| Line 629: |
Line 629: |
| | to know everything about their material content | | to know everything about their material content |
| | down to the depths that matter can go. | | down to the depths that matter can go. |
| − | </pre>
| |
| − |
| |
| − | =====1.3.5.13. A Formal Suspicion=====
| |
| − |
| |
| − | <pre>
| |
| − | | Rational thought is interpretation according to a scheme that we cannot throw off.
| |
| − | |
| |
| − | | (Nietzsche, 'The Will to Power', S 522, 283).
| |
| − |
| |
| − | I hope that the reader has arrived by now at an independent suspicion that the
| |
| − | process of formalization is a microcosm nearly as complex as the whole subject
| |
| − | of inquiry itself. Indeed, the initial formulation of a problem is tantamount
| |
| − | to a mode of "representational inquiry". In many ways this very first effort,
| |
| − | that stirs from the torpor of ineffable unease to seek out any sort of unity
| |
| − | in the manifold of fragmented impressions, is the most difficult, subtle,
| |
| − | and crucial kind of inquiry. It begins in doubt about even so much as
| |
| − | a fair way to represent the problematic situation, but its result can
| |
| − | predestine whether subsequent inquiry has any hope of success. There
| |
| − | is very little in this brand of formal engagement and participatory
| |
| − | representation that resembles the simple and disinterested act of
| |
| − | holding a mirror, flat and featureless, up to nature.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | If formalization really is a form of inquiry in itself, then
| |
| − | its formulations have deductive consequences that can be tested.
| |
| − | In other words, formal models have logical effects that reflect on
| |
| − | their fitness to qualify as representations, and these effects can
| |
| − | cause them to be rejected merely on the grounds of being a defective
| |
| − | picture or a misleading conception of the source phenomenon. Therefore,
| |
| − | it should be appreciated that software tailored to this task will probably
| |
| − | need to spend more time in the alterations of backtracking than it will have
| |
| − | occasion to trot out parades of ready-to-wear models.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | Impelled by the mass of assembled clues from restarts and refits to the
| |
| − | gathering form of a coherent direction, the inkling may have gradually
| |
| − | accumulated in the reader that something of the same description has
| |
| − | been treated in the pragmatic theory of inquiry under the heading
| |
| − | of "abductive reasoning". This is distinguished from inductive
| |
| − | reasoning, that goes from the particular to the general, in
| |
| − | that abductive reasoning must work from a mixed collection
| |
| − | of generals and particulars toward a middle term, a formal
| |
| − | intermediary that is more specific than the vague allusions
| |
| − | gathered about its subject and more generic than the elusive
| |
| − | instances fashioned to illustrate its prospective predicates.
| |
| − |
| |
| − | In a recursive context, the function of formalization is to relate a
| |
| − | difficult problem to a simpler problem, breaking the original inquiry
| |
| − | into two parts, the step of formalization and the rest of the inquiry,
| |
| − | both of which branches it is hoped will be nearer to solid ground and
| |
| − | easier to grasp than the original question.
| |
| | </pre> | | </pre> |