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Theory: a three-part minicourse
The Canadian artist Michael Snow said, I don't need
a theory, I am a theory. What might he have meant?
What are some of the things we can mean by 'theory'? Is
a religion a theory?
How is theory created or found? Who makes theories, and
why? Is there such a thing as 'pure' theory? What is the relation between
experience and theory? Research and theory? What do we know about theory
and the brain? How do we recognize a theory, summarize it, assess it, use
it? What is theory good for? What is it bad for?
- Theory I: What is a theory?
- 1. Conceptual analysis of 'theory'
- 2. Beyond definition: theory as social fact
- 3. Beyond definition: theory as cognitive fact
Theory I. What is a theory? The philosophy and psychology of theory
1. Conceptual analysis of 'theory'
In doing conceptual analysis we are trying to examine
a concept as such. In this case we are fanning out some of the ways we
use the term 'theory,' and trying to find commonalities and differences.
Polysemy: the fact
that a linguistic term has more than one sort of meaning or use.
A. Name some instances of theory:
theory of relativity, theory that the earth is flat, Freudian theory, systems
theory, theory of management, conspiracy theory, theory of music, literary
theory, alchemical theory, Jung's theory of archetypes, Methodism, hydrodynamics.
B. Analyze dictionary definitions
of 'theory,' look at the various contrasts implicit in each of these definitions,
and try to find examples of each.
>Definition 1. a speculative or conjectural belief/statement
Contrast: between guessing
and having secure knowledge. Example: theory that members of Western
elite groups are members of a reptilian form of off-world aliens
>Definition 2. abstract knowledge/belief
Contrast: between abstract
and applied or practical knowledge/belief. Example: music theory,
as in "I'm not a musician; I just do music theory."
>Definition 3. a closely reasoned set of propositions
derived from and supported by established evidence and intended to explain
phenomena
A number of constrasts:
- reasoned or logic-based vs nonreasoned
- systematic or connected vs ad hoc
- articulated in statements or formulae vs implicit
- tested against evidence vs untested or untestable
Paradigm example: a mathematized
hard science such as hydrodynamics, which uses mathematically described,
empirically tested physical laws to make causal predictions about the relations
of (for instance) rivers and bridges.
>Definition 4. an
integrated body of principles thought of as underlying a domain being investigated
Contrast: between explicit and implicit theory? Between
order in nature and explicit descriptions of that order?
Example: Imagine an unschooled
musician's intuitive sense of octave and chord relations. They are principles
of music that she or he has discovered in making music 'in the music'
- but they are also principles someone else could discover by reading a
book. The latter is obviously a case of theory, but sometimes we call the
former theory too.
It is often difficult to conceptually separate order in
nature (or culture, etc.) from our own ability to detect and formalize
that order. When we try to discover 'the principles of' music, or of psychology,
or river flow, or painting, we look for something that is part of the domain
we are studying, but as soon as we discover and name such order 'the principles'
also seem to be part of our theory, our language. Definition 4 reflects
some of this ambiguity: the language used does not choose between natural
order and our discovery and expression of that order. In its ambiguity
it also leaves room for putting our own responsive and thoughtful bodily
order into our sense of what theory is (see Part 3).
C. Etymology: look up the origin of the word
Greek theoreein: to look at, theoria: a
view, speculation - theory as a manner of seeing, a way of having insight
or a comprehensive view.
2. Beyond definition: theory as social fact
A. We can think of a theory as a discourse community
a manner of speaking and acting; a shared
vocabulary; shared formation or training; a common faith in shared assumptions.
It can be a social identity, for instance as a Freudian
or a hydrodynamicist.
It can be thought of as a sort of cognitive microclimate
an intellectual/emotional/perceptual niche in which some sorts of
thoughts and feelings can flourish and others cannot.
Scientific and nonscientific communities have very different
criteria for membership. A physical science community might require
mathematical talent and instrumental skills whereas a cultural theory community
might require an indefinable sophistication, an ability to come up with
ways of thinking that grab the attention of people who know the history
of a discourse or the current intellectual fashion.
Different theoretical communities allow change in different
ways: a hard science community has mechanisms for accepting gradual change
in a progressive manner, where a cultural theory community may swerve like
a flock of swallows from one fad to another.
B. Watch out for the politics of theory. Since theories are made and defended and promulgated and dissed
by humans, power relations are everywhere in theoretical communities.
It is always wise to ask, Who made this theory? What
were the race/class/gender loyalties of its makers? What is noticed in
this theoretical community? What is ignored? Whose cognitive talents are
valued? Whose are devalued? Does this theory recognize my own existence
and value?
And further (thank you William), there is also always
the question, What are my reasons for wanting to believe/support/diss
this particular theory?
3. Beyond definition: theory as cognitive fact
By cognition I mean perceiving, imagining,
feeling, thinking, speaking and acting by means of the intelligence of
a human body evolved and structured to be able to do these things.
This section talks about theory as an embodied fact of
human function: how bodies do theory.
A. Elements of theory discoverable in the body:
i. Generalizations or abstractions. We understand or believe facts about whole categories of things,
not just the particular instance we happen to be perceiving at the moment.
An example might be Europeans previous to their first landing on Australia
believing, as part of their theory of swans, that all swans are white.
It used to be thought that such generalizations were supplied by some special
faculty of mind, such as the faculty of Reason, and somehow attached to
moments of perception. Brain scan studies have shown us that the moments
of particular perception are moments of many kinds of response in many
places distributed through the whole cortex. Some of these sorts of response
can be thought of as abstracting and generalizing, so that abstracting
and generalizing can be understood as an inherent and essential part of
any moment of perception. Another way to think of this is to think of generalization
in terms of bodily preparedness: Australian swans are black, but European
bodies were prepared and expecting to see swans that were white. This preparedness
can be thought of as implicit theory.
ii. Causal stories are another
essential part of theories, and they also can be seen as built into the
structure of the body. An experimenter showed subjects a video of a truck
backing up toward a loading platform. She later showed the subjects still
photos of the truck at different positions and asked which matched the
position the truck had reached in the bit of video they had seen. The subjects
remembered the truck as having backed up further than it actually had in
the video they saw their visual systems were extrapolating from what
they had been shown to what was going to happen next. Our muscles and perceptual
systems and their evolution- and experience-built interconnections understand
causation and can be thought to embody implicit theories of causal relation.
iii. Metaphor. We think by
means of what we know. When we are trying to understand things we can't
see or touch we nonetheless often think of them in terms of things we do
see or touch. Trying to understand personality, Freud thought of ego, id
and superego as if they were people interacting. When we teach children
about atoms we show them pictures of little balls whizzing around a nucleus.
The metaphoric structuring of theoretical thought is subtly and interestingly
pervasive, and it can be traced to bodily structures we use in basic perception
and action.
B. Hemispheric connection and disconnection.
It seems as if there is somebody somewhere who believes
just about every possible theory. How can we account for the credulity
or frailty humans demonstrate in relation to theories?
- Story of hemispheric disconnection.
- Observation and confabulation.
- Gurjieff : We observe with a good mechanism and explain
with a poor one.
C. Being theory
Filmmaker Michael Snow: "I don't need a theory; I
am a theory."
What might he mean?
- I became an artist by making art.
- I don't need a theory about art to tell me how to make
art.
- I am already an ordered structure.
- I don't need linguistic descriptions of order.
- I can make order because I am order.
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