intense debate.
• Decision under uncertainty, thinking in probabilities, is yet another distinct style of
scientific thinking.
• There may also be a genetic way of understanding, most successful in such
evolutionary theories as Darwin’s theory of natural selection, but also tried out in
enterprises as diverse as Freudian analysis and Marxist historiography.
These are distinct ways to find things out, practiced in what we call the sciences. They
have histories that are to some extent independent. They are grounded in cognitive
capacities about which, at present, we can only speculate. These are distinct styles of
scientific thinking, each of which has been developed in its own way, in its own time
frame, and each of which contributes to the larger fabric of scientific imagination and
action (2-3).
Lecture 3: “The laboratory style of thinking and doing”, p. 2.
I first heard about the “six styles” from Crombie at a conference in 1979, and that
started me thinking anew about the sciences; the first sign of my uptake was published
in 1982, and I have been thinking about these matters from time to time ever since.1
Today I shall be concerned with his second and third styles of thinking, and with a
combination of the two. I call it the laboratory style of thinking and doing. Here are the
brief descriptions of the second and third styles that I heard almost 30 years ago: 2.
Experimental measurement, and exploration of more complex observable relations. 3.
Hypothetical construction of analogical models (p. 2).