Skill, Technology and Enlightenment:: Practical Philosophy
Skill, Technology and Enlightenment:: Practical Philosophy
Skill, Technology and Enlightenment:: Practical Philosophy
On Practical Philosophy
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND SOCIETY
Skill, Technology
and Enlightenment:
On Practical Philosophy
Springer-Verlag
London Berlin Heidelberg New York
Paris Tokyo Hong Kong
Barcelona Budapest
BoGoranzon
Mathematician and Researcher, Swedish Center for Working Life,
Box 5606, 5-11486, Sweden
ISBN-13:978-3-540-19920-5 e-ISBN-13:978-1-4471-3001-7
DOl: 10.1007/978-1-4471-3001-7
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in
writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in
accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing
Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be
sent to the publishers.
This book has one of its main starting points in the international
conference on Skill and Technology: On Diderot, Education and the
Third Culture, held in Stockholm in September 1993. This conference
brought together 100 researchers and artists in the fields of technol-
ogy, philosophy, the history of ideas, divinity, literature, econom-
ics, chemical physics, the creative and performing arts etc. The three
opening addresses to this conference, by Lars Lofgren, Artistic and
Managing Director, the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, Janne
Carlsson, Vice Chancellor of the Royal Institute of Technology,
Stockholm, and Anders L. Johansson, Director of the Swedish
Institute for Worklife Research, Stockholm, are reproduced after
this preface.
The book has another starting point in the Dialogue Seminar held
at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm by the Swedish
Institute for Worklife Research and the Royal Institute of
Technology, Stockholm. Over the past five years workshops related
to the Dialogue Seminar have been held in Norwich, Stockholm,
Bod0, Cambridge, Innsbruck, Moscow, Paris and London. One of
the workshops took as its theme Beyond All Certainty, a dramatiza-
tion of the meeting between Alan Turing and Ludwig Wittgenstein,
their destinies and their respective views of knowledge. The play,
written by Bo Goranzon and Anders Karlqvist and performed by
the Great Escape Theatre Company, the University of East Anglia,
Norwich, has been played to audiences in Stockholm, Norwich,
Cambridge and Bod0, with the performances being followed by
workshops. The results of the work on Beyond All Certainty are pre-
sented in Section IV of this book.
The contours of the Skill and Technology research field and a
multitude of issues that require thorough investigation are present-
ed in this and the five preceding books in this series. They are:
Stockholm Bo Giiranzon
August 1994
Addresses
with Jean Ie Rond d' Alembert, the other great name behind the
French Encyclopedia, which was published from 1750 to 1780.
D' Alembert was a mathematician, philosopher and natural scien-
tist. His well-known principle of mechanics has played an impor-
tant role in the development of mechanics and the related parts of
the engineering sciences.
His main philosophical thesis was that all our knowledge is
based on experience. This - I understand - is a central idea behind
the work of the "Skill and Technology" group.
Perhaps it would be an interesting endeavor for the "Skill and
Technology" group to reflect upon the relations and the coopera-
tion between the two editors of the French Encyclopedia, one repre-
senting science, the other art: the two cultures. Could that possibly
be a topic for a future seminar?
But first we have an interesting Diderot seminar to look forward
to. On behalf of KTH I welcome you all, and extend a special wel-
come to our friends from abroad.
It is my belief that this conference will give us not only the opportu-
nity to meet eminent scientists from other countries, it will give us
the opportunity to highlight one of the most important dilemmas in
our modem society: the growing gap between democracy and the
wishes of the people on the one hand, and the logic of science, tech-
nology and modem technocracy on the other.
From the perspective of Skill and Technology we are able to iden-
tify different groups in our society: those who, by virtue of their
work and professions, are committed and take an active part in
progress and development, and those who are marginalized and
only passive parties to this process.
As I see it, the study of this technology and science-based tension
between democracy and technocracy is of outstanding importance.
As a consequence of this dilemma there is a growing risk that we
will underestimate and even ignore practical skill and ordinary
worklife experience. And we have clearly come a long way since
then!
It is my hope that this conference will mark a new chapter, a new
starting point in research in:
• skill and technology
• democracy and technology, and
• the use of language.
I am convinced that our institute, together with the Royal
Institute of Technology and such eminent researchers as Stephen
Toulmin, Allan Janik, Bo G6ranzon and Ingela Josefson to mention
just a few, will, as the result of this conference, have the capacity to
develop important research programs.
In short, I am confident that this will be a productive meeting and
a conference of great importance for forthcoming research on skill
and technology.
Contents
Preface .............................................................................................. v
Addresses ......................................................................................... ix
Summaries
Rolf Hughes ....................................................................................... xxi
SECTION I. Introduction
1. Introduction
Jon Cook and Bo Goranzon 3
4. Imaginary Confessions
Stephen Toulmin ............................................................................... 37
8. Comments
Lars Kleberg ....................................................................................... 83
13. Comments
Bo Goranzon ..................................................... ................................. 123
22. Comments
Rolf Hughes ....................................................................................... 209
29. Comments
Jon Cook ............................................................................................. 297
34. Comments
Magnus Florin ................................................................................... 341
xvi Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Christopher Bigsby
Director, Professor, Arthur Miller Centre, University of East Anglia,
Norwich, NR4 7IJ, UK
Peter Bradner
Dr.-Ing, Head of Production Systems Dept, Institut Arbeit und
Technik, Florastrasse 26-28, 0-45879, Gelsenkirchen, Germany
Janne Carlsson
Vice Chancellor, Professor, Royal Institute of Technology, 5-10044
Stockholm, Sweden
Jon Cook
Director, Centre for Creative and Performing Arts, University of
East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7IJ, UK
Albert Danielsson
Professor, Department of Industrial Economics and Management,
Royal Institute of Technology, 5-10044 Stockholm, Sweden
Richard Davies
Actor, Researcher, The Centre for Applied Research in Education,
University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7IJ, UK
Richard Ennals
Professor, Kingston Business School, Kingston University, Kingston
Hill, Kingston upon Thames, KT2 7LB, UK
Magnus Florin
Dramaturgist, The Royal Dramatic Theatre, Box 5037, 5-10241
Stockholm, Sweden
BoGiiranzon
Doctor of Technology, Swedish Institute for Worklife Research, Box
5606,5-11486 Stockholm; Adjunct Professor, Skill and Technology,
Royal Institute of Technology, 5-10044 Stockholm, Sweden
xviii Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Lars Gustafsson
Author, Adjunct Professor, Department of Philosophy, Austin
University, 2312 Tower Drive, Austin, TX 78703, USA
Paul Henry
President, College International de Philosophie, 20 Avenue des
Gobelins, 750 05 Paris, France
Marian Hobson
Professor of French, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London,
and 21 Church Lane, Trumpington, Cambridge, CB2 2LA
Rolf Hughes
Author and Researcher, Centre for Creative and Performing Arts,
University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK
Jon Hyde
Director, Great Escape Theatre Company, 34 Trinity Street,
Norwich, NR2 3BE, UK
Allan Janik
Professor, Brenner Archive, Innsbruck University, A-6020
Innsbruck, Austria
Anders L. Johansson
Director, Assistant Professor, Swedish Institute for Worklife
Research, Box 5606, S-11486 Stockholm, Sweden
Ingela Josefson
Doctor, Linguist, Swedish Institute for Worklife Research, Box 5606,
5-11486 Stockholm, Sweden
Erland Josephson
Author, Actor, Royal Dramatic Theatre, Box 5037, S-10241
Stockholm, Sweden
Anders Karlqvist
Professor, Department of Architecture, Royal Institute of
Technology, S-10044 Stockholm, Sweden
Lars Kleberg
Assistant Professor, Culture Counsellor, Swedish Embassy, Ulitsja
Mosfilmovskaya 60,119590 Moscow, Russia.
Nicolas Lash
Professor, Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University, St John's
Street, Cambridge, CB21TW, UK
Contributors xix
Lars Lofgren
Artistic and Managing Director, The Royal Dramatic Theatre, Box
5037, S-10241 Stockholm, Sweden
Jon Monk
Professor, Faculty of Technology, The Open University, Walton
Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK
Igor Naletov
Professor, The Institute of Philosophy, Academy of Science,
Moscow, Russia
Tore Nordenstam
Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen,
Sydenyplass 9, N-5000 Bergen, Norway
Dag Prawitz
Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Stockholm,
Skeppargatan 4,5-11452 Stockholm .
Goran Printz-Pdhlson
Author, Clare Hall College, Cambridge University, Cambridge,
CB39AL, UK
Michael Robinson
Professor, School of Languages and European Studies, University
of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7IJ, UK
Kate Startin
Systems Consultants, 15 Lark Rise, Martlesham Heath, Ipswich,
Suffolk, IP5 7SA, UK
Thomas Tempte
Master Cabinet Maker, S~alkhammars G a Skola, S-59098 Edsbruk,
Sweden
Stephen Toulmin
Professor of Philosophy, The Centre for Multiethnic and Trans-
national Studies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles,
CA 90089-7724, USA
xx Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Jan Unenge
Assistant Professor, Mathematics, University of Jonkoping,
Tnmghallavagen 25, 5-56400 Bankerud, Sweden
Fedor Valach
Professor, Slovak Technical University, Faculty of Chemical
Technology, Department of Chemical Physics, Radlinskeho 9, 812
37 Bratislava, Slovakia
SECTION I. Introduction
Chapter 1. Introduction
Jon Cook and Bo Goranzon
Dialogue and narrative, fact and fiction, the elegant and the grotesque interweave
continually. His descriptions attempt to capture spontaneous gesture and therefore
aspire to the condition of music and dance. Secondly, the reader is drawn into the
dialogue and encouraged to reflect on the disquieting encounter with lui, which may
be an encounter with the lui within ourselves. Diderot's artistry reveals how easily
we deceive ourselves by becoming attached to inaccurate self-images.
Rameau's Nephew is ironic in the paradoxical Platonic sense that it makes some-
thing great seem small for the sake of letting its actual greatness emerge 'dialectical-
ly', rather than in the Wagnerian opposition between the monumental and the
pathetic. Diderot prefigures both Strindberg's exploitation of ambiguity in Miss Julie
as well as the 'transcendental irony' of Offenbach and Georg Trakl's ironic 'decon-
structions' of the Symbolist's poetical dream world. His insistence that 'the impor-
tant point is that you and I should be, and that we should be you and 1', anticipates
Feuerbach and Kierkegaard and, ultimately, the twentieth century philosophy of
dialogue in Ferdinand Ebner and Martin Buber.
deadlock, which are manifest in the stereotypes of isolationism and the Russian
mania for creating systems. Marxism proclaimed the annihilation of a universal
philosophical system through the revolutionary critical practice of dialectics, which
in turn became the only scientific and universal philosophical system capable of
delivering self-emancipation. Dialectics was premised upon the possibility of achiev-
ing absolute truth and therefore could not oppose the creation of systems per se.
Philosophy may be deconstructed into specialist (or special interest) categories, or
may retain its claims to be a unified and universal system of thought. The availabili-
ty of differing philosophical positions has led to some confusion; can materialism be
combined with idealism, determinism with indeterminism, freedom with moral
responsibility? The apparent chaos arising from a radical eclecticism makes a return
to a monological style of thinking appealing with its stable solutions to fundamental
problems.
In the philosophy of Diderot, dialogue incorporates the complexity and the limits
of scientific disciplines and different systems of belief. In depicting mutually depen-
dent contradictions (between spirit and nature, nature and education, freedom and
necessity, motion and stasis), Diderot's dialectical way of thinking expressed an
almost absolute flexibility, a philosophy of uncertainty opposed to the creation of
systems. Diderot manages to capture a sense of thought in motion. His knowledge is
not explicit but latent in the structure of the dialogues themselves. Definition is
achieved through the play of oppositions, a strategy tolerated by neither Hegel nor
Marx. Diderot's philosophy, unlike that of Marx or Engels, was premised on para-
dox and contradiction. In Diderot's works, opposites are equal.
An open philosophy implies not an endless series of possibilities, but a particular
set of alternatives. Freedom of choice should not be a conclusion, but a fundamental
prerequisite of philosophy.
Chapter 8. Comments
Lars Kleberg
and thus insincerity. The author discusses the distinction between sincerity and
seeming - a distinction crucial to Diderot - and suggests that the actor, rather than
manufacturing deceit, effects a redirection, or refocusing, of those tactics and social
representations which are the stuff of daily intercourse.
The theatre is a sensual medium; the body is recuperated so that abstract speech is
rooted in physical being, the categories, the systems, the social and psychological
roles in which we otherwise place our faith are destabilized by the embodied skills of
the actor before us.
It is one of the skills of the actor to draw on levels of being and sensibility other-
wise proscribed or denied by custom or acculturation, to cross boundaries, deny the
permanence of meaning, the fixity of language, the precision and singularity of inter-
pretation. Noh theatre supplies the terms Riken no ken ('outside view') and Gaken
('inside view' - i.e. the performer's own view); the actor needs both, to see his perfor-
mance from within and without simultaneously. An actor's skills should be invisi-
ble, subsumed in the task they facilitate. Training in traditional Japanese theatre con-
sists of learning prescribed forms of expression and physical and vocal techniques.
The aim of training is to enable the actor to perform an action without worrying how
to do it, and thereby to arrive at a freedom of communication. The skill is not to be
aware of the skill, which moves from the level of learned procedure to apparently
instinctive behaviour.
When does one cease to act? The author suggests that the dichotomy between
authenticity and performance is a false one. Rather than associate acting with deceit
or the absence of individuality, one might see it as an integral part of social and moral
existence, having to do with plenitude and possibility, with transformation and
empathy, with performatic skills which have become so intuitive that they are indis-
tinguishable from intuition itself. Acting therefore presents an alternative possibility.
The theatre is the dialogic form; it does not mirror or mimic social action. It is the thing
itself. The actor is polyvocal, various, and thus a denial of the monologic culture in
which a singular text is interpreted in a singular way by a priesthood of initiates. In
the theatre all meaning is subject to change and interpretation is available to all.
The actor recuperates the world night after night and makes it strange for us. New
meanings are reborn through repetition. The actor resists the deceptive perfection of
an inert language, denies fetishisation, the unyielding and unalterable perfection of
the object represented to us in its unchanging coherence. The skills of the actor are
the skills of all; the greater fear is not that we may all be actors, observed in our
actions, given meaning by an audience, but that we live our lives unobserved and
our actions and decisions are accordingly drained of significance and purpose.
surrogate existence for the actor's supposed absence of personality, and the actor as
a proliferating and unnatural multiplication of signs, an identity that circulates, that
is not fixed, and which associates in a promiscuous violation of identity with crowds.
Rather than discuss the real or metaphorical consonance of theatre and life, the
author suggests we emulate Diderot in considering the different forms of knowledge
and skill employed by the actor in researching, establishing, and defining a role
before presenting it to the public.
The actor finds a bodily emotion for each feeling, s/he works through physical
actions that express psychological realities. The actor's body is normally the primary
theatrical sign, the repository of the role which is acquired and stored in the per-
former's muscular memory. S/he is at once artist and instrument; philosophy in the
theatre unfolds itself as 'a thinking of the body' (Bert 0 States). The actor's instinct,
intuition and inteIlect provide a focus for his/her work on a dramatic text. Intuition
here may be associated with 'organized reasoning', a kind of tacit knowledge that we
have internalized into a system for understanding and acting in the world, and
which may be applied to the situations with which the actor is confronted in the dra-
matic text. SkiIl, dexterity, physical and vocal training, and a knowledge of tradition
may all be essential aspects of training, but one should add the notion of 'emotional
memory', as defined by Stanislavski, and the account of the actor's corporeal memo-
ry in Diderot's The Paradox of Acting. The actor, as both Diderot and Stanislavski
were aware, is a master of physical actions in which the imaginative world of the text
is realized in constant dialectical play with the world of real experience, but cannot
be mistaken for that world, except as a social activity in which actors and audience
are mutuaIly engaged.
The author cites two differing accounts of actors preparing for a role -
Stanislavski's intuitive discovery of appropriate correlations in life and Henry
Irving's 'natural, yet highly artificial' stage presence.
The words spoken by the actor started originally as an impulse for expression, and
are hence part of a complex, fluid, multivocal process; the words of a text may imply
a body and its shape and movements, a voice and its articulations and inflections,
but only in production do these words assume theatrical meaning, firstly through
the intervention of the actors and a director, and secondly through the decoding of
the complex processes of verbal and non-verbal communication by an audience.
Turing machine, with its zeros and ones on a paper ribbon. Zeros and ones may be
regarded as the basic building blocks of mathematical calculations.
A computer may be described in terms of the number of building-blocks - 'bits' -
that are needed. The complexity of a programme may be measured by the length of
the sequence of zeros and ones. Theories may be perceived as algorithms capable of
reproducing observations and extending this body of observation, i.e. predicting.
Observations of random phenomena have no theory in this sense. Prediction becomes
impossible. Chaitin's development of Godel's results using a computer and a self-
referring paradox are discussed in this context.
'True or false', the author concludes, are blunt criteria for scientific understanding.
In the transfer of mathematical knowledge a vague form of communication may be
an advantage in making the essence of an idea comprehensible. The mind's ability to
intuitively understand the point of an argument before one has, with the help of the
laws of logic, established it is correct, offers us a deeper idea about understanding
and one which is difficult to capture in the artificial intelligence that the computer
represents. Can we compare human consciousness with a Turing machine? To deter-
mine whether or not an algorithm is applicable requires insight rather than another
algorithm. A Godelian argument leads inevitably to the conclusion that human con-
sciousness is not capable of formalizing its mathematical intuition.
The computer, with its sophisticated and highly efficient capacity for calculation,
may take us closer to the border country of thinking, but never through it. We see the
mirror image of these limits in arithmetic. The theory of numbers cannot answer all
the true statements about itself. Logic does not permit this. We cannot think about
thinking with anything other than our own thoughts. We cannot study our brain
with anything other than our own brain, even if our instruments and calculating
machines can sharpen our sight and speed up our calculations. We must therefore
continue to live with our great mystery: to remain a mystery to ourselves.
about man and his societies. The author proposes a sober appraisal of theoretical
innovation from both an 'intra-science' and an 'extra-science' perspective (a dual
perspective adopted by Wittgenstein), and assesses the significance of GOdel, Turing
and Wittgenstein's discoveries within these terms.
(i) Turing's definition of an abstract general computer i.e. what we now call a
Turing machine
(ii) Turing's theory that everything which is computable may be computed with a
Turing machine, and
(iii) Turing's ideas about an artificial intelligence and its criterion summarized in
what is commonly called the Turing test.
Turing's philosophical legacy, according to this summary, could contain three main
assets: the Turing machine, the Turing thesis and the Turing test.
Turing's Thesis
In contrast to the Turing machine, which is a contribution to logic and mathematics,
Turing's thesis is a contribution of a logical-philosophical character. The thesis is that
the intuitive concept of the calculable and the concept of the determinable can be
defined, or explicated, with the help of Turing machines; something is calculable or
determinable only if it can be calculated or determined by a Turing machine, and
this explication or definition, Turing argues, corresponds to our intuitive concepts of
calculability or determinability. Philosophical explications of provable, definable,
measurable or knowable concepts have failed to match Turing's thesis in terms of
precision, simplicity and inherent plausibility.
One might object to Turing's thesis on the basis that humans have abilities which are
in theory impossible to get a machine to carry out, and, even if a machine could
successfully imitate man's external behaviour, there would still be a crucial differ-
xxxii Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
ence between man and machine. Human thought includes certain types of experi-
ence which involve internal processes not readily translatable into the codes of exter-
nal behaviour that a machine might understand.
The author discusses the meeting between Turing and Wittgenstein, with refer-
ence to the play Beyond All Certainty. The confrontation is compared to the meeting
between Turing and Churchill, a conflict between a scientific and non-scientific
mind.
Wittgenstein's view that in mathematics we are dealing with inventions rather
than discoveries could be termed 'extreme conventionalism'. Mathematical proof
should be seen as a decision we take to use the relevant concepts in a certain way; by
calling something proof we make it proof, and this, according to Wittgenstein, is a
choice, a decision we make. It is through our practice that we give importance to our
symbols. Every new proof is only a new convention; it becomes an agreement by
being accepted and thereafter used by us. In this sense Wittgenstein is an extreme
conventionalist, in contrast to the realism or so-called mathematical Platonism advo-
cated by GOdel.
The meeting between Turing and Wittgenstein illustrates one of the most impor-
tant and topical issues in philosophical theory, namely the conflict between realism
or Platonism on the one hand, and different forms of anti-realism - such as idealism,
conventionalism, constructivism - on the other. The difficulty in finding a reasonable
position between those of Wittgenstein and Turing is the difficulty of both respecting
the objective validity of a mathematical proof, which means that we are not at liberty
to prove what we want, and simultaneously freeing ourselves from the notion of an
already-stated and independent mathematical reality, which mathematical proof
does no more than uncover. It is this philosophical balancing act that the meeting
between Turing and Wittgenstein challenges us to perform.
Utterances (or 'language games', 'speech acts', 'illocutionary performances' etc.); this
has accompanied a redirection of attention from Formal Logic towards the rehabili-
tation of Rhetoric, a shift, in other words, from the logical question 'How do proposi-
tions cohere?' to the pragmatic question, 'How are utterances put to use?' The
Philosophers' traditional Dream, to arrive at Truths that can be 'carved in stone',
must remain a dream. What 'meaning' do functional, situated, timely utterances
retain, once we replace them by functionless, desituated and timeless propositions?
Against this background, the rationalist question of certainty was a distraction
from serious issues of practice. Narratives re-emerge of a sort that pre-dated
Descartes. Language Use, Pragmatism, and Narrative become a central feature of
any possible advances in Philosophy today. The author compares a clinical, casuisti-
cal approach in medical ethics to the formal theories of Bioethics in order to contrast
the practical basis of diagnosis and treatment with the dream of moral standards
caroed in stone. The meanings that concepts, beliefs, judgements and utterances have
in situations are embedded in the situations. They are praxis based, not text based;
and whatever certainty physicians' judgements may have is not a formal result of for-
mal deductive inference, but a pragmatic outcome of mature experience.
The author invites us to reflect upon what sort of fact this is, comparing the so-
called scientific facts of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and the
Encyclopaedia Britannica to the deliberately menacing quality of Lyotard's statement
of 'fact' that the sun will perish in precisely 4.5 million years. This kind of 'fact' is the
subject of recent 'science fiction' and the author cites a number of apocalyptic scenar-
ios, or scientific hypotheses, posited in the near future by J.G. Ballard. Ballard him-
self has claimed that the literature that will survive as the fiction of our time is 'sci-
ence fiction (or, in the term employed by Darko Suvin, 'speculative fiction'), while
reworkings of more traditional material will sink without trace. These fictions lay
claim to public attention and credence, and command it, in a way nothing clearly
labelled 'fiction' can.
The author compares the 'factual' scenario posited in Lyotard's The Inhuman to one
of Ballard's 'fictional' ones in his Myths of the Near Future. Both centre on a diseased
sun, and display the symptoms of human time-disease. Both are seeking a new ver-
sion of time that will make it possible to stave off extinction - or at least conscious-
ness of extinction. In comparing these scenarios, the author suggests, it becomes evi-
dent that we are dealing not with theoretical systems (though often there is a
putative theoretical matrix), nor with scientific facts (though some scientific facts are
incorporated) but with a cluster of metaphors. That they are drawn from science
does not make them any less metaphorical.
Contemporary scientific fact-fictions display the attraction between different
spheres of discourse expressed in or effected by the deceptive similarity of concepts,
the overlapping of terms, analogy, or poetic metaphors. They are more prone to
erase the distinctions between discourses than to observe them.
Literary critics tends to celebrate the capacity of fiction to fictionalize fact and fac-
tualize fiction. The author suggests, however, that the new scientific fact-fictions,
which dominate discourse of all kinds, deserve closer critical scrutiny. If the public is
subjected to the rhetorical use of these scientific fact-fictions by pundits claiming sci-
entific status for their diagnoses and nostrums, it can hardly be expected to make
accurate distinctions and informed policy decisions.
(i) the 'closed world' paradigm suggests that all real-world phenomena, the prop-
erties and relations of its objects, can theoretically be transformed by human
Summaries xxxv
The paper reflects on these two paradigms with specific focus on production engi-
neering. The productivity of manufacture, the author argues, depends to a large
extent on the usability and learnability of the (computer) artefacts used and the skills
developed through work. The design and use of artefacts and their effectiveness, in
tum, relate back to the basic question of how humans and machines are viewed.
Developing an adequate model of humans, therefore, forms a necessary basis for the
design of usable systems.
In order to produce the achievements of common sense that symbol manipulating
machines have so far failed to simulate, an adequate conception of the human being
is necessary. The author suggests that recent findings about biological and cultural
evolution (Bateson, Maturana and Varela) and about human acting (Holzkamp,
Volpert) provide useful insights in this respect.
A cognitive action or cognition emerges if a human develops appropriate behaviour
in a context; all primary experience that humans gain from their cognitive actions is
first of all implicit, internal (or embodied) knowledge private to the acting person ('tac-
it knowledge'). Intelligence can thus be defined as a person's ability to actively appro-
priate parts of the environment by producing a functional internal representation of
his or her actions through which the environment is restructured at the same time
(,structural coupling'). Consequently, meaning must be realized in the acting itself.
The conceptual understanding and theoretical knowledge being developed by
interfering with the surrounding world and by symbolically interacting with their
fellow creatures (constituting the social system) can then be objectified as tools or as
language. Tools and machines, like concepts, represent 'coagulated experience' -
they incorporate objectified, explicit knowledge (knowledge of how they work and
knowledge of how to work with them) - or 'implemented theory'. It is the bodily
experience and the embodied tacit knowledge that forms the core of human skill,
expertise, and competence. Gathering experience through the use of artefacts,
exploring their functions and meaning, and adapting to new situations or new ways
of using them, this is what constitutes its abundance and ingenuity.
The chapter discusses the limitations and problems of knowledge based systems
when attempting to represent or objectify the vague conceptions and the mostly
implicit background knowledge of the experts into facts and rules. Instead of imitat-
ing human abilities and trying to replace them by machine artefacts, they should be
productively combined with the performance of appropriately designed machines.
Among the unique human abilities, the sensory perception discriminating holistic
patterns, distinguishing differences and similarities, learning and inferring from
experience, making fine judgements, coping with unforeseen events and acting in a
goal-oriented fashion without relying on rules are the most important. Work
and technology must be designed so that these abilities can be maintained and devel-
oped through work. The chapter offers guidelines for design to support this and
describes two prototype systems being developed at the Institute of Work and
Technology which have been designed in accordance with these basic assumptions
and guidelines.
xxxvi Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
discourse. Extending the dialogue between the professions makes for change, mobil-
ity, and the revival of productive skill.
which moves beyond the vague to become precisely what links experience in a
synthesis, an analogy which will both regulate the artist's treatment of the beautiful
and anchor it to notions of the objective and of the functionally dynamic.
The author discusses the last two chapters of Essais sur la peinture [Essays on
Painting] in which Diderot considers the size of Saint Peter's in Rome, which is said
to be so perfectly proportioned that it does not seem as big as it is. The word 'pro-
portion' translates the Greek 'analogon' and the notion fundamental to both is that of
ratio. Is it better to make a building seem bigger or smaller than it is? The problem
Diderot proposes (in, typically, a chiasmus) is that of an overall harmony which
impedes general effect, versus a defect in harmony which makes the whole seem
extraordinary and imposing.
The problem of illusion of size in architecture may be compared with the respec-
tive value of proportion and line, or colour and illusion in painting. Diderot argues
that in the same way as architecture has been impoverished by a concern for mod-
ules, when it should only recognize 'the infinite variety of conventions' (i.e. social
function), so the same concern for proportion in figure painting has erased the con-
cern for the characteristic, the traits that individualize and particularize, the traits
that show 'the habitual functions'. Yet, Diderot asks, is not such a view of art rela-
tive? Does the phrase 'the infinite variety of conventions' indicate that there would
be no common rule to such an art, merely a fitting to circumstance?
Michael Angelo created the most beautiful possible form for Saint Peter's dome.
When it was measured by the French mathematician La Hire he found that its out-
line was the curve of greatest resistance. Michael Angelo, Diderot notes, was
inspired by the experience of the play of dynamic forces in everyday life. It is the
notion of function which enables Diderot to link the beautiful to the true and the
good; the form which is the most economical and strong for a certain purpose will be
the one instinctively felt as 'right' in both moral and aesthetic senses.
The author traces the connections between themes which are linked twice in
Diderot's writings: tiny experiences; in the case of architecture, physio-dynamic
experiences of space within which one is moving; then the problem of taste, and its
relation to factors like social organization which may seem to make it dependent on
human convention; then the question of proportion, and whether it is numerical and
stable, or whether it varies according to the same factors as taste.
Citing responses to the basilica from the seventeenth to the eighteenth century -
different accounts of the 'progression of surprise' its perfect proportions produced in
the visitor - the author provides a historical context for the question of illusion in
space and, the question which interested Diderot, that of the nature of proportion.
Diderot's contact with architects in the 1760s and his thinking about proportion give
a depth and a physiological content to the static formal idea of proportion, enabling
him to move towards a more dynamic conception of sensation traces and memory.
'Rapport', the author suggests, moves from proportion to analogy, so that it can be
linked with epistemology, with our organization of experience; in this way it will
point to Kant's concept of 'analogies of experience' in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The chapter traces discussions about classic and gothic architecture which provid-
ed an important context for Diderot working on his own aesthetics. Perronet, for
example, claimed that Soufflot's dome, which is not resting on pillars but carried by
a system of side buttressing, had achieved an elegant and economical mean between
gothic and classic construction. Moreover, he claims, the edifices are constructed 'in
imitation of the structure of animals', an analogy which makes of the gothic cathe-
dral a dynamic complex of thrusts and counter thrusts, and suggests that he has been
applying such principles to conSidering living animals' distribution of weight.
Engineering and architecture thus become linked to human perception of spatial
appearance. What is now at stake is not objective and static proportion, perceived
merely by the eyes, but an illusion created by the eyes exploring and translating
what they see into internal sensation, and sense of dynamic counterpoise. Beauty
Summaries xli
acquiring knowledge is the more geometrico method - the idea that the whole of
knowledge can and should be rebuilt starting with clear, distinct and unquestionable
truths from which all the rest should be deduced. It is the Cartesian method which
he contests. The author compares Diderot and Spinoza on this point, and argues that
Diderot's conception of knowledge was more accessible, more 'democratic' and
practically useful. Knowledge for Diderot is not homogeneous but heterogeneous,
and there is no legitimate hierarchy between different types of knowledge.
Furthermore, there is no standpoint from which we can hope to gather, even in a
purely formal way, the whole of knowledge.
The author next discusses the impact of Karl Friedrich Gauss's Disquisitiones arith-
metica?, and compares d'Alembert and lagrange's attempts to re-establish method-
ological rigor in mathematics to those of Gauss and Cauchy. Gauss is not satisfied
with the fact that the use of complex numbers has never introduced contradictions.
This is the basis of his criticism of the demonstrations of the fundamental theorem of
algebra proposed by Euler, d'Alembert, Lagrange and others. Gauss demands that
we identify 'an adequate substratum'. As for complex numbers, he finds this sub-
stratum in the orientation of space. He praises Kant for having criticized Leibniz's
attempt to reduce space to a pure phenomenal relation between substance, and for
seeing in asymmetry the proof of the absolute character of spatial positions. But he
criticizes Kant's view that the orientation of space is a form of our intuition. For
Gauss, space has an absolute existence, an existence independent of our intuition.
The object of geometry for Gauss is the 'true nature of space', about which, he
acknowledges, we know almost nothing. Since Gauss needed geometry as a founda-
tion for algebra, he grounds the whole of mathematics upon knowledge which he
believes to be beyond the reach of human reason and experience.
Although we cannot claim that Enlightenment philosophy has directly influenced
mathematics, the criticism of mathematics as a model for knowledge by leading
Enlightenment philosophers such as Diderot clearly marks a historical development.
The Enlightenment brought about a radical challenge to the classical conception of
knowledge and understanding. Thus Gauss's conception of a mathematical knowl-
edge based on what we know almost nothing about owes a debt to the
Enlightenment critique of the classical conception of knowledge. Furthermore,
Diderot's materialism, aligned to his conception of knowledge, seems to be linked to
what Gauss put into practice, that which protected him from Kant's idealism and
opened new ways for mathematics.
nary knowledge emerges from the sources belonging to various disciplines. Citing
Wittgenstein's criticism of Russell's concept of implication, the author argues that
the interdisciplinary method can be developed by considering the role of experience. If
experience can verify a statement in any natural science, the concept of hypothesis
should lose its meaning. The postulative formulation of any interdisciplinary science
should be adequate.
Experimental physics has proved the existence of rational numbers. In physics the
'vanishing' quantities of mathematical analysis have not lost their dimension. The
author claims that the problem formulated by Gauss as the 'true nature of space'
(Euclidean and non-Euclidean space) will be solved by experimental and theoretical
physics. The fact that Gauss was not satisfied with the non-contradiction as a proof
may have its roots in his highly developed physical thinking. This might also explain
his criticism of demonstrations of the fundamental theorem of algebra.
Although pure mathematics may be interesting only if it can be proved, a mathe-
matical theory becomes scientifically proved if it can be used as a model in a natural
science.
Diderot's contacts with architects and engineers reveal his fascination with geo-
metrical proportions. The author raises the question of geometrical symmetry in
nature by asking why growing crystals keep their symmetry class. Symmetry fulfills
an important role in art and engineering. It can normally be divided into translation-
al symmetry and local symmetry. The former means repetition, for example the peri-
odical repetition of tones in music. The latter is the equivalence of properties within
the finite space. Experience repeated many times can lead through deformations of
material objects to the forms of various kinds of symmetries. The geometrical invari-
ants in symmetrical objects, so called symmetry elements, have the properties of
algebraic units (groups and sub-groups). It seems that such connections between
proportions in the architecture of Saint Peter's basilica and abstract algebra fascinat-
ed Diderot.
In the first phase the problem is interpreted, the formula, mathematital model and
algorithm are selected, as is the kind of mathematical calculation. In the second
phase, the calculations are done and the equation is solved. In the third phase the
result is assessed and an attempt may be made to verify it, for example by a feasibili-
ty assessment. The author discusses the implications for professional knowledge of
the use of computers in tackling these distinct phases and cites some of the findings
of the 'Alternative Teaching Paths in Mathematics' research project (the ALM pro-
ject). These include the discovery that pupils using pocket calculators can solve prob-
lems that they would not normally be given until they were much older, and can
solve a problem that they do not understand at all - by finding a method for phase
(b) without having understood phase. They are nor equipped, therefore, to reflect on
the answer - i.e. to complete phase (c). This risk is not exclusive to any particular
occupation or occupational group. What are the consequences of the fact that when
using these tools one can evidently produce an answer to a problem that one de fac-
to does not understand and cannot solve? Should professional knowledge not
include the skill of assessing the feasibility of the answers we get from pocket calcu-
lators or computers? What kind of training is needed at different levels of profession-
allife to allow the use of pocket calculators, computers and other aids to reflect pro-
fessional knowledge?
In school mathematics phase (b) dominates because traditional textbooks and
teaching concentrate mainly on the answer to the problem. The situation is quite dif-
ferent in the world of work (and in daily life). There is often no - or only one - right
answer, and the wrong answer may have financial or other, dangerous repercus-
sions. The ability to perform pen and paper calculations appears to be disappearing.
One cannot immediately use the pocket calculator in a curriculum which has not
been planned with this tool in mind; there must be a clear and non-artificial way of
justifying the use of this aid. There is a clear need to overhaul both the content and
objectives of courses. By analogy, the same kind of analysis is essential if these tools
are introduced at work. However, when the pocket calculator is introduced outside
the school, it is introduced into a real world where phases (a) and (c) are embedded
in professional knowledge and when the calculator may sometimes be a technical
aid in performing phase (b). Experience from the world of work, in other words, may
provide the background to improved professional knowledge. This may also guide
us in finding ways to describe what is meant by using the pocket calculator and com-
puter effectively and with judgement, and may additionally indicate what mathematical
knowledge is required.
To problematize this by studying working life is an important aim of the research
into professional knowledge and technology. It is a question of breaking down the
theory of knowledge, of reflection, into two parts; the first part is interpreting a
result and reflecting on this interpretation, the second is to have such a distance on
the 'tool' - the computer/pocket calculator - that one no longer blindly trusts the
results it produces.
The mathematical knowledge requirements of different professions need to be
analyzed. It is likely that a common core of mathematical requirements exists in sev-
eral occupations; when we identify that core we can provide the proper education in
mathematics for occupational training and working life and thereby raise the level of
professional knowledge.
Summaries xlv
Introduction
Chapter 1
Introduction
Jon Cook and Bo Goranzon
opens the section on Education and the Information Society, continues these
experiments in dramatic form and dialogue. This piece itself forms a bridge
between the discussions of the legacy of Turing and Wittgenstein and the
reflections on practical and theoretical education which are the main con-
cerns of Section V.
This reflexive structure does not simply mean that a book which contains
essays about the theatre and acting also includes the script of a play. One of
the main arguments of the book is that knowledge is internally related to its
mode of presentation, and, as a corollary, that there are important kinds of
knowledge that cannot be presented in explicit and axiomatic form. It is
part of the practical nature of practical philosophy to respect and acknowl-
edge this fact, but also to explore the substantial questions it raises about the
relation between different modes of knowledge formation and representa-
tion. This is why the book's emphasis on dialogue is central to its intellectu-
al concerns. Beyond All Certainty is a play about a dialogue between two
major figures in the intellectual culture of the west. But it is also, at another
level, a dialogue between dramatic form and mathematical argument,
between the cultures of science and the arts. The pieces collected in Section
IV take up this dialogue in different ways, including the essays which turn
to the question of the relation between science and literature.
Dialogue does not automatically imply consensus. The account of
Turing's work in Some Enigma Variations does not simply confirm the view
of Turing developed in Beyond All Certainty. This is one example in a book
that is traced through with dialogues about Diderot, Wittgenstein, Turing,
the history of mathematics, epistemology, the nature of learning and educa-
tion. Each separate section of the book is intended to open up new perspec-
tives on issues raised in the other sections. The argument about the
education of skilled practitioners which opens the book is taken up again in
Section V, Education and the Information Society, but in a way which
alludes to some of the intervening statements on drama, mathematics, and
the epistemology of skill. Sophocles's Antigone is cited as a major example in
the education of doctors. Engineers can learn how to do their work by
reflecting on the skills of actors, and so on. Apart from these particular
points of connection, Section V takes up the argument about the theory and
practice which informs the whole book, but this time in relation to institu-
tional questions about professional education and training.
Diderot was a mathematician of some ability. Julian Coolidge, in his
"Mathematics of Great Amateurs" (Oxford, 1949) includes Diderot among
his elected sixteen and thus places him in a class with Leonardo da Vinci,
Albrecht Diirer, John Napier and Blaise Pascal. Diderot was genuinely inter-
ested in mathematics, especially in their applications. Coolidge concludes
by saying, "I cannot leave Diderot without expressing my admiration for
his really stimulating mathematical work when his other interests were so
large and varied.
Section VI, On Diderot, Analogy and Mathematics, re-engages with
Diderot's work in a way that explores his thinking about one example of a
skilled practice, architecture, and its philosophical and aesthetic implica-
tions. Another topic in this section is a discussion of the reason for Diderot's
criticisms of mathematics.
6 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Why Diderot?
Why should a thinker two hundred years dead be put at the center of the
current dialogue on culture and technology? It is by no means easy to com-
prehend why the thinking of Denis Diderot, so long neglected in discus-
sions of the theory of science, should figure prominently in debates on
technology and society at the present time.
Yet international interest in Diderot's conception of knowledge is increas-
ing. For example, in a book entitled Bright Air, Brilliant Fire, On the Matter of
the Mind (1992) one of the world's foremost brain scientists, Gerard
Edelman asserts that biology is the key to understanding the brain and
argues against the currently fashionable view of the brain as a computer. In
setting the problems of his book Edelman refers to Diderot's play Le Reve de
D'Alembert as predicting the research of human consciousness.
Another example: the science faculty of the University of Paris has recent-
ly decided to officially rename itself Universite de Paris Denis Diderot as of
October 1993.
These are two small signs of the Diderot renaissance that is now taking
place. Also, new editions of Diderot's writings appear frequently and inter-
est in both his ideas and his unique mode of presenting them is abundant.
Still, this fact hardly answers the question why Diderot is the focus of a
major international conference on Skill and Technology in Stockholm,
September 1993. The answer is rather that Diderot brings together all the
issues that have imposed themselves on Swedish scholars engaged in
researching and investigating the concept of skill. Diderot poses provoca-
tive questions, more so than even Ludwig Wittgenstein (who was, and still
is, essential as regards the epistemology of skill) about the respective func-
tions of art and science in the process of Enlightenment, tacit knowledge
and the value of work, questions that have arisen from the 1980s project
"Skill and Technology", which culminated in the international conference
"Culture, Language and Artificial Intelligence" held in 1988 at the Royal
Dramatic Theatre.
Moreover, Diderot had a conviction that dialogue and dialogue alone is
the appropriate medium for reflection on the things which we know, up to
the moment when we are asked about them (Le., tacit knowledge); this con-
cept of Diderot's is analogous to the position that the Dialogue Seminar at
the Royal Dramatic Theatre has reached independently.
It was therefore natural that Diderot should become the next topic of dis-
cussion in our continuous research of skill and technology. In 1989 a group
of scholars and writers from Austria, England, France and Sweden met in
Paris to map out the aspect of Diderot's thinking which could help us illu-
minate the formation of skill and knowledge. Since then, a series of semi-
nars in Stockholm, Innsbruck, Moscow, Norwich and London have
explored the possibilities offered by Diderot in hdping us with the prob-
lems of developing a perspective on technology and society, the limits of
Enlightenment, the relation between cultural criticism and the epistemology
of practical knowledge, tacit knowledge and a non-elitist conception of
expertise, the role of the arts as a basis for reflection etc.
Introduction 7
On Practical Philosophy
Chapter 2
The Practical Intellect and Master-
Apprenticeship
Thomas Tempte
Part I
which it was intended, and was not made of, say, a synthetic material, as is
now the case. I began quizzing the older craftsmen: Why this? Why that?
My interest in their knowledge and skills pleased them, but they were anx-
ious about my future. "You've got a head on you lad, this is no place for
you! In 20 years' time, the carpentry trade will be a thing of the past". No,
no! I objected. And then they went on telling me things.
Stubbornly I persisted in my search for further knowledge, beyond their
lucid descriptions of the trade. Somewhere (I thought), there must surely
exist an all-embracing thesis, a universal philosophy. I had no idea of what I
was looking for. When I came to Stockholm I began combing the museums,
but found nothing about the history of implements. The museum staff knew
nothing about tools either. Then, in 1966, quite by chance, I acquired a
Festschrift on the history of the Order of Joiners and Carpenters. Ah, so there
had been an Order of Carpenters. When? How did it function? Why had it
been dissolved? Oh, it was a Guild. But wasn't that a reactionary organiza-
tion - what! (I couldn't believe my eyes) - had their function also been to
safeguard the ancient secrets of the craft and to preserve the quality of the
work? And finally, a few pictures: an early 16th century plane from
Nuremburg with chased-iron and ivory details. A carpenter's bench with
marquetry work. This was something I recognized - from Kalmar Castle (in
southern Sweden) where I had been fascinated by the intarsia panelling in
the bedchamber of the mad King Erik XIV; the walls, ceiling and floor had
all been inlaid by carpenters from Augsburg. In 1966 I went up to the
Nordic Museum in Stockholm and asked if they knew of any useful book
for a carpenter, containing descriptions of the old handicraft methods and
techniques. In the 1960s "the past" could be 1920 or 1880. But now it was
beginning to dawn on me that "the past" could also be the 16th century.
Well, they said, we have a book about handicrafts from the 1930s. This I
knew of. And a bit further back in time we have Roubo? ... and also Diderot,
of course, - Aha? - "Yes, it is very comprehensive ... " Oh yes? - The illustra-
tions are published in separate volumes. Perhaps we should start with the
section on carpentry '" I was dumbfounded - there were bold wooden
designs carved on tool after tool.
Quite suddenly I was inundated by history. And it was systematic. But I
wasn't! I was seized by confusion. What were these tools used for? Those
planes all look alike. Why are they all included in the picture? What kind of
a tool is this? But look there, a small hand. That must be some kind of mold-
ing tool. That little hand placed so aptly there so ... (to show how the tool
was held) ... page after page. I was bowled over. It was as I had always
sensed. The past had contained something worthwhile after all. Someone
called Denis Diderot had seen fit to document the passing moment. What
beautiful tools he had depicted and what sophisticated work had been car-
ried out by those now long dead and forgotten, Those drawings are better
than photographs - they actually show the objects to advantage. What an
odd carpenter's bench, how big it is! Can it be real? Small sketches of crafts-
men, like beetles crawling over the benches. And quite suddenly a realistic
portrait of two carpenters sawing out pieces of veneer.
My hunch had been confirmed. Handicraft is a wiser method of produc-
tion and the progression of human knowledge and skill is not necessarily
vertical. Some work of an earlier age is in fact superior, and made with the
The Practical Intellect and Master-Apprenticeship 13
simplest of tools. I began perusing all the structures made by man. I strolled
around the town, reflecting on the age of buildings and the methods of con-
struction. Which kind of roof-truss? Which were stone-built? The 17th cen-
tury Riddarhuset, House of the Nobility, and the Royal Palace from the 18th
century. Had cranes been used in the work? How was the work organized?
The gap between theory and practice widened into a bottomless chasm. The
old carpenters had advised me to go on studying. Well that is just what I
was doing now.
Was Diderot intellectual or intelligent? Are they the same thing? I looked
up the word "intellectual": someone who understands, it said. A lawyer,
perhaps, could be intellectual, or was he intelligent? Was a carpenter intelli-
gent ... ? Well of course. Perhaps intellectual too? Yes, well in that case he
couldn't remain in the trade, could he? Could one be intellectual in different
ways? Intellectual, as in a person who tries to understand, someone who
asks questions, the answers to which create new questions. An intelligent
person is "quick to grasp"; he comprehends, but does he understand? If he
continues to ask questions, then perhaps he isn't intelligent after all. He asks
himself or he asks others. One day - when one has reached a certain age,
comprehension or understanding will dawn, and one will live in the light of
this knowledge. Maybe that's what's meant by being "intellectual".
Having been a maker of furniture for 34 years, I know when I don't
understand. I have left behind the youthful passion to understand, to know,
to be in control .... Practical working experience in the trade seems to run in
7 year cycles. These reflect the old "craft cycles". Way back, in ancient Ur in
Sumer the craftsman's training and acquisition of skills followed the same
cyclic rhythm. In my case, it was only in the 4th seven-year cycle that I have
been able to create furniture as I want it. After 28 years, that is. After a sev-
en-year apprenticeship, one made one's "Apprentice's piece", after which
one became a journeyman for a further 7 years, and then one made one's
"Masterpiece" .
My vision of an overall framework of handicraft production had been
confirmed, for example, by Mr. Diderot. I found that the best tools from pre-
industrial times were based on an altogether different concept. The efficien-
cy of the machines derived from means other than strength, working upon
the material in many subtle ways.
I had already made a number of replicas of old implements, and this time
I wanted to make an actual artefact that had been made with such tools. So
having decided to make a reconstruction of the small, white-painted cedar-
wood chair that had belonged to Tutankhamun, I then set about construct-
ing the world's oldest lathe. Soon after this I decided also to reconstruct the
simple wooden lathe from Diderot's Encyclopaedia. I made them at the
same time, alternating between the two. Ostensibly different, I realized
afterwards that they represented the initial and final versions of a particular
technical concept. They both work with a rocking movement, and they have
many features in common. The twin-angled spindles are based on a tradi-
tional concept that is now lost to us. The twin-angled spindle has survived
for 6000 years. With his encyclopaedic survey of handicraft, Diderot marks
the end of the epoch of manual production. But before that, the Renaissance
has already ushered in the new era. In Germany, water power is being har-
nessed and placed in the service of the mining industry. In Holland, land is
14 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
being reclaimed from the sea by the construction of dykes and with the aid
of wind-driven mills to pump out the water. In Augsburg, in the 14th centu-
ry, the water of the river Lech is diverted through the city, providing power
for the machines. At the beginning of the 15th century, the city water-tower
is filled by means of a plunger-pump plant. Here too is built an elaborate
multi-bladed fine-toothed framesaw mill for the production of precision
sawn veneer. Which will, eventually, be used to produce the elaborate cabi-
nets that will become a hallmark of the city for centuries to come. In
Augsburg, which is controlled by the Protestant Burgher class, resides the
Catholic emperor Maximillian of Hapsburg; it is the seat of the rich and
powerful Fugger family. The Mozart family are prominent cabinet-makers
here. This is where the Silk Route ends and the Hanseatic League begins, it
is the gateway to Northern Europe; in Augsburg, the Middle Ages end and
the Modem Age begins. It is here that Luther defends his doctrine and
where the Reformation is initiated. And so the city of Augsburg endures,
with its well-preserved workshops, historical monuments and archives,
until, centuries later, it is razed to the ground by allied bombing raids dur-
ing the Second World War.
In Egypt, iron was not discovered until about three centuries BC The
only known metals were copper and bronze, and flintstone was the stone
most commonly quarried. Egyptian tools, in comparison to those depicted
in Diderot's Encyclopaedia, appear primitive. A large number of imple-
ments have been preserved but they do not show a great deal of specializa-
tion. About a dozen different types of cutting chisels, five or six different
types of saws. The hatchets are of a similar design, with some slight varia-
tion in size. The most common tool seems to have been a copper hatchet
(adze). Seeing this and thinking of the work that the Egyptians have left
behind, one has to admit that a sophisticated technology is not the obvious
prerequisite for an excellent result. The artistry of their furniture-making is,
in many ways, unsurpassed, both as regards expression and technique.
Anyone who has stood in front of the mighty pyramids in Giza has felt their
powerful impact; the massive stone-blocks and the soaring, straight lines of
their outer wall facing. It is pointless to recount their height in figures. They
are visible over a large part of the city of Cairo, and stand like mysterious
mountains in the sunset. Enigmatic and incomprehensible, they have stood
there for 40 centuries. The entire plateau on which the Cheops pyramid
stands was levelled and smoothed using a small copper adze. To have orga-
nized and executed such a gigantic feat man must have developed other
sides of himself than those we use today. To us the implements are not even
primitive; rather they are rudimentary, to say the least. And yet look at the
results!
Incidentally, it is of interest to know that the finds from the Great
Pyramid have hitherto been insignificant. Last summer German archaeolo-
gists, with the help of a small robot equipped with a video camera, succeed-
ed in discovering a narrow passageway within the pyramid leading up to a
small copper-hinged door. Perhaps the Pharaoh of the Cheops Pyramid has
managed to safeguard his secrets from the curious gaze of posterity for
4,000 years. What would an Encyclopaedia in the Egyptian kingdom 4,500
years ago have looked like, I wonder? What does Diderot capture in his?
The oldest lathe in the world is actually the oldest known depiction of a
The Practical Intellect and Master-Apprenticeship 15
lathe. It is from a relief in the tomb of the High Priest Petosiris. It is a two-
man lathe and requires a good deal of mutual understanding between the
operators. Fourteen years ago I demonstrated the two lathes in Sigtuna, not
far from Stockholm. I was assisted by my apprentice and journeyman. The
young apprentice, Ebba Siodahl, was required to split pieces of wood for
tuming from a tree stump. Since then nearly two cycles-of-Ieaming have
turned and Ebba has acquired a proficiency of her own. Today she is a qual-
ified and experienced architect, and has outgrown me by far. Our forthcom-
ing demonstration of a lathe may serve as an illustration of how the skills
necessary for mastership are transmitted. At the Egyptian lathe she pro-
vides assistance, chiefly in the form of intelligent muscle power. At the
Diderot lathe she is herself the master-craftsman, after having first observed
and served.
Perhaps my most stimulating period was the time I had both an appren-
tice and a journeyman working with me. They quizzed me about tech-
niques, methods and materials, history, and approaches. I really had to
cross-examine myself, search my memory, consult old notes. Or look things
up in books and think out new solutions. Their questions awoke new
insights in me, and sometimes even questions of my own would receive an
answer. One of the questions they asked was simply: "What exactly is hand-
icraft?" After that one I was in a turmoil for several days! And I'm still
wrestling with the answer. The Egyptian lathe is supposed to be in an
Egyptian carpenter's workshop. It is in the company of a carpenter's block,
a few saws and the ingenious folding chair, sella curulis, which was attrib-
uted foremost to a Commanding General.
Part II
the present audience. You are here because you are, more or less, open to
such ideas - but nevertheless. Such pitfalls are everywhere - yes, even
where we least expect. Gnothi seavton. (Know Thyself.)
I do, of course, strongly believe that our entire culture is rapidly distanc-
ing itself from practical work, and a personal contact with natural materials.
All the raw materials that we use come out of this planet which sustains us.
Therefore it is not enough to know how to tackle a problem, or to under-
stand how we function when we work - we also have to know just how
much we can extract from material resources and the consequences of our
taking; regrowth and recycling. This is a paradigm for handicraft in a global
perspective. Some years ago a philosopher said to me: we shall have to
return to handicraft because it is the only logical way to go. It is, presum-
ably, as simple as that. Contempt for and/or skepticism about practical
work is deeply rooted in traditions going back several thousand years. This
is what an Egyptian scribe writes to his son, three thousand six hundred
years ago: liThe stamper of floors is in his clay in his lifetime - among the
living. The clay makes him uncleaner than rope and leather thongs until he
has burnt his clay. His clothes are stiff from plaster and his loincloth is in
rags. His breath as it goes out is hot, even when fresh air blows into his nos-
trils. He treads the clay with his feet and is hurt. The rooms of his house are
filthy and the floors in disrepair ....
But when the scribe is in office at the Palace there shall not be found there
any misery or vileness, and he shall not fall into disgrace. For he has under-
standing for other people. Behold - there is not anything superior to books,
as there is not anything superior to water". A dialogue between theory and
practice creates energy. A monologue or one-sided imbibing of one of them
creates stagnation. Perhaps I am naive, but I believe in the power of this dia-
logue to create the conditions for improvement, and to arrive at a greater
understanding. I have found that it works. I have been asked many times to
give lectures, or to teach with compendium and slides. But that is exactly
what I do not have to offer. Come and visit me instead at my workshop,
look around my woodyard and storeroom. Or come out with me into the
forest, and I'll show you the trees that can be felled for different purposes.
At this point, interest usually wanes, a sure sign that the practitioner's
knowledge is of no great value. Of course there are many explanations for
this - but, there it is. To me it would be unthinkable to leave my profession
as yet and travel around, talking, TALKING about it. One day perhaps,
when age has taken its toll, and I'm old and decrepit ....
The practical intellectualism is to be found in the workshop, in the studio,
on the farm. It can hardly be described with scientific exactitude, but it can
be sought in the magnetic field between our emotions, which create energy,
and our intellect, which is capable of analysis. When these are in harmony
we become enabled to shape the new.
Many people consider my criticism of the academic world to be aggres-
sive and vengeful. This is a misconception. I am merely pointing to the
paradoxical division between theory and practice. Nobody has ever been
able to give me a satisfactory explanation for the sense in it. But theory is
usually linked with power, and practice with action. To act without think-
ing or to give instructions that are impossible to carry out seems to me to be
impractical.
The Practical Intellect and Master-Apprenticeship 17
the learned, the Dissoi Logoi or Twofold Opinions, was widely discussed. 6
Later in the early medieval period similar problems arose with respect to
reconciling the truth of various contradictory statements about the style and
substance of true belief found in assertions or "sentences" the Church
fathers.7 The eminently dialogical Scholastic method of question and
answer, which enables us even today to read theological disputations other-
wise dry as dust with fascination, was formed to deal with similar problems
of reconciling a superfluity of conflicting wisdoms. In both cases the strate-
gy is essentially the same: to eliminate ambiguities, to eliminate outright
inconsistencies and, above all, to develop a more general and thus more
comprehensive theory in whose terms what is really true on both sides of
the conflict can be subsumed and the apparent conflict thereby reconciled.
Such reconciliation at a higher level is necessary for Plato and the
Scholastics because they are deeply committed to the notion that "truth is
one", i.e., the idea that all true propositions form a consistent whole in a
way that, say, Montaigne as an anti-systematic practical philosopher is not
compelled to be. Pascal's method, his dialectic as I shall call it, is an "exis-
tentialist", Augustinian version, of this recognized philosophical gambit.
Pascal's dialectic is at once made possible and necessary by the fact that
Descartes and Jansenism stand between him and Montaigne making
absolute claims to certainty and with respect to values respectively. Pascal,
like the early Wittgenstein, was convinced that in real life we never want a
mathematical answer to our problems; but also like the early Wittgenstein
he was convinced that only mathematics leads us to knowledge." For both
Pascal and Wittgenstein the point is the same scientific and existential prob-
lems are entirely different spheres of human experience. Pascal's strategy
(from which the early Wittgenstein could profitably have learned) is to
show that "objective" and "subjective" certainty, the mind and the "heart"
or emotions stand in a paradoxical, one might even sayan antinomic, rela-
tion to one another. Thus Pascal opposes the method of geometrical proof,
which is compelling in the abstract and general sphere of theoretical knowl-
edge (esprit de geometrie), to rhetoric, which seeks these nuances of argumen-
tation that will be "intuitively" compelling for a particular person in a
particular situation (esprit de finesse). Both have a crucial role to play in
human experience: human beings cannot dispense with either, but the two
ways of thinking and acting are absolutely incompatible with one another.
In the juxtaposition of the two, then, a sort antinomy arises. The matter is
further complicated by the fact that justification in the sphere of the mathe-
matical may be wholly general but it can never be absolute; for we can
always ask for a justification of the method and terms of justification of the
mathematical method itself and so forth ad infinitum. On the other hand,
nothing is more actual in my experience than my own emotions; yet, these
emotions can lay no claim on objectivity. Nor can "I" myself; for I am noth-
ing more than my desires, fears loves and hates. Objectively that very "I",
which is the absolute center of my being is nothing more than those loves,
hates and fears as David Hume would later emphasize. Pascal's solution to
his antinomy is to insist that neither objective nor subjective claims to
knowledge have the total character that they make for themselves. The par-
tial character of both the subjective and objective sides of our experience
points to the fact that the "foundations" of our experience lie outside of it.
22 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
The ultimate "foundation" for knowledge, as for life itself, is faith, i.e., the
admission that the finite cannot reach the infinite, i.e., the nothingness of
my own being, my "Self", provides the crucial clue to the way beyond
doubt. This is the core of Pascal's thought. 9 Our concern here is with his
method of procedure as it illuminates the "argument" of Diderot's dialogue;
later we shall take a look at what Jansenism contributed to the substance of
Diderot's thought in Rameau's Nephew.
Fortunately for us, a clear account of the origins of Pascal's method has
survived in the form of a conversation which was recorded between the
newly-converted Pascal and one of his spiritual directors, Monsieur de Saci,
at Port Royal. In his "Conversation with M. de Saci"l" Pascal laid out his
mode of procedure for dealing with conflicting wisdoms. This short work,
which has in fact been a key to the formidable task of establishing the
intended order in the Pensees, will tum out to be our key for establishing the
logic of Rameau's Nephew. The dramatis personae of the conversation are the
newly converted Pascal and Monsieur de Saci, a figure renown for his piety
and leaming. Pascal impressed Saci with his brilliance and a grasp of
Christian wisdom, which was so profound that Pascal seemed to know the
whole teaching of the Fathers of the Church without having read them. Sad
was renowned for his ability to gear his conversation to the interests of his
visitors. So the conversation with Pascal had to be about philosophy. Saci's
question to Pascal was: which philosophers had he read with most profit?
Pascal responded with a paean to Epictetus and Montaigne but which,
nevertheless, elaborated their achievements as showing us the limits of
worldly wisdom.
Pascal admires Epictetus as the philosopher, who understands duty as
rooted in reverence for divine order and justice perhaps best among pagans.
He finds Epictetus's stress upon the notion that God provides us with the
means to discharge our obligations and to live contentedly in conformity
with Nature by pursuing a virtuous life wholly admirable. Similarly, he
admires the Stoic's admonition to suffer the most unpleasant tribulation,
even to face death, in silent resignation. Further, Pascal praises the way
Epictetus encourages us to accept our fate in the way that actors accept roles
that they have not chosen in the theater, i.e., with a view to playing them
"naturally" and pleasingly. Moreover, the emphasis in Epictetus upon the
personal, inward, character of moral resolve impresses Pascal profoundly.
True, there are certain problems such as the Stoic admonition to suicide
when we can no longer fulfill the duties of our station but in general
Epictetus provides us with an admirable account of the life of reason as it
would have been had mankind not "fallen" into sin.
However, if Epictetus provides us an account of the glory of reason with-
out revelation, Montaigne, the skeptic, shows us the other side of the coin,
i.e., the poverty of reason without revelation. He is not an Academic skeptic,
who insists that we cannot know anything, but a Pyrrhonist who admonish-
es us to reflect upon just what it is that we can really be said to know. He
reminds us that there is a difference between mere opinion and genuine
knowledge, that the more we consider the matter the less we can be said to
know in the strict sense. Thus, Montaigne's merit consists in reminding us
how often we flatter ourselves by thinking that we know something with
certainty when in fact it is merely a matter of personal prejudice rather than
From Montaigne to Diderot 23
justified belief. Skepticism is for him, then, a method for attaining intellectu-
al equilibrium amidst the temptation to go overboard by committing our-
selves to any and all modish ways of thinking. Montaigne's critical scrutiny
of received opinions, then, shows us clearly that reason is full of contradic-
tory opinions and thus the vanity of thinking that we can simply adopt the
views of even the most distinguished thinkers without being deceived. In
short, in Pascal's view Montaigne establishes that we are not to find certain-
ty in this world, that, if we are to find it at all, we must seek it elsewhere. At
this point Pascal reminds us that God and truth are one and the same: certi-
tude, or lack of it, with respect to the one will also apply to the other. Yet,
the distance between the finite and the infinite is an infinite distance, so
there is no particular reason why we should expect to know God or truth
with absolute certainty. Our knowledge of these matters can only be a mat-
ter of faith. In order to make the case for skepticism with respect to all forms
of worldly wisdom complete, Montaigne further shows us that we only
know that words like "soul", "body", "movement", "time", "space" and the
like have the same meaning a-posteriori, i.e., that people who use them gen-
erally understand one another; we have no assurance that there is an a-pri-
ori certainty in the matter of meaning. Even the axioms of geometry, i.e., the
basis of all proof are themselves unproved. In short, Montaigne's skepticism
teaches us that pure thinking is little better than dreaming and in so-doing
he teaches us to be humble with respect to what the intellect, unaided by the
light of faith, can know.
M. Saci seemed not to be particularly impressed by Pascal's defense of the
importance of philosophical acumen and quoted St. Augustine, the ultimate
authority for the Jansenists, to that effect. This provoked Pascal to defend
Montaigne's significance alongside Epictetus for Christian thought as pro-
viding a sort of dialectical prtl!ambula fidei.
Pascal argues that Stoicism and Skepticism are the only two possibilities
for reason divorced from faith. Stoicism, ignorant of the fallen character of
the human condition optimistically treats of human nature as healthy, i.e.,
as it might have been before The Fall. Thus, Stoics assume that reason alone
can fathom the order in the universe to the point of understanding the
nature of duty. Skeptics, on the other hand, ignoring the Fall, take human
nature to be more impotent than it actually is. The latter fall into what
amounts to a sin of despair; whereas the former fall into what amounts to a
sin of presumption. Both see aspects of the human condition with complete
clarity; however, both fallaciously assume that they see the whole when
they only have a partial perspective. Reason without faith develops schizo-
phrenically. Skeptics take the fallen condition of the human race for an ulti-
mate truth and conclude that it is forever condemned to its present state of
ignorance; whereas Stoics see only the grandeur of uncorrupted nature with
its ability to control its own destiny. The one ultimately becomes a sort of
spiritual laxity; whereas the other falls into an equally opprobrious pride.
Only the Gospel is capable to reconciling these two opposites at a higher
level, namely, that of living faith. Once we know from Revelation that the
key to understanding the human condition is the notion that Christ, the
God-man, died for our sins, we can understand why merely rational per-
spectives have to be partial. Conversely, since we are, despite our faith, still
mere mortals and, as such, must understand the infinite through the finite,
24 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
the philosophical antinomy that Stoicism and Skepticism present has a theo-
logical significance: in contrast to the Stoic, the Christian approaches virtue,
as Kierkegaard would later emphasize,l1 without gritting his teeth; in con-
trast to the Skeptic, the Christian can doubt without falling into despair, i.e.,
because faith allows him to believe things he does not understand. In short,
knowledge of what is alive and what is dead in reason helps faith to distin-
guish itself from its counterfeits. Thus, a perfect morality has room for both
duty and human imperfection because it is based upon love, which pre-
vents it from falling prey to pride or laxity. Thus, the Gospel reconciles what
remains paradoxically irreconcilable to reason unaided by faith.
It is important to emphasize here that Pascal is not speaking about faith as
a mere matter of intellectual assent. For him, as a Jansenist, faith is princi-
pally a God centered, as opposed to a worldly, way of living. So it is not
merely a matter of simply slipping comfortably from one perspective to
another but a matter of re-orienting our corrupted will. In short, we can
appreciate the true aspects of Stoicism and Skepticism only when we learn
to live in a truly Christian way. Here we seem to be a long way from
Rameau's Nephew but in truth that is only on a superficial view of the matter.
Pascal's goal in leading us to faith by "staging" an encounter with the
opposed views of Epictetus and Montaigne has been one of setting us spiri-
tually in motion, of combatting our moral lethargy. Epictetus, Pascal tells
us, should shake up the lazy, who seek repose in material things by show-
ing them that they are blind to spiritual reality and slaves to their own
materialism. Montaigne is no less indispensable in jolting us out of the com-
fortable security, either of conventional wisdom or of science. Moreover,
Pascal insists that Epictetus and Montaigne need to be read together
because Epictetus alone shakes us out of our laziness only to replace it with
pride; whereas Montaigne is "absolutely pernicious" for those who are at all
inclined to impiety or vice. Read together, evil is opposed to evil, not for the
sake of producing virtue, but in order to disturb us in our vice. The princi-
ple is clear: the most dangerous evil in spiritual life is complacency or con-
formism; therefore, whatever challenges our intellectual inertia has already
got us half way to the truth. As such Pascal's strategy would seem much
closer to Montaigne than Epictetus, who drily and directly tells us what
morality is all about; while Montaigne induces us to think about the matter,
albeit in a structured and disciplined way, for ourselves. 12 It is Pascal's pecu-
liar way of setting us into motion by presenting us with an alternative in the
form of an antinomy that paves the way from Montaigne to Diderot by a
dia-Iogic for inner theater. Montaigne taught us to conceive our "inner" life
as a debate or critical dialogue; Pascal, who has clearly learned a great deal
about "inner theater" from Montaigne, now seeks to teach us how we can
reconcile similarly conflicting but actually complimentary positions on
morality by a change of perspective, whereby the complimentarity is pre-
served and the conflict eliminated by the more comprehensive point of
view. Pascal's aim was, of course, nothing less than facilitating a "change of
heart" or religious conversion. If his text functioned as it should, its dia-
logic ought to change, not simply his reader's way of thinking, but his
whole way of living. By living a genuinely Christian life devoted to
simplicity in all matters of taste and good works, rather than theological
speculation, in matters religious we ultimately achieve the Stoic ideal of
From Montaigne to Diderot 25
and the Continent having a bearing upon culture is the hard and fast
Baroque distinction between cultivated elite and "rabble" was never made
in English society). Whereas courtesy (literally) demanded close attention to
the play in the case of Racine's audience, and, therefore permitted him to
build up his play almost in the manner of an argument systematically and
uninterruptedly; Shakespeare's audience needed to be entertained as well
as edified: he could never risk the chance of boring any element of his very
heterogeneous audience. Stylistically, Racine represents a vast simplifica-
tion and purification of language with respect to Shakespeare in which all
forms of ornamentation and ambiguity such as allusion, conceit, metaphor
and the like are rigorously banished from theatrical language in favor of ele-
gantly simple direct statement. Thematically, we find neither comedies nor
"problem" plays nor histories in Racine's oeuvre, only courtly tragedies: at
first secular ones, later religious ones. Moreover, Shakespeare's tragedies
very much follow Montaigne's chief pedagogical principle: to wit, that we
learn most from examples of suffering resulting from bad judgment. For
Racine, writing as a Jansenist critic of the Baroque, tragedy is rooted, not
merely in bad judgment but in a sinful egocentrism pervading all secular
modes of thinking, what Ferdinand Ebner would later term Traum vom
Geist, that could only be transcended by a change of heart, i.e., a complete
conversion of one's way of life. I shall concentrate on one of Racine's plays
alone, Berenice to illustrate Racine's Jansenist critique of Baroque monarchy.
Berenice is the story of how, upon being proclaimed the new Roman
Emperor, Titus banishes Queen Berenice of Palestine, the woman he has
loved for five years, and, indeed, loves still. He justifies his decision to ban-
ish her, and effectively his love itself, on the grounds that Romans do not
accept to be governed by royalty. The Roman imperial theme itself is a clear
indication that the work belongs to the Baroque (Lipsius's Baroque practical
philosophy was entirely modeled on Seneca's Rome). In fact, Racine's bitter,
elegantly understated, irony in the work begins by attacking the hypocrisy
that the Roman Empire was not an hereditary monarchy. But that is only
the beginning. One startling feature of Berenice is that nothing much hap-
pens in the play. We are given a pellucid picture of Berenice's absolute
devotion to Titus, of his love for her, of his resolve to banish her and finally
of her banishment and bitter disillusionment. Throughout the values of
Baroque absolutism centering around "constancy" are satirized with
mountingly bitter irony. In the Neo-Stoic scheme of things the ruler justified
his claim to absolute power on the basis of his practical wisdom. Neo-
Stoicism sought to institutionalize practical wisdom by creating a system of
royal advisers and ministers, who would have absolute freedom to criticize
royal opinions at the price of absolute loyalty (which took the form of a
complete rejection of tyrannicide - d. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar). The
mark of practical wisdom, as we have seen, is constancy" or steadfastness.
II
This is what Racine so powerfully satirizes in his play; for the constancy (a
word that occurs throughout the play) is anything but the mark of wisdom;
rather, it is the mark of Titus's inflexibility in making what Racine clearly
takes to be an inhuman decision. The office of Emperor becomes an end in
itself - something which is all the more ironic inasmuch as Titus does not
seem to be particularly power hungry, or even particularly egoistic.
Constant devotion to his station and its duties simply necessitates that he
From Montaigne to Diderot 29
banish the woman that he loves for the good of the state as a true Stoic ruler
should. There is further subtle irony in the fact that almost every mention-
ing of this theme is coupled with a reference to the fact that the Roman peo-
ple, i.e., the "rabble" in Neo-Stoic terms, would never tolerate having a
queen rule them. So there is a certain intimation that Titus's actual motiva-
tion, be it conscious or not, has more to do with fear of the people than it
does with dedication to the state. Although it is "Rome" that will not toler-
ate a queen, it is clear right from the start Titus has the court in his pocket,
so who else can "Rome" be but the "rabble"? It seems, then, that in practice
the ruler's practical wisdom is dictated, not from a "divine" insight into
practical affairs, as the Stoic idea would have it, but from the mob below. It
is not respect for fate in the form of divine providence that motivates the
ruler to maintain his honor and perform his duties but fear. In any case,
there is no sense in which Titus can be said to exercise autonomy. His will is
subject to a higher one but its is hardly a wiser one. In his own eyes he real-
ly is at the mercy of fate. There is no reason to doubt his declarations of love
for Berenice or that he would become a coward in his own eyes were he to
succumb to his love for her. And it is precisely the sinceritytR of his love for
Berenice which makes him as much a tragic hero as her. It is less important
for our purposes to identify Titus's motivation once and for all than to see
that the value system to which he subscribes is something that nobody in
his right mind would choose to institutionalize. His conception of himself
and of his duty produces an absurd, inverted world in which sincerity, i.e.,
public affirmation of one's own inmost thoughts and feelings, is forbidden.
Furthermore, the tragedy in this world consists precisely in the fact that it is
a world devoid of dialogue. In Berenice Titus and Berenice scarcely speak to
one another. Titus's sense of himself, i.e., of "his station and its duties", and
his concomitant resolve to be Emperor so dehumanizes his personal world
that it becomes a world of tragic monologues, from which genuine commu-
nication is absent.
But what does all this have to do with Pascal, let alone with Diderot? For
the answer to this question we must consider the Jansenist conception of the
world of fallen man. 19 That world is an inverted world, a world wholly with-
out constancy as Pascal insists, in which all love is self-love. In it things
mean the opposite of that which they seem to mean. LaRochefoucauld's
Maximes provides us with a scathing Jansenist analysis of man's misery
without faith and the perversion of values in that world. LaRochefoucauld's
motto is a succinct expression of both his perspective on social values and
his pithy way of provoking reflection upon them: "our virtues are most fre-
quently only our vices in disguise'?' Moreover, LaRochefoucauld's apho-
risms aim at focussing our attention upon the ways in which the virtue of
the honnete homme, what conventionally passes itself off as respectability or
decency, is in fact anything but that. The relation between genuine wisdom,
conventionality and mediocrity becomes a crucial question in this context.
In fact, we have a Jansenist assault upon the Neo-Stoic value system and
thus the Baroque world order from the perspective of Augustinian
Christianity.
LaRochefoucauld's very choice of medium is a critical development of the
Stoic practical philosopher's employment of pithy "sentences" from ancient
authors encapsulating received wisdom. The difference is that
30 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
look at the matter: "if we judge love by most of its effects, it looks more like
hate than friendship" (72). Another paradox emphasizes how our actions
often have the opposite effects from our intentions: lithe desire to appear
clever often prevents one from becoming SOli (109). These maxims are an
important contribution to practical philosophy inasmuch as they help us to
reflect, i.e., to cultivate our critical faculty in distinguishing, say, genuine
humility from mere submissiveness and genuine generosity from mere
ostentation. Moreover, LaRochefoucauld's examples make is clear that it is
often impossible to discern unambiguously whether an action should be
considered virtuous or vicious, sincere or affected. Furthermore, he insists
that the agent is often in no better position than anyone else to understand
the nature of his actions: "if there is a pure love free of mixture with our oth-
er emotions, that is something hidden deep in our hearts and we do not
even pay attention to it ourselves"(69).
LaRochefoucauld paves the way to Rameau's Nephew inasmuch as he rela-
tivizes the meanings of actions and intentions. However, the hidden God
that gives these aphorisms a Christian meaning never enters the text, so it is
relatively easy to make a transition from Jansenism to a sort of secular cyni-
cism with respect to values. Indeed, as soon as he is read out of the context
of Jansenism he is sure to be interpreted as a libertin of exactly the cynical
sort that Rameau's nephew turns out to be. And, indeed, LaRochefoucauld
has been often read this way. There are such a striking number of themes in
the Maximes which later tum up in Rameau's Nephew that it is hardly possi-
ble for the similarities to be coincidence. Moreover, the dynamic quality of
LaRochefoucauld's prose is no less reminiscent of Diderot.
Let us briefly consider some of the themes of LaRochefoucauld that pave
the way to Rameau's Nephew: (I paraphrase) genuine sincerity is rare; what
usually passes for it is merely dissimulation for the sake of winning the con-
fidence of others (62), intelligence is always the dupe of the heart (102; c.
Hume: reason is the slave of the passions); the only good copies are those
that make fun of bad originals (133); there are people whose whole merit
consists in being usefully foolish (156); there are countless actions which
appear absurd but are wise and sound (163); hypocrisy is the homage that
vice renders to virtue (218); all professionals posture to make an impression;
society is an ensemble of postures (257); (in an almost Kierkegaardian vein)
weakness is more opposed to virtue than vice (445); there are bad qualities
which makes great talents (468). Two other maxims are particularly impor-
tant for Diderot, so I cite them exactly: "Madness follows us our whole life
long. If somebody should appear wise, its only because his follies are pro-
portioned to his time and his destiny" (207); "Who lives without madness
isn't as smart as he thinks (209). So, it should be clear that it is not only
II
Pascal's dia-Iogic but his Jansenist values, both moral and rhetorical, which
mark a crucial stage in the development of inner theater from Montaigne to
Diderot.
In conclusion it will do well, first, to reflect upon the transformation of
practical philosophy that has taken place at the hands of Pascal and the
Jansenists and, second, upon how Pascal and Jansenism contributed to the
substance and logic of Rameau's Nephew. We . can begin by contrasting
Montaigne and Pascal as practical philosophers. For Montaigne the aim of
practical philosophy was to induce reflection upon experience on the basis
32 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Notes
1 For the now standard view that Plato's "elenctic" dialogues represent his first efforts at
philosophizing see Gilbert Ryle's unconventional but nevertheless unconventionally
stimulating, Plato's Progress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 120 et passim.
2 We forget at our peril that philosophers as different as Francesco Patrizi, Galileo, George
Berkeley and David Hume wrote dialogues.
4 This in fact occurred in my Plato class at Wellesley College in the Fall of 1977.
5 One could ask here: must this be the case, i.e., could they do the job better than Plato did or
is the "message", i.e., theory of Forms incompatible with true dialogue, i.e., open exchange of
opinion?
7 On the tradition of commenting upon the "sentences" of the Fathers, which Peter Lombard
had collected in his book of that name, see Josef Pieper, "Scholastik" (Munchen: Kosel, 1960),
130-132.
8 G.H. von Wright was the first to suggest this comparison in his "Biographical Sketch" in
Norman Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein: A Memoir (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 21.
Despite the mountain of literature produced annually by the Wittgenstein industry no one has
to date explored this connection in any depth.
9 This account of Pascal is much indebted to Alban Krailsheimer's Pascal (Oxford, Oxford
University Press, 1980).
10 Pascal, Entretien avec M. de Saci, Oeuvres completes ed. Jacques Chevalier (Paris: Gallimard,
1954),560-574.
11 Parallels between Pascal and Kierkegaard abound. The similarities between Pascal's
"Wager" and Kierkegard's "leap of faith", for example, are often drawn in the literature on
Kierkegaard. The methodological similarities between Pascal's dialectic and Kierkegaard's in
Either/Or are less often mentioned; yet the skeptical sensualist seducer and the moralistic Judge
34 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
William have a great deal in common with Montaigne and Epictetus as Pascal presents them.
Kierkegaard's dialectic, to be sure, does not put these positions on an equal footing as Pascal
does. On reason why this parallel has not been recognized has to do with the erroneous
projection of Kierkegaard's three stages on life's way into the argument of Either/Or. I am
indebted to Lars-Henrik Schmidt for information about the relationship between Pascal and
Kierkegaard.
12 If this is right, and, if Rameau's Nephew does indeed owe as much to Pascal and Montaigne
as I have suggested, then the conflict between moi and lui in Diderot's dialogue, as well as
much in the conflicts between their respective successors, is in fact a conflict between two types
of Stoicism, one conceiving philosophy theoretically as science, and the other conceiving in a
more literary manner as an unsystematizable practical wisdom. Should this turn out to be the
case a good deal of thinking about the development of philosophy from the Renaissance to the
present stands in need of revision; for the very concept of philosophy currently employed in
academic circles will tum out to be radically defective.
14 My account of the "Baroque" ethos is based upon Gerhard Ostreich, Geist und Gestalt des
fruhmodernen Staats (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969) and Strukturprobleme der Neuzeit
(Duncker & Humblot), 1980.
15 On Lipsius's view the function of the police was to keep the "rabble" in line, ct. Ostreich,
"Justus Lipsius als Theoretiker des neuzeitlichen Machtstaats", Historische Zeitschrift 192
(1961),54.
16 It is not that such tolerance was necessary within the framework of Hermeticism, but that is
was a possible alternative basis for a political order in which sectarianism would not have
political implications as, for example, the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf n seems to have thought;
ct. R.J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 94 et passim.
17 This is what gives Kantianism the claim to being a "critical" philosophy and it explains why
Kantianism was forbidden as subversive in a Baroque state like the Habsburg monarchy
during the Metternich era; ct. Werner Sauer, Osterreichische Philosophie zwischen Aufkliirung
und Restauration ("Studien zur Osterreichischen Philosophie, Bd. 2; Amsterdam: Rodopi,
1982), passim.
18 Sincerity was emerging as principal "value" at this time; ct. 1. Trilling's brilliant Sincerity
andAuthenticity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971). It must be emphasized,
as Trilling rightly does, that Shakespeare is one of the pioneers of the English tradition of
"plain-speaking" as the closing lines of his greatest work, King Lear clearly indicate: to be able
to "speak what we feel, not what we ought to say!" would be somehow to have the weight of
this "sad time" lifted from us. For all their differences, Shakespeare and Racine are at least in
this respect similar. Thus there is a profound sense in which Shakespeare is a precursor of
Racine. The latter is not mentioned by Trilling - something, which I take to be a major gap in
his work.
19 A Jansenist conception of the world: Lucien Goldmann has taken pains to distinguish the
radical, world-denying Jansenism of Barcos and St Cyran from the more worldly,
philosophically rationalist version of Arnauld. See his path-breaking, if not entirely reliable, Le
dieu cac1re: etude sur /a vision tragique dans les Pensees de Pascal et dans Ie theatre de Racine (Paris:
Gallimard, 1959), 158. I am much indebted to Goldmann for my understanding of Jansenism. It
is he that emphasizes that there is no genuine dialogue in Berenice, ibid., 372. Moreover,
Goldmann insists that monologue is the only adequate expression for tragic humanity, ibid., 76;
i.e., humanity without God. For Goldmann, following Lukacs, the Pensees are solitary
dialogues, ibid., 77.
this important thinker. The translation is my own. Important stylistic features pertaining to the
"tactics" employed in the Maximes are analyzed by Pierre Lerat, "Le distinguo dans les
Maximes de LaRochefoucauld" and Jean-Pierre Beaujot, "Ie travail de la definition dans
quelques maximes de LaRochefoucauld", Les fonnes breves de la prose et Ie discours discontinu
(xvie-xviie siecIes), ed. Jean Lafond (Paris: Vrin, 1984),90-99.
21 Delige, et quod vis fac, St. Augustine, In Johann. ad Parthos. VII, 8, Patrologia latina, ed. Migne
XXXV, col. 2033. For an overview of the impact of St. Augustine's impact on modern thought
including such figures as Pascal and Kierkegaard see Erich Przywara, "St. Augustine and the
Modern World", St. Augustine: His Age, Life, and Thought (New York: Meridian, 1950),251-286.
22 Jansenists were pragmatic, anti-mystical Christians, who emphasized that Christian belief
was no better than the actions which embodied it; cf. Krailsheimer, op.cit., 6.
24 Pascal appears to have had the idea that we are all continually talking to ourselves in a kind
of day-dreaming and thereby conditioning ourselves to believe what we want to believe. For
this reason "change of heart" seems to imply a sort of silence in the "inner theater". This would
also seem to be the case in Ferdinand Ebner, who was profoundly influenced by Pascal.
Chapter 4
Imaginary Confessions
Stephen Toulmin
Introduction
Good Evening - When Bosse asked me to be responsible for this part of our
Diderot Seminar, discussing the relations between Science and the
Humanities on the lines of my book Cosmopolis, I was afraid it would be bor-
ing, both to you as audience, and to me as author. People always ask
authors to speak about things that excited them 5 or 10 years ago, though
meantime their heads have moved on. If I am here today, that is because I
had second thoughts - that I had an idea about the relation of the Natural
Sciences to the Humanities that goes well beyond that book.
The idea was this. Most of us are taught to think differently about the
people who produce stratospheric intellectual creations - scientific theories
or abstract philosophy - from those who produce novels, music, pictures,
poems, and the rest. Thomas Aquinas is presented to us in different terms
from Fran<;ois Villon, Descartes differently from Rabelais, Newton from
Shakespeare, Einstein from Picasso.
In a poet or dramatist, personal oddity is legitimate topics of interest.
Villon is hanged as a criminal, Shakespeare is on bad terms with his wife, a
painter is eccentric or paranoid, self deceived or dyslexic. These things are
relevant to their work because they show us their "humanity". How differ-
ent it is in science and philosophy! Aquinas and Descartes, Newton and
Einstein, are held out as interesting, not for their humanity - let alone their
oddity - but as pure embodiments of Rationality. What is Great about them
is (on this view) what each of them contributed to the Onward March of
Rational Theory.
***
38 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
(I)
Prive de l'ami Ie plus doux, Ie plus cher et Ie plus intime, et tel que notre
siecle n'en a vu de meilleur, de plus docte, de plus agreable et plus parfait,
Michel de Montaigne, voulant consacrer Ie souvenir de ce mutuel amour
par un temoignage unique de sa reconnaissance, et ne pouvant Ie faire de
maniere qui l'exprimat mieux, a voue acette memoire ce studieux appareil
dont il fait ses delices.
{Robbed of the sweetest, dearest and closest friend, than whom our
Age saw none better, none more leam'd, none more agreable and
none more perfect, Michel de Montaigne, wishing to sanctify his
memory of a mutual love in a unique testimony, and unable to find
any better way to express it, devotes to that memory this Place of
Learning in which he finds such joy.}
(II)
DESCARTES. Ts, ts ... ts, ts ... Where are you, petite chatte? Where have you
gone -little machine? - I only wish to refuel you.
HE SHRUGS-
Helas, it disappeared! Perhaps, I offend it by speaking to it politely, as
vous, not tu, as an intimate. However charming, a cat is une machine;
and who can "tutoyer" une mech-an-isme?
HE SETS THE DISH DOWN, AND STANDS BY THE TABLE-
Well, here I am, in the Palace of this formidable Drottning, Christine de
Suede. Such a personality - at once imperious, yet so submissive!
Paradoxe: Reigning, she is one of the Great Powers of Europe, and yet -
ce qui est rigolo - she most wants to tum herself into une phi-Io-so-phe!
"M. Descartes," she says to me: "I will have you join my Court, as
my instructor. Move to Stockholm, and teach me the Principles of Logic
and Metaphysics." "Madame," I reply, "Your Majesty's Wishes are
44 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Judgment of the Church has a claim on my loyalty. Must 1 hide the text
of my own cosmology, my treatise de Mundo? After this condemna-
tion, how can 1 work as a Philosopher of Nature? My spiritual director
advises me to continue working on some more abstract - how can I
express it? - me-tho-do-Iog-ic-al subject. Such a text - he said - may
escape the eyes of Cardinal Bellarmine's censors. At first, I take his
advice: so I compose my Discours de la Methode and my Meditations.
Still, Galilei's arguments have convinced me, so how can I for ever
delay publishing my own scientific ideas?
HE LOOKS AROUND, CONFIDENTIALLY-
There is - it seems - one other way to go. 1 can publish those ideas, but
in a dissimulated form. In my secret journals, I note my new motto,
Larvatus prodeo. I go on stage masked - my face hidden - ambiguous-
ly. Since then, in publishing all my theories, I have taken good care to
elude the censure of the Church. After all, I cannot believe the Church
can for ever ignore the wisdom of M. GalileL What was it first drew me
to him? He shows us all the power that mathematical proof gives us in
the Sciences of Nature. As he put it, "The Book of Nature is encoded -
written in an exotic language, that it is the scholars' task to decipher.
What is the alphabet, the system of this language? It is - precisely -
Mathematics. Mathematicians, and only mathematicians can decipher,
and read for themselves, the true text of the Book of Nature."
HE GAINS CONFIDENCE-
Galileo's image seized my imagination with unforgettable power. The
Philosopher of Nature who learns mathematics becomes Chief Decoder
of the Secret Writings of the Creator - that was no mean task!
1 am on my own, here in Stockholm? Yes, 1 am here on my own -
not just an exile, but a hermit. I have no woman friend with me, not
even a companion - only my valet, if this Nordic buffoon counts as a
valet.
Did 1 always run my life like that? Not at all. When I lived in
Holland, 1 employed a housekeeper, who organized all my material
life. She took care of my needs; she comforted my frailties; she under-
stood the phrase, "bonne a tout faire". Not surprisingly, perhaps, she
became pregnant. Her little girl (I acknowledge her as my niece) was
entertaining enough - a little kitten - but when she was aged six she
took ill and died.
I felt more chagrin over the death of my kitten than 1 had expected.
But then, it was not the first time that a woman had abandoned me.
THE BELL RINGS ONCE: HE STANDS UP IN IRRITATION-
Hm, Mme l'lmperatrice does not abandon me: too much the contrary.
She is a Queen, She is a Sovereign, but She is a Woman too, with female
frailties and irrationalities. The Winter nights are long; one cannot talk
of philosophy for 12 hours on end. The feelings of a warm hearted
woman like Queen Christina are very pressing: she is forever wanting
to discuss with me the subject of Amour. "M. Rene," she says, "We - toi
et moi - are not sufficiently intime." "Your Royal Majesty," 1 answer
politely - how can one call a Queen tu -like a member of one's family?
On ne peut pas tutoyer une Monarque! - "Your Royal Majesty, I will
prepare a Treatise on the Passions for Your Majesty, in which I will
Imaginary Confessions 47
([II)
LEIBNIZ LIMPS ACROSS TO A LEATHER CHAIR AND SITS WITH HIS FOOT ON A
FOOTSTOOL: HE SUFFERS FROM GOUT-
LEIBNIZ. Meiner Damen und Herren - Seien Sie herzlich willkommen ins
Konigliches-Elektorisches Bibliothek der hoch geehrter Georg von
Hanover - [HE MAKES AS IF TO BOW] - Ihr gehorsamer Diener ....
Entschuldigen - Excuse. I introduce myself: Gottfried Wilhelm,
Freiherr von Leibniz. Seit 40 years, from 1676, have the direction und
maintenance of the Bibliothek of the herzogliche Familie Braunschweig
been my duties. (Forty years? Not believable? Yet Gott be Praised -
Arithmetik tells no lies!)
Now am I trapped in this chair, mit Podagra - Gout. Walk about
can I not: even to stand is hard. For News can I only on Correspondents
und Visitors rely. So what can you inform me? What News bring you
from - from - ... (?)
... from London you are arriving? Ach so, Ich muB again Englisch
speak, or try so to do. Since 43 years was I not in GroBbritannien, aber
jetzt lives meine ganz beste Studentin dabei. You know, perhaps, meine
Caroline, the Prinzess - how is it? - von Land Vells? Pays de Galles, like
diplomaten say? Leider, since 1714 is staying the whole kingly Familie
in England. After my present Master, King Georg der Erst, wird
Prinzessin Caroline's Mann "King Georg der Second von England" sein.
Wann ze Familie ist zu England geruft, was mein best Hope with
them to move and ein powervolle Rolle im GrofSbritannische Academie
spielen. Aber, the backers of the Local Hero, Isaac Neuton, complain to
the King, und so bring mein best Hope zu nichte. Even die gute
Prinzessin Caroline can nichts tun.
So Here I am, Here I sit - isole, a cripple - und mein Brain is turning
to Wurst. in Leipzig was I born - Ich war Leipziger - now feel I more
like a Braunschweiger (nicht wahr?) ein Braunschweiger Wurst.
Der best I can do is zu Prinzessin Caroline Letters to send, to opset
the followers von Neuton und Locke. This evening selbst - mein
Assistent, the good Eckhart reminds me -leaves the Kurier fur London;
und mit Ihm mein latest - mein fifth - answer to the blaspheming und
ignorant Samuel Clarke.
48 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
HE RELAXES-
Pardon: it is long I have not spoken Englisch. Always (meinen Sie) was
I a Man of the World. In Body, living here alone, ist mein life here
isolee: I am a Schwann disguise as a Gander - Giinser, so zu sagen. In
Geist, I still maintain my activites, dank zu mein Correspondenten in
all the lands of Europe. Am I like die Spinne ins Gewebemitte -
l'arraignee au centre de la toile - ze Speider in its Yep. In Ie Monde des
erudits, the World of the sciences, nothing happens except they write to
tell der old Speider, Leibniz. So am I become das punctum saliens of the
Learn'd World. Und so, with all meine weaknesses, kann Ich mein
vocation - mein Lebensruf - still pursue.
***
Mein Beruf - my Calling, do you say? (Pardon, I can easier speak in la
langue universelle des savants.) Let me recall you the circonstances of
my origin, and the problemes from which Leipziger - wie aller
Teutscher - then suffer. I am geboren 1646 - 70 year ago. After 28 year
of continuel fight, the merciless War must soon terminate. I grew (so zu
sagen) in a Germany ruinee - zerstort - smashed, zu grunde gelevell'd.
Mein Vater has taught, at l'Universite de Leipzig, Rechtsphilosophie -
philosophy of right: Schade, through the War was it always, Might
wins iiber Right. And ze hates - les haines - die Feindseligkeiten -
which have prolong this shock of the Titans, are nourished more and
more of jalousie religieuse - odium theologicum. And the habitants der
Teutscher Liinder, they become more and more epou-van-tes, er-
schreckt - ter-ri-fied.
In its way, die Katholischer Armee of Erzherzog Leopold was bru-
tal; but the mercenary of Lutheranisch Konig Gustavus Adolphus are
without limit terrible. When our little German children will not sleep,
say to them their Mutter, "Hush, hush; or will I give you to the
Schwedes!"
Among partisans of different religions (semblait il) was no possibil-
ity that they reconcile. Everyone is certain that his very own Belief are
right - are justifiable - please the Good God. Everyone find the Good
God's Design - die Vorsiitze der Schopfer - in his own prejudice. They
lack all Methode - aller Lehrweise - to arrive at an understanding,
according to ze Sufficient Reason - die ratio sufficiens.
Without this understanding, natiirlich, are they throwing them-
selves one on the other. Not having arguments, is there only arms.
They forget what say Good God Himself: En arche, en ho logos - In ze
Beginning is der Wort - der Wort der Vernunft.
That, that was insupportable - for the learned people, c'etait Ie de-fi
de-fi-ni-tif: the final challenge. First of all, is needed new Principles von
Human Understanding - the rational methode to reveal the Design of
the Good God. So I find my mission - mein Lebensberuf. My task, it is
to articulate arguments that shall convince honest men from any
religions.
***
Imaginary Confessions 49
How to do it? <;a, c'est l'histoire de rna vie. Through 40 years, have I
travailed in hope to explain to all of the World the beautiful Principle of
ze Sufficient Reason, without which no systeme de metaphysique, ou
de philosophie naturelle, can give the true understanding of the mer-
veilleuse work of the Createur. So I study the languages, symbolismes,
thought systemes strange to the philosophique traditions. Languages
written with ideograms - like the Chinese - do they suit the human
thoughts more than languages written with alphabets like our
European langues? The Chinese systeme of divination, I Ching, can it
teach something fondamentale about our fonctions rationelles et intel-
lectuelles? This was my ideal: a langue accessible to men of all culture,
all religion, all nation - what I call my characteristica universalis.
It is hard work, even penible. Partout a spirit of contestation persist.
Among my correspondants (semblait il) some are not honest as I
assume. The famous Bossuet - archeveque, historien, theologien not
bad - trap me in an exchange of letters which first promise to be fruit-
ful. I assume he is an interlocuteur sincere in my project to invite the
leading savants of all orientation to a frank and open exchange of view.
But it tum out that Bossuet want only to convert me to a
Catholique. The Pope offer me - can you believe it? - the direction of
the Bibliotheque Curiale in Rome! After all, they would corrupt me? Du
Lieber Gott!
***
And now, what do these "English Gentlemen"? As I warn the good
Prinzessin, they understand nothing: most of all the solitary autodi-
dacte, Isaac Neuton, who la Princesse call in her letter "Ie chevalier
Newton." Chevalier?! Cavaliere?! Knight? Ritter?! Pferdlose Ritter, a
mon avis. Neuton have never mount [so they tell me] either the horse
or the woman. Before 25 year, I read his Principia Mathematica
Philosophiae Naturalis - more exact, I read the first 30 pages - genug
ist genug!
Well, what does he do of any interest, this so-called Chevalier?
Nothing at all. He cannot even demonstrate by a preuve rationelle that
the beautiful Systeme of the Sun and Planetes, which the Good God
make as habitation for His Creature most high, must preserve always
its constant figure. According to M. Neuton, the Planetes wander, lose
their way, so that Mister God will intervene to re-establish the lost sta-
bilite! What kind of a Creator is this? What kind of Clockmaker? The
Beautiful Mechanical Creation du Monde, is it some kind of
Kuckusckuhr - a Cuckoo Clock?
Certainly not! The Good God cannot create a Universum that the
Men cannot understand. That is easily prove. The Creator must an
Universum supremum, optimum, perfectum, have gemade - sicher -
<;a va sans dire. But, an Universum that the Men cannot understand is
certainly worse than an Universum the Men can understand. Ergo: if
the Universum supremum perfectum ist, so must it be intelligible to the
Men. The best Cosmos (an Universum tout a fait rationel) will be to rea-
son - having thinkers clear and intelligible. Ho theos ouk esti mono
50 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
sophos, alla kai dikaios, as say the Fathers of the Church. The Good
God is not only Wise, He is also Just. We explain not only the Wisdom
of the Good God, but also his Justice. This was the goal for which I
write my Theodicee.
One need not even be Christian to understand this Beautiful
Principle. It shows itself also to the Jews - par exemple, my distinguish
colleague, Benedictus de 5pinoza of Amsterdam. As even a Jew will
one day insist - "Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht!"
......
Of course - I protest to the noble Prinzessin about the ignorant dicta of
Chevalier Neuton - and what answer does he give her to my argu-
ments? "The Good God," he say, "can make the Universe just as He has
chosen, just as He is pleased." What deep lack of rationalite! - How
arbitraire! As if the Good God's choices are decided in a manner less
than perfect, less than rational! Is Neuton right, every person return to
his prejudice, and attribute them to the Good God without fear of
refute! Even worse - Is Neuton right, the War of Religion can once
again break out! ... Forbidden! Blasphemous! UnzuliiBig! Unmoglich!
Weh! Weh! Weh!
LEIBNIZ HALF STANDS, CLUTCHING HIS FOOT-
Entschuldigen, bitte! What do you say, For-Give Me. If I remember all
the problem I have with that damned Neuton, und that idiot Clarke,
mein Podagra give me the strongest Hurt. In-sup-porteable--
THERE IS A QUIET KNOCK ON THE DOOR-
The good Eckhart knocks. The Courier waits. 50 muB Ich mein fifth let-
ter to the noble Prinzess finish. How to make this Idiot Clarke a fifth
time understand? Only my courtly duty makes me go on. It is a pursuit
of the inaccessible: I run after - is it not? - a Red Herring.
(IV)
NEWTON IS ALSO IN A CHAIR, NOT FROM GOUT BUT FROM OLD AGE
tell me right (that is) for who knows such things with certainty?
I am - you see - a man without Father or Mother: at least, without a
fleshly Father or Mother. They teased me with a tale that my Father
died before I was born: a likely story! From the time that I was an infant
of tender years - at most 3 years old - my Mother disappeared: not
wishing to be a widow, she married the elderly vicar of the next parish
- Barnabas Smith, the scurvy fellow was called - so I never lived with
her before I was above ten years of age, and that Barnabas Smith went
to his maker. In the meantime, I was raised and tended by an aged
woman, who said she was my Grandmother.
Think not it was an easy life. Children bear not their burdens with
untroubled hearts. It is long years since Barnabas Smith died; but even
now it still afflicts my conscience that I swore I would go to the house
in which he and my Mother were dwelling, and bum it over their
heads.
My Mother's return was not much to my benefit. She brought three
step children born to her and Barnabas Smith; and, ere long, I was
packed off to Grantham to study at the grammar school. There I was
introduced to the World of the Mind in which I have since spent most
of my 80 years.
This was the year 1655, and already I began to indulge my curiosity.
The day Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector died, a storm swept
across England. It was the strongest I ever observed: by leaping up in
the air with the best of my strength, I was borne on the wind a full
twelve inches further than on any other occasion. My coevals - my fel-
lows - at school found this a strange thing for me to do; but then, they
were not like me - not like me at all!
After six years, not finding these school fellows to my taste, I was fit
to move to Trinity College in Cambridge. There I remained for 35 years,
until the Dutch King, William of Orange, preferred me to be the Master
of the Royal Mint. When I went to Cambridge in 1661, young King
Charles was newly restored, and those who were not reconciled - Mr
John Locke and Mr John Milton, with many others - began to conspire
with my Lord Shaftesbury within, or sought for asylum without, for
the most part in the Netherlands.
Being a young man, I was not given to meddling in Affairs of State,
and cast around for subjects that seized my imagination. In what the
new students at Cambridge were required to do, there was little mathe-
matics, aside from the Geometry of Monsieur Des Cartes. As a sizar, I
worked as a College servant to spare paying fees, and for two years I
did not excel publicly in learning.
I had to find my own way into the mathematical and philosophical
texts that have since been my joy: my Tutor (Mr Pulleyn) thought it
well to introduce me to Dr Barrow, the Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics, who thereafter oversaw my studies. When he left the
Lucasian Chair in 1669, indeed, he procured for me the succession to
that office, and he continued as my protector in the years that followed.
My first years at Cambridge were a time of affliction for both Town
and College. The monstrous plague that visited England in the year
1665 did not spare Cambridge. Soon after Midsummer the College
52 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
***
There are those who understand me to say that the sight of apples
falling from a tree in Lincolnshire, while I was back home during the
Plague Years, prompted me to think of gravity as the cause of terrestri-
al and astronomical motions alike. For that I must have been very sim-
ple: The true story is easily told. The apples fell when the wind tore
them from the tree. They fell sidewise, and reached the ground more or
less far from their starting points, as I did as a child when I leapt into
the air in a windstorm. As it struck me, the fall of an apple and the orbit
of a planet followed the same general rules - like the Moon around the
Earth, and the planets around the Sun, an apple blown sidewise at
greatest speed might trace a circle round the Earth, and never reach the
ground at all.
At first - delicious years - I pursued my fancy in any direction I
found entrancing. Fluxions, gravity, the coloured light of prisms, the
alembics and receipts of the Alchemists - not least, the Age of the
Earth, as told in the Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms - Egyptians,
Chaldeans, Greeks and Hebrews - even Hindoos, so I could find
records of their calendars - all was grist to the mill for a youth whose
excitement was free to explore all he willed. I felt like a child on the
shore, who finds here a pebble, there a shell or sea weed that stirs
delight, while the Great Ocean of Truth rolls on beside him.
It was my flattering friends who undid me. Only my dear Swiss
friend, Fatio de Duillier, betrayed me not, at least at first. Once I was
satisfied about the System of the World, maintained by God's benevo-
lent action, through gravity and other forces, that plausible young
Edmund Halley flattered me into finishing a manuscript of natural phi-
losophy for publication. Hinc illae lacrimae - and such lacrimae!
I wept when I saw how all my enemies had lain in wait to entrap
Imaginary Confessions 53
me. "Oh, that mine Enemy had written a book!", they thought: my
innocent attempt to show how the Rational Creator chose to fashion his
Creation awoke their jealous venom. Worst of all, that Spider in my
Bosom - that Leibniz - not content with first stealing and then mocking
my invention of the Fluxions, and presenting himself to the Learned
World as its inventor - also writes complaints to the Royal Court, and
seeks to tum the mind of the Princess of Wales against me. Spider! -
Viper! - Swineshead!
"What," saith he, "Does not this Newton call the Omnipotent God
an incompetent clockmaker, whose works are so ill made that - ever so
often - he must needs put them to rights?" Nincompoop! How can he
reproach me of all people? Could he ever demonstrate how the glori-
ous System of Sun and Planets manifesteth God's Wisdom? Was it not I
who brought to the attention of mortal men that Law of the Inverse
Squares, by which the Rational Deity maintaineth his Creation? Does
that Leibniz think that any other form of a Law better befits the
Almighty's Wisdom than that which I set forth in my Principia?
The silly fellow! What child knoweth all that is in His Father's
mind? God Almighty is no incompetent clockmaker. It is we prentices
who can fathom only in part the perfect laws of Universal Design testi-
fied to in the Book of Nature by which the Almighty illustrates his Book
of Scripture; it is we who must submit to His Rational Will. What (asks
this Leibniz)? Is the Lord God free to choose, and we not able to calcu-
late his choice in advance, without testimony, Natural or Scriptural?
Indeed, I answer him: can God not be free to choose, and we His
Creatures be humble enough to seek out His Mind in the evidences of
His Creation?
Flattery I enjoy; but I well know how to appear modest if occasion
present. Surely, if I had had the soul of a servant - I nearly said, the soul
of a sizar - I could never have brought to light of day the wonderful
Laws of my Father's Creation. Not the Soul of a Servant, I say: rather,
the Confidence of a Son. Think you a Rational God would choose any
less than a Rational Messenger to bring to the world of Men the Good
News of the Rational Laws of his Natural Creation? With what other
purpose did He create a Mind sharing the Divine Harmonies of His
Mathematics, and put in it a perception of His Law of the Inverse
Square? Why else did He send that Mind into the World on the very
same day as His Holy Son, Jesus Christ?
.........
It is an old man that talks to you. So good of you, so very, very good of
you - so flattering - to pay a call on this very old man on his birthday.
You must excuse me now: at this stage in life, sleep overcomes me each
afternoon. That is the trouble with age: my flattering friends needs
must make me President of the Royal Society of London, for the term of
my natural life - condemn me, they had rather say. Like a villain
spared the quick shock of the Newgate gallows, and transported to the
Antipodes, I find the rest of my life dragging along: and, now that Herr
Leibniz is gone to his Maker - how little did I foresee it! - I find no one
54 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
The Silver Swan who, living, had no note, When Death approached,
unlocked her silent throat. Leaning her breast against the Reedy
Shore, Thus sang her first and last - and sang no more. "Farewell,
all Joys: Oh, Death, come close mine Eyes - More Geese than Swans
now live, more Fools than Wise!"
"More Geese than Swans, more Fools than Wise": yes, indeed! Please
excuse me. It is an old man who talks.
Conclusion
Well, there you have it. So what am I saying? Certainly, the men whose
voices I have borrowed were not pure embodiments of formal rationality;
but the pictures I painted stay close to the historical record. Montaigne, as I
show him, has less than 18 months to live - he dies in 1592, in his late fifties:
as he predicts, his redoubtable mother lives on into her 90s, to 1601.
Descartes may well wonder about his survival: he will be carried off by
pneumonia six weeks after we have seen him. Leibniz lasts little longer: he
is said to have died of an attack of gout - though I don't quite know what
that means in medical terms. Newton is more durable: he lives on for some
five years after his 80th birthday.
The thesis that Newton privately saw himself as the Son of God is no fan-
tasy. It was documented 25 years ago by Frank Manuel: even devout
Newtonians conceded that his evidence is subtle, complex and ingenious.
Nor is it implausible. Like Descartes, Newton knew infantile deprivation -
losing both his parents in infancy. His father died before he was born: when
his mother remarried, and moved away, she left Isaac in foster care with her
own mother. People with such histories are deeply uncertain of their true
ancestry. In England they often claim to be illegitimate children of the Royal
Family. Nor is this kind of pathology an English monopoly. In War and
Peace, Pierre Bezhukov does numerical calculations with the letters of his
name, and ends with the Biblical Number of the Beast - 666. This leads him
(as Tolstoy depicts him) to set himself a personal mission to assassinate the
invader, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Does this mean that the Newtonian world view, the founding structure of
Scientific Modernity, was the product of personal fantasy, not logical infer-
ence? That is too strong. Yet anyone who savours the intellectual modesty
Imaginary Confessions 55
All I have tried to do here is show that Sassoon's feelings for Blake and
Shelley as poets are ones we can equally well have for highly individual sci-
entists and philosophers: Montaigne or Descartes, Leibniz or Newton. This
is not, of course, the complete story about the relations of the natural sci-
ences to the humanities; but it is a significant part of that story, even a
neglected one. Let me leave it at that.
Thank you.
Chapter 5
Rameau's Nephew. Dialogue as
Gesamtkunstwerk for Enlightenment
(with constant reference to Plato)
Allan Janik
promote human happiness. So both the positivists of the Vienna Circle and
Critical Theorists can call upon a long and distinguished list of precursors in
developing their respective accounts of progress through development of
the scientific spirit.
No laughing matter. Indeed, upon hearing the word 'Enlightenment' sen-
sitive souls (starting with the first generation of Romantics in the 18th cen-
tury) often tend to grit their teeth in the way that children do when
confronted with the dentist or a bitter medicine, i.e., with the sense that
what is about to be done to them 'for their own good' will be either unduly
harsh or ineffectual, at best, with a certain surprise, when the desired bene-
ficial effect is obtained relatively painlessly. So the post-modem critics
of Enlightenment in its Carnapian, Habermasochist 2 (or Leninist) forms,
for all their frequent superficiality, are not entirely silly in reacting like chil-
dren to the equally one-sided view of rationality that we are usually pre-
sented with.
Yet, the technocratic, "progressive", concept of Enlightenment was by no
means the only way of conceiving what it meant to be "enlightened" in the
eighteenth century. David Hume's dictum "reason is and ought to be the
slave of the passions"3 captures an aspect of Enlightenment that we have for
the most part forgotten (principally, I think, because of Bismarck's Kultur-
kampf and the nineteenth century debates around Darwinism made
Enlightenment into a question of being 'for' science and 'against' religion
and generally relegating anything that was not science to a less-than-ratio-
nal status). It is important to mention Hume here because nobody would be
inclined to consider that ironically skeptical thinker as an enemy of
Enlightenment; yet at the same time he was less than optimistic about both
science and progress. The point is that he, like Diderot, was in no way
opposed to progress or science but much more concerned with the ways in
which human nature limits our capacity for "improvement" according to a
consciously developed plan. Rameau's Nephew is built around similar
assumptions, namely, that before we can even begin to think about how we
might improve ourselves we need to have an accurate picture of what we
actually are - and that is what is devilishly difficult to obtain.
A similar picture of rationality is at the center of Freud's psychotherapy"
His presupposition is that, to the extent that we have intractable psycholog-
ical problems, the source of those problems is self-induced in a less-than-
conscious way. So we have to learn how it is that we have ceased to be
master in our own house or how we systematically prevent ourselves from
controlling our own behavior by repressing some aspect of our personality.
In Freud's view it is only when we are prepared to accept ourselves as we
are and not merely as we would like to see ourselves that we can begin to
cope with what to that point are insurmountable problems. To be sure,
Freud's explicit interest here is entirely psychopathological (although there
is clearly a covert utilitarian concept of ethics in Freud's view of human
nature, as his critics have often indicated); whereas Diderot's is principally
moral and aesthetic. He wants to explain to us generally why it should be
that we are seldom the noble, heroic figures that we would like to be.
The problem with Freud, as critics as different as Alasdair MacIntyre,
Arthur Schnitzler and Ludwig Wittgenstein have pointed out, is that the
concept of Enlightenment that informs his very impressive therapeutic
Rameau's Nephew. Dialogue as Gesamtkunstwerk for Enlightenment 59
However, the story only begins there; for Plato goes on to relate what
happens when our prisoner is "dragged by force up the ascent which is
steep and rough"8 out of the cave into the sunlight. Once more the same
experience results: the pure sunlight dazzles and the unfamiliar objects,
actually the models for the artifacts with whose shadows he has grown up,
confuse him. With time he comes to realize what has in fact been his fate till
now, and he comes to rejoice in possessing a full grasp of reality.
The Allegory of the Cave is principally about political liberation but its
importance for Western thought lies in the fact that Plato considers this
impossible without the pursuit of abstract knowledge, i.e. mathematics and
metaphysics, the search for true-for-all-time definitions for our concepts.
For that reason his prisoner must not only experience the cave itself, he
must learn that there is a reality beyond the mere relative certainty that the
sensual world presents to us, i.e., in the non-corporeal world of Ideas,
where the ultimate definitions of our concepts gambol with the axioms of
logic. This other world Plato terms the "world of the really real" (ontos on).
Its constituents are the Ideas or Forms (eidoi).Their chief characteristics are
that they are universally, necessarily and unchangingly true. For example,
'a rose is a rose' is a general statement that can never be false, even if roses
become extinct; whereas all statements about the color, scent, size, beauty of
individual roses can become false under certain circumstances. 'A rose is a
rose' is absolutely true (if remarkably uninteresting, to the uninitiated), and
that is precisely why Plato, along with every metaphysically-oriented logi-
cian to this very day, finds it so fascinating and important: it, and all such
'logical' truths, is absolutely certain and thus absolutely reliable. Plato was
convinced that the unreflectiveness typical of the Athenians who put
Socrates to death was a form of inconstancy, which was in fact the 'logical'
result of taking the world of sensory experience for ultimate reality. His task
was to convert people from this belief. Thus, he created in his dialogues a
set of 'spiritual exercises' designed to seek reality with the mind's eye (a
phrase Plato invented), rather than with the bodily eye.~
The first step in this process of conversion is thus to reject what the senses
present to us as reality, and with it the body itself. Nothing is more central
to Platonic thought and to the tradition of thinking commonly termed
'Platonism' than the idea that there is an absolute dichotomy between body
and soul (mind), one which must be cultivated by fleeing the physical
world lO through the pursuit of what he called dialectic, i.e., what we would
call logic, which "purified" the body. It is this aspect of Platonism that St.
Augustine might be said to have baptized in his theological works and
which in its 'spiritual' form has become a central teaching of orthodox
Catholic Christianity and a presupposition of metaphysical thinking to the
present day (albeit in the form of Leibnizian ontology, cognitive psychology
or Transcendental Philosophy, that many traditional Platonists or August-
inians would hardly recognize). What is crucial here is that it is at this point
in the development of Western metaphysics that the body was banned once
and for all from the realm of genuine knowledge; only to be allowed re-
entry into the realm of reality with Newton, who mathematized physical
reality and thereby 'materialized' and 'mechanized' Platonism. 11
Be that as it may, Plato's allegory continues. He poses the question as to
what would happen if the 'enlightened' prisoner were to return to his for-
Rameau's Nephew. Dialogue as Gesamtkunstwerk for Enlightenment 61
mer colleagues, tell them of his experiences, and urge them to flee the cave
with him to a better world. They would, of course, be absolutely incapable
of understanding a word that he would say. Moreover, his incapacity to
function efficiently in the darkness would be a further indication that he
should not be taken seriously. Should he insist that the world which he had
experienced was, nevertheless, superior and continue to admonish his fel-
low prisoners to leave their familiar surroundings, Plato suggests, they
would probably kill him - a clear reference to the fate of Socrates. In the end
the allegory purports to demonstrate that it is only when philosophers
become kings or kings become philosophers that we can expect to transcend
the cave.
Up to this point the story is the classical account of the pursuit of knowl-
edge as a difficult struggle against what Bacon would term the "Idols" that
are conventionally and unreflectively confused with genuine knowledge.
As such, Plato's allegory has become the classical account of the liberation
of society from the bonds of convention on the basis of science. However, on
the standard view of the matter, Plato was certain that his view of 'real'
society was so far from the common sense perspective that it was not some-
thing that ordinary people can be expected to understand in any literal
form. Logos, i.e., a true, scientific account of the matter, would only confuse
them. Thus he must have recourse to mythos, i.e. tell a story whose point
hearers must establish for themselves, if he is to communicate the insight he
has gained here. The literary form incorporates the cognitive content of his
message into an aesthetic experience designed to provide a deeper, more
coherent alternative to the everyday picture of the world. So Plato turns
out, paradoxically, to be closer to Diderot than he is either to Carnap
or Habermas in his presentation of what is involved in becoming
'enlightened' .
Plato's assumption in telling us the allegory is that its "logic" is transfer-
able to our own condition. Thus, if we are to think along with Plato we
should want to raise questions about the details of the story he has told. For
the most part philosophers have (not implausibly) construed the allegory as
a paean to formal logic as the key to transcending the world of sense decep-
tion into the world of Truth (i.e., the Ideas) and thus the means to
Enlightenment. Plato describes this arduous process as a conversion.
However, he tells us very little about its nature. Rather he is content to show
us, both in his "myths" or little stories as he describes them 12 and in the dia-
logues themselves, examples of how that comes about - the problem that
poses itself here is that of whether it is possible to do anything more than
'showing' here. In the Allegory of the Cave, as we have seen, he simply says
that the freed prisoner has to be "forced" out of the security of the cave to
the rough and steep ascent to daylight. This has all the earmarks of the
child's bitter medicine. It is important that Plato's prisoner is portrayed as
being passively acted upon in the course of becoming enlightened. How are
we to understand Plato at this crucial juncture? How is rationality compati-
ble with force as it would seem to have to be in the Allegory of the Cave?
The answer is entirely unclear from the text.
The problem, then, with Plato - and with the mainstream of the philo-
sophical tradition inspired by him - is that of sugar-coating the bitter pill, to
put the matter in a banal form. However, this cannot be a mere cosmetic
62 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
identifying Diderot with moi .... It is through his eyes, or to be more precise,
through his considerable powers of description that we encounter lui,
whose own assertions only offer us partial insight into his character. Moi is
everything that we expect from a philosophe: regular in his habits, a reflec-
tive, critical, intellectual, as such curious, a worldly-wise 'thinker' in every
respect, to whom pleasure is by no means foreign, but whose aim in life is to
achieve and maintain equilibrium. 17 He is every bit the eighteenth century
man of 'enlightened' wisdom, the honnete homme, the libertin in Montaigne's
sense, who cultivates publicly respect for convention and authority, while
maintaining private freedom of imagination to examine, to question and
explore the whole of reality intellectually. In short, he is the very personifi-
cation of Neo-Stoic values such as they were understood circa 1760 - and
everything that the very existence of Rameau's nephew calls into question.
Moi believes, like all 'Platonist' philosophers, that everybody really would
like to think like him, but that their short-term perspective on reality, i.e.,
their 'passions', prevent them from seeing things with the requisite objectiv-
ity to share the perspective of his 'enlightened' self-interest.
Moi finds lui interesting precisely because he is absolutely unconvention-
al, which is to say 'natural'. Lui can be construed as the epitome of Plato's
contented Cave dweller inasmuch as he and everything he does is a puz-
zlingly dynamic mixture of solid common sense and folly, good and evil.
His bewildering transformations of himself, now in the money, now poor as
a church mouse, now overstuffed, now lean, provoke moi to assert that,
"nothing is less like him than himself" (424) - something that lui will flatly
deny at the end of the dialogue: "Isn't it true that I'm always the same?"
(520), ironically claiming a more profound sort of constantia for himself than
the Stoics have yet conceived. In any case, he is above all a corporeal crea-
ture in all that he does, something that his stentorian voice exemplifies in
the eyes of moi. Briefly, he incorporates everything sensual that the puritan-
ical Allegory of the Cave enjoins us to eschew. For moi, which is to say for
Enlightenment, lui is important because his disdain for orthodoxy is so
refreshing; he is so very much his irrepressible self that he dramatically shows
us the difference between spontaneous Nature and stolid convention in
social matters i.e., something that will be of value to all would-be social
reformers and idealists like moi. In a sense 'society' is in fact the central
theme of the dialogue inasmuch as both figures in their very different ways
consider it a conventional, and as such arbitrary, network of constraints to
be subjected to criticism or to be exploited depending upon whether one is a
philosophe or a parasite.
At this point we do well to bear in mind that Diderot's argument here
turns very much upon a value that the secular Enlightenment adopted from
its Augustinian Christian (i.e., Jansenist) sources, and thus a value that is
foreign to Plato's world, namely, sincerity and its opposite hypocrisy.
Rameau's nephew'S 'naturalness' consists precisely in the forthrightness in
conversation with moi: he displays his good characteristics without being
ostentatious about them, his bad ones without being ashamed of them. This
is what makes him so interesting: he presents himself in dialogue as the
curiously contradictory 'sincere' insincerity. Thus, he casually affirms his
conviction that there is nothing more to reality than the corporeal by
remarking that the important thing in life is a free and easy, copiously
64 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
by its impact upon people. Joy, for example, is contagious: everybody likes
somebody who makes them laugh. Nobody really admires the coldly
detached intellectuality, verging on solipsism,19 of the Stoic, and the proof
that nobody really admires him is that nobody emulates him. Lui considers
the philosophe foolish to think that anybody believes anything like that.
The 'principle' according to which Rameau's nephew lives his life is thus
absolutely hedonistic. Its justification lies simply in the fact that it is natural
to enjoy oneself. Thus he refers to himself as "the apostle of ... ease" (482).
Plato had gone to pains to show that rigorous pursuit of a life devoted to
pleasure was ultimately self-defeating, like collecting water with a sieve as
he put iU" Plato's argument was that to try to make the search for pleasure
into the goal of life is bound to be self-defeating because this means that you
must look at life entirely in terms of what you have. However, that means
that you are also thinking about what you lack, since to think of life in these
terms is to consider the goal of living something that you possess - as
opposed to something that you are. The problem with this view is that you
will never have 'enough' and, therefore, you shall never be satisfied.
In the two millennia between Diderot and Plato this view had certainly
been challenged, but usually in literary form, for example by Rabelais,21 sel-
dom by philosophers themselves. Few philosophers were bold enough to
take up Plato's challenge straight-forwardly by constructing a thought
experiment (i.e., a "myth" in Plato's sense) in which the full consequences of
hedonism were explored. Philosophers may have been unhappy with the
Platonic view that virtue is the only real happiness but they seldom dared to
defend the full consequences of hedonism as Diderot does in Rameau's
Nephew. This entails accepting the primacy of pleasure over logic and a pic-
ture of life in which consistency does not playa particularly large role. It is
exactly what we have in Rameau's Nephew. Diderot accepts Plato's view that
such a life would be a life in of frustration, but, nevertheless, worth living.
Moreover, he seems to be insisting that pace Plato we can live with such
frustration if we are aware that it is an integral part of our chosen life style.
Thus Jean-Francois Rameau's frustration at not being a genius like his uncle,
Jean-Philippe, is not something which arbitrarily appears in the dialogue, it
is absolutely central to Diderot's confrontation with the philosophical tradi-
tion stemming from Plato. So it is entirely consistent that the nephew gains
his livelihood from sham and pretence but, nevertheless, appreciates, to the
point of worshipping, genuine creativity.
The very fact that lui is a professional parasite is also entirely coherent
with the confrontation with Plato's scenario for the good life; for the latter
considers that the need for autonomy underlies human strivings. We
should bear in mind that Plato's philosopher is a lover of wisdom, and that
love in Plato's view is the ever-yearning, underprivileged child of poverty
and plenty.22 Diderot seems to be insisting that we shall never understand
what it is to be a lover of wisdom, till we understand what it is to be a lover
of money, i.e., of the means to pleasure.
Be that as it may, consistent with his character lui is full of aspiration23 but
his goal is always pleasure. So he is content to pretend to be a piano teacher, if
that ensures the good will of his patrons and provides him with a livelihood.
At that level everything he does is simply a means to the end of making his
life more pleasant. The price he must pay is that, regardless of what people
66 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
think of him and his talents, he must be aware of his own pretenses and of
how little he can actually do in comparison with his uncle, who had revolu-
tionized the theory of harmony. In this matter he possesses a shattering self-
knowledge (436) that makes him worthy of the attentions of a Socrates.
His choice of a life devoted to hedonism is thus the choice of a life that is
continually lived between extremes, which is the exact opposite of the Stoic
ideal of constantia as conventionally conceived. In living for his instincts he
is always contradicting himself: in his cynicism money is the only value that
he respects: yet, his yearning for genius reflects that he recognizes standards
of excellence which are more than means to his selfish ends. He is thus more
Platonic than he would admit.
Nothing is more typical of Rameau's Nephew than his incessant motion: "I
never tire", he says (444). The eminent Diderot scholar, Jean Starobinski, has
demonstrated that the ceaseless flow of discussion in Diderot's dialogue has
the form of a chiasmus, i.e., an 'x' shaped figure, in which the nephew is a
sort of pivot that swings from the heights to the depths, from joy to despair,
from wisdom to folly, from morality to art, from assertion to self-
contradiction. 24 This is certainly a crucial feature of the 'consistent inconsis-
tency' of Rameau's Nephew; equally important, however, is the musical char-
acter of the dialogue itself frequently commented upon by commentators.
More specifically, it has been observed that Rameau's Nephew displays at
least superficial similarities with that typically eighteenth century musical
form, the suite.25 The suite is composed of a group of dance movements
interspersed with purely musical movements in a loose, interchangeable
order, usually in the same key. If we consider the nephew'S mime sequences
as dances and the conversational elements as the dialogue'S "pure music"
as it were, it is entirely possible to consider the dialogue as a suite. It is well-
known that Diderot was very much taken by the then frequently-discussed
problem of whether matter could think and what would be a better example
of matter thinking than a dance?2h This hypothesis is wholly consistent with
Starobinski and entirely fitting in a work which would parody Plato's flight
from the body to the soul in the form of a dynamic 'x'-shaped 'ensouled'
movement,27 We should not forget that Plato was thoroughly suspicious of
music28 so it is entirely fitting that a dialogue that would challenge the cen-
tral tenets of Plato' thought should have a musical form. Moreover, just as a
piece of music overcomes Platonic dualism inasmuch as it reconciles sensu-
al beauty with rigorous intellectual structure, i.e., it can both dazzle us sen-
sually and at the same time have a rigorously mathematical order, Diderot's
dialogue seeks to show us a certain bodily 'logic' incapable of abstract
analysis behind the nephew'S antics.
Consider the following example of one of lui's 'dances':
He: It's nothing. These things are just passing moments [i.e., frustration with his own medioc-
rity and jealousy of his brilliant uncle).
(Then he pulled himself together singing the overture to Les Indes galantes and the air Profondes
abimes, and added):
Something inside there is speaking to me and saying: Rameau, old chap, you would like to
have composed those two pieces, and, if you had composed those two you could do two more,
and when you had done a certain number people would play and sing them everywhere, and
you could hold your head erect when you walked. Your conscience would attest to your own
Rameau's Nephew. Dialogue as Gesamtkunstwerk for Enlightenment 67
worth, and people would point at you with their finger and say: 'that's the man who wrote the
pretty gavottes' (he sang the gavottes, then, with the appearance of a man deeply touched,
with eyes wet from swimming in joy, he added, rubbing his hands): you would have a good
house (and he measured it dimensions with his arms), a good bed (and he stretched himself
nonchalantly on it), good wines (which he tasted clicking his tongue against his palate) a fine
coach (and he raises one leg to climb into it), pretty women (whose breasts he fondled and cast
lecherous looks upon them), a hundred rascals would come to flatter me every day (he thought
that he could see them around him - Palissot, Poincinet, the Frerons, father and son, LaPorte -
and he listened to them, strut with pride, gave them signs of approval, smiled, treated them
with disdain or contempt, put them to flight, called them back and then continued): And thus it
is that people would tell you in the morning that you were a great man, you would read in the
Trois Siecles that you were a great man, and by the evening you would be convinced that you
were a great man; and the great man Rameau the Nephew, would fall asleep to the soft mur-
mur of praise in his ears, and even in his sleep he would appear well satisfied, his chest would
dilate, rising and falling with comfort and he would snore like a great man. (And speaking all
this he softly sank upon a bench, closed his eyes and imitated the blissful sleep he was imagin-
ing. Having tasted the sweetness of this repose for a few moments he awoke, stretched his
arms, yawned, rubbed his eyes and looked around for his dull flatterers.) (434-435)
Two things should be borne in mind with respect to this passage. First,
there is an extraordinary eye at work here; moi's description reveals an
extraordinary perspicacity with respect to the gestures appropriate in partic-
ular situations. Second, there is an equally extraordinary pen at work here:
those gestures are described masterfully, so masterfully that we are all too
easily tempted to delight in the passage - which was Diderot's point in writ-
ing it as he did - without remarking upon the consummate artistry that has
gone into crafting it in all its detaip9 Just those things that are tediously
inessential to the Platonist tum out to be crucial for disclosing the nephew's
character. In Pascalian terms the esprit de finesse captures what of necessity
eludes the esprit de geometrie.
However, it is not as if this topic, which Michael Polanyi would later term
tacit knowledge, is not at all mentioned in the work. To the suggestion that
he ought to put the tricks of his trade into writing Rameau's Nephew insists
that whoever needs a manual can not be expected to go far (469). General
rules fail to catch the most essential feature of our actions, namely, how they
are performed. Moreover, people of experience in fact always deviate from
general moral rules, insists the nephew cynically (455ff). Earlier he had
insisted that the sorts of things contained in his 'bag of tricks', his skill suc-
cessfully evading, as it were, was a matter of knowing the exceptions to
general rules. His claim is that the division of labor in society presupposes
deviance from all general codes of ethics and a-fortiori abstract patterns of
knowledge. In fact Rameau's nephew champions imitation and improvisa-
tion as the actual sources of the knowledge that real people live by. Plato's
flight into the world of the "really real" is for him the equivalent of ceasing
to exist, so much more real is the particular than the general for him.
There is also a certain irony here; for the whole Platonic epistemology in
the early and middle dialogues3<l turns upon precisely the rejection of the
idea that there could be 'knowledge in general' or a 'general' method for
attaining knowledge. In fact it is for this reason that he rejects the claims
of the Sophists to be able to teach 'knowledge'3! - and of actors to possess
it. There is no such thing as 'knowledge'; only specific modes of knowing.
There are criteria for using words rightly. Doctors and generals are
called 'doctors' and 'generals' because they have certain very specific
68 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Notes
1 Denis Diderot, Le Neveu de Rameau, Oeuvres romanesques, ed. Lucette Perol (Paris: Garnier,
1981),423-520, hereafter referred to parenthetically in the text. The translation is my own.
2 For Carnap Enlightenment is the equivalent the abolition of all traces of metaphysics from
human thinking. See Rudolf Carnap "The Elimination of Metaphysics Through the Logical
Analysis of Language," in Logical Positivism ed. A.J. Ayer (New York: The Free Press, 1959), 60-
81. On Habermas see Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Philosophy of Jiirgen Habermas (Cambridge,
Ma.: MIT Press, 1978), passim. McCarthy emphasizes how Habermas sees psychonanalytical
theory as presenting a model of Enlightenment. On the relationship between the proto-
positivism of nineteenth century German Monists to Bismarck's Kulturkampf see Daniel
Gassman, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism (London: 1971). This heritage does much to
explain the bitterness of the twentieth century positivism's assault upon, not only metaphysics,
but all forms of 'non-scientific' philosophy. Prof. Tore Nordenstam reports finding this apt
expression coined by Ernst Topitsch in Hans Albert's guestbook.
3 David Hume, A Treatise on Human Understanding, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1888), 2,3,3, 415.
4 See Brian McGuinness, "Freud and Wittgenstein," Wittgenstein and His Times, ed. B.F.
McGuinness (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1982), 27-43.
5 See Allan Janik, "Psychoanalysis: Science Literature or Art?", Style, Politics and the Future of
Philosophy" (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 114; Dordrecht & Boston,
London: Kluwer, 1989), 190-196.
6 Plato, Republic, trans. Paul Shorey in The Col/ected Dialogues of Plato, eds., Edith Hamilton
and Huntington Cairns ("Bollingen Series LXXI; New York: Pantheon Books, 1961), vii, 514A-
517A.
9 On the role of 'spiritual exercises' in philosophy see Allan Janik, "Style and Idea in the Later
Heidegger," in Janik op. cit, 20ff. On the "mind's eye" see Rep., vii 527E.
10 Theaetetus, 173Dff.
11 Concerning the ways that early Christianity reinforced Platonic views of the body see Peter
Brown's brilliant study, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early
72 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Christianity (London and Boston: Faber & Faber, 1988). The idea that Newton mechanized and
materialized Platonism is, of course, an oversimplification of a long and involved historical
story. For the full account see E.J. Oijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture:
Pythagoras to Newton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
12 Timaeus, 290.
13 'Platonism' has, of course, only a little to do with Plato as Nietzsche and Heidegger have
pointed out; d. Janik, op. cit., 16-18.
14 For a succinct account of Oiderot's literary-philosophical ideal here see his "Eloge sur
Richardson," Oeuvres esthetiques, ed. Paul Vernire ("Classiques Gamier"; Paris: Bordas, 1988),
29-48. I am indebted to Herbert Josephs for calling my attention to the importance of this text
for understanding Oiderot.
15 Phaedo, 65.
16 For the distinction between Enlightenment philosophers and philosophes see Henry Steele
Commager, The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment
(New York & Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1977), 236-245. Commager emphasizes that the
philosophe was 1) essentially a practical thinker, rather than a theorist, 2) a man of the world
with deep concern for society, 3) a utopian, 4) a "natural philosopher" (in practice a botanist)
and avid admirer of Newton,S) an educator, 6) a rationalist and deist in religious matters
regarding all churches with suspicion, 7) a humanist social reformer, 8) a publicist, who
campaigned for the humanistic causes he championed, 9) typically Francophile, 10) a
statesman, who aspired to be a social architect, 11) a friend of kings.
17 In short, the philosophe is what has become of the honnete homme, whose principal virtue
remains a sort of constantia.
18 In King Lear Shakespeare makes much of this distinction. Lear is the "natural fool of
fortune" (IV, 6, 191-192) who cannot make the distinction between appearance and reality, rule
and exception; and he must suffer for it. The "artificial" fool is the jester, who reminds Lear that
the truth cannot be simply and straight-forwardly perceived, but must be apprehended in a
judgment about differentiating between situations (I, 4, 91ff.). In Diderot the natural and the
artificial are not opposed to one another in this way, but the whole of Rameau's Nephew speaks
for the idea that the judgment in question has not in the meantime, for all the virtues of
Enlightenment, become any easier.
19 There would appear to be an ironic reference to Plato's and Machiavelli's defence of the lie
in politics. Oiderot would appear to be suggesting that amusing falsehood plays an important
and indispensable role in social life.
20 Gorgias, 492Eff.
22 Symposium, 203Bff.
23 For F.M. Cornford the Socratic revolution in Greek philosophy stems from his introduction
of a "morality of aspiration" into western philosophy. See his Before and After Socrates
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
24 Jean Starobinski, "Sur I'emploi du chiasme dans Le Neveu de Rameau, " Revue de Metaphysique
et de Moral, 1984, 182-196.
26 Nietzsche, it should be remembered would not worship a God, who could not dance: "Ich
wurde nur an einen Gott glauben, der zu tanzen verstunde," "Vom Lesen und Schreiben," Also
Sprach Zarathustra.
27 Could this be a parody of the vortex paradigm of physical reality in Cartesian physics? On
Cartesian physics see E.A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (New York:
Doubleday, 1954), 112: "This primary matter, forced into a series of whirlpools or vortices, in
which the visible bodies such as planets and terrestrial objects are carried around and impelled
toward certain central points by the laws of vortical motion."
28 Rep., 411Aff.
29 Diderot's concern for the nature of description in all its complexity is connected with his
efforts to describe the paintings exhibited at the salons, i.e. from just about the time that he
began to write Rameau's Nephew.
30 According to the generally accepted view Plato's early dialogues are the so-called "elenctic"
dialogues in which Socrates cross-examines someone or other with a view to determining
whether his claims to knowledge can pass the test of universality. They are generally taken to
represent what Plato thought Socrates was up to. The middle dialogues contain the so-called
Theory of Ideas and thus represent Plato's own philosophizing. In a third period Plato
subjected the Theory of Ideas to a scathing critique. On this division of the Platonic corpus see
Joseph Owens, A History of Ancient Western Philosophy (New York: Appleton, Century, Crofts,
1959),193-194.
31 I take this to be the point of such texts as Republic I and the Ion.
34 Herbert Josephs, Le Neveu de Rameau: Diderot's Dialogue of Language and Gesture (n.p.: Ohio
University Press, 1969), 23-38; 43-62.
35 We should bear in mind that the Platonic philosopher must withdraw from the world into
the Academy in order to understand how the world really functions and to determine what is
"really real". See Plato, Theaetetus, 176B. The Enlightenment believed that it was possible to
understand this world and even to change it from within.
37 For Wagner's concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk see Michael Tanner, "The Total Work of Art,"
The Wagner Companion, ed. P. Burbige and R. Sutton (London: Faber, 1979), 140-224. On the
Problematic character of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk see A. Janik, "Saint Offenbach's Post
Modernism," "Der Fall Wagner", ed. Thomas Steigert (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1991), 361-386.
Chapter 6
and perverted society where moral principles and social behaviour each go
their separate ways. In thus reversing the traditional roles, allowing for the
"enlightener to be enlightened" (A. Janik), Diderot gives another twist to
the ironic reversal of Platonic thought, which indeed is what much of the
dialogue is about.
Jacques Chouillet also reminds us that in the years of crisis in Diderot's
public and private life when he started writing Rameau's Nephew, some of
his most cherished convictions seem to falter, such as the famous trinity of
the True, the Beautiful and the Good, or the equation of virtue and happi-
ness, both of Platonic origin. The clash between principles and the world as
it goes, turning the philosopher into a mere "oddity" is repeated, Chouillet
says, within philosophy itself in the clash between theory and action. So it is
that neither of the two characters are consistent in their roles; a number of
times the fundamental opposition between them weakens to the point of
turning into agreement and complicity. In this game for power their respec-
tive positions are constantly put to the test, pushed as far as possible in a
series of moves of attack and defense, where positions are reversed and
superiority shifts from one to the other.
Diderot subtitled his text Satire seconde, which has generally been read as
referring to Horatian satire, in relation to the epigraph quoted from Horace.
There are other possible readings, one of which ties up with the Diogenes
motive and its anti-Platonic implications. Recent critics (Starobinski, Jauss3)
have suggested that the "genre" which most aptly describes Diderot's mas-
terpiece is that of Menippean satire, as developed by Lucian in his dia-
logues, later by Varro and by Petronius in the Satyricon. Of this possible
ancestor Diderot's Satire seconde certainly has the provocative laughter, the
subversion of traditional values and the mocking challenge of established
truths. Menippus, writes Diderot at the end of the article "Cynique", "made
himself more recommendable for the kind of writing to which he gave his
name than for his morals and philosophy". As Starobinski points out in the
article quoted above, when the virtuous courage of the early Cynics disap-
pears, what is left is an author of satire: literature thrives on the ruins of phi-
losophy "in spite of the lesser dignity of existence, or precisely because of
this degradation". After Diogenes, embodying "heroic marginality, submit-
ted to the most radical norm", follows Menippus the usurer:
Et les propos qui s'echangent dans la satire diderotienne ne trouvent leur patron legitime qu'en
Menippe, Ie disciple imparfait, l'ecrivain speculateur, sarcastique et incapable de resignation.
Les moeurs, faisant desormais probleme, ne suivent aucune norme, et la parole - insolente,
nostalgique, doutant d'un retablissement de la norme perdue - se donne Iibre cours, en deux
voix alternees.·
Notes
1 "DiogEme dans Le Neveu de Rameau", Stanford French Review, 8, 1984.
4 "And the exchange of views and words in Diderot's satire only find their legitimate patron
in Mennipus, the imperfect disciple, the speculating writer, sarcastic and incapable of
resignation. Morals, being henceforth an unresolved problem, do not follow any norm and
speech - insolent, nostalgic, doubting the reestablishment of the lost norm - flows unhindered
in two alternating voices."
Chapter 7
have already forgotten. In these traditions lie the solution to our dilemmas. I
refer here to the traditions of Diderot's philosophy.
First, I would like to stress that Diderot was perhaps alone among the
encyclopaedists in not "creating a system". His philosophy is not a collec-
tion of dogmas. It does not have a life of its own, separate from reality and
human knowledge. For Diderot, philosophy is only the instrument of think-
ing; it is real dialogue which reflects all the difficulties of the real world, of
human thoughts and passions. Do you not think that this magic of philoso-
phy, free from the mania to create systems, is needed to overcome the
boundaries of scientific disciplines and the limits of the various philosophi-
cal schools and systems of beliefs?
In their writings on Diderot, many Soviet philosophers maintain that
Engels took Diderot's thoughts to a deeper level, or that Marx showed the
narrowness of Diderot's views and so on. But we can see more dialectics in
many of Diderot's works than in Marxism itself. To some extent Diderot
was more profound than Marx because he saw the deep roots of the contra-
dictions between spirit and nature, between nature and education, between
freedom and necessity, between motion and stasis and so on.
I do not know of any other form of philosophy, including Marxism, in
which these aspects are so strongly contradictory and at the same time so
strongly dependent on one another. The matter is that the spirit of system
creation, the ambition to solve all possible problems and to use any means
to build practical and non-contradictory systems, leads both Marx and
Hegel to accentuate and state preferences. For example, Marx insists that
materialism is preferable to idealism, motion is preferable to stasis, struggle
is preferable to unity. Yet in the strict sense dialectics needs at the same time
equality and the mutual elimination of all these opposites. That is, in fact,
the spirit of Diderot's philosophy.
In its almost absolute flexibility and refinement, Diderot's thinking
achieved full uncertainty, thanks to its complete freedom and emancipation.
Diderot himself knew this, and he used his talents as a writer and philo-
sopher to express the lack of correspondence between the process of think-
ing and the result of thinking. He concentrated on the contradictoriness
of thought.
Some scientists called these aspects of his works Socratic. It is thanks to
these features that Diderot managed to avoid the temptation to create a sys-
tem. His Socratic, or should I say dialectic, way of thinking destroys any
system. I consider this characteristic of Diderot's writings to be one of his
foremost distinctions and one which illustrates the features of the philoso-
phy of Enlightenment. Diderot is interested not only in what his contempo-
raries are thinking about, or the subject of their thinking, he is interested in
the very process of thinking, the very process of reasoning. He manages to
capture the thought, to understand the meaning of the thought even when it
is far from complete. Thought is always in motion if it is not dead. Every
completed thought is actually only half of it. It not only discovers, it also
hides the mysteries of life and the process of thinking. That is why Diderot's
philosophy is not explicit; it is latent in the structure of the dialogues
between the Philosopher and Rameau, between Jack and the master. The
flexibility of Diderot's thinking does not mean that his notions arid images
are without form. The notions and images of his dialectical thinking are
82 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
very definitely formed. Diderot achieves this through contrast. The differ-
ences between things in nature, feelings and thoughts eliminate one anoth-
er. But there are no other forms of definitions in philosophy than through
their opposites. Motion may be defined as in opposition to stasis. Necessity
may be defined as the opposite of chance. Truth can only be found through
absurdity.
It must be noted that this correspondence of categories is supported by
neither Hegel nor Marx.
Diderot's way of thinking differs from that of Holbach, Helveziy and
Marx and Engels in its realized paradoxicality. Marx and Engels were sure
that their own concept held no inherent contradictions. And they were
unwilling to look at their own concept from the opposite viewpoint.
Diderot's philosophy was in itself contradictory. Diderot did not want to
solve contradictions. His task was only to discover the contradiction in its
most paradoxical form. In Diderot's works all opposite sides are equal.
The philosophy which we shall bring into the next century must not be
simply pluralistic, drifting with neither sail nor rudder in a boundless sea of
world culture. The open philosophy implies not an infinite and unbounded
series of possibilities, but a very concrete set of alternatives. I must recog-
nize and grant to the philosopher, scientist and political figure the right to
choose one of the possible positions: materialist or idealist, monistic or plu-
ralistic, religious or atheist etc. However, in consistently championing and
developing open philosophy, they follow the principles of dialogue and do
not allow one of them to tum into an all-consuming monster. In contrast to
Marxism, freedom of choice will be not only a conclusion drawn from gno-
siology and sociology, but one of the fundamental prerequisites of philoso-
phy.
We are, of course, at the beginning of the road, but let me express my
wish and my belief that this process will be a pacifying and fruitful one.
Chapter 8
Comments
Lars Kleberg
Before leaving Yasnaya Polyana to go to his death we are told Tolstoy sat
down at his desk and re-wrote, by hand, like a schoolboy, a long passage
from Socrates' Apology. We do not know exactly what passage he chose.
What interests us here is the very act of re-writing - not simply re-reading -
the text in order to let it pass through the physical movement of the hand,
reiterating the very curves of the letters, as if to memorize physically the
movement of the thought itself. Tolstoy's was a gesture of profound sub-
mission; of concrete understanding.
Today, modem communications technology seems to have reduced the
physical or physiological relation to thought and reasoning (rhythm, fric-
tion, contextuality) to a minimum. 1 Tolstoy'S schoolboy-like exercise
reminds us of the importance of retaining the connection between hand and
thought, between body and mind. For the Russian writer, the work of copy-
ing obviously had a deep moral meaning of submission and subordination
of the self to the text. The studious and careful rewriting has an ascetic,
almost monastic character.
At the same time, Tolstoy'S example reminds us that every reading, every
act of understanding (even without copying by hand) implies a kind of
translation. The professional translator's goal is not only an imitation of the
"content" or the "form" but of the very movement of the original texU
Thomas Tempte's fascinating reconstruction of Tutankhamen's Chair is, in
this respect, a perfect icon for the work of the translator. In order to "imi-
tate" the original, one needs to "get inside" not only the end product but
also the process of construction (maybe even its tools); one needs to under-
stand practically "how the text is made".3 The theory of translation has
therefore taught us less about the skill than about the careful study of the
history of the profession or of concrete and successful pieces of work.
Both systematic reasoning and organization are traditionally modelled on
the principles of non-contradiction. The ideal behind the perfect system is
often the smooth, frictionless working of a machine or engine. 4 The re-
writing by hand of Socrates' Apology is, from this point of view, totally
absurd. Compared to a modem digital copy or some other kind of "cloning"
of the (Russian or Greek) original, the re-writing only introduces distortion
into the system. But as is the case with any serious process of translation,
distortion does not only imply the well-known "losses" but also certain
84 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Notes
1 The introduction of the pen-computer, particularly the Apple Newton with its program for
translating handwriting into digital information (designed by the Moscow mathematician
Georgy Pachikov), might change this radically.
2 Thomas Tempte, "The Chair of Tutankhamun", in Goranzon and Florin (eds), Dialogue and
Technology. Art and Knowledge Springer-Verlag, London 1991, pp 157-164.
3 Jean Ie Rond d'Alembert, "On the Translation of Tacitus", Observations sur l'art de traduire
en general et sur cet essai de traduction en particulier, the Introduction to "Essai de traduction
de quelques morceaux de Tacite", Melanges de litterature, d'histoire et de philosophie. Nouvelle
edition Amsterdam 1760.
4 Nordal Akerman (ed.), The Necessity of Friction. Nineteen Essays on a Vital Force, Physica
Verlag, Heidelberg 1993.
Section III:
In the field of dramatic art the most inaccessible and hard-to-describe thing
is the knowledge an actor possesses. Most actors find it difficult to under-
stand what their knowledge actually consists of, once one goes beyond the
obvious skills of good diction, excellent movement, stamina and a good
memory. Some of us can fence and ride as well, some have learned to fall
well without hurting themselves, and a few of us can still apply an expres-
sive stage mask.
All of this can be registered and described. And all of this is the sort of
thing that drama schools can, or at least should, teach.
But beyond that, things become more difficult.
One unforgettable day, John Gielgud gave me a lesson in delivering
Shakespearean verse. At that time he was 86 years old and I was 67. He usu-
ally addressed me as "young man".
We were making a film of The Tempest, directed by Peter Greenaway. Sir
John was Prospero and I was Gonzalo. Gielgud asked if he could take me
through my lines:
comma, and where in the text you drew breath was vital. All these signs
and rules constituted a tradition that had been handed down, knowledge
that had been developed and refined over hundreds of years. The signs sep-
arating phrase and sentence were not Shakespeare's, they were the actors';
their placement an expression of the actors' experience, of their recommen-
dations and their practice. They reflected hard-won knowledge, a battle
with phrasing, with feelings and insight, technique and clarity, with charac-
terization and with contact with the audience. The punctuation was notes,
directions, reminders. Line ends were not simply a notation of metre, they
also stimulated thought and feeling. Fantasies that had been worked upon
right across centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes
and seconds. Everything is at once venerably old, original, altered, devel-
oped and renewed.
Consciously or subconSciously, Gielgud's lesson will leave its mark on
me. And it is reasonable to suppose that what I learned may at some time
influence some young or old actor. Suddenly, one evening on a Swedish
stage in the year 2003, Gielgud's and his predecessors' phrasing may echo
from a young actor playing his first Shakespearean role.
In the same way there is not a single actor at the Royal Dramatic Theatre
who is permitted to take the part of the King in any play without coming
under the influence of Lars Hanson; imitating him and his dialogue. The
theatre walls are imbued with experience, knowledge, suggestions, angels
and ghosts.
Lars Hanson died in 1965.
Ivan Hedqvist died in 1935. I cannot possibly explain, either to myself or
to others, what there is of Hedqvist in my performances; I have probably
never seen him on the stage. But I know that I make use of Hedqvist's the-
atrical triumphs and changes. As with all innovators, he discovered new
and useable knowledge. Knowledge that the audience perceives as new
truth. A surprising naturalness or an expressive un-naturalness that signals
new discoveries about man.
Once, when I was in difficulties with a monologue, I asked the advice of
Georg Rydeberg, the famous Swedish actor. "Don't lean back when you
sit", he said. "You can't deliver a harangue like that when you are leaning
back". I sat up straight and the problem was solved.
Acting is full of the most varied kinds of knowledge. But as a rule we
actors are rotten theoreticians, probably for fear that structured theories
might come between us and startling new experiences of ourselves, of oth-
ers and of the world. Our knowledge suffuses all our senses and our bodies;
it is in the tone of our voices and in our expressions and gestures. We
remember in the way we hold ourselves, we muse with our facial expres-
sions, we animate our thoughts by making rhythmical appraisals. We sen-
sualize all sorts of internal processes.
We pass on experiences without verbalizing them. This does not prevent
us from making craftsmanlike observations or giving instructions. We are
better practical teachers than we are lecturers.
This has nothing to do with our intelligence. Except that the actor orga-
nizes, so to speak, his intelligence in a different way to other people. He
must keep his intellect sharp, alert to lightning-fast impulses and influences,
and this requires a different kind of resolution than that required to grasp a
We Must Safeguard the Freedoms of our Craft 91
thought. He must assiduously investigate and assess the impulse, but not
allow himself to be enslaved by it; he must transform it into a dogma: no-
one has such a complicated relationship to faith as does the actor. The
actor's intelligence is restless and hungry, its main objective not confirma-
tion but new experience. This is often described as intuition, but that is a
senseless limitation because in most cases our intelligence is such a vigorous
co-creator. But its function can and must be so untrammelled that its cre-
ative processes will extend to encompass even stupidity and emotional
storms. It fears the confining walls of "push-buttonology".
Am I now clothing the usual stereotypes in rather more complicated
wording? Yes, I probably am. But ancient knowledge and truthful observa-
tions will emanate even from the stereotype actor. The actor's knowledge
and experience is, after all, subjected to constant interrogation on the rack of
the inquiring and exacting audience.
We are both controlled and developed by our audiences, perhaps in equal
measure, and as often in a negative or cautious direction as in a positive or
bold direction. The audience influences us in our knowledge of ourselves.
This is sometimes painful and demanding, sometimes joyful and confirma-
tory - and that is when there is a danger that we might stagnate. We must
learn to make wise use of the knowledge our audiences give us. That is not
a simple process, for this knowledge is intimate and personal in nature. Its
strength lies in its lack of objectivity, its weakness in its assumed objectivity.
Drama creates new knowledge. Without art, science will stagnate, and with-
out science, art will stagnate. Knowledge is refined as much by its expres-
sion as by its formulation. But where is the actor in this process?
In the centre.
Or at least we should be in the centre. The actor must abandon his sup-
posedly humble position as an "interpreter", as a conveyor of other people's
intentions and visions. We are our own vision, our own consciousness,
which the playwright, the director and each member of the audience have
to interpret. We are the portrayers of society, we offer a role to the lost and
insecure, a structure to the confused, truth to the blind. We have the gift and
the opportunity to create new attitudes in a matter of a few hours. It is
above all the actor who provides the substitute experience, makes it under-
standable, concrete, relevant to man and his fate. This may sound pompous,
but I don't give a damn how it sounds, as long as I allow myself to say it.
The actor has made himself a platform from what is clear and at the same
time contradictory. We must keep a watch on this, for this is the freedom of
our craft. It is so easy to lose. Sometimes it is so temptingly comfortable to
simply reproduce.
Chapter 10
knowledge of limits. The needs form the organs, but the organs also form
the needs. There is a flux in Nature which excludes perfectibility - there are
no platforms to be arrived at. In Rameau's Nephew the divine mathematical
madness of the great-uncle turned into the non-divine madness of the dilet-
tante nephew. Nature has returned to a new experiment, forgetful of all the
arias and heroes and pythagorean speculations of the great Rameau. How,
then, do these ideas hang together? Is it an old sport, started either by
Sainte-Beuve in his Lundis or perhaps by even earlier critics to speak about
the "confusion" of Diderot. "Son materialisme n' est pas un mecanisme
geometrique et aride, mais un vitalisme confus, fecond et puissant, une fer-
mentation spontanee, incessante, evolutive, ou, jusque dans Ie moindre
atome, la sensibilite latente ou degagee subsiste toujours presente."4
However, it remains an open question whether it is not the reader rather
than the writer who is "confused". Inspired by such modem scholars as
Elizabeth Potulicki, I am fairly convinced that Diderot's thought shows a
great deal of internal coherence and consequence and that it all constitutes
an understanding of the world which is admirably modem and free, but
which in his time was hardly possible to express other than in fragmentary
and paradoxical terms. As I shall try to argue in a moment, his Paradox is a
good example. Sainte-Beuve also remarks that at the core of Diderot's philo-
sophical method is his talent for being surprised. An excellent example of
this is of course the famous Paradox of the Actor. Once we are acquainted
with the paradox in Diderot's oeuvre it all seems so simple, and yet - how
mind-boggling are the consequences.
To the English empiricists - who although less coherent and less rigidly
empirical than their textbook image are still fairly insistent on the principle
that nothing can be in the mind which was not put there - creative imagina-
tion poses a problem, because every idea which is not an exact copy of
something outside ourselves has to be explained in terms of combinations
of such representations. This approach has a reasonable chance of accom-
modating things which do not exist, such as dragons and greek gods, but
has more difficulty with the immense wealth and flow of human creativity.
Diderot makes a serious attempt to bring creativity into the picture, and
that is probably one reason why it seems so difficult to fit essays like
D' Alembert's Dream or the Paradox of the Actor into a general Enlighten-
ment pattern. 4
How can Diderot's paradox be formulated? Various ways will suggest
themselves to the reader of Diderot, depending on where his interest lies. If
it is in psychology, he might say that the most convincing way to theatrical-
ly represent an emotion is in an emotionally detached way.
If, on the other hand, our interest is in Nature, we might express Diderot's
result by saying that Nature cannot be imitated with natural means. And
thirdly, if we are more interested in the logical foundations of semantics, we
might say that the act of representation always has to be different from the
thing represented. A thing cannot be its own optimal image, because if it
could, it would have to be at the same time different from and identical to
itself, as the image-relation seems to presuppose a difference between the
representation and the thing represented. What we meet in the theatre are
not emotions but acts of art which evoke emotions in ourselves. It is we, not
Some Reflections on Diderot's Paradox 95
In his essay, Diderot in fact expresses the Paradox in many ways; you can
say that he walks around what he has discovered in a sort of circle, viewing
the discovery from different perspectives. In one place it is introduced psy-
chologically, as a distinction between sense and sensibility:
C'est que' etre sensible est une chose, et sentir est une autre. L'une est une affaire d'Ame, I'autre
une affaire de jugement.·
A little further into the dialogue we find what might better be called a
"logical" interpretation of the Paradox:
Je vous entends; il y aura toujours, entre celui qui contrefait la sensibilite et celui qui sent, la
difference de !'imitation 11 la chose.'
And, still a little further down, we find what might be called the formula-
tion in terms of Nature and its limits:
Vous voyez qu'il n'est pas meme permis d'imiter la nature, meme la belle nature, la verite de
trop pres, et qu'il est des limites dans lesquelles il faut se renfermer.'
So what might look like a logical observation from one perspective looks
like an empirical observation from another. The distinction probably does
not make as much sense to Diderot as it did to Kant.
Of course, the logical approach to the Paradox does not exclude its empir-
ical confirmability, but for a modem approach, what can be argued logically
does not have to be argued empirically as well.
Seen as a logical argument, the Paradox seems to be more a regression
than a real paradox. An emotion in representation cannot be identical with
the emotion represented because the element of representation adds a qual-
ity which makes the copy radically different from the original. Thus a like-
ness in order to be a likeness has to be different from what it is like. The
argument which can of course be extended to all sorts of representations
(pictures, memories, perceptions) does not really say anything about the
nature of mind or the limits that nature has placed on our activities.
So it seems that what Diderot delivers is not one but a package of at least
three "Paradoxes" in his Essay, in which logical,' empirical and psychologi-
96 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
This thought, never quite developed in the Paradox, brings us very close
to a contemporary tendency in the Philosophy of Art, i.e. the refusal to
accept similarity as an explanation of the relation between the work of art
and that which is supposed to be its meaning. When Nelson Goodman"
draws our attention to the fact that all oil paintings of castles have many
more similarities in common with other oil paintings than with castles, he
makes a reflex ion which Diderot probably would have liked.
What is "expression of feelings" supposed to mean? Mozart's Requiem is
supposed to express Mozart's personality. Mozart's obscene canons are also
supposed to express the divine composer's personality. If we follow
Diderot, and it seems very hard to deny that he has said something very
important about the subject, instead of an emotional substance which is
transported between minds we get a skill, which is not really even an imita-
Some Reflections on Diderot's Paradox 97
fascination with the gaps in our knowledge. And also the possibility to
make a rhetorically and philosophically highly effective use of the aware-
ness that is there. Compared to other Enlightenment philosophers, Diderot
seems more preoccupied with what he does not understand than with what
he does understand, and that is, perhaps, the source of his
originality.
Notes
1 Pensees sur !'interpretation de la Nature XI
3 ibid.
11 Nelson Goodman
12 Friedrich Nietzsche "Jenseits von Gut und Bose!" 11. Ed, Schlechta II p. 575
Chapter 11
Prologue
The nature of theatre is such that its metaphoric force is frequently, if para-
doxically, invoked. A simulation of reality, it assumes a paradigmatic force
with respect to that reality until we seem trapped in a house of mirrors.
Since we stage our lives before an audience, it is suggested, where should
we look for a clue to our self-dramatizations but to the theatre. Since the the-
atre mimics the social world, which is the pre-condition for its existence,
where should the actor tum for a clue to authenticity but to that world
which he would convince us he reproduces and inhabits? The unease which
such a circularity implies is disturbing precisely because it would seem to
challenge the very notion of authenticity itself, because the deceit which we
applaud is also the deceit which we would deplore. Living thus becomes a
series of lies and plausibility what we require above all. And yet if what we
seek is understanding of our social actions we could do worse than step
through the curtains and enquire whether stage and auditorium, actor and
audience, are not, indeed, merely versions of one another, offering, as they
do, altered perspectives but perhaps not a radically transformed mode
of being.
When Freud looked for an image of men growing into possession of their
lives he turned to the theatre, to Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus. When the
sociologist Erving Goffman looked for an image of social relationships, in
The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life, he turned to the theatre. As
metaphor, as symbol and as fact the theatre has been seen not merely as a
mirror to our psychological and social nature but as a key to those transfor-
mations which are the essence of private and public truth, which fact is the
more disturbing since acting and the theatre have always been treated with
the most profound suspicion. As late as the second half of the 19th century
an actor in New York was refused burial in holy ground. But - and this I
suppose is my point, in so far as I have one - we should perhaps all be
refused such burial in so far as the actor's skills are no more than extensions
of our own and his violations those necessary for social life.
100 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Act I
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry "Content!" to that which grieves my heart.
And wet my cheek with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machievel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.
"Pushkin asks of the dramatist, and we may ask of the actor, that he possess
'sincerity of emotions, feelings that seem true in given circumstances'." To
Pushkin and Stanislavski, then, sincerity and seeming become one and the
distinction so carefully made by Hamlet and, incidentally, Diderot, is
blurred. Nonetheless it is a distinction which is vital. The skill of the actor,
you might say, is thus tainted by its very nature. And even Diderot accepts
as much when he says that "the player's brain gives sometimes a touch of
trouble to his soul. He weeps as might weep an unbelieving priest preach-
ing of the Passion; as a seducer might weep at the feet of a woman he does
not love, but on whom he would impose or, like a courtesan who has no
heart, and who abandons herself in your arms." Seen thus, of course, the
deceits of the actor are not a special circumstance but a redirection, a focus-
ing of those tactics, those social representations which are the stuff of daily
intercourse.
But it is not only deceit that has made the actor the focus of subversion.
The Puritans were quite right to suspect the theatre. There is something
seductive, lubricious, sensual about it. In the theatre language is savoured
in the mouth, shaped, formed, caressed, ejaculated. The body is recuperated
so that abstract speech is rooted in physical being, a body which, with a
mere movement, may expose the supremacy of instinct over thought, lan-
guage being earthed in need, the body becoming a sign more powerful,
immediate and subversive than a language borrowed from the library of
public expression. Dionysus denies the supremacy of Apollo. The body is
proxemically alive and, above all, present, now, in the tense which is
uniquely the theatre's own: the present tense. The tense which is also our
own. In a public place we are permitted to share in transgression and trans-
gression is perhaps a central fact of theatre. Here we are allowed a voyeuris-
tic involvement, to glimpse those who post with such dexterity to
incestuous sheets, to boldly go where few members of the audience have
gone before: incest, adultery, torture, murder. The theatre is libidinal and
Dionysus is its god. Though the Apollonian is present in the structured lan-
guage, the form, the ordered context, the actor's role is to threaten that
order with his or her physical being, to suggest, by his or her very skills,
how insecure are the categories, the systems, the social and psychological
roles in which we otherwise place our faith. The actor is a reminder that we,
too, are Proteus; that we, too, combine the Apollonian and the Dionysian.
The actor is a paradigm of the resistant self and of the plural self.
Act II
The Puritans put theatre on a par with long hair, face painting (which, of
course, is a critique of God), health drinking, effeminate dancing, effeminate
music, Christmas keeping and bonfires. The list is William Prynne's and the
word effeminate occurs twice and is an interesting word in the context of
acting because, to my mind, one of the qualities of truly great actors - of
Brando, as he once was, of Olivier, of Malkovich - is the fact that they con-
tain both the male and the female, that they are no respecters of boundaries.
It is one of the skills of the actor to draw on levels of being and sensibility
102 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Act III
There is a term in Noh theatre - Rilren no ken - which means outside view,
and another - Gaken - which means inside view, the performer's own view.
The actor needs both: to see his performance from within and without
simultaneously. Like Tennessee Williams's gypsy girl, in Camino Real, who
regains her virginity with every full moon, it's a good trick if you can pull it
off. But the actor has to walk this high wire and in simulating he draws not
just on technical skills but skills having to do with emotional recall, itself a
The Actor as Paradigm? 103
dangerous territory. John Gielgud thought of his dead mother when play-
ing Hamlet's 'To Be or Not To Be' soliloquy. When Daniel Day Lewis
walked off the stage at the National Theatre reportedly because Hamlet's
concern for his dead father had become entangled with Day Lewis's for his,
he was perhaps being a bad actor but a good human being. Whatever the
truth of that it served to underline a danger. The actor has to be simultane-
ously involved and detached. This is what concerned Diderot. Balance is
perhaps the essence, though not to Diderot who preferred detachment, but,
as with a high wire act in a circus, part of the excitement of theatre comes
from our sense of being in the presence of danger. Ian Holm rushed from
the theatre in 1979 in the middle of a monologue in O'Neill's The Iceman
Cometh, a play which itself explores the permeable membrane between the
self and its social representations, which dramatizes the degree to which life
and performance become inseparable. Directors feel uneasy in the presence
of Alan Rickman, not because his acting can be mannered but also because
he exudes this sense of danger, of being barely in control. So, too, perhaps,
with Anthony Sher and John Malkovich. This is not a feeling you would like
to have in the presence of a brain surgeon and not, perhaps, strictly speak-
ing a skill, unless consciously deployed, more of a quality, but no movie
ever gave you this. The fact is that in theatre we are ready for any eventual-
ity from actors forgetting their lines, to duellists inflicting real wounds, the
scenery collapsing or onstage coronaries. Moliere did in fact collapse and
die while playing the part of the hypochondriac Argan in The Imaginary
Invalid, thus somewhat undermining the point of his own character.
The essence of an actor's skills, and, I am tempted to say all skills, is that
they should be invisible, subsumed in the task they facilitate. The Japanese
actor Yoshi Oida has explained that in traditional Japanese theatre there is
no improvisation or personal expression, simply prescribed forms of
expression and physical and vocal techniques. Training consists of learning
these. The end result of training may be the acquisition of these skills and
techniques but it is also, paradoxically, a sense of freedom. As he explains,
"the aim of all systems of technical training is to enable you to do an action
without worrying how you do it. Unless you have this training you cannot
arrive at this freedom of communication." The American actor/director
Joseph Chaiken has said, similarly, that "technique is a means to free the
artist." The risk lies in becoming a victim of the technique or being too con-
scious of the skills being deployed. As Maureen Stapleton has said of the
Delsarte method of actor training: "by the time you've learned it all it's hard
to open a door." Consciousness of this kind is the enemy. In like manner the
golfer who becomes suddenly obsessed with technique is liable to find him-
self in the bunker. The skill is not to be aware of the skill which moves from
the level of learned procedure to apparently instinctive behaviour. As
Stanislavski remarked, in Creating a Role, fIlet our unconscious, intuitive
creativeness be set in motion by the help of conscious preparatory work.
Through the conscious to the unconscious - that is the motto of our art
and technique."
Yet at the same time the essence of acting is not that the actor should
efface him or herself in assuming a role or subordinate intuitive ability to
skill. If it were why should we choose to see Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet or
even Mel Gibson's? Actor and role co-exist. Nor is this a mere matter of
104 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Act IV
Lenin once remarked that if the appearance and essence of things were the
same there would be no need for such a thing as science. Much the same
could be said of culture but in particular of the theatre in which the two co-
exist as the condition of its being. The gap never closes. Gloucester's bastard
son Edmund deceives and dissembles to win his way to power, Portia to
save a man's life, Kent to survive, Edgar to redeem. Lear plays king, beggar,
madman, saint. For O'Neill's derelicts, in The Iceman Cometh, survival
depends on their playing out their fictions and not confronting something
which presents itself as reality but which is merely another form of perfor-
mance. Authenticity and performance constitute a false dichotomy. They
are the infra red and ultra violet of human response, not easily distinguish-
able to the human eye but part of the white light of truth. We watch
Gloucester's eyes gouged out and wince in horror, but not really in horror
for we know that what we see is not what we see, that Gloucester is not
Gloucester, that the eyes are not eyes, that the blood is not blood and that
we are playing the role of audience and not that of bystanders uncertain
whether to intervene or not. A child may not make this distinction but we
can tell a hawk from a handsaw. And there, surely, is the proof, you might
say, that we are more than actors for we know that we have but to step out-
The Actor as Paradigm? 105
side the theatre and the blood and the eyes will be real enough. True. But
then perhaps that is the function of the theatre, to remind us of what we
know, that, as in the former Yugoslavia, today's friendly neighbour may be
tomorrow's rapist and murderer and that we, in tum, are someone's neigh-
bour. And which, then, was the authentic self? The friendly neighbour or
the rapist? And which are we? The truth is we do not know and may not
until the moment comes. We may be either. We contain both possibilities.
The theatre tells us this, not in the plot of individual plays but in its recogni-
tion of transformation as an immediate possibility, a source equally of hope
and of despair.
Joyce Carol Oates concludes an essay on Ionesco thus: "Ionesco comes
closest to the gravest most sinister truth about ourselves - being is an empty
fiction, and our 'becoming' is equally fictitious, equally empty, for we stand
in front of locked doors, motionless, not lacking the power of motion but
willed to motionlessness, waiting for a key or a miracle. There is no key,
there is no miracle. Being is an empty fiction. Becoming is a nightmare."
Diderot's paradox is thus resolved-or side-stepped. There is no sensibility
to deplore or praise, to deploy or avoid. There is only pretence. To wipe off
the greasepaint is not to reveal the truth. To remove the mask is only to
expose another beneath it. That is one version of man as actor, transfixed by
a fear of inauthenticity, a fear of being no more than a sequence of perfor-
mances designed less to deceive others than the self in wait for the miracle
of meaning, the Godot of revelatory coherence. There is, however, a
brighter version of the coterminous nature of social and moral existence and
acting having to do with plenitude and possibility, with transformation and
empathy, with performatic skills which have become so intuitive that they
are indistinguishable from intuition itself. As John Barth once remarked,
"the key to the treasure is the treasure." We are a blend of the given and the
created. So, too, are actors in a play. We make a particular hand gesture
because somewhere in the double helix of our being is an instruction that
we should do so. At the same time we learn by watching and never discov-
er the extent of improvisation and the degree of authority which must be
given to the genetic text which we follow.
We are plural, as the actor teaches us we may be. Like the actor we, too,
surely progress by transgression, speak words which are not our own
while, like an actor, endeavouring to give them a sense of ourselves? We are
at our finest when we allow our imagination to let us see through others'
eyes, feel the pain that others feel, see the stranger enter our world as a
coequal on the stage of experience. Whatever else Shylock may be required
to speak he is allowed to plead his humanity and when his mind might be
on his gold he cries only one name - Jessica, his daughter. It is the actor who
leads us where we must go, into the mind of one who cries for Jessica as we
would cry for our own. Do we not become ourselves only by losing our-
selves? Acting is not falsehood but an alternative possibility. It is as we
might be in a parallel universe except that the parallel universe is this one.
We exist as separate selves yet, like the actor, only in so far as we exist as
social selves, shaping our behaviour and adjusting our language to that of
others, thereby creating a meaning out of dialogue, speaking in confidence
of being understood, in the faith that a reply will come, that your experience
may be translated into mine and mine into yours. The theatre - Bakhtin
106 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Act V
In explaining the actor's craft John Gielgud turned to art: "I've always said,"
he remarked, "that when you see the picture of the Van Gogh chair you
suddenly think what an extraordinary way to paint a chair - at an angle -
and it's yellow - and a funny colour. But after you've seen that picture you
can never again see a chair without thinking of Van Gogh. In the same way
I think any great actor's moment in a play is brought about by the fact that
he has felt it, he has observed it and registered it in his memory book, and
he can then repeat it technically over and over again." In other words what
the actor does for us is to recuperate the world and make it strange for us, to
defamiliarize and offer it back to us new born. And the word repetition is
significant for repetition in the theatre is not like repetition on the produc-
tion line where the objective is precise replication. It is not even repetition in
the sense of a mechanically reproduced and identical image, such as an
artist's print or even a movie. As Ingmar Bergman has reminded us, the
essence of theatre is "repetition, living, throbbing, repetition. The same per-
fonnance every night, the same perfonnance and yet reborn." And in that
respect, too, the theatre can stand not merely as metaphor but exemplar for
as Kierkegaard reminds us, in his book Repetition: repetition in life always
implies change and difference and forces us to understand that we do not
inhabit the realm of the aesthetic. The theatre is thus an aesthetic fonn
which contains a suspicion of the aesthetic, which deliberately contaminates
the unyielding and unalterable perfection of the object represented to us in
its unchanging coherence. The skill of the actor is to resist the deceptive per-
fection of an inert language, to deny fetishization, the iconic force of charac-
ter become myth.
For Maureen Stapleton the job of the actor is to be "true and real and alive
each time" adding that "nothing in life, or in human behaviour, can be alien
to the actor. There is nothing that the human being can do that is a surprise,
or a shock, or un-understandable." In other words the writer and the actor
together, at their best, accomplish what the historian, the psychologist, the
sociologist, the anthropologist, all of whom have turned to drama and the
actor as metaphor and as fact, struggle so hard to achieve: an understanding
of human beings and their behaviour, for that is the essential skill of the
The Actor as Paradigm? 107
actor, at his or her best. And the world they recuperate, whether it be fourth
century Greece, sixteenth century England, or 19th century Sweden, is in
essence our own, for, whatever fictions they enact there is no other world
than our own. As Paul Eluard remarked: "There is another world, and it is
this one./I
There is a play by Arthur Miller called The Archbishop's Ceiling. It is set in
an old archbishop's palace in eastern Europe. Concealed in the ceiling may
or may not be a series of microphones, the effect of which is to tum all those
in the room into actors, performing for an audience which mayor may not
be listening, which mayor may not exist. Beyond the political point, beyond
even an awareness that today we are rarely out of range if not of micro-
phones then of video cameras, that we are public even when we imagine
ourselves to be private, is a more fundamental consideration. For this is an
archbishop's palace. The true reason, therefore, for Jaques' observation that
all the world's a stage, his insistence that we are all actors, is that there is
perhaps a hidden audience without whose knowledge no sparrow falls
from the air. The actor's skills are therefore the skills of all. And if we are no
longer sure that such an audience exists or, like Richard Nixon, forget for a
moment that it may, nonetheless awareness of that potential audience
remains a spur to performance. For the greater fear is not that the micro-
phones are there but that they are not, for it is the microphones, the audi-
ence, which give significance to those in the room. The fear, then, is not that
we may be actors, observed in our actions, given meaning by an audience,
but that we live our lives unobserved, that we may not, after all, be what in
our inmost hearts we wished we might be, figures on a stage, performing
a drama whose meaning and purpose is assured because its coherences
are clear to one who watches and whose applause, at the last, we require
if we are to perform our strange eventful history and know it to be
something more than "mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste,
sans everything".
Chapter 12
instability, distemper, and acting a part lays one open to what Lionel
Trilling calls 'the attenuation of selfhood that results from impersonation'.3
(It is instructive, however, that all those critics of the theatre who, like
Trilling, suggest that playing a role such as Iago or Richard III endangers
the moral integrity of an actor, since s/he may assume the attributes of
those s/he impersonates, do not extend this notion of imprinting through
impersonation to any virtues a character might have.) The actor is therefore
certainly transgressive, as Chris Bigsby also points out, and not only
because his ambivalent, equivocal, multiple, carnivalesque nature on stage
has the ability to confound all distinction and discrimination, whether sexu-
al, social or political. Indeed, the element of transgression already exists as a
possibility in the encounter which the theatre sets up between the exciting,
strange, and on occasion aggressive - almost animal - energy of the actor
and the audience that is on the receiving end, an energy that has frequently
been identified with the theatre at its most compelling, whether it be
Olivier's celebrated physical magnetism as Othello or Rachel in Racine, who
was described by the English philosopher and analyst of acting, George
Henry Lewes, as a 'panther', by Charlotte Bronte as a 'tiger', and by her
French critic and admirer Jules Janin, as a 'pythoness'.4 Such physical,
adversarial, even erotic aspects of live performance are sometimes to be
caught in the slang which actors use (at least in English) to describe their
relationship with an audience: 'bowling them over', 'knocking them out',
'socking it to them', 'slaying them', or even 'laying them in the aisles'.5
Sexuality, the transgression of gender boundaries, and an ill-defined but
tantalizing link with the idea of prostitution are therefore assuredly bound
up with our notion of acting. The significance of this parallel has been
explored in spectacular fashion by modem dramatists, the meta theatrical
investigation of specular images and social and staged identity by Genet in
The Balcony is an obvious example, while theoretically we might ponder not
so much the commonplace associations between the two occupations as the
way in which the actor allows him or herself to be used by a variety of texts,
anyone of which would seem to be as good as another for his or her pur-
poses. Nevertheless, in Britain, the theatre has, ever since the acceptance of
the actress on stage during the Restoration, frequently been associated with
an act in which women routinely violate polite conventions of dress, make-
up, and gesture while exposing themselves, in later years by flickering
gaslight, in order to solicit the concupiscent male gaze, a desire that in the
two domains of prostitution and stage performance may, as Tracy Davis
suggests, be gratified by 'women whose identity, sincerity, and appearance
were illusory but whose success relies on not giving away the hoaxes of the
consumer's control of full reciprocity or enjoyment': One might add, how-
ever, that in the theatre at least, the actor does not normally divulge the
skills whereby this illusion is created, any more than does a conjurer, since
in the dominant conventions of western theatre, the art of the performer
consists in concealing that there is any art at all, although in The Gay Science,
Nietzsche was prepared to see such behaviour as characteristic of women in
general: 'Reflect on the whole history of women', he noted, with misogynic
satisfaction, 'do they not have to be first of all and above all else actresses? ...
love them - let yourself be 'hypnotised by them!' What is always the end
result? That they "put on something" even when they take off everything'.7
Actors and Acting 111
According to Walter Kaufmann, the final sentence in the original ('Das sie
"sich geben" selbst noch, wenn sie - sich geben') permits the more literal
reading: 'That they "give themselves" (that is, act or playa part) even when
they - give themselves'.
The link between acting and femininity, however, is a commonplace. It is
even made by women themselves, as when Sarah Bernhardt, in L'Art du
theatre, claims that acting 'contains in itself all the artifices which belong to
the province of woman: the desire to please, facility to express emotions and
hide defects, and the faculty of assimilation which is the real essence of
woman'.8 More particularly, the skills of the actor are (wrongly) seen to be
entirely imitative and reproductive, and to require the histrionic multiplici-
ty of a chameleon combined with the seductive and fickle charm of some-
one who will be whatever is demanded of them. In his Man and Woman,
Havelock Ellis remarks 'an interesting parallelism, and probably a real
deep-lying nervous connection, between the suggestibility of women and
the special liability of female butterflies, birds, and mammals to be mimetic
in coloration, etc. Mimicry, or suggestibility, is an adaptation to the environ-
ment, ensuring the protection of the sex that is less able to flee or to fight.'9
And to bolster his argument, he quotes the opinion of the French dramatist
Ernest Legouve, who had closely observed the great nineteenth-
century French tragedienne, Rachel, and concluded that 'Whether actor
or singer, the interpretative artist needs above all a talent for observing
details, flexibility of the organism to follow the movements of thought, and
above all, that mobile, ardent, and varied impressionability which multi-
plies in an almost incredible degree the sensations and signs which repre-
sent it. For this reason the dramatic faculty is more native to women than
tomen.'lll
Reviewing Bigsby's evocation of the anti-theatrical prejudice in the light
of the quotation from Mephisto, there are two other recurring associations to
which acting gives rise that it is valuable to recall here. One is that acting
attracts those who are nothing in themselves, and therefore seek to fill this
void with a surrogate existence. The performer, in brief, has no countenance
but the countenance of the occasion and his seemingly boundless capacity
for mutability and imitation is consequently understood to mean that an
actor's character may be defined as a lack of character. The idea is not neces-
sarily negative. Although it is advanced with contempt by the Irish writer
George Moore in his diatribe on 'Mummer Worship' of 1888, where the
stage is described as 'a profession for the restless, the frankly vicious - for
those who [seek] any escape from the platitude of their personality''!! it is
presented with a certain wistfulness by Johan Ludvig Heiberg, the director
of the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen and husband of the great Danish
actress Johanne Luise Heiberg, in his verse drama En Sjrel efter Deden (1841),
in which he portrays an actor who in the course of many years and roles on
the stage has prayed to so many different gods that at the moment of death
he did not know on which one to call. Not only that: he had forgotten the
Lord's Prayer and could only recite it with the assistance of the prompter.
And for Diderot, of course, this absence, or void, of character was closely
bound up with the paradox of the actor, as the precondition of his or her
necessary variety and plenitude. Diderot famously questioned the argu-
ment 'that actors have no character, because in playing all characters, they
112 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
lose that which Nature gave them, and ... become false just as the doctor, the
surgeon and the butcher become hardened. I fancy that here cause is con-
founded with effect', he observes, 'and that they are fit to play all characters
because they have none'.12 Or as Henry James remarked, of the English
actress Fanny Kemble, the performer represented not so much an inchoate
variety as the copiousness of life: 'she abundantly lived and, in more than
one meaning of the word, acted - felt, observed, imagined, reflected, rea-
soned, gathered in her passage the abiding impression, the sense and sug-
gestion of things'.13
The other association is with that essential but surprisingly neglected
component of the theatrical event, the audience or crowd, with whom the
actor promiscuously shares his art. In speaking of the dedoublement of the
personality, Chris Bigsby refers us to Baudelaire; it is also worth recalling
what Baudelaire has to say in his Journals of the prostitution of crowds as 'a
mysterious expression of sensual joy in the multiplication of Number'.14
Indeed, many of the characteristics which are attributed to the actor by the
anti-theatrical prejudice are also identified with crowds, which similarly
alarm the antitheatricalists with their undifferentiated multiplicity. That
obsessive theoretician of the crowd, Gustave Le Bon, repeatedly describes
how they submerge the stable ego in the mass and threaten the individual
with a loss of identity. 'Crowds', Le Bon maintains, 'are everywhere distin-
guished by feminine characteristics'. They are unconscious, irrational, bar-
baric, impressionable and easily seduced, and it is therefore hardly
surprising that in his disdain for this seething, amorphous, fluid, change-
able, compound and (supposedly) corruptible body in all its protuberant
and menacing excess, he associates it readily with the theatre. 'The art of
appealing to crowds is no doubt of an inferior order but it demands quite
special aptitudes', he observes. 'It is often impossible on reading plays to
explain their success.' And more pertinently for our purposes perhaps: 'A
crowd thinks in images .... It is only images that terrify or attract them and
become motives of action. For this reason theatrical representations, in
which the image is shown in its most clearly visible shape, always have an
enormous influence on crowds .... Nothing has a greater effect on the imagi-
nation of crowds in every category than theatrical representation. The entire
audience experiences at the same time the same emotions and if these emo-
tions are not at once transformed into acts, it is because the most uncon-
scious spectator cannot ignore that he is the victim of illusions, and that he
has laughed and wept over imaginary adventures.'15
Le Bon's argument is also pursued, as usual more succinctly, by
Nietzsche when recording 'the emergence of the actor in music' in the guise
of Richard Wagner. 'No one brings along the finest senses of his art to the
theatre, least of all the artist who works for the theatre - solitude is lacking;
whatever is perfect suffers no witnesses. In the theatre one becomes people,
herd, female, pharisee, voting cattle, patron, idiot - Wagnerian; even the
most personal conscience is vanquished by the levelling magic of the great
number; the neighbour reigns, one becomes a mere neighbour'.16 However,
in this review of the actor as a proliferating and unnatural multiplication of
signs, an identity that circulates, that is not fixed, and which associates in a
promiscuous violation of identity with both prostitution and crowds, per-
haps the last word should be given to the nineteenth-century Catholic rabu-
Actors and Acting 113
list Leon Bloy. 'I regard the state of an actor as the shame of shames', he ful-
minates, in his novel Le Desespere. 'The vocation of the theatre is, in my eyes,
the basest misery of this abject world, and passive sodomy is, I believe,
slightly less infamous. The male whore, even when venal, is obliged to con-
fine his debauchery to cohabitation with a single other person, and can still
- in the midst of his frightful ignominy - preserve a certain freedom of
choice. The actor abandons himself, without choice, to the multitude, and
his industry is not less ignoble because it is his body which serves as instru-
ment of the pleasure given by his art.'17
Bloy returns us to the Puritan rejection of pleasure; unwittingly, he also
indicates where a proper assessment of the actor's art might begin. For
what, of course, characterizes all these expressions of the anti-theatrical
prejudice is an ignorance of acting itself, and more particularly of the skills
which sustain an actor on stage, save as a public display of that dissembling
to which even puritans may be reduced in private. For it is almost invari-
ably a perceived absence of sincerity that most offends, and ultimately, the
actor stands condemned because the tricks he employs in strutting his stuff
are supposedly our own. Logically, indeed, this enthusiasm for sincerity
would accord greater merit to the unfortunate Gallus Vibius, the actor who,
according to Seneca, went mad while attempting to imitate the movements
of a madman, rather than Garrick who, in a famous anecdote that Diderot
repeats in his 'Reponse a la lettre de Mme Riccomboni' (1758), describes
how he prepared for the role of Lear by observing a madman kept locked in
a room near his lodgings. While standing near an open window in the
upper story of his house with his young daughter in his arms, a moment's
distraction had caused the man to drop the child into the street below,
where it was killed. The man's insanity manifested itself in a horrible pan-
tomime in which he repeatedly reenacted the entire scene. Although he
applied his observations to the role of Lear, Garrick also worked up the
scene into one of his parlour performances, which he was accustomed to
conclude with the remark: 'Thus it was I learned to imitate madness'.18
Even if the theatre is an essential and central metaphor for life, the nor-
mally collective process whereby it is created is distinct from the sometimes
quite elaborate dramas that all of us may on occasion stage in our private
life, where those about us are not professional actors but, like the young
men employed to humour Pirandello's supposedly mad Henry IV on being
appraised of his sanity, the bewildered and unwilling supernumeraries in a
plot they do not understand. The theatrical event is collaborative, and creat-
ed, at least in a theatre like the Royal Dramatic Theatre, which is providing
the venue for this conference, by a host of scene painters, carpenters,
machinists, electricians, flymen, wardrobe assistants, and box office staff as
well as a director and the actors who eventually fill that empty space which
Peter Brook has identified as the starting point of the theatrical event. 19
Instead of searching out the real or metaphorical consonance of theatre
and life it is therefore of more value in the present context to emulate
Diderot and consider how the actor achieves what s/he does in the theatre,
in, for example, the rehearsal process, through which the knowledge s/he
requires to playa part is researched, established, and defined, often with the
help of improvisation, before it is finally placed before a public in the the-
atre, where, according to Artaud, meaning is created here and now, in the
114 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
II vit ainsi une crise. II eprouve une vie nouvelle. Par de legeres phosphorescences, la piece
prend sa signification et Ie jeu devient une decouverte de sens, une verification. Quelle que soit
I'reuvre, au moment oil ilia joue dans cet etat de sensibilite aigue, ce qui est ou ce qui se fait
dans I'acteur Ie place au sein meme de cette reuvre. Et Ie texte de l'auteur cesse d'etre un texte
litteraire pour devenir une transcription physique dont il est Ie premier dedicatoire et I'inter-
mediaire exclusif. II comprend qu'il est la part materielle, corporelle du poete et que sa mission
n'est autre que de retrouver dans ce texte imprime I'etat physique, Ie transport ou etait
I'auteur dans Ie moment qu'il ecrivait, et de recreer avec lui, avec exactitude, les sensations et
les sentiments. Cela ne peut s'accomplir par la pensee, mais seulement par un etat sensible, une
pratique secrete du texte par quoi Ie personnage est delivre. 21
actions for whatever part s/he plays should the dramatist not have
indicated them.
The point for us, however, is to emulate Diderot in The Paradox of the Actor
and examine the way in which the actor finds these actions, the skills on
which his art is predicated. It might therefore be helpful to focus not on the
ready assumption that the skills an actor employs are those we all deploy, if
with less obvious dexterity in the real social situations of our daily lives (the
kind of approach that finds confirmation in the approach to the latter of
(say) Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life).26 For exam-
ple, in eliding all difference between theatrical and ordinary social inter-
course Raymond Aron's observation that 'Society is a sort of commedia dell'
arte in which the actors have the right to improvise along prescribed lines',27
diverts our attention from what is particular to the actor to what is
commonplace.
In RoUen, his account of a year spent rehearsing and performing in Peter
Brook's production of The Cherry Orchard, Erland Josephson nudges us in
the right direction, when he asserts that it is the actor's 'instinct, intuition
and intellect',2B which provide a focus for her/his work on the dramatic text,
especially if, as George Henry Lewes did, we associate intuition with 'orga-
nized reasoning',lY a kind of tacit knowledge that we have internalised into a
system for understanding and acting in the world, and which may be
applied to the situations with which the actor is confronted in the dramatic
text. Skill, dexterity, physical and vocal training are, of course, essential, and
I note that in our eurocentric fashion we have omitted all consideration of
the kind of training necessary to achieve the skills demanded in Kathakali
or Noh theatre, where not novelty but the faithful perpetuation of an
ancient tradition is the performer's aim, where a performer often learns a
performance score by imitating a master, and repeats it until it can be repro-
duced perfectly, and where a hand gesture or a movement of the eye is cod-
ified so as to be expressive for a spectator even when dispassionately
demonstrated. Nevertheless, in the western tradition, at least one needs to
add to these elements the notion of 'emotional memory' as it is defined by
Stanislavski with some help from the French psychologist Theodule Ribot
in his Les Maladies de la memoire (1881) and Les Maladies de la volunte (1885),
that frequently suppressed and forgotten knowledge which, like involun-
tary memory in Proust, may often be associated with the kind of physical
sensation that Diderot recognized in his Elements de physiologie, when he
affirmed: 'The sound of a voice, the presence of an object, a certain place,
and behold, an object recalled - more than that, a whole stretch of my past -
and I am plunged again into pleasure, regret, affliction'.311 Compare this with
the account of the corporeal memory of the actor in the Paradox, which per-
mits the performance of a controlled acting score rather than the inspira-
tional frenzy of Lui in Rameau's Nephew because the trained instrument that
is the performer's body is able to combine with a store of sense impressions
and emotions that may once have been experienced with great intensity, but
which are now recoverable as a sequence of reflexive mechanisms respond-
ing in tum to a plan that the actor has worked out carefully in advance, and
which may consequently be repeated every e\:,ening to an audience that
accepts them as if the performer were responding to outer stimuli for the
first time. 'It is when the storm of sorrow is over, when the extreme of
116 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
sensibility is dulled, when the event is far behind us, when the soul is calm,
that one remembers one's eclipsed happiness, that one is capable of appreci-
ating one's loss, that memory and imagination unite, one to retrace, the oth-
er to accentuate'/1 which can be compared with Stanislavski's remarks in
Building a Character on how, 'Our art seeks to achieve this very result and
requires that an actor experience the agony of his role, and weep his heart
out at home or in rehearsals, that he then calm himself, get rid of every sen-
timent alien or obstructive to his part. He then comes out on the stage to
convey to the audience in clear, pregnant, deeply felt, intelligible and elo-
quent terms what he has been through. At this point the spectators will be
more affected than the actor, and he will conserve all his forces in order to
direct them where he needs them most of all in reproducing the inner life of
the character he is portraying'.32
Thus, well before Stanislavski defines him as such, the actor, as Diderot is
aware, is a master of physical actions in which the imaginative world of the
text is realized in constant dialectical play with the world of real experience,
but where what we witness on stage cannot, ultimately, be mistaken for that
world, except as a social activity in which actors and audience are mutually
engaged. Two extended quotations, depicting two great actors at work, will
help establish firstly, one of the ways in which an actor may achieve his per-
formance text, and secondly, how this text inevitably and necessarily differs
from our experience of the performer offstage. In his biography of
Stanislavski, David Magershack gives the following account of how
Stanislavski 'taught his actors the method of reaching to the inner nature of
their parts through the external idiosyncracies of any person they knew in
life who seemed to approach most closely their mental picture of the charac-
ter they had to represent', and how he created one of his greatest roles, Dr
Stockmann in Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, by taking the composer
Rimsky-Korsakov as his model for Dr Stockmann's facial appearance.
In this part, Stanislavski found that his stage comportment and gestures seemed to come to
him by themselves. But it only seemed so. When he came to analyze his acting, he discovered
that while he assumed that Stockmann's gestures, gait, and deportment had come to him intu-
itively, they had really emerged hand-made from his subconscious mind where he had stored
up a great number of impressions of people he had met in life and then unconsciously picked
out those that were most characteristic and typical of Dr Stockmann. Thus Dr Stockmann's
short-sightedness, his hurried gait, his manner of walking with the upper part of his body
thrust forward, and particularly the expressive use he made of his fingers folded with thumb
on top - were all taken from life .... As for his way of "sawing the air" when engaged in heated
argument, with his thumb stretched out and forefinger and middle finger as well as third fin-
ger and little finger held close together and the two sets of fingers held apart like the blades of
a pair of scissors, he got it from Maxim Gorky, who always drove home his point that way.3J
However, lest one assume that suiting the action to the word and discov-
ering the rhythm of a text and the tempo of a performance is merely a mat-
ter of finding the appropriate correlation in life, it is instructive to juxtapose
this account with Edward Gordon Craig's description of Henry Irving, in
his memoir of the great Victorian actor. Craig describes Irving on stage 'as
natural, yet highly artificial', and possessed of a walk that was 'a whole lan-
guage' in itself. 'I think', Craig opines, that 'there was no one who saw him
in the street or a room, in private life, who denied that he walked perfectly
Actors and Acting 117
.... Irving walked perfectly naturally - but only in private life. As soon as he
stepped upon the boards of his theatre, at rehearsal, something was added
to the walk - a consciousness .... It wasn't walking. It was dancing.' And he
then makes a bold attempt to convey a sense of Irving's stage presence in an
account that does not admit summary:
'When [Irving) came to melodrama', Craig writes, 'he realized that a good deal more dance
would be needed to hold up these pieces [than in Shakespeare], - and then it was that, putting
out all his skill, he wiped the floor with the role and danced it like the devil. When it was
Shakespeare he was dealing with, he had merely to wipe the beautiful glass window-panes.
His movements were all measured. He was forever counting - one, two, three - pause - one,
two - a step, another, a halt, a faintest turn, another step, a word. (Call it a beat, a foot, a step,
all is one - I like to use the word 'step'.) That constituted one of his dances. Or seated on a
chair, at a table - raising a glass, drinking - and then lowering his hand and glass - one, two,
three, four - suspense - a slight step with his eyes - five - then a patter of steps - two slow syl-
lables - another step - two more syllables - and a second passage in his dance was done. And
so right through the piece - whatever it might be - there was no chance movement; he left no
loose ends. All was sharp cut at beginning and end, and all joined by an immensely subtle
rhythm - the Shakespearean rhythm.''''
Acting resembles life, but on the stage it is essentially distinct from life
even though (another paradox) it must be imbued with life if it is to
succeed.
For the words on the page are only a beginning, and as Brook again
points out, the frequently expressed injunction to the actor to 'Play what is
written' directs the actor only to certain ciphers on paper, which are records
of the words the dramatist 'wanted to be spoken, words issuing as sounds
from people's mouths, with pitch, pause, rhythm and gesture as part of
their meaning. A word does not start as a word - it is an end product which
begins as an impulse, stimulated by attitude and behaviour which dictates
the need for expression';35 it is hence part of a complex, fluid, muItivocal
process that is again likely to disturb precisely on account of its failure to be
always and securely the same. And thus the frequently expressed prefer-
ence for what is considered to be the stability of the published text over the
evanescent, provisional nature of the text in performance, which is also con-
demned for bringing down 'a fine vision to the standard of flesh and
blood'.36 In fact, with few exceptions, the written or printed texts of plays
have always had a derivative or secondary status, either as a scenario which
acts as a blueprint for future productions or as a document that records ear-
lier ones. The words of a text may imply a body and its shape and move-
ments, a voice and its articulation and inflections, but only in production do
these words assume theatrical meaning, firstly through the intervention of
the actors and a director, and secondly through the decoding of the complex
processes of verbal and non-verbal communication by an audience. 37 As
Diderot remarks, in the Paradox, of his favourite actress, Mlle Clairon: 'The
poet had engendered the monster [but] Clairon made it roar'.3R
A text like Le Misanthrope, for example, does not even indicate whether
either of the characters who open the play is already on stage at the outset,
and if so where, or if not, how they arrive, and who enters first, and
whether they are running or walking: all this emerges only in rehearsal.
Likewise, even in so internally directed a playas Beckett's Waitingfor Codot,
118 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
But in what positions are Vladimir and Estragon arrested? In what rela-
tion to each other, and to the singular tree with which they share the stage?
Moreover, in what light, and what kind of silence, before the one (possibly)
is extinguished in order to confirm that this is indeed the end of the
evening's proceedings and that consequently the other may be broken by
applause. The printed page in which, according to Charles Lamb, we
observe 'the mind and its movements',4(J is indeed a comfortable refuge in
comparison with the 'body and bodily action' of the play in performance, or
our hurried perception of a shifting sequence of visual and verbal images in
the commedia dell' arte, Pip Simmons, Robert Wilson, or Robert Lepage.
It is the skills an actor employs to achieve this enacted event that should
concern us in the context of this conference, and I would conclude with two
detached, but pertinent remarks by contemporary practitioners. Firstly,
Robert Wilson who echoes Ibsen in declaring that 'For me to work in the
theatre is to ask a question and not to have answers'''' and secondly, a com-
ment by that fine contemporary Irish actress, Fiona Shaw, who maintains
that 'The desire to perform is the desire to make sense of the world through
performing in it'.42
Notes
1 Klaus Mann, Mephisto (Harmondsworth, 1983), p. 130.
2 Prynne's wide-ranging but repetitive assault upon the theatre was published in 1633. For an
overview, see Jonas Barish's essential survey of the phenomena in The Antitheatrical Prejudice
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).
3 Trilling argues this point in his essay on the theatricals at Jane Austen's Mansfield Park, in
The Opposing Self, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1980), pp 181-202.
4 For Lewes's description of Rachel as 'the panther of the stage, [moving) with a panther's
terrible beauty and undulating grace', see his On Actors and Acting (London, 1875), p. 23.
Charlotte Bronte's fictional account of Rachel's acting, which in life had 'transfixed me with
horror, enchained me with interest, and thrilled me with horror' (letter to James Taylor, 15
November 1851, The Brontes: Their Lives, Friendships, and Correspondences, ed. T J Wise and J A
Symington, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1932), III, p. 289), occurs in her novel Villette (1853), where Rachel
is portrayed as the actress Vashti. Jules Janin's remark, 'Elle est semblable a la pythonisse', is
repeated in his Rachel et la Tragedie (Paris, 1859).
5 For a valuable account of acting as the product of a powerful transgressive energy, see
Michael Goldman, The Actor's Freedom (New York, 1975).
7 The Gay Science, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York, 1974), p. 317.
Actors and Acting 119
9 Fourth revised and enlarged edition (London, 1904). Cf. Darwin, who, in commenting on
the 'natural' differences between men and women in The Descent of Man, maintains that
through natural selection, man has become superior to woman in courage, energy, intellect,
and inventive genius, and thus would inevitably excel in art, science and philosophy. Even
those faculties in which women had the edge - intuition, perception, and imitation - were
actually signs of inferiority, 'characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower
state of civilization, although they might give her the edge in acting'. Reprint of 1871 edition,
Princeton, N. J., 1981, p. 327.
10 Ernest Legouve, Histoire Morale de la femme, 6th ed. (Paris, 1874), p. 345.
12 The Paradox of Acting (New York, 1957), p. 48. If Diderot does not celebrate the apparent
absence of character in the actor, he nevertheless perceives it as a precondition of great acting.
'Perhaps it is just because he is nothing that he is before all everything', remarks the first
speaker in the Paradox. 'His own special shape never interferes with the shapes he assumes' (p
41). And again: 'A great actor's soul is formed of the subtle element with which a certain
philosopher [Newton] filled space, an element neither cold nor hot, heavy nor light, which
affects no definite shape, and, capable of assuming all, keeps none' (p 46).
13 Cf. James's early response to Mrs Kemble, in a letter to his mother: 'Mrs Kemble has no
organized surface at all; she is like a straight deep cistern without a cover, or even, sometimes a
bucket, into which, as a mode of intercourse, one must tumble with a splash' The Letters of
Henry James, ed. Percy Lubbock, vol. I (London, 1920), p. 67.
15 See Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd. A Study of the Popular Mind (London, MOCCCXCVI), pp 37,
57. Cf. a letter from Strindberg to his old friend Leopold Littmansson, written while Aurelien
Lugne-Poe's Theatre de l'reuvre was performing his play Creditors: 'This is happiness, this
feeling of power, to sit in a cottage by the Danube, surrounded by six women who think I'm a
semi-idiot, and know that right now, in Paris, in the intellectual headquarters of the world, 500
people are sitting like mice in an auditorium, and foolishly exposing their brains to my
suggestions'. Strindberg's Letters, 2 vols, translated and edited Michael Robinson (London,
1992), II, p. 480.
18 One might contrast this with Ellen Terry who was urged to visit an asylum and study real
madwomen in order to prepare for the role of Ophelia. This she did, but found that the
madwomen were 'too theatrical' to teach her anything. Ellen Terry, The Story of My Life (New
York, 1982), p. 98.
20 Diderot's dialogic imagination always recognizes the essential role of the audience in the
theatrical event. Likewise in any form of narrative. As he observes, at the start of the short story
entitled in English translation 'This is Not a Story': When one tells a story, there has to be
someone to listen; and if the story runs to any length, it is rare for the storyteller not sometimes
to be interrupted by his listener. That is why (if you were wondering) in the story which you
are about to read (which is not a story, or if it is, then a bad one) I have introduced a personage
who plays as it were the role of listener'. This is Not a Story and Other Stories, translated by P. N.
Furbank (Oxford, 1993), p. 17.
22 Toby Cole and Helen Chinoy, eds., Actors on Acting (New York, 1949), p. 134. My emphasis.
23 Thus C. B. Coquelin, in Art and the Actor (Brander Matthews, Papers on Acting n (New
York, 1926), p. 163), who assumes a position entirely consistent with Diderot's argument in the
Paradox: 'the instrument of the actor is himself. The matter of his art, that which he has to work
upon and mould for the creation of his idea, is his own face, his own body, his own life. Hence
it follows that the actor must have a double personality. He has his first self, which is the
player, and his second self, which is the instrument.'
25 For Charcot's staging of hysteria, see Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious
(New York, 1970), p. 96, and Georges Didi-Huberman, Invention de I'hysterie (Paris, 1982),
passim.
29 Problems of the Life and Mind,S vols (London, 1874-79), nv, p. 290.
30 Quoted in Joseph Roach's excellent chapter on Diderot, 'The Paradoxe as Paradigm', in his
The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (University of Delaware Press, 1985), p. 146.
Roach's account of Diderot on acting remains the most informed and intelligent study of the
subject, and the present essay is greatly indebted to his book.
31 Paradox, p. 36.
33 Cited in Eugenio Barba and Nicola Savarese, The Secret Art of the Performer (London, 1991),
p.143.
36 The phrase is Charles Lamb's, in his Essays of Elia (1823). On seeing Garrick's tomb Lamb
also wondered 'what connection that absolute mastery over the heart and soul of man, which a
great dramatic poet possesses, has with those low tricks upon the eye and ear, which a player
by observing a few general effects, which some common passion as grief, anger, etc., usually
has upon the gestures and exterior, can so easily compass'. So eaSily indeed!
37 One might note an example of such a physicalisation of the text that would surely have
appealed to Diderot. In an interview in New Theatre Quarterly, 6 (1986), p. 100, one of the
leading members of the Berliner Ensemble, Ekkehard Schall, maintains that 'The thinking of an
actor on stage is the thinking which expresses itself. It doesn't matter what you feel here and
here [he points to his head and heart]- nobody wants to know', and he goes on to underline
his point with an anecdote: 'Helene Weigel once told me the following story. As a young
actress she once played at the side of the great Albert Basserman, in one of Ibsen's plays, I
think. In one scene in which she was on the stage with him, he received one piece of
catastrophic news after another: father dead, mother dead, children dead. To take in these
catastrophic bits of news, Basserman chose to stand with his back to the audience. One day
Helene complained to him that his face, turned away from the audience, did not show any
emotion and, what was worse, took on some private expression. "So what, the audience don't
see my face." He played everything with his back; he played every shock that he received with
his back.'
38 Paradox, p. 43.
Actors and Acting 121
Comments
Bo Goranzon
The interest that has centred on skills has developed from reflections on
case studies carried out in the late seventies and early eighties. These case
studies were of problems that arose in the workplace, and included nurses,
doctors, foresters, social insurance office staff, meteorologists and others.
The focus was on the epistemology of skill in working life. Increasingly, as
the question "what is skill?" emerged at the center of worklife research, it
was felt that work had to be understood from the perspective of the philoso-
phy of science. Traditional epistemology was of little help in shedding light
on this issue, because its concerns were too abstract. Skill, on the other
hand, is something very particular, and its particularity cannot be captured
in general theories, it can only be grasped through case studies. These case
studies provide examples of the way solid judgement is built up over time,
as a novice gradually develops his or her competence and, with talent and
perseverance, expertise in the workplace. Both confidence and certainty are
the hallmarks of the expert judgement that develops as a result of this
process. Its distinctive characteristic is its success in dealing with unfore-
seen problems. Expertise, skill in the fullest sense, is less a matter of know-
ing more than it is a matter of knowing better.
Skill is formed by doing something. Typically, a skilled person can give
an example of what it is to do something. Erland Josephson takes an exam-
ple from an unforgettable meeting with Sir John Gielgud, who gave him a
lesson in delivering Shakespeare's verse. "We spent two hours on these fif-
teen lines. Gielgud was tireless. Eagerly, he gave me of his knowledge / ... /
I was supposed to observe all the punctuation and mark the end of every
line. / ... / All these signs and rules constituted a tradition that had been
handed down, knowledge that had been developed and refined over hun-
dreds of years. They reflected hard-won knowledge, a battle with phrasing,
with feelings and insight, technique and clarity, with characterization and
with contact with the audience."
The idea of taking acting as a general model for skill is taken from
Diderot. Erland Josephson says that an actor's intelligence " ... requires a dif-
ferent kind of resolution than that required to grasp a thought. / ... / The
actor's intelligence is restless and hungry, its main objective not confirma-
tion but new experience."
This ability to "grasp a thought" is a different kind of intelligence, namely
124 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
What is rhythm? The musical imitation of rhythm was not an unprocessed expression of sensa-
tions. It was rhythm created after an agonizing struggle with words. The mind listens atten-
tively to its own movement, the critical intellect is, always lucidly, always actively, considering
sensations which show them naturally in the spontaneous gestures of thought.
According to Diderot, the ability to observe and control the surge of one's
thoughts, to make the proper gestures and rhythmic expressions, is a result
of reflection. The point of Diderot's study of the paradox of the actor is not
Comments 125
It is quite different with the actors who act after thinking and after studying human nature, and
who always have some ideal picture to follow, building their parts on the power of their imag-
ination and their memories.
Beyond All Certainty was premiered by The cast for performances in Bode, Norway and
The Great Escape Theatre Company in Norwich, Stockholm, Sweden was:
England on the 20th February 1993 with the
following cast: Ludwig Wittgenstein: Ricluzrd Davies
Alan Turing: Jonatluzn Rea
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Martin Cooke Bertrand Russell,
Alan Turing: Jonatluzn Rea Winston Churchill: Jon Hyde
Bertrand Russell, Helene Wittgenstein,
Winston Churchill: Paul Lawrence-Davies Mrs Turing: Cluzrlotte Garrard
Helene Wittgenstein,
Mrs Turing: Cluzrlotte Garrard Design & Stage-Management: Steve Ridley
Directed by Jon Hyde
Music
Clearly central to Wittgenstein's philosophy and to the world of the play, two musicians - cello and
piano - should underscore the language and action. For the original production, the director selected
recorded music as follows where indicated in the script:
SCENE 1
multiplication tables, etc. and see what results they come to.
WIlT. Yes, there appears to be a parallel, but where does the similarity lie?
TURING. In both cases we are interested in what the final result may be.
WIlT. Let us suppose that we get someone to multiply two numbers by each
other, where is the experiment in that? Do I want to know what results
this person arrives at, or what? If that is the experiment, it doesn't mat-
ter what answer he writes down. 136 x 51 =6935, for example.
TURING. Then the experiment was carried out wrongly. He did not follow
the rules.
WIlT. Yes, of course, we can say: we have taught him the rules, now let us
see if he follows them. I cannot at the same time allow the result of an
experiment to be the result of a mathematical calculation. If the result of
the calculation is determined by rules, i.e. 136 x 51 =6936, the result of
the experiment is not what result he arrives at if he follows the rules, but
whether or not he follows the rules ...
TURING. But surely...
WIlT. No! The entire analogy between mathematics and physics is a com-
plete mistake. In fact, what we have here is an important source of con-
fusion. It may be that 20 apples + 30 apples = 50 apples [THE TWO
ASSISTANTS LEAVE AND RETURN WITH APPLES IN BUCKETS AND DEMON-
STRATE THE BALANCE BY SITTING ON SEESAW AND TOSSING THEM TO EACH
OTHER] may not be a proposition about apples. It may be a proposition
of arithmetic and in this case we could call it a proposition about num-
bers.
On the other hand [TURING CATCHES FOURTH APPLE THROWN BY ASSIS-
TANTS, ENDING THEIR GAME], if we say that lions are four-legged - then
that is a statement about lions, or that elephants are four-legged - then
this is about elephants and not numbers.
THE TWO ASSISTANTS FETCH THE APPROPRIATE STUFFED TOYS AND ARE
DISMISSED BY WITTGENSTEIN'S ...
No! [THE TWO ASSISTANTS THROW ANIMALS AWAY.] What I want to show
with these examples is that there is an essential difference between
mathematical propositions and experiential propositions that look
exactly the same.
TURING. You seem to assert that mathematical truths are only conventions-
a question of consensus of opinions.
WIlT. Is that what I'm saying? No! There is no opinion at all, it is not a ques-
tion of opinions, it is a question of consensus in action. A consensus in
doing the same things, in reacting in the same way. We all act in the
same way. When we count, we do not express views. There is no opin-
ion that says that 25 follows 24 - neither is there a special intuition. We
express our opinions quite simply by counting. We demonstrate math-
ematics in action, in practice.
THROUGHOUT THE ABOVE SPEECH, WITTGENSTEIN AND TURING SIT ON SEE-SA W
AND PUNCTUATE THE SPEECH BY MOVING IN CONCERT.
TURING. Yes, but you cannot be confident about applying your calculus
until you know that there is no hidden contradiction in it. If one takes
Frege's symbolism and gives someone the technique of multiplying in
it, by using a Russell paradox he could get a very wrong application.
WIlT. This would come to doing something that we would not call
132 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
SCENE 2
SCENE 3
ideas, then the war carne and I was given the task of building this cal-
culator - the universal machine will certainly, one day, even be able to
develop feelings. And probably also have what we call a soul. Animals
too have souls, and for how long were they denied their existence?
CHURCHILL. And this is your universal machine?
TURING. [CROSSING TO ENIGMA] No, not this. This is a very banal calculator
that I had to build to break the German's Enigma code. It is just a sim-
ple application of my theoretical work. It has certainly not been
endowed with a soul.
CHURCHILL. And when did you get the idea for your universal machine?
TURING. I published my thesis in 1936, Prime Minister.
CHURCHILL. 36. How old were you then?
TURING. I was 24.
CHURCHILL. And this offshoot of your universal machine?
TURING. Just a modest, special version. With the aids at my disposal, any
good mathematician could have tackled Enigma ....
CHURCHILL. That is what people always say when someone absolutely irre-
placeable is the first to think of something. Then those people who
didn't think of something say that it would have occurred in any case.
Thus it is yours, it is, and will continue to be yours, Turing. And what
will you call your universal machine?
TURING. It hasn't been given a name yet, Prime Minister. The Latin for count
is computare, so "computer", perhaps? Perhaps one could call it a com-
puter.
CHURCHILL. A computer? A counter? It all sounds too simple, too colorless.
Surely there is some magic involved here?
TURING. Magic isn't involved here at all ... but...
CUE MUSIC (4). TURING TAKES A LIVE, WHITE RABBIT FROM THE COMPUTER.
STROKES IT. LIGHTS FADE.
EXIT TURING AND CHURCHILL.
SCENE 4
through his causal analysis Freud really understands what dreams are
about. Compare that with the way he speaks about the joke and the
subconscious. Freud takes an example from Heine's Reisebilder, where
a humble lottery-agent, boasting of his relationship with Baron
Rothschild remarks, "he treated me quite as his equal- quite famillion-
airely!" We laugh at this not only because of the clever play on words,
but also, Freud says, because it brings out a suppressed subsidiary
thought: that there is actually something rather unpleasant about being
treated with a rich man's condescension. We can identify with this kind
of chain of ideas. We do not compare it with experience or look for a
causality, but we accept Freud's analysis as an explanation.
This is the whole point. We must give an explanation that is accept-
ed. Just as in art, in music. We must see connections that we did not dis-
cover before, see what is gripping, beautiful and so on.
CUE MUSIC (S). EXIT. FADE LIGHTS.
SCENES
SCENE 6
WIITGENSTEIN AND RUSSELL ENTER CARRYING TWO DECK CHAIRS AND GLASSES OF
BEER. TURING IS SEATED IN DARKNESS UPSTAGE.
RUSSELL. Shakespeare!
WITI. Yes, that troubles me.
RUSSELL. Troubles you? What, that Shakespeare was a great writer and
poet?
WITI. I am troubled that everyone thinks so.
RUSSELL. But surely you don't think the whole world has been bluffing for
hundreds of years?
WITI. No, I don't think so. But I am unable to accept Shakespeare as a great
poet. His metaphors and similes are, in the ordinary sense, bad. Take
that passage from Richard II: "within my mouth you have engaol'd my
tongue / doubly portcullis'd with my teeth and lips."
RUSSELL. Well, that's not so bad. Perhaps the reason you don't like it is that
you don't like English culture in general.
WITI. Yes, that's true. But I cannot see Shakespeare as a great human being.
I can only stare in wonder at Shakespeare; never do anything with him.
He has such a supple hand and his brush strokes are so individual that
each one of his characters looks significant. One can talk of
"Beethoven's great heart" - but nobody could speak of "Shakespeare's
great heart". Nor could he regard himself as a prophet or as a teacher of
mankind. People stare at him in wonderment, almost as a spectacular
natural phenomenon. They do not have the feeling that this brings
them into contact with a great human being. Rather with a
phenomenon.
RUSSELL. But you yourself have said that understanding music, poetry,
painting and humor are reactions that belong to, and can only survive
in, a culture.
WITI. Yes, and you could have added philosophy too. What is required here
is not the discovery of facts, nor the drawing of logically valid infer-
ences from accepted premises, nor still less the construction of theories
- but, rather, the right point of view. It's the same with humor, it's not a
mood, but a way of looking at the world. The Nazis managed to
destroy an entire style of life when they stamped out humor.
RUSSELL. But philosophy. What has music to do with philosophy?
WITI. Appreciating music is a manifestation of the life of mankind.
RUSSELL. But how should we describe it to someone? You cannot capture
the sense of a piece of music by using words to describe what the music
means.
WITI. It's the same with philosophy. Understanding a sentence is like
understanding a theme in music. To me a musical phrase is a gesture. It
insinuates itself into my life. I adopt it as my own. Like the infinite vari-
ations of life, musical expression is incalculable.
AS WIITGENSTEIN SPEAKS THIS LAST PHRASE, WE HEAR THE INTRODUCTION FROM
HANDEL'S "ISRAEL IN EGYPT". CUE MUSIC (6).
It is impossible for me to say one word in my book about all that music
has meant in my life. How then, can I hope to be understood?
142 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
can swear on the life of my mother that I had no idea that our "broth-
ers" on the other side of the Atlantic would commit such a crime with-
outwaming ....
WIIT. Two atomic bombs are reason enough to tackle a problem that not
even Schiller was up to. Yet who was capable of tackling that problem?
Not even you. And I am not up to it because I have the kind of profes-
sion which, according to you, "bluntens you with happiness".
TURING. Look, the Americans made the bomb because Einstein - the paci-
fist! - wrote to Roosevelt assuring him that...
WITf. Roosevelt was a decent man! He would never have used the bomb on
the Japanese if victory had already been assured!
TURING. He was fortunate enough to die at the right moment. The question
is, would Einstein have committed such a terrible crime if he had not
written to Roosevelt. Einstein had every reason to believe Nils Boor
when he said that they were working on the bomb in Berlin. [PAUSE,
AND THEN SUDDENLY] I thought you were Jewish.
WITTGENSTEIN SLOWLY STANDS TO FACE TURING
WIIT. Half Jewish, why? What does that tell you? I am indignant about the
fact that the bomb was developed to be used against Hitler, but was
then used on a people who were not making atom bombs. And who
did not bomb cities. And who did not murder millions of people in gas
chambers. Was it also mere coincidence that the atom bomb was
dropped on the Japanese because it wasn't ready until a month after
Berlin had fallen? That is even more shocking.
TURING. SO, we didn't stop the atrocities of the concentration camps by
breaking the Enigma code. Or did we?
BLACKOUT. CUE MUSIC (7).
SCENE 7
LIGHT UP ON ENIGMA MACHINE, AS TURING WALKS INTO THIS LIGHT. MRS. TURING
WALKS INTO LIGHT CENTER STAGE.
while people from Cambridge don't care who it belongs to. If I had
stayed in Cambridge, things would certainly have taken a different
tum. I could have ended my days as Sir Alan Turing, President of the
Royal Society. And there was so much scientific work still to be done. I
had shown the way to the development of the computer. The only
thing we were waiting for was the technology. Electronics.
We could have built an intelligent machine, a machine that could
really think, I never doubted that. [Enter Wittgenstein to blackboard] But
Wittgenstein, and his critical attitude to logic and the idea that it was all
a matter of seeing, that nothing is hidden, what has that given us?
WITT. Bach said that all his achievements were simply the fruit of industry.
But industry like that requires humility and an enormous capacity for
suffering, hence strength. And someone who, with all this, can express
himself perfectly, simply speaks to us in the language of a great man.
Bach wrote on the title page of his Orgelbilchlein, "to the glory of. the
most high God, and that my neighbor may be benefitted thereby". That
is what I would have liked to say about my work.
Only every now and again does one of the sentences I write make a
step forward; the rest are like the snipping of the barber's scissors,
which he has to keep moving so as to make a cut at the right moment. I
am not capable of bringing out the great, the important things. But
great views are hidden in these feeble remarks. A philosopher may be
interested in reading my notes. Even if I hit the target rather infrequent-
ly, he should understand what target I have been aiming at. The meet-
ing point, the point where doubt becomes meaningless. We cannot
doubt everything, and that is true for practical reasons alone. A doubt
without end is not even a doubt. Am I not getting closer and closer to
saying that logic cannot be described? You have to look at the way the
language is used, and then you will see.
TURING. Hilbert said of Galileo that only an idiot could believe that scientif-
ic truth calls for martyrdom. I do not intend to die a martyr. It may be
necessary in religion, but I have no such faith.
TURING FINDS A SCRAP OF PAPER IN HIS POCKET FROM WHICH HE READS THE
FOLLOWING:
still urge you, without the least idea what is our destination,
Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.
[from "Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman.]
TURING. Consciousness does not need my body. Let me leave it. I know I
can get in touch with Chris Morcombe. That, at least, is beyond all cer-
tainty.
WITT. Wisdom is without passion. Knowledge only hides life from you. It is
like cold grey ashes that cover the glow. Life can educate one to believe
in God. And experiences too are what bring this about; I don't mean
visions and other forms of sense experience which show us 'the exis-
tence of the being' but, for example, suffering of various sorts.
Experience, thoughts, - life can force the concept of God on us. The
problems of life cannot be solved on the surface; they can only be
solved in depth. One keeps forgetting to go right down to the founda-
tions. One doesn't put the question mark deep enough down.
FADE TO BLACK.
Chapter 15
The Cast
ONE: Visualization
JH. The play begins with a passionately-done, but largely technical discus-
sion about certain rules of epistemology and mathematics, if I remem-
ber right. Really very difficult at first sight.
RD. I remember learning the lines for Wittgenstein from the first draft I
saw. It was almost impossible because there had been so many
changes, you could hardly read the lines for all the blacking out and
bits of writing added on in biro or whatever and then photocopied. I
had to keep asking "Which bit am I supposed to be memorizing?
What's that or there? Is that all the speech gone or just most of it?"
]H. A scene we chose to set in a playground.
RD. It could have been a lunatic asylum with a. recreation ground for all
I knew.
]H. Exactly. It could be Marat Sade land. You guys on the seesaw. You
148 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
WITTGENSTEIN. " .. .It may be that 20 apples + 30 apples = 50 apples (The two
assistants leave and return with apples in buckets and demonstrate the
balance by sitting on the seesaw and tossing them to each other) may
not be a proposition about apples ... "
JH. I think we can. I think that Beyond All Certainty is now an engaging
and interesting piece. It presents very grand ideas in just over one hour.
Now, something like King Lear presents equally grand ideas over three
hours. But it does something else as well. When Lear is dying and he's
lost his entire kingdom, he says to his daughter - "Will you loosen my
button?". It might go by you in performance, you might miss it, of
course. Nevertheless, that for me is as profound as anything else going
.on in the play.
RD. But where are these depths located? How do we know about them, rec-
ognize them? What is profound about loosening a button? That's your
judgement. I could say, for example, that it's a superficial remark, a nei-
ther here nor there sort of thing, under the circumstances. As you say,
you may not even notice it, but you wouldn't miss it as such. You
would still be moved by the play
JH. I don't think it is superficial or that you didn't miss something deliber-
ate and essential. You can't simply present these ideas, these reflec-
tions, by preaching at people at great length about the things that
Wittgenstein and Lear were obsessed by. You can't just present them
baldly and have a narrator telling you what to think. You have to find
another way of presenting them, which is more closely connected with
people's experience. You're not hiding the ideas. You are presenting
them obliquely. .
RD. Is this more than you saying you know what you like?
JH. It's a way of foregrounding the things that are difficult to talk about or
express. It's why you laugh at Mrs Turing fussing with Alan's clothes
and yet find it sad, and poignant as well. Drama has to address itself to
things that are difficult to talk about, things we would normally rather
avoid, I think. And do it in an understandable way.
RD. Some of the feedback I got at the dinner after the Stockholm perfor-
mance was that it was a good performance, very absorbing, a great
show, but it wasn't drama. What interests me, whether I agree or not is
that I knew exactly what was meant when someone said "It wasn't dra-
ma". How do we recognize drama?
CG. There was a similar reaction from someone who saw it in Norwich. He
was waiting for something visual to happen. Isn't there a sense in
which there's no room in the play for things-that-happen? Words are
what happens.
JR. But that's a lot of what philosophy's about. Isn't it?
150 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
]H. And literature, religion, politics, blah, blah. It is argued that we con-
struct the world through our languages. "In the beginning was the
word" and so forth.
RD. Wasn't Wittgenstein very fond of that alternative of Goethe's "In the
beginning was the deed."
]H. Possibly. Anyway you could say that the impact Wittgenstein had on
the philosophical playground was inherently dramatic. In terms of
what he was arguing, of the way he was.
RD. From what I've learned from doing the play, is that if there was a dra-
matic figure in philosophy in the past 200 years it was Wittgenstein. In
terms of his arrival, his impact and his obstinacy - and so much of dra-
ma is about the arrival of someone or something at the door setting off
a chain of events after which nothing is really the same...
eG. That has to do with his personality and his power, rather than words.
]H. But in the world of the play, he is solely created by the words the play-
wright gives him
eG. And by the interpretations of the director and actors. You also create
the character through the performance. The point is: it's not just the
words.
RD. How does one separate his obsessive thinking from the way he was,
anyway? His personality is a philosophical personality.
eG. Yes. But what did he represent? Not just "what did he mean when he
said such and such"
JR. Exactly. Who is this man, what is he saying, and why do we care?
eG. And what does he represent in the play? It can't be enough that
Wittgenstein had an impact on a philosophical playground as an obses-
sive personality. His charisma isn't inherent for the audience member
who knows nothing about him. It has to be apparent dramatically.
RD. Even now, according to Stephen Toulmin, you can see Wittgenstein in
Cambridge through the mannerisms of his former students who are
themselves now professors of philosophy.
WITTGENSTEIN. I felt cut off from heaven. Wisdom was not enough if I were
to be saved. To be redeemed, I needed faith.
FOUR: Practice
Perhaps this book will be understood only by someone who himself already had the thoughts
that are expressed in it - or at least similar thoughts. - So it is not a textbook. - Its purpose
would be achieved if it gave pleasure to one person who read and understood it.
JH. You can't start doing the real work until you're in the rehearsal room.
JR. We thrashed about for about three weeks before that.
RD. What were you thinking? What were your reactions? What did you
think you'd landed yourselves with?
JR. My reactions were - "What is this about? What does it mean?" And we
spent a long time, some wasted, going over every line ...
JH. Wasn't a waste, wasn't a waste ...
JR. Speech by speech...
JH. Together...
JR. Going .. "What does this mean, what is he saying ... "
RD. Did either of you go to the Tractatus?
JH. No. Unnecessary.
JR. The Ray Monk biography was more relevant.
JH. For the purpose of this exercise we don't need the Tractatus. Just as for
Hamlet one wouldn't seek authenticity in performance by researching
the actual writings of 16th century Danish aristocrats. One might of
course and it may contribute to an interesting interpretation but it
would only be one approach amongst many others.
RD. Wittgenstein really didn't like Shakespeare, did he? I wonder why.
Only someone who hasn't seen a beautifully done "Midsummer
Night's Dream" as I did last summer in front of a ruined abbey in the
middle of open Norfolk countryside on a warm, dry evening, with a
professional company using local children as fairies, could say
Shakespeare wasn't a great poet or human being. The whole event was
phosphorescing with humanity, from the text, whatever its quirky
metaphysics, to the performance, where at one point the lights failed. I
suspect Shakespeare wasn't quite man enough for Wittgenstein, he was
someone of a too complex androgyny. Great 'human being' for
Wittgenstein is probably synonymous with great 'man'. In his book it
probably wasn't available to women to be great human beings any
more than it was available to them to be great philosophers Whatever
his sexuality I think Wittgenstein liked his genders cut and dried which
may be why he couldn't get on with Shakespeare. Beethoven by com-
parison does seem to come over as a grand, passionate, rogue male
which is why, I suppose, Wittgenstein could allow him a 'great heart'.
WITIGENSTEIN .... I cannot see Shakespeare as a great human being ... he has
such a supple hand and his brushstrokes are so individual that each
one of his characters looks significant. One can talk of 'Beethoven's
great heart' - but nobody could speak of "Shakespeare's great heart" ...
People stare at him in wonderment, almost as at a spectacular natural
152 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
phenomenon. They do not have the feeling that this brings them into
contact with a great human being. Rather with a phenomenon."
WITTGENSTEIN. "But how do you know it will fall down? Isn't that a ques-
tion of physics? It may be that if one throws dice in order to calculate
the bridge it will never fall down!"
Thoughts on Acting and the Play Beyond All Certainty 153
WITIGENSTEIN. "Yes, of course, we can say: we have taught him the rules,
now let us see if he follows them. I cannot at the same time allow the
result of an experiment to be the result of a mathematical calculation. If
the result of the calculation is determined by rules, i.e. 136 x 52 = 6936,
the result of the experiment is not what result he arrives at if he follows
the rules, but whether or not he follows the rules."
RD. I really was scared that some of the lines and passages were almost
unlearnable, or if I did learn them they would never corne back to me in
an orderly fashion when I was on the stage.
JR. The script is unkind to actors. In places.
RD. It is when you have lines that are almost similar but are in very differ-
ent parts of a scene and you suddenly find yourself lost; you don't
know which one you're saying with all the implications that has for
what is to follow, for where you are located in the scene or the play. For
example "The entire analogy between mathematics and physics is a
complete mistake. In fact what we have here is an important source of
confusion." Later on in the scene we have "There seems to me to be an
enormous mistake here. You have confused two separate things." What
we are talking about is not a definite catastrophe, things necessarily
going wrong, but experiencing a sudden, unpleasant doubt in a vulner-
able situation. Again, its about knowing the topography but there are
two landmarks in very different parts of the town that look similar.
You corne across one of them on the way to your supposed destination,
and for a horrible moment you can't remember which one is which and
you are no longer certain where you are. One would care not to experi-
ence such things.
JH. So, the script is unkind to actors ... ?
JR. At times ...
JH. Then why is it that you do some of your best work in these roles? RD
154 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
HELENE. We are out of danger. We have used the influence of our position
and great wealth to negotiate with the Nazis to be classified as non-
Jewish.
(HELENE TURNS TO LUDWIG AND OFFERS HIM THE GIFT. HE RESPONDS BY
BLOWING OUT THE SEVEN CANDLES. BLACK OUT. EXIT HELENE)
......
Thoughts on Acting and the Play Beyond All Certainty 157
RD. Would it have mattered if you had never understood the text?
eG. I don't think I do understand a lot of the text.
JR. I don't either.
CG. I really don't. I mean I can stand backstage and just let it all wash over
my head. I know vaguely what's going on, the more personal stuff and
you know there's an argument weaving in here, but I don't understand
the finer technical points.
JH. (TO JR) Would you say you understand everything Turing says?
JR. Not everything. Not when he's talking about the mathematical side of
things.
JH. My question is: "as an actor do you understand?" I don't mean you
have to know the calculus or all about that. As an actor, do you still
have difficulties with certain lines?
JR. Yes, I do. Mostly in the first scene. Maybe I just have a block about first
scenes. I can understand its point. I can get inside the emotion behind
it. I can get inside the head of someone who has a radically different
point of view to another person, but apart from that... I don't know
enough about mathematics and mathematical theory and blah, blah.
But I can get in touch with Turing's sadness. If there wasn't that sad-
ness I'd be really at sea.
eG. Can I just drop in 'the paradox of the actor'?
JH. Oh yes. Absolutely. I was hoping you would.
eG. It's a nightmare. You can be in the Alan and Mrs Turing scene and
you're saying something like "Alan needed friends. He was such a
dreamer and very unsociable." Now that's a very normal thing to say
and a very easy thing to understand. But you can be on stage and sud-
denly, for example, you need to go to the toilet. So your mind is on two
entirely separate things. It's a real pulling between character and per-
son on a tense line of concentration. I can imagine if the words are more
complex involving philosophical debate, the problem increases tenfold.
Your brain is holding an argument together and your body wants to be
in the bathroom and you're thinking "I don't understand what I am
saying. I have lost concentration."
JR. Anyway, if you don't understand what you're saying, you're far more
in danger.
eG. There's much greater danger.
JR. You're not absolutely, completely in control of that character.
CG. But no actor ever is. You never absolutely, completely know what the
next minute on stage is going to be like, to sound or look like.
RD. There's that story, I don't know if it is true or not, you always hear
about Olivier, being furious with himself in the dressing room after
doing a wonderful Othello and people asked why he was so angry after
being so brilliant and he said "I know it was brilliant, but I don't know
how I did it, so I don't know if I can do it again". An actor's knowledge
is unavoidably, always, and probably necessarily, incomplete.
JH. That's the job, isn't it?
RD. Some job.
eG. But that's the job.
158 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
TURIN. . ..you cannot be confident about applying your calculus until you
know there is no hidden contradiction in it. If one takes Frege's symbol-
ism and gives someone the technique of multiplying in it, using a
Russell paradox he could get a very wrong application.
.........
meant. It suddenly gets top heavy about Turing towards the end. Am I
wrong?
]H. What happens to me is that in the world of the play this all fits and is
appropriate. Of course this isn't what happened in 'real life'.
RD. But that's alright in this piece with regard to Wittgenstein and Turing.
They did not actually meet as such, as far as this company knows, but
there was and remains a kind of meeting and conflict and this play is an
aesthetic version of it, an organized impression of it, with points to
make, and issues to represent that go beyond the documentary details
of the lives of these particular individuals.
JR. The fact is Wittgenstein and Turing hardly met.
CG. Apart from a couple of lectures.
RD. Anyway we don't really know. I don't. Monk hardly seems to mention
Turing.
]H. What seems to me to happen in the play is that we all know that
Wittgenstein is the star and the most difficult part - or maybe not,
maybe the lead role is not the most difficult - but what seems to me is
that the scene at the very end where you finally see Turing - or the
ghost of Turing - that triggers this final speech of Wittgenstein's which
isn't about philosophy, it doesn't seem to be quite Wittgenstein's
voice--
CG. And the whole play is called "Beyond All Certainty" which is some-
thing that Turing says and it sometimes seems to me that the play is
about something they start talking about in the last scene. As if they're
wrapping up the whole play in those final speeches.
RD. There is Wittgenstein, at the end of the play, doing this pulpit terrier
job about life forcing God on us and all this stuff. It's very fine and
moving but I'm not convinced it's Wittgenstein. What you've got,
which is perfectly reasonable, is the authors of the play speaking. So for
example when Wittgenstein in the Cambridge speech says "What I am
trying to do is change people's style of thinking"; whose is the "I" here,
or how many others inhabit this apparently singular pronoun. I would
argue that here the play's authors are speaking and the people they are
trying to change are the people attending the performances or the con-
ferences. Wittgenstein moves from being this extraordinary ego to this
extraordinary vehicle
]H. In so far as there is any useful difference.
RD. OK. The authors of "Beyond All Certainty" have skillfully put together
a speech that might have been made by Wittgenstein but is, in my view,
their collage performing as Wittgenstein's ultimate statement, his grand
summary. But it is a collage, made out of found material. This material
is lent a certain inflexion by the way it is organized and put on the page
to suit other purposes. I would say that in doing those final speeches I
don't feel much like I am being a mouthpiece of Wittgenstein. I am pre-
senting a manifesto for the authors of the play, or a public provocation
to debate born out of the Skill and Technology movement. I say that
because perhaps I'm not entirely happy pressing notions of God on
people, but the quotes those final speeches are made up of may be, I
think, in some cases quite critical remarks or observations that
Wittgenstein made in other contexts about religion and so forth rather
Thoughts on Acting and the Play Beyond All Certainty 161
***
September 1993: First Notes
We knew of the Wittgenstein 'industry' of course. As the commission stated, we
would perform initially to approximately sixty academics from all over the world
and their post-graduate students. We were told that, having seen the performance,
many other people with a stake in the Great Man would have the opportunity at
9:00 am to ask us questions about the relationship between text and performance.
We decided immediately to do it. (JH)
JR. Are you saying the play would be better if it was two hours rather than
one?
RD. The play that we have got could be the first act of three.
JH. I disagree.
RD. It could be epic. I think more could be made of Russell. I think we tend
to make him look a bit of a silly twit - and yet he was one of the few or
only philosophers around at the time that Wittgenstein would not
allow others to treat disrespectfully in conversation. We don't hear
anything of that other genius, philosopher, fascist of the time, J.L.
Austin who everybody was apparently scared stiff of, just down the
road in, wash my mouth out, in Oxford. And who the hell was Frege?
His name crops up in the play. The unintelligible in pursuit of the inac-
cessible. What were they all so bothered by?
JH. The play is about the meeting of Turing and Wittgenstein - who in fact,
it appears, hardly met but they represented opposing systems of
thought or different notions about what it is to be human and able to
think and do things, and we are still living in the consequences of it all.
That's why this script and these conferences exist. There is absolutely
no need to go on about any other stuff.
162 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
JR. Possibly there was not enough time, enough script, to make for exam-
ple the balance right at the end between Wittgenstein and Turing.
]H. I don't disagree with that. The play goes by quickly. Possibly too quick-
ly. Because it is such an intensely practical business, theater, I can't see
how you can hold attention with material as difficult as this with more
- maybe it would be a better play if it was two hours, but there's no
guarantee that it would be, and it might be hugely worse.
JR. It might just be a longer play.
]H. It might just be heavy handed.
JR. We've always talked about chucking in another scene.
]H. We're all busy. There is a sense for me that you have the script, which
we have performed what, ten times? Eight times? This is something I
should know but I don't. It works, it works very well, it's like snap-
shots, it's like an impression of - I like that very much, there is some-
thing for me that is very attractive in trying to encapsulate all this stuff,
very briefly. And you're bound to miss loads of things, particularly if
you're trying to - as this play tries to - weave in Turing's sensitivity
and Wittgenstein's sensitivity in - what - an hour.
RUSSELL. "But you must admit that Wierstrasse, Dedekind and Cantor have
solved the problems of the infinitesimal, continuity and infinity in a
logically perfect way"
***
Memoirs of a Production Manager IV
Each venue is different, and so the set and lighting design needs modifying each
time. For example we performed Beyond All Certainty at Clare Hall College,
Cambridge in a small lounge, bounded on two sides by large windows and a low
sloping roof, in one corner a grand piano and a quantity of tables and chairs, and
eight lights to work with. Within weeks we were performing at Bode, Norway, a
stark change for now a real stage approximately sixty feet by thirty feet and fifty to
one hundred lights available, plus many extra and willing hands too. (SR)
***
performance is any more than laying the ground for a certain kind of
potential - optimizing the chances of something happening, a state of grace
which all the preparation in the world cannot guarantee .
.... .
When doing a play involving historical characters then not to do any
research as an actor would for me be a symptom of such uninterest that if I
were to know this I would not go to it. I would feel that I had been duped
into watching just another egomaniac seeking attention. So there is an ethi-
cal, documentary responsibility.
I don't feel this is the case for Mrs Turing and Helene because their role is
a narrative and informational one. They are there to tell us about Turing
and Wittgenstein and not themselves. This is their purpose and it is really
quite instrumental. They began their lives in the playas 'The Narrator'. The
two women have been fashioned out of an original, anonymous narrator
figure in order to provide some degree of human and social context to the
technical and abstract concerns of the two philosophers. The integrity of the
performance here is not measured by the quantity of research.
Chapter 16
Enigma
On June 7th, 1954 Alan Turing was found dead, by his side an apple poi-
soned with potassium cyanide, with which he had chosen to end his own
life. This was a death without farewells. No letters, no actions that warned
of what was to happen. Turing's legacy was a modest one, his estate was
negligible and his physical remains were cremated and the ashes spread in
the memorial gardens at Woking crematorium. No stone was raised to his
memory.
The story of Alan Turing, a 42-year-old English mathematician could end
there. But prominent researchers may often count on some kind of immor-
tality, an abstract life after this one, as a concept, a unit of measurement or
as the name of a mathematical theorem. And this was the case with Turing.
Turing's name became associated with a machine, the Universal Turing
Machine. But Alan Turing's intellectual legacy proved to be richer than that.
In the perspective of 50 years of history, the world of thought he inhabited
can fascinate, be understood, and live on in the new life it gives to the intel-
lectual debate of our times.
Turing's own fate was a dramatic one, or to be more precise, it was fate-
fully linked with a dramatic historical event. His penetrating mind was put
to use by the military powers, a fate that he shared with many other scientif-
ic and trained mathematicians in the Europe of the Second World War. The
British Brains Trust, which had been given the task of deciphering German
radio messages, was situated at Bletchley Park. Bletchley was an unremark-
able rural English village located in the triangle between London, Oxford
and Cambridge. Alan Turing came to Bletchley in the autumn of 1939, and
he stayed there for the whole of the war. Turing's efforts were decisive in
breaking the German's Enigma code, and therefore probably had a decisive
effect on the course of the war.
This historical role that Turing and his colleagues played did not attract
any significant amount of attention. That was partly due to the nature of the
The Legacy of Turing 169
work, which was surrounded by very strict secrecy. Turing's "secret" life
had another, more personal, dimension. His homosexuality limited his
social life. Society's view of sexual deviations was repressive, and in
Turing's case this kind of lifestyle could easily have been seen as a security
risk. His feeling of isolation was well-founded.
Turing's work on the Enigma code was a top priority matter. Encrypted
messages had to be decoded while they were still topical, and the codes
were constantly changing. This work required more than mathematical acu-
ity. Machines were also needed to solve these problems quickly.
Turing was not a practical man, but he was well acquainted with mechan-
ical designs. At the theoretical level he had earlier encountered problems of
a mechanical nature, and the question of the artificial versus the natural.
Problems relating to thinking, the brain and machines were central prob-
lems, which today would come under the heading of artificial intelligence.
Turing's genius was in mathematics, but his revolutionary contribution to
the theory of mathematics was in fact a combination of mathematical
insight and mechanical ideas in the form of a theoretical machine. The result
was presented in his thesis "On Computable Numbers" (published in 1936).
This was the context in which the Turing machine was introduced.
The value of Turing's dissertation was evident to leading mathematicians
of the time such as John von Neumann and Alonzo Church. Yet at the time
his findings were neither widely-known nor very influential. In the ortho-
dox mathematical environment of Cambridge, Turing's link between
abstract symbols and mechanical devices was perceived as being "shocking-
ly industrial".
The logical connection of applications with mathematical theory were
met with suspicion. Turing often had to defend and argue his standpoints.
He was the only pure mathematician in Ludwig Wittgenstein's seminar on
the Foundations of Mathematics, held in Cambridge in the spring of 1939.
At this point, Wittgenstein had refuted the ideas on mathematical logic he
had developed in his Tractatus. He claimed that the work of attempting to
deduce the foundations of mathematics from a strictly logical calculation
was futile. It is a mistake to believe that mathematics rests on loose sand,
and that by applying logic one could clarify the nature or composition of
mathematics. Wittgenstein therefore disputed the idea that the internal con-
tradictions and paradoxes discovered in the foundations of mathematics
had any relevance. Mathematical arguments are a question of seeing con-
nections, and paradoxes are merely expressions of language-games that
have no use.
It was impossible for Turing to accept that the question of the internal
composition of mathematics was irrelevant, and he gradually gave up argu-
ing with Wittgenstein on that point. The realities of war soon crowded out
philosophical speculation on the nature of the language of mathematics.
The Germans' coded messages, which with the help of mathematical combi-
nations became combinations of letters sent over the ether, were anything
but language-games with no practical application ...
170 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Unlike many other machines, the Turing machine has not become obsolete
or been replaced by newer and better designs. It only exists on paper, as an
idea and a "gedanken experiment". The machine, which has a simple
design, is very powerful, as it can perform all kinds of mathematical compu-
tations. The contribution of Turing's genius was that he not only stated how
this machine would work, but also demonstrated that it is actually capable
of carrying out all mathematical computations.
The Turing machine has two parts, a "black box" and an infinitely long
paper tape. The box can read and write on the tape, which may be seen as
being divided into squares. A 0 or a 1 can be written in each square, or the
square may be left blank. In each unit of time, one or more of the follo",:ing
occurs:
What the machine does at any given moment is determined solely by the
internal status of the box at that moment. This status is in its tum decided
exclusively by its internal status during the previous unit of time, and by
the symbol in the read-in square at that time.
The remarkable thing about this apparatus is that, despite its primitive
design, it can do everything that a modem computer can do. The Turing
machine is the prototype of the computer. (In practice the computer is, of
course, more cleverly designed, to make the computations faster and more
user-friendly. Operating systems and various kinds of programming lan-
guages are tools for this purpose. But the principles are basically the same,
even though no paper tapes are fed through the machine.) The stream of Os
and Is are the instructions and data that describe a computational task. The
machine performs its mechanical work from these instructions, without any
external intervention. The result in the form of Os and Is is then written on
to the tape. If the problem is to calculate whether a certain mathematical
statement is true of false, we can imagine that the machine prints a 1 for the
answer true, and a 0 for false, and then stops. The machine stopping signi-
fies that the problem has been solved. In other words: calculability is the
same as the Turing machine stopping at some point. If it is given a calcula-
tion that cannot be solved, the machine will never stop.
As we shall soon see, Turing's ideas have far-reaching implications. The
Turing machine gave the .idea of mathematical computation an exact and
generally-applicable content. With this definition we can also take the
important step forward of asking the question whether or not we can
acquire knowledge of the physical and biological world by using computa-
The Legacy of Turing 171
tions as a tool. The dream of the rational universe is precisely the dream that
this tool is a universal one. Perhaps the clearest expression of this view is to
be found in the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the German philosopher
and mathematician. Leibniz was convinced that in theory all human activity
was accessible to mathematical calculations and that every dispute could be
resolved with computations. "Gentlemen, let us compute!"
Hilbert's Tenth
At the Congress of Mathematicians in Bologna in 1900 the great mathemati-
cian David Hilbert made an expose of unresolved mathematical problems
which he thought would be an important challenge for the mathematicians
of the next century, the present century that is soon at an end. In his list of
23 problems there was one, the tenth, that dealt with a classical area in
mathematics, so called diophantine equations, equations where the solu-
tions can only have the value of integers.
The problem that Hilbert posed concerned the possibility of finding a
procedure, an algorithm, which could be used to determine in advance
whether or not an arbitrary diophantine equation can be solved, i.e.,
whether there are integer numbers that satisfy the equation.
Hilbert was sure that mathematics was a perfect structure and only the
finishing touches remained to be put to it. Even though the naive mechani-
cal picture of the world that prevailed in the 1700s had been substantially
changed, there was still a strong belief in the boundless ability of human
reason and in the dream of a coherent picture of the world. Newton's
physics was the basis for knowledge of the world and mathematics was its
most powerful tool. Only a few pieces of the puzzle were missing. That was
the spirit of the time, and the great philosophers and mathematicians of that
time, Hilbert, Russell and Frege, for example, were steadfast in this belief.
It only remained to show conclusively that mathematics was consistent,
i.e. free from internal contradictions, and complete, i.e., that e:very meaningful
mathematical statement could be proved to be either true or false. This
required a formalization of mathematical arguments, so that every derivation
could be expressed as a chain of logical operations. From a series of given
primitive concepts and axioms, a mechanical application of the rules of log-
ic will produce every possible mathematical proposition.
Little did Hilbert know, when he fired his younger colleagues with enthu-
siasm at the Bologna Congress, nor Russell, when he wrote with Whitehead
his monumental work "Principia Mathematica" on the formalization of
mathematics, that their life dreams could never come true. As soon as he
arrived in Cambridge in 1911, the young Wittgenstein addressed the task of
correcting Russell and pointing out the shortcomings in his mathematical
logic. But it was an eccentric Czech mathematical genius, Kurt Godel, who
was to finally.puncture the dream of the perfection of mathematics, with his
findings on "Uber formal unentscheidbare Satze der Principia Mathematica
und verwandter Systeme I", published in 1931.
Neither would Hilbert experience in his lifetime the surprising resolution
of the diophantine equations. In 1970 Yuri Matijasevic, a young Russian
172 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Paradox II - "the set of all sets that are not elements in themselves"
Paradox III - "the smallest integer which requires more words to express
than those in this sentence."
These paradoxes were seen as more than amusng subtleties; they have
vexed both mathematicians and philosophers. These paradoxes indicate
profound difficulties in logic and in mathematics itself. Bertrand Russell
was one of the first people who took this seriously. He drew attention to,
and published, Berry's paradox in 1908. But Russell's name was connected
mainly with Paradox II - the barber paradox. Russell realized that this para-
dox demonstrated that informal arguments in mathematics could lead to
contradictions. The way out of this problem was to formalize the basics of
mathematics, beginning with the theory of sets, so that this kind of contra-
diction could never occur. The occurrence of paradoxes was like having
weeds in a garden, they were the result of carelessness and neglect.
Principia Mathematica was an heroic attempt to clear the garden of mathe-
matics of weeds.
It soon became clear that these paradoxes were not so easy to weed out:
the useful plants of mathematics disappeared as well. Berry's paradox was
put to use to demonstrate the inherent randomness of mathematics, and
Epimenides' paradox of the liar plays a decisive part in G6del's findings,
because it leads to an unbridgeable gulf between what is true and what can
be proved. G6del utilized this paradox in a form which says "this statement
cannot be proved" to demonstrate that in every formal system there are true
statements that cannot be proved.
Wittgenstein held a radically different view of this matter. There were no
mathematical truths to discover. Proof did not mean that one establishes
that a conclusion is true, it means that one must establish the meaning of
certain symbols. To deny that 2 + 2 = 4 is to ignore the meaning of the sym-
bols involved, not to deny a fact! In this perspective, paradoxes and contra-
dictions were uninteresting. Turing, who was confronted with these
opinions at Wittgenstein's lectures, was not convinced. Mathematics was
incontrovertible, and contradictions were unacceptable, because they may
cause errors when mathematics is applied. In this argument, Turing claimed
that mathematical experiments could be carried out in the same spirit as
experiments in physics. This comment has an almost prophetic ring to it in
anticipating the computer-aided mathematical activities of today. However,
for Wittgenstein the analogy between physics and mathematics was mis-
leading and a cause of confusion. Mathematics is a technique, a way of per-
ceiving connections, of seeing aspects. There is no mathematical paradise
(Hilbert's description of how Cantor introduced infinity into the axioms of
mathematics), and Wittgenstein saw his task as being to demonstrate that.
craft of mathematics and its applications could still be carried on; "business
was as usual". It is relevant to mention here that Godel's proof was compli-
cated and hard to understand. The consequences did after all appear to be
limited to the peculiar pathological comers of mathematics.
A few years after Godel's propositions had been published, Alan Turing
introduced a new approach to these findings. Turing was able to link
Godel's arguments to the question of computability, and thus to the possi-
bility of running programmes on a computer - the Turing Machine! Today,
there are many paths leading to Godel's conclusions (and their generaliza-
tions) that are easier and more natural to follow than the original proof.
With all these new perspectives that have opened up, mathematical "imper-
fections" have also become more tangible and immediate. Mathematical
theories appear to be an increasingly threadbare patchwork in the total
mathematical-logical landscape.
Godel's original proof contains a number of brilliant ideas, the contents of
which are possible to grasp without having to master the entire mathemati-
cal-technical machinery. The core of the proof lies in constructing a state-
ment within the mathematical system (in this case, the theory of numbers,
arithmetic), which is self-referencing and contradictory in the same way as
Epimenides' paradox. In Godel's version this statement became G = "this
statement cannot be proved". If G can be proved, then the system (arith-
metic) is inconsistent, i.e. it contains logical contradictions. If, on the other
hand, G cannot be proved, we have a true proposition, G, that cannot be
proved, i.e. the system is flawed.
The trick in creating this self-reference is to code the mathematical state-
ments themselves as numbers. Every theory of numbers statement thus cor-
responds to a unique "Godel number". A great deal of ingenuity is, in fact,
needed here to get this right.
The special characteristics of primary numbers are used to secure a
unique correspondence between numbers and mathematical propositions.
Using this technique, it is possible to formulate the theory of numbers prin-
ciples containing Godel's numbers, and thus perceive these propositions as
propositions that are in themselves about theory of numbers propositions!
Self-referencing systems obviously have a vital ability to break out of the
framework of rational linear thinking. If we look back to the prototype para-
doxes formulated in the previous section, we find that all three blunt our
rationality with a self-referencing statement. This kind of self-reference does
not need to be as explicit and condensed as in these paradoxes. It may also
be the result of the connection between two or more simple (and unop-
posed) statements such as:
offers many examples, from the genetic code to human consciousness. Are
there therefore absolute limitations to understanding the world in rational
scientific terms? Is it possible to express human characteristics such as
judgement and intuition in computable forms? Is artificial intelligence in
this strong form at all possible, or is there a Godelian limit to thinking about
thinking? Wittgenstein went further in his conclusions when he claimed
that the limitations of science were to be found in language. Everything that
can be said can be said clearly, and of that of which one cannot speak, one
must remain silent, and this silence contains everything that is important in life.
Mathematical systems
System of numbers
(
Logical derivation of )
Properties of numbers
propositions
Computer programs
Execution of programs
176 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
A paraphrase of Einstein's famous dictum that God does not play dice
with physics is close to hand. It was Einstein's persistent suspicion of quan-
tum mechanics that prompted this statement. But we may, of course, agree
with Chaitin that God appears not only to have played dice with physics
but also with mathematics itself! Before we leave experimental mathematics
and Chaitin with his 7000-headed equation, which he had a computer pro-
duce (in 1987), we return once again to Turing. The fate of Hilbert's tenth
was of course sealed forever. This was perfectly clear when the solvability
of diophantine equations proved to be closely related to the problem of
whether Turing's machine stops or not. As much as ten years before Chaitin
designed his equation for co, the number had been introduced as a probable
number.
co is the probability that a given Turing machine stops after a finite num-
ber of steps, when it is given an arbitrary programme. This was the number
that Chaitin coded as a signature of the solvability of diophantine equa-
tions.
At a chess competition for computers held some years ago, one computer
was not particularly successful. In fact it lost all its games. In other words, it
was not particularly "artificially" intelligent. But it had one particular "tal-
ent", namely the ability to give up. It gave up on lost games long before oth-
er computers "realized" that the game was lost. This generated widespread
admiration.
Even though the chess computer's simple application of judgement in
giving up lost games hardly indicates any radically different type of artifi-
cial intelligence (a cleverly programmed decision rule should suffice), the
example demonstrates precisely how it is possible to apply a decision rule
at a different level in the game than the level which deals with moving the
pieces. Changing levels, going from playing the game to examining the
rules of the game, is to go from analyzing differences in perceptions to ques-
tioning the category of concepts with the help of which these perceptions
are articulated. This is typical of genuine human discourse. Allan Janik has
shown "essentially contested concepts and the part they play in human life"
(Cordelia'S Silence, Carlsson BokfOrlag 1991).
It is hardly likely that considerations of this kind can be wholly captured
in algorithmic rules. To determine whether or not an algorithm is applicable
requires insight, and not yet another algorithm. A Godelian argument leads
inevitably to the conclusion that human consciousness is not capable of for-
malizing its mathematical intuition. If it had managed to formulate in algo-
rithms any of this intuition, it is this very knowledge that provides new
intuitive insights. It is possible that a theory-proving machine can exist,
which is the same as mathematical intuition, but if so, it cannot be proved to
have this capability!
about itself. Logic does not permit this. Self-referring systems cannot be
broken down into finite calculable steps.
We cannot think about thinking with anything other than our own
thoughts. We cannot study our brain with anything other than our own
brain, even if our instruments and calculating machines can sharpen our
sight and speed up our computations. We are therefore doomed to incom-
pleteness. We must continue to live with our great mystery: to remain a
mystery to ourselves.
Chapter 17
Much may be gained from reference to "the legacy of Turing" and to a line
of tradition that starts with Turing and G6del's work and that may be traced
back to earlier traditions in logic and mathematics. Wittgenstein is far more
difficult to place. His later thinking (after "Tractatus") has no obvious prede-
cessor in philosophical tradition. Although Wittgenstein had a strong influ-
ence on present-day philosophy, one can hardly say that he "formed a
school" or "left a legacy" which others have managed to cultivate.
Nonetheless, Wittgenstein plays an important part in connection with
"the legacy of Turing", and it is a multi-faceted part. One facet which I shall
attempt to discuss in more detail here could be summarized as follows:
Wittgenstein is a critic who wanted to reduce to its proper proportions the
consequences of some of the more sensational ideas and findings in the sci-
ence of logic and mathematics. He wanted to calm the storms in thinking
that these advances had precipitated.
Put very simply (and therefore easily misleadingly), the results may be
described as the discovery of some inherent imperfections in formalized
systems of logic and mathematics. Or to simplify it slightly more: the dis-
covery of theoretical limitations in human thinking. Thus in all systems
with a sufficiently elaborated structure there are propositions that are
"unverifiable", i.e. it is impossible to establish within the system whether
they can be proved or not. Neither can it be shown of all such systems, with-
out looking for proof beyond the system's own framework, that they do not
contain latent contradictions.
It is evident that results of the kind indicated are important and may have
far-reaching consequences. But why must they be considered so sensation-
al, or even subversive? To understand this we must set the discoveries of
Turing and his "predecessor" G6del against the background of certain gen-
erally accepted expectations or deeply rooted preconceptions about the
capacity and nature of human thinking. These preconceptions - which are
"philosophical" rather than "scientific" in nature - are part of the spiritual
structure, which I shall simplify here to "the classical world picture of
European science".
In mathematics, this picture of the world had been so to speak canonized
in the "programme" of the great mathematician Hilbert, which was present-
ed in a shortened form in a lecture at an international congress of mathe-
184 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
confusing. One loses faith in something one would have preferred to hold
fast to. But rather than throw oneself off a cliff in despair, one should
attempt a sober appraisal of what has really happened, both in an "intra-sci-
ence" and a "extra-science" perspective. One could say that this was the sort
of thing that Wittgenstein wanted to do.
We get an "intra-science" perspective of Godel's and Turing's discoveries
when we view them in the light of the later developments that began during
and after the Second World War and in which the computer played a deci-
sive part, not only as a theoretical object (the "Turing machine") but also as
a practical tool for research. In his article, Professor Karlqvist relates this
development to the advances in mathematical and physical science that
became popularly known as Chaos research. Seen in an extra-science per-
spective they may be said to have made a further contribution to the under-
mining of traditional faith in deterministic causality and predictability.
Chaos has gained a foothold in our picture of the world - something that,
inter alia, colours our conceptions of our ability to plan and control the path
of humanity towards the future. But I shall not reflect any further on this
matter. Instead, I shall briefly return to the Godel-Turing-Wittgenstein con-
stellation.
I dare say that both Godel and Turing may be criticized for having dra-
matized the extra-science perspective of their results in a possibly mislead-
ing way. In Godel's case the existence of unverifiable but true mathematical
propositions - a doubtful formulation in itself - was the starting point of a
platonized metaphysics, which sees quantities and numbers as realities in a
world of eternal truths, which we can look into but which remains beyond
our ability to understand. This of course is not an entirely accurate, and
even less an exhaustive description of Godel's position. But I cannot but
believe that Godel's mathematical realism is the not-so-great philosophy of
a great mathematician. Wittgenstein's criticism of it - and of Hilbert's pro-
gramme - is an attempt to reduce the consequences of Godel's incomplete-
ness proofs to their proper "intra-mathematical" dimension.
Turing fell victim to another philosophical temptation. In a famous essay
from the end of his short life, he took his insights into the nature and limits
of computability as the starting point for speculations on consciousness (the
"psychic"). The question of whether or not the brain operates like a comput-
er when we make calculations, or remember things in the past, or structure
the impressions of our senses, is entirely significant. This is an "intra-sci-
ence" issue and it does not lose its legitimacy because an earlier enthusiasm
for the computer analogy appears to have faded in the light of more recent
discoveries about networks in the brain and their integrative ways of oper-
ating. But the occurrence of conscious reactions in a living being is not
determined on the basis of what happens in his brain, but on the basis of
verbal and other macroscopic behaviour in his "Lebenswelt". The belief that
the "mystery of consciousness" may be resolved through, for example, AI
research, is a conceptual confusion. The very idea of a "mystery" is fuelled
by false analogies, as is the idea of an out-of-body "soul" as some kind of
ethereal being, inaccessible to an outside observer. One may answer all this
with an oft-quoted saying of Wittgenstein's: "nothing is hidden". The diffi-
culty is to see what lies, openly, before our very eyes.
Chapter 18
Turing's thesis
The Turing machine constitutes a body of work that is on the border line
between logic and mathematics. By contrast, the other legacy, Turing's the-
sis, is a contribution of a logical-philosophical character. It is a question of a
philosophical thesis and not a mathematical result. The thesis is that the intu-
itive concept of computability and the concept of decidability can be
defined, or even better, explicated, with the help of Turing machines. The
definition says that something is computable or decidable if, and only if, it
can be computed or decided by a Turing machine. Turing argues - appar-
ently convincingly - that this explication or definition corresponds to our
intuitive concepts of computability and decidability. Philosophers have
made great efforts to attempt to clarify central concepts in different areas,
including concepts that are more or less distant relatives to computable and
decidable, such as provable, definable, measurable and knowable, and have
said a great deal about such concepts. But for none of them have we an
explication that even comes close to Turing's in terms of precision, simplici-
ty, fruitfulness and inherent plausibility.
Churchill. The episode in the play where Churchill becomes severely irritat-
ed by what Turing is saying about machines and sonnets is splendid and in
my eyes illustrates a conflict between a scientific and non-scientific attitude.
As a practical man, Churchill is not interested in the vocative of tables and
chairs, or in machines that write sonnets. Similarly, electrical phenomena
were long regarded as being something to amuse people with at the circus
but not to be taken seriously. I have heard practical people say that even if
parapsychological phenomena are real, they are not particularly interesting
because they occur so rarely. Turing's answer to Churchill is that research is
not encouraged by setting limits or objectives and he tells Wittgenstein that
contradictions are symptoms that should be taken seriously.
For a scientific attitude, and I am now considering science as related to
philosophy rather than technology, what appear to be practically unimpor-
tant exceptions and contradictions are actually of great interest. They show
that reality is not as we had imagined. Electrical phenomena had no place in
the conception of the world engendered by early physics, and parapsycho-
logical phenomena have no place in the conception of the world we have
today. Exceptions are exciting in science and philosophy, for in order to
understand them we must sometimes change both our stock of concepts
and our picture of reality. That is why since ancient times philosophers
have been deeply interested in paradoxes and contradictions.
Wittgenstein is certainly right when he says we have no immediate prac-
tical use for contradictions. Nobody uses paradoxes to make calculations or
to draw an arbitrary conclusion from them. Being language mistakes, they
have no use. But they are symptoms that something is fundamentally
wrong with our ideas and theories, and thus that exciting things may be just
around the comer. There are also practical aspects to this. As Turing quite
correctly pointed out, bridges may collapse if faulty theories have been used
in the calculations with which they are designed. Conversely, good theories
often prove to be of practical use.
Thus these two meetings have some similarities. It may appear absurd to
put Churchill and Wittgenstein in the same boat, and admittedly, there are
differences between them. Churchill instinctively takes a pragmatic atti-
tude, and it is understandable that he had no time to get interested in the
question of who would most appreciate sonnets that future machines might
be imagined to write. Wittgenstein adopts a similar attitude when he rejects
paradoxes as having no practical importance, and minimized the impor-
tance of certain theoretical and philosophical embarrassments, but he does
it for reasons of principle, and argues intellectually that this is philosophi-
cally correct.
Conventionalism
Wittgenstein's position stems from a certain conviction about the nature of
mathematics. It is related to what is usually called conventionalism. But
Wittgenstein goes a step further; his standpoint could be called extreme
conventionalism. His view is indicated by his slogan that in mathematics
we are dealing with inventions, not discoveries. A mathematical proof is not
a discovery that things are in a certain way, it should be seen as a decision
Turing and Wittgenstein 191
Realism
attitude to be one of his major contributions. On the other hand, there is still
something absurd about Wittgenstein's radical conventionalism.
Wittgenstein says that he would never dream of driving someone out of
the paradise that Cantor is said to have given us. The expression "Cantor's
Paradise" comes from Hilbert. He was afraid that Brouwer's intuitionalistic
ideas, by which Wittgenstein was strongly influenced in many respects,
would make us abandon large parts of Cantor's creation, and Hilbert
accused Brouwer of attempting to drive us out of this paradise. But
Wittgenstein said that he would instead welcome everyone to this "par-
adise" and show the new arrivals around, upon which they would certainly
leave the paradise all by themselves.
But Cantor's paradise is not the only bone of contention between Turing
and Wittgenstein; there is also the paradise first populated by the ancient
Greeks. Since the time of the Greeks we have thought that by providing
proof we could find out about the real nature of things. Wittgenstein did not
want to criticize the mathematicians' proof. He was entirely against getting
the mathematicians to change their practices, but he wanted to make us see
these practices in a new light. He wanted us to understand that proofs are
nothing more than conventions, that they are decisions we make jointly and
store in our archives. But if we are quite wrong in believing that through
proof we arrive at an understanding of the true nature of things, why
should we continue this activity? As the British philosopher Michael
Dummett said: the effect of what Wittgenstein says about mathematical
proof is that although he did not want to drive us out of even the paradise
the Greeks discovered, he will not give us any reason to stay there.
There is something incomplete about Wittgenstein's understanding of
mathematical practice; he never manages to account for its deductive
aspects - for what use do we have it; why should we keep it at all?
The meeting between Turing and Wittgenstein illustrates one of the most
important and topical issues in theoretical philosophy, namely the conflict
between realism or Platonism on the one hand, and various forms of anti-
realism - such as idealism, conventionalism, constructivism - on the other,
forms that are currently under discussion in seminars and symposia all over
the world (including, to make a local comment, the philosophical seminar at
Stockholm University). The difficulty in finding a reasonable position
between those of Wittgenstein and Turing is that, on the one hand, this posi-
tion should respect the objective validity of a mathematical proof, which
means that we are not at liberty either individually or collectively to prove
what we want, and, on the other hand, the position should free us from the
idea of a mathematical reality that is already given independent of us,
which mathematical proofs do no more than uncover. It is this difficult
philosophical balancing act that the meeting between Turing and
Wittgenstein challenges us to perform.
Chapter 19
The title "Beyond Certainty" is ambiguous in a way that can, but need not,
be misleading. Wittgenstein did not claim that we can arrive at no kind of
Certainty: merely that the philosophers deceive us if they pretend that the
only kind of Certainty that has any intellectual relevance is a formal, geo-
metrical kind. He did not direct us beyond all Certainty, only beyond the
monopoly of inappropriate,formal Certainty (decontextuallogical necessity)
and toward an appropriate, pragmatic Certainty, a well grounded, situated
certitude. With the Death of Cartesian foundational epistemology, we do
not lose all hope of certainty, only the illusion that the only Certainty worth
having is a formal, eternal feature of knowledge, exemplified in the logical
coherence of texts. In its place, we recover an alternative Certitude: a timely,
pragmatic feature of knowledge, within particular situations and modes of
praxis.
In parallel with this confusion of practical certitude with theoretical
necessity, Cartesians also confuse two kinds of Skepticism: the Classical
Skepticism of Pyrrho or Sextus, revived in Montaigne's Apologie de Raimond
Sebond, and the Systematic Doubt of Descartes' Meditations and Discourse.
Rationally speaking (for Descartes) claims to Knowledge for which no theo-
retical foundation is given are to be rejected: we must deny propositions we
cannot prove.
For Montaigne and other Classical skeptics, by contrast, it is as misguided
to deny truths that go beyond the reach of proof as it is to assert them. The
high school Atheist who shocked his family friends by denying God's exis-
tence became an Agnostic after studying Classical Skepticism at College. He
now found Dogmatic Atheism as baseless as Dogmatic Theism: "What I
previously disbelieved I now no longer understand." He gave up not just
the positive answer to the question "Does God exist?", but the question
itself - positive and negative answers alike. ("Does God exist? God alone
knows!")
In classical terms, Systematic Doubt is not a kind of Skepticism at all: the
Ancients call it negative dogmatism. So, the 20th century escape from
Cartesian Foundationalism did not put systematic denial in the place of the-
oretically groundless assertion. Rather, it freed us from a dogmatism exem-
plified, equally, in misplaced denials and in misplaced assertions.
194 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
for the worse, the doctor's earlier judgement is then set on one side, while
the clinical team asks why the picture changed so rapidly. When this hap-
pens, the doctor's earlier utterances - as offered to colleagues navigating
shoals here and now - are no longer "carved in stone": now they blow away
on the wind.
A clinical focus on timely, localized events gives words definite meaning,
only so far as they are situated in a given medical locus, e.g., the bedside of
a patient who just lapsed into a vegetative state: it in no way relies on the
Dream of rational exactitude, or the identification of "propositions" as the
units of knowledge. So understood, concepts, beliefs, judgements and utter-
ances, are praxis based, not text based - meaningful only in relation to their
situation of use. If the physicians' judgements carry any "certitude", this is
not the formal necessity of deductive inferences, but the pragmatic outcome
of mature experience. Nor is Medicine alone in this. The whole realm of
phronesis (Aristotle's "practical wisdom") has survived the wreck of
Modernity untouched.
Chapter 20
I. Primitivism
I represent to myself the vast body of science as a large area strewn with dark places and with
illuminated places. Our labors should have as their aim, either to extend the limits of the lit-up
places, or to multiply the number of centers of illumination. One is for the creative genius; the
other for the wisdom which improves, develops, amplifies.
We have three principal means: the observation of nature, thought and experiment.
Observation collects the facts, thought combines them, and experiment verifies the result of the
combination. The observation of nature must be painstaking, the thinking profound and the
experiment exact. One rarely sees these methods combined. And creative geniuses are not
common.!
This is the patron saint of our conference, Denis Diderot, writing in 1754,
and the text underlines much of what we still see as standard wisdom
regarding the relationship of natural science to our culture. But if we go
to his contemporary, adversary, and part-time ally, Rousseau, it is not
difficult to find examples of a contrary and more jaundiced evaluation of
natural science:
If our sciences are futile in the objects they propose, they are no less dangerous in the effects
they produce. Being the effect of idleness, they generate idleness in their terms; and irreparable
loss of time is the first prejudice which they must necessarily cause to society. To live without
doing some good is a great evil as well in the political as in the moral world; and hence every
useless citizen should be regarded as a pernicious person. Tell me then, illustrious philoso-
phers, of whom we learn the ratios in which attraction acts in vacuo; and in the revolution of
the planets, the relations of spaces traversed in equal time; by whom we are taught what curves
have conjugate points, points of inflection, and cusps, how the soul and body correspond, like
two clocks, without actual communication; what planets may be inhabited, and what insects
reproduce in an extraordinary manner. Answer me, I say, you from whom we receive all this
sublime information, whether we should have been less numerous, worse governed, less for-
midable, less flourishing, or more perverse, supposing you had taught us none of all these fine
things.'
II. Experiments
Regarding the applicability of a generalized method of science to the single
"forms of life" that offered themselves in a thoroughly technologized soci-
ety, Diderot's tripartite division of scientific principles still seems valid.
Although empiricism is not much in vogue at the moment, as at least the
famous 'dogmas' of empiricism have been cunningly undermined by the
very spokesmen for "scientific realism" who first isolated them, and though
thought (rejtexion) is most often redefined as "consciousness", theory and
observation are still the two main foundations of knowledge, even outside
the domains of science proper. The pursuit of truth is still seen as a function
of these two concepts, but their internal relationship has been variously
interpreted in the meantime, in particular in regard to the third, more
instrumental or operational concept: that of 'experiment'. The reason for
these fluctuations is to be found in the intrinsic developments of the more
abstract disciplines of science, physics, mathematics, and more lately, cos-
mology, where the link between observation and theory has become, to say
the least, tenuous. Nevertheless, 'experiment' has provided a powerful
model for domains of knowledge, far removed from the sciences where tra-
ditionally the strictures of objectivity have had much less prominence: liter-
ature, art, philosophy. I shall highlight three occasions or moments where
the analogy of 'experiment' has been applied to innovations in literature,
albeit with different bias, but still with commensurate results.
'Experimental' literature was favored by modernism, or at least by one
branch of modernism that we might call avant-gardism, and we are now
enjoying - if that is the word - the result of the struggle of postmodernists
Experiment, Science, Literature 199
Meister's Lehrjahre sind keine blosse Wirkung der Natur, sie sind eine Art von Experiment.
[Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship is no mere result of nature, it is a kind of experiment.]'
In the next few days, in an intense exchange of long letters, they discussed
the novel as such an experiment in the pursuit of realism, and Goethe is
forced to admit to a "realistic tic", which he likens to a computation which
introduces deliberate mistakes in addition, in order to make the sum appear
less. 5 We can see an important new meaning of the word 'realism' gestate
before our eyes.
Two years later, in 1798, in the "advertisement" to the first edition of
Lyrical Ballads, we find Wordsworth writing:
The majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written
chiefly with the view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and low-
er classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure.·
The word is retained with less emphasis in the much longer Preface to the
Second Edition (1800):
It [the 2nd edition] was published, as an experiment, which, I hope, might be of some use to
ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangements a selection of the real language of men in
a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasJ,lre and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted,
which a Poet may rationally endeavor to impart.'
commune, puis acceptons dans les lettres toutes les rMtoriques qui se produironti regardons-
les commes les expressions des temperaments Iitteraires des ecrivains.'
III. Reductionism
If we accept the pragmatist'S claim that the meaning of a statement is to be
identified with the methods of its verification, then Zola seems to be in a
peculiar position in advocating his experimental method when refusing any
formal constraints to this method. This is different from the positions of
Wordsworth or Goethe, as they are in fact, in various ways, trying to predict
some future paths for the novel, or the diction of poetry. As they are not
bothered by any large or holistic claims for poetry or the novel, they can
easily Sidestep the "view from nowhere" and concentrate on the work at
hand. And here, I think, lies the crucial difference in attitude between posi-
tivism, as represented by Zola's naturalist stand, and previous partial
attacks on, or defenses of, science.
Because there is no such thing as a divided culture: no 'two cultures' of
the kind that C. P. Snow dreamed up in the late 1950s, when positivism was
at its strongest. l1 There are, and have always been, a good many cultures in
our Western civilization - high and low cultures, specialized and popular
cultures, and all those ethnic enclaves we have preferred to forget about
until very recently. What has been objectionable to the so-called humanists
has not been a culture of science, or even a culture of boffins, but the all-
embracing claims of reductionism. And there is a general as well as a special
theory of reductionism - just as with the more famous doubling of the theo-
ries of relativity. There is the widespread belief that science as a unified
viewpoint can provide an objective picture of everything, in terms that are
translatable into a final vocabulary, presumably of subnuclear forces and
particles. But the special reductionist tenet is connected with Diderot's sec-
ond 'principle': reflection - thought or consciousness. If the general scheme
of reductionism is correct, then the special case of reducing human con-
sciousness to a vocabulary of biology, physiology or artificial intelligence,
must also be viable. Even the most discerning scientists have preferred to
remain skeptical of that possibility. Let me throw in another quote, from the
Cambridge physicist Sir Brian Pippard:
What is surely impossible is that a theoretical physicist, given unlimited computing power,
should deduce from the laws of physics that a certain complex structure is aware of its own
existence."
Notes
1 Denis Diderot, L'interpretation de la nature, 1754, quoted from the English translation in Gerd
Buchdahl, The Image of Newton and Locke in the Age of Reason (London, 1961) pp.80-81
2 J.-J. Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts, 1750, quoted from Gerd Buchdahl, op.cit.,
pp.97-98.
4 Schiller, writing to Goethe 8 July 1796 from Jena, Goethe/Schiller Briefwechsel (Fischer,
Frankfurt am Main, 1961) p.126.
5 Goethe, to Schiller (undated) ibid. p. 130-131: und ich komme mir vor wie einer, der,
nachdem er viele und grosse Zahlen tiber einander gestellt, endlich mutvillig selbst
Additionsfehler machte, urn die letzte Summe aus Gott was weiss was fUr einer Grille zu
verringern.
7 ibid. p. 27
9 Emile Zola, Le roman experimental, edited by Aime Guedj (Paris, Gamier, 1971) p.92.
10 Which is properly noted by the translators in the most recent translation by Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton, 1983).
11 To be fair, one has to admit that Snow showed himself very aware of the distorting effects
of his dichotomy. See the new edition of his two lectures (1959 and 1963) edited and with an
illuminating introduction by Stefan Collini (Cambridge, 1993). Fairness never bothered Dr
Leavis in his various rebuffs to Lord Snow: they are conveniently reprinted in F.R. Leavis, Nor
shall my Sword: Discourses on Pluralism, Compassion and Social Hope (London, 1972).
12 A.B. Pippard, "The Invincible Ignorance of Science", The Sir Arthur Eddington Memorial
Lecture 1988, The Great Ideas Today 1990 Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago etc., 1990) pp.324-337.
Scientific IIFact-Fictions"
Elinor Shaffer
The death of many important ideas has been proclaimed in our century -
the death of God, Man, the Self, the Imagination, and the Author. More
recently, a new proclamation has been issued: Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard has
come to fell the "grand narratives." According to Lyotard, a French philoso-
pher and social thinker, postmodernism is to be defined as "incredulity
towards metanarratives."l In Lyotard's influential book, The Post-Modern
Condition (1979), the death knell of grand narratives was still largely con-
fined to the grand narratives of the Enlightenment already called in ques-
tion by Horkheimer and Adorno in The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1942),
narratives of reason, progress, and the liberty of humankind.
According to Lyotard, "The penetration of techno-scientific apparatus
into the cultural field in no way signifies an increase of knowledge, sensibil-
ity, tolerance and liberty," as the Enlightenment believed. "Experience
shows rather the reverse: a new barbarism, illiteracy and impoverishment
of language, new poverty, merciless remodelling of opinion by the media,
immiseration of the mind, obsolescence of the soul." In his more recent
book L'Inhumain (1988), The Inhuman, Lyotard underscores this: we must,
he tells us, give up the narrative of "the emancipation of humanity."2
The toll of deaths reached a new high with the death of the grand narra-
tive not of any particular author but of humanity itself. But now, in The
Inhuman, we seem to be dealing with a different kind of claim: for the death
that figures largest in this book is none other than the Death of the Sun.
The Death of the Sun is a "fact" projected into the future, a prediction or
prophecy rather than a fait accompli; but it is presented as none the less cer-
tain for that. No evidence is given, no reference to evidence is made. No
particular scientific authority is named. It is presented as a simple,
irrefutable and incontestable fact on which present contemplation and
action must be based. What will follow post-modernism? Lyotard tells us: it
is none other than "post-solar thought."3 Even as an ungainsayable scientif-
ic fact "the Death of the Sun" nevertheless has a feeling-tone, an affect about
it, and a familiar, an all-too-familiar rhetoric: if, as a limit, death really is
what escapes and is deferred and as a result what thought has to deal with,
right from the beginning - this death is still only the life of our minds. But
the death of the sun is a death of mind, because it is the death of death as the
life of the mind. 4 In short, this fact is to put a stop to the religions, myths,
204 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
aesthetics, and grand narratives of death that modem thought has dealt in.
We must ask ourselves what sort of fact this is. In this end-dominated dis-
course, both cultural critique and literary work privilege a "fact-fiction"
based on the assumption of the verity of a hypothetical event within the
parameters of the possible as currently understood by science. For we are
increasingly faced with scientific replacements, substitutes, and equivalents
for the "dead" - the outworn religions, debunked myths and aggrandizing
narratives. This, surely, is the reason for the phenomenal sales of Stephen
Hawking's outline of current physics and astrophysics, A Brief History of
Time(1988). This account by "one of the world's leading cosmologists" pur-
ports to give the scientific facts about the origin and fate of the universe
"from the big bang to black holes" (his subtitle). What degree and kind of
factuality attaches to them? Pursuing Lyotard's "Death of the Sun," we find
that Hawking offers, for example, the round figure of "five thousand mil-
lion years or so": "Our sun has probably got enough fuel for another five
thousand million years or so .... "5 The Encyclopaedia Britannica, as the cul-
mination of an article on "The Life History of a Typical Star," concludes dra-
matically but reassuringly: "These events will not come to pass for
thousands of millions of years."6 This reassuringly vague gesture at an
inconceivably distant future is in strong contrast to the deliberately menac-
ing quality of Lyotard's reiterated pseudo-precise "4.5." Fact, if it is fact, is
being employed as rhetoric. And how should a "fact" of 4.5 billion years
hence - or "thousands of millions" of years - influence our behavior?
Some recent fiction makes this kind of fact its subject - not surprisingly,
perhaps, it is often labelled "science fiction," although this label is far too
restrictive of its scope and still implicitly dismissive of its literary value.
One of the best writers in this genre - Suvin classes his work as "speculative
fiction" - is J.G. Ballard.7 One of his most striking titles is the collection
Myths of the Near Future. A number of his other short stories and novels
could well have appeared under this collective title. Ballard projects "scien-
tific" scenarios not 4.5 billion years hence but thirty years hence. The "factu-
al" claim allied with their imminence gives them a chilling persuasive
power. Typical Ballard scenarios: a genetic defect will cause living creatures
to be born blind, beginning with cattle and moving on to humans. A new
crop fertilizer will induce monstrous growth in birds who then prey upon
farm cattle and humans (as in the story "Stormbird, Stormdreamer," in The
Disaster Area). Oil supplies will run out and the great cities have to be aban-
doned (as in "The Ultimate City" in Low-flying Aircraft). The waters will rise
and only a few northern outposts of human life will be left, soon to go
under, as in his early novel The Drowned World (1961).
These scientific hypotheses or plausible extrapolations of them employed
as facts by fiction writers and cultural commentators are perhaps the most
significant fictions of the present day. Ballard himself has ventured to say
that the literature from our time that will live on is "science fiction" in this
extended sense, and that it will live on simply as the fiction of our time, while
reworkings of more traditional literary material will sink without trace.
In the hands of a cultural critic like Lyotard or a cosmological commenta-
tor like Hawking it becomes evident that these fact-fictions are not ade-
quately described by the anodyne (or dismissive) generic phrase "science
fiction," or even the more nearly appropriate "speculative fiction." 'They lay
Scientific "Fact-Fictions" 205
claim to public attention and credence, and command it, in a way nothing
clearly labelled "fiction" can.
Lyotard goes on in The Inhuman to produce his own scenario of life today
based on the "fact" of the death of the Sun 4.5 billion years hence: we must
prepare ourselves now, technologically and mentally, for "exodus from our
solar system" - note the emotive Biblical word - and for the separation of
thought from its vehicle the body.8 Hawking, for his part, moves into the vac-
uum left by philosophy (he makes the school of linguistic analysis the guilty
party) and talks freely of God (though His name is omitted from the index)Y
Yet the similarities between Lyotard's "factual" scenario and one of
Ballard's "fictional" ones are remarkable. In Myths of the Near Future (1982)
Ballard develops a theme based on the sun and the relation of the future of
humanity to it. In two stories in particular, the title story and "News from
the Sun", he depicts the spread of a new disease closely linked with the
apparently increasing heat of the sun. The "death of the sun", of course, in
terms of current science, as the Encyclopaedia Britannica informed us (see
note 6), could be expected to be preceded by a period of greatly increased
heat, as the sun became a "red giant", before the final cooling. The story
does not supply that information, but may derive plausibility from it; even
without that information, the recent widespread publicity given to "global
warming" and the "loss of the ozone layer" may be sufficient for the gener-
al public to accept the notion that there will be an effect of increased heat of
the sun or increased exposure to it, which may have dangerous conse-
quences. In the first story this is given local plausibility by being placed in
the hot climate of Florida, as the abandoned space stations and dried-up
swimming pools begin to return to wilderness; the second story shows the
advance of the disease at a later stage, when Las Vegas had been aban-
doned, and the hot, arid deserts of Nevada surround the "Solar City", a
utopian structure intended to run on solar power.
The disease itself is not sunstroke, blindness, or cancer (although unpleas-
ant minor effects of over-exposure are recorded, such as "the blisters on his
eyelids, lymph-filled sacs ... ";!!l "the sunlight brought out a viral rash on my
lips"lI). It is a more complex condition in which human beings suffer
"fugues" in which they go into a kind of stasis or paralysis for increasing
amounts of time - at first, for a split second, later for nearly all their hours, so
that they die by accident, or by starvation, or, in a more psychological twist,
embrace their fate willingly. The sun is seen as inducing or advancing the
"Time Disease", and is shunned in the early stages; but in the later stages it
may be embraced. A number of different "visionary deaths" in which the
victims embrace their ends gladly, even ecstatically are sketched: in the first
story, we have the letters of a dying wife describing the beauty of the bird-
life in the encroaching wilderness; in the second story, the mad jet-fighter
pilot who had wished to be an astronaut kidnaps the last living astronaut
and takes off with him in a light plane "into the sun" - both men are happy,
for in life even the senior astronaut had reached only the moon; the main
protagonist in the second story, a doctor, in whom the advance of the disease
is shown from within his own mind, comes to believe that normal "clock-
time" ("prissy point-to-point consciousness"12) is a mark of a more primitive
state, and that the fugues indicate evolution is entering a new, more sophisti-
cated state of consciousness in which all times are simultaneously present.
206 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
castigate them for unnecessary fears and irrational judgements which may
stand in the way of progress. This demand may itself be a remnant of one of
the" grand narratives" of the Enlightenment. If the public is subjected to the
rhetorical use of these scientific fact-fictions by pundits claiming scientific
status for their diagnoses and nostrums, it can hardly be expected to make
accurate distinctions and informed policy decisions. 17 Much has been made
of the role of the media, and much blame has been heaped on them for mis-
leading the public; but more fundamental in the molding of minds is the
deployment of the scientific fact-fictions that dominate discourse of all
kinds. This urgently needs further analysis.
Notes
1 Jean-Franc;ois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge [1979], trans. Geoff
Bennington and Brian Massumi (Manchester University Press, 1984), p. xxiv.
2 Jean-Franc;ois Lyotard, L'Inhumain: Causeries sur Ie temps (Editions Galile, 1988), The
Inhuman. Reflections on Time, translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Rachel Bowlby
(Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991), p. 62.
3 Ibid., p. 23.
4 Ibid., p. 10.
5 Stephen Hawking, A BrieJHistory of Time (London and New York: Bantam Press, 1988), p. 83.
6 The full paragraph is worth quoting: "Eventually, the sun will die as a white dwarf, but
before that happens it will evolve as a giant star. The Earth will become uninhabitable and
probably will be swallowed up in the vastly extended envelope of the red-giant-stage Sun.
These events will not come to pass for thousands of millions of years." See "Stars and Star
Clusters," Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 28, p. 217.
7 Darko Suvin, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (Yale University Press, 1979), p. 67.
10 J.G. Ballard, 'News from the Sun', in Myths of the Near Future [1982] (London: Vintage,
1994), p. 107.
11 Ibid., p. 97.
12 Ibid., p. 102.
13 Ibid., p. 87.
14 E. S. Shaffer, "The Sphinx and the Muses: the third culture," Editor's introduction to Comparative
Criticism, vol. 13, "Literature and Science" (Cambridge University Press, 1991), xiv-xxvii.
15 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor [1977] (London: Routledge, 1986), p. 267.
16 Ibid., p. 263.
17 Science and the Powers: a Colloquium sponsored by the Swedish Government, Department
of Education and Science, Stockholm, Sweden, March 1994, in the (eds, Lars Gustafsson, Susan
Howard, and Lars Niklasson).
Chapter 22
Comments
Rolf Hughes
Language is not just a system of signs operating according to certain rules. It is also an event, a
coming-into-time and a coming-into-being of something new. This is invisible in the formaliz-
able traits of the language. The words contain no marker for the reality. Their validity arises
through the signature, through the reference to, or imprint of, a real body in the utterance.
Horace Engdahl'
'The dialogue provides a model for the reading of texts, even though we may not find a
dialogue in the text. We can, however, always find something (yet) unsaid, before, in, and after
the text:
Bengt Molander'
The script of Beyond All Certainty was conceived at the outset as a process
rather than a product - an open dialogue which set in motion an extended
and widening collaboration, drawing in The Great Escape Theatre
Company, postgraduate students and faculty from the University of East
Anglia, the University of Cambridge, and the Royal Institute of Technology
in Stockholm. In February 1993, after six weeks of rehearsals, the play was
given its first full dramatic performance4 at the Guildhall in Norwich as the
210 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Some actors get so deep into their research, especially in the context of playing 'real' characters,
that they know too much to imagine and the performance suffers. (my emphasis]
Several months have passed between each run of performances and the
actors have been involved in other projects. Each time the company returns
to their production of Beyond All Certainty, they effectively enact a question
which interested Wittgenstein, namely, what does it mean to follow a rule? A
production is never complete but always evolving, and new additions,
developments or modifications will be made with reference to a shared
memory of previous performances. A model is created anew; it builds on
past experience, but is never simply resurrected in an unchanged form.
The play took on a different identity in each new venue according to the
size of the performance space, lighting, the position (and composition) of
the audience, entrance and exit points, the time available for a technical
rehearsal, amongst other factors. The actors, director, lighting designer and
stage manager had to adapt their roles at short notice. Flexibility - the
capacity to respond to changing circumstances and improvise as necessary
- was called for:
eG. [A] piece of theater is designed to work in certain ways according to the
space around it.
Comments 211
the subject:
I remember how I always trembled when I approached the one I loved; my heart was thump-
ing, my thoughts were confused, my words were mixed up, I made a mess of everything I said,
I answered no when I should have said yes, I made endless clumsy and awkward remarks, I
looked ridiculous from my head to my feet: I knew it and only looked more ridiculous. At the
same time, before my eyes, a cheerful, agreeable, relaxed rival, self-possessed, enjoying what
he was doing, missing no opportunity for flattery, and clever flattery at that, managed to be
amusing and pleasing, and successful; he asked for a hand which was abandoned to him, he
took it sometimes without asking, he kissed it, he kissed it again, and I, away in a comer, turn-
ing my eyes from a sight which angered me, stifling my sighs, clenching my fists so that the
joints of my fingers cracked, overcome with sadness, bathed in cold sweat, could neither show
nor hide my vexation."
Diderot is here illustrating his view that the expressive skills of the man
of sensibility are inferior - or less persuasive than those of the emotionally
detached actor/ and the effectiveness of his 'cheerful, agreeable, relaxed
rival' exemplifies the importance of knowing an appropriate system of com-
munication for a specific situation.
In discussing different ways in which the term 'application' is conceived
by developers, Startin identifies communicability as the concept which links
different aspects of understanding a problem before finding a technical
implementation. The role of communicability is taken up by Richard
Ennals, who reminds us that the typical graduate engineer today manufac-
tures not physical objects, but designs or reports - formulations in language
and symbols that are comprehended and used by the managers who consti-
tute their audience:
This suggests that the engineer must develop expertise in a complex process of knowledge rep-
resentation and mediation, maintaining dialogue with the client or commissioning manager
regarding the transformation of physical objects within the terms of an agreed specification,
and recording objectives and progress in a variety of media. [... ] Engineers are actors in the
world of business, organizations and politics, and need access to insights both from acting and
the social sciences, much of which is best achieved through practice and reflection.
From Peter Bradner, meanwhile, we have the idea that the productivity of
manufacture largely depends on the usability and learnability of the (com-
puter) artefacts used and the skills developed through work. The design
and use of artefacts and their effectiveness are in tum conditioned by how
we view humans and machines. Developing an adequate conception of the
human being therefore forms a necessary basis for the design of usable sys-
tems. A cognitive action or cognition emerges, he argues, if a human devel-
ops appropriate behaviour in a context; all primary experience that humans
gain from their cognitive actions is first of all implicit, internal (or embod-
ied) knowledge private to the acting person ('tacit knowledge'). Intelligence
can thus be defined as a person's ability to actively appropriate parts of the
environment by producing a functional internal representation of his or her
actions through which the environment is restructured at the same time
(,structural coupling'). Consequently, meaning must be realized in the act-
ing itself.
Wittgenstein has taught us that concepts arise from the particular practi-
cal experience of their users, an observation which has implications for
engineers, as Albert Danielsson points out, whose different educational
Comments 215
backgrounds lead them into different jobs, involving different tasks and
areas of responsibility, and thereby equipping them with different practical
experience:
Where there is a lack of experience (including common experience) new ideas cannot be based
on an existing common language; they cannot be articulated, they must be demonstrated. [... ] If
new scientific findings have to be demonstrated to be accepted, good teaching methods for a
training course in this area must be based on demonstrating the content.
They have to present a public face to an audience, working from a script on commission, medi-
ating complex issues for the non-specialist. They are subject to critical scrutiny, and their ongo-
ing employment is contingent on successful performance. Though working from a script, the
intervention of the actor is critical, and each performance constitutes a test of professional skill.
The skilled actor can manipulate his audience as an engineer can modify his system, and
playing an active role in a real-time set of events, dispels views of the adequacy of prepackaged
solutions. The actor has to engage in implicit dialogue with his audience as the engineer does
with his client, often working with rough hewn and inadequate material.
Notes
1 "The Personal Signature", Chapter 27, Artificial Intelligence, Culture and Language: On
Education and Work [Springer-Verlag, 1990), p. 249.
2 Whitemore was himself motivated to write Breaking the Code by reading Stephen Toulmin's
review of Andrew Hodges' biography of Turing in The New York Review of Books
(November 1983)
4 A dramatized reading of the script had been given at the Royal Dramatic Theatre on 16
February 1992.
5 The Paradox of the Actor, trans. Geoffrey Bremner [Penguin Books, London, 1994), p. 130
7 "The great actor observes the phenomena around him; the man of sensibility is his model,
which he reflects upon, and, thanks to this reflection, decides what is best to add or take away."
The Paradox of the Actor, p. 125
8 Denis Diderot, Rameau's Nephew, translated by Leonard Tancock, [Penguin Books, London,
1986), p. 104
Section V:
I. The Essay
ME. I've got to write an essay on Turing.
MYSELF. There's plenty of material there.
ME. It reminds me of Pygmalion.
MYSELF. The sculptor wh.o didn't like the way some of the local women car-
ried on. 39
ME. Put him off. Wouldn't share his couch with any woman.
MYSELF. But he made a statue of a beautiful woman and fell in love with it.
Kissed it and caressed it; was afraid of bruising it.
ME. Deluded.
MYSELF. Not entirely. He asked Venus for a wife just like the statue and
Venus made the statue come to life. They had a child who founded the
city of Paphos.
ME. Quite romantic. But it all gets a bit muddled. There was more than one
Pygmalion and in some accounts their stories get mixed up. His wife is
unnamed in some accounts and is called Galatea in others. Then there
seems to be more than one Galatea.
MYSELF. It's a story. It's a myth. The names of the characters are ... just the
names of characters. They're not the point of the myth. You tell a story
to make some point. The details just provide the fabric. Perhaps it's
really about ... loving your own work.
ME. Exactly. That's what I mean about Turing. There's too much material.
Too many accounts. It's impossible to disentangle it all. What is the
point?
MYSELF. The point of Turing's life?
ME. No, asking the point of someone's life is, well, theological. No, what's
the point of telling stories about Turing?
MYSELF. Turing has become a bit of a legend. He's mentioned with names
like Einstein or Feynman. People bandy his name about and tell stories
about him. It doesn't seem to matter much whether the stories are
invented or not.
ME. Turing got involved in a public debate involving the newspapers about
"wireless valves" thinking. 65 I bet the newspapers didn't get it right.
220 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
MYSELF. The Times made it sound as though the main preoccupation of the
University of Manchester was to find the degree of intellectual activity
that a machine was capable of and whether or not a machine could
think for itself.65
ME. It probably got Turing to be well known. I've seen a sort of spoof story
on the Internet. Turing, he's canonized - in the story.lIl It's a bit irrever-
entyou see.
MYSELF. Irreverent to refer to 5t. Turing?
ME. Well I think it's meant to be irreverent. He buries these gold bars.
MYSELF. I'd expect them to be silver. Or are you making things up/
ME. How d' you know they're silver?
MYSELF. His mum wrote about him burying silver bars during the War.59
ME. Oh. Well, some silver bars are dug up and they're wrapped in an oily
rag that bears the imprint of a machine.
MYSELF. The Turing machine I suppose.
ME. Well it's a hoax isn't it because the Turing machine wasn't built. Was it?
MYSELF. You know there's 'The Turing Option',24 it's science fiction, but on
one of the opening pages there's a quote from Turing without a
detailed reference.
ME. SO it wouldn't be clear to anyone who had not read Turing's work
whether the quote was part of the fiction or not.
MYSELF. In 'Turing's Man'4 there's a description of the Turing test, but it's
not quite the same as in Turing's papers and in the same book it says
that faster transistors are mainly bigger transistors whereas it tends to
be the other way round. 36 • So you don't know what's right and what's
wrong.
ME. On the Internet there's a piece about the Turing tar-pit!
MYSELF. The connectionists sometimes want to talk about a code where
everything happens at the same time. To explain the code they describe
a piano. The note you get by pressing each key conveys something dif-
ferent. 52
ME. Each note conveys something different.
MYSELF. Yes. Now you could playa chord and convey a number of different
things together.
ME. And someone with a musical ear could disentangle it all. So what?
MYSELF. Well they call the piano 'Turing's piano'. They're just using the
name.
ME. And it's only a fiction, an allegory. They want it to sound authoritative
and use his name because of that?
MYSELF. SO it's a bit difficult to know what's true about Turing and what's
not.
ME. Some people think he was a brilliant logician3 or a mathematical
genius. l
MYSELF. On the other hand he lacked interest in administration2l and saw no
need to make concessions to those less well endowed. M
ME. There've been a number plays about Turing and you can expect the
authors to have taken some license with his story.
MYSELF. In 'Beyond All Certainty'22 Turing discusses the name for calculat-
ing machines with Churchill.
ME. You mean he didn't meet Churchill.
Some Enigma Variations 221
MYSELF. Yes he did. He was pretty nervous about it. 21 No. He didn't coin the
word computer.
ME. Oh! Where did it come from?
MYSELF. Well I guess it came from the Latin. It was used by Turing himself
in his famous paper,s6 not to talk about calculating machines, but about
people doing a job. Being a computer was a job. It'd been a job for
years, especially in astronomy. There was even a hierarchy. There were
those that decided on the best mathematical methods and those who
were able by following rules to do all the detailed calculations. Babbage
tried to automate the job of this last lot. 64
ME. And then you get the dialogues and conversations like the one in the
coffeehouse where they say Turing is such a legendary figure~ and the
plays ...
MYSELF. There's "Breaking the Code".h3
ME. The trouble with dialogues and plays is that they often wrestle with an
idea. They present contradictory views.
MYSELF. Perhaps in those sorts of plays that's the point. There is no conclu-
sion, no rationale and writing a dialogue is a way of dealing with it.
ME. Just confusion and conflict.
MYSELF. Alan Hodges wrote about Turing's lively and popular writing,28 but
Newman said Turing was a difficult author to read."1
ME. Newman didn't like Turing then.
MYSELF. I think they got on. Newman was Turing's supervisor at
Cambridge, got him the job at Bletchley and got him the job at
Manchester. He spoke well of him at his trial.
ME. Trial for what?
MYSELF. Being a homosexual.
ME. Was that a crime?
MYSELF. It was at the time. He was given hormone treatment.
ME. To change his sexual preferences. I suppose then they thought it was all
chemical. Funny, people talk about it being caused by genes now. It
seems to change with the science of the time. Why do people want to
find out causes?
MYSELF. SO they can come up with explanations.
ME. To justify doing things. It is strange though that Turing was a kind of
war hero and was a homosexual.
MYSELF. There's nothing odd about that.
ME. No. It's just that you wouldn't expect his story to have been passed on.
Attitudes being what they were. What was the other play?
MYSELF. That was called the "Imitation Game'?
ME. About the rights of homosexuals?
MYSELF. No more about women's rights. The main character is a woman,
Cathy, who is clearly intelligent but she's smothered by the attitudes of
her family, and her work mates and the establishment, in the form of
the army.
ME. What about Turing? I suppose he was rough on her. He used to call the
women he worked with "his slaves".""
MYSELF. Turing, called Turner in the play, is inte,1ligent too but has a job that
you feel Cathy has the potential to do. There is an opportunity for them
to begin an affair, but Turing proves impotent.
222 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
ME. It was just an odd coincidence that Turing and Post had similar sound-
ing ideas. With Turing at Cambridge and Post in New York?
224 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
MYSELF. Yes. It seems that way. Though soon after their papers were pub-
lished, Turing visited Princeton. 27 Turing's paper was more extensive in
its scope than Post's, but you'd find Post's machine easier to under-
stand. It's more like one of today's machines.
ME. In what way?
MYSELF. He proposed a fixed set of unalterable instructions to direct opera-
tions and the order in which they should be performed.
ME. Sounds like an instruction set.
MYSELF. Yes. And there was the row of boxes that Post called a symbol space.
ME. That's the memory. Some computer scientists today might talk about
symbol space.
MYSELF. He had one direction that would trigger different operations
depending on the markings in a box.
ME. A conditional instruction.
MYSELF. I think the instructions were kept separate from the work.
ME. SO Turing's contribution was to propose the Universal machine and
that's important. You can look at Turing's tape as a place to hold an
encoding of the algorithm, some starting values, the result as it builds
up and the rough notes. But Post put a lot of this in a slightly more
familiar form.
MYSELF. Emil Post published a critique of Turing's approach4" and points out
that Turing had particular ways of using the machine which weren't
part of the definition of his machine. With his conventions he'd have
difficulty tackling some problems. He says that Turing's preoccupation
with computable numbers marred the entire development of the
Turing machine:" And he reformulated the machine.
ME. But it seems impossible to pin it all down. Post says Turing's descrip-
tion isn't complete but even Post had to qualify words like 'prints' to
say what is meant is printing on a blank square. You can go on and on
adding more and more detail like this and never get it exactly right.
MYSELF. Yes. Post says Turing's definition of an arbitrary machine is not
completely given in his paper'" and people writing about Turing's
machine choose to take what they might call 'unimportant liberties
with Turing's original specification'.42
ME. I came across a book that describes a box on wheels in a chapter on the
Turing machine. It suggests looking at it as a man in the box who has a
list of instructions. It's more like Post's machine. The instructions
include the stop instruction that was a part of the specification of Post's
machine. The box moves along the tape like a railway wagon. 5
MYSELF. Some people would say "One thing to bear in mind about a Turing
"machine" will be that it is a piece of "abstract mathematics" and not a
physical object."4o
ME. A real machine may not follow our rules.
MYSELF. We might use the movement of actual machines as an analogy but
we don't have to worry about all the detail.
MYSELF. But there's no reason why the physical world should behave like a
Turing machine. 15 If it did we might say that the Universe was com-
putable ...
ME. And the notion of computability would be important to physics as well
as maths.
Some Enigma Variations 225
MYSELF. There are some pretty weird results that say if you use the wave
equation, that's an equation physicists use, you can show that some
things can happen that couldn't be modelled on a Turing machine. 32
ME. But again these are just theoretical ideas. I can't go and buy a Turing
machine. Can I?
MYSELF. No.
III. Computability
MYSELF. Turing says that numbers like 1t, which goes on for ever, is a com-
putable number.50
ME. But I thought, to be computable there had to be an end to it. So num-
bers like 0.5 are computable but the decimal expansion of V3 wasn't
because you keep on writing down threes. You know: nought point
three, three, three, three ... and so on.
MYSELF. Well Turing's machine printed two sorts of symbol on the tape.
ME. OS and Is.
MYSELF. Not quite. One sort of symbol was the Os and Is that stood for bits
of the answer. The other sort of symbol were to make up the rough
notes. You know the sort of thing you jot down while you're working
things out.
ME. SO he invented the binary notation, the Os and Is we use today.
MYSELF. No! Binary numbers have been traced back thousands of years. 47
ME. SO what did he do? What's computability got to do with symbols?
MYSELF. Ah! You wouldn't want your computer to keep on writing down
rough notes. Would you?
ME. That's true.
MYSELF. Computability is about when a machine gets stuck and can't print
any more new Is or Os.
ME. But it could go on for ever printing Os and Is along the tape, then it
would be computable. That doesn't sound very useful.
MYSELF. In Turing's definition, if a computing machine never writes down
more than a finite number of Is and Os then what it writes down is not a
computable sequence.
ME. That's a funny way of putting it. Wouldn't it be better to say if the com-
puting machine writes down more than a finite number of Os and Is
then it is a computable sequence. No. That sounds funny too. Or at least
it doesn't sound very useful.
MYSELF. That depends what you want to use it for.
ME. OK. It doesn't sound a very useful idea for people writing computer
programs. It sounds as though you have to wait forever to find the
result if something is computable. I think people using computers are
more interested in the computer coming up with something in a rea-
sonable time. Which you say is non-computable.
MYSELF. You're thinking about a computer calculating a function.
ME. Yeh! You put an input in and you get an output. Quickly.
MYSELF. Turing would map out the whole function for you.
ME. Give every output for every possible input - but you only want one.
226 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
MYSELF. Turing also wrote that the computer does things in really simple
steps, so simple you couldn't imagine splitting them up.
ME. Like atoms?
MYSELF. And each step, each operation, brings about a physical change in
the computer, the person, and the tape that he writes the results on.
ME. We're into the workings of the brain here. I thought it was about maths.
MYSELF. Turing is really exploring the notion of computability and trying to
show that it's the same as we would expect a person to do if we said
they were computing. He goes on to show it's like working your way
through a mathematical theory.
ME. Like a state machine where you can work out what to do next on the
basis of a rule and the current state of affairs.
MYSELF. He's proposing analogies between the way people do things, work-
ing with a mathematical theory and a state machine. He does this to
justify his machine.
ME. Why? If he had just said I am doing some maths he wouldn't get into
hot water by trying to justify it. By using analogies between people,
mathematical theories and machines he must have got into a lot of
trouble.
MYSELF. Not with his paper on computable numbers.
ME. I don't suppose many people understood it. I don't suppose many peo-
ple understood the title. What was it? "On computable numbers with
an application to the ... " What is it...?
MYSELF. The "Entscheidungsproblem". The trick was recoding everything
until statements in logic became numbers.
ME. You could then have a statement about numbers encoded as a number.
MYSELF. SO you'd get some odd things like a whole statement about a partic-
ular number could be encoded by that number.
ME. The statement and what it's about are the same thing.
MYSELF. That's roughly right.
ME. I bet you get some funny results playing around with things like that.
So Turing did all this?
MYSELF. He was involved, but the coding scheme, the idea of using numbers
to recode things was used earlier by G6del who upstaged the presenta-
tion of Wittgenstein's work at the Conference in K6nigsberg. 37
ME. You said Turing encoded logic statements as numbers and used that in
his proofs. Where do the machines come into it?
MYSELF. He also coded the descriptions of machines using numbers.
ME. A serial number?
MYSELF. Not really. Turing's universal machine could simulate machines.
The number of a machine was treated by the Universal machine as a
description.
ME. A description number? A coded description?
MYSELF. Turing said there is no way we can design a machine that can work
out whether another machine can compute a computable number or
not.
ME. Eh! I am not sure whether that is useful or not. It sounds a bit circular.
Talking about machines seems to make it more complicated.
MYSELF. He argues by showing that you arrive at a contradiction if you
assume you can do it.
228 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
ME. Pretty serious. You're done for if you get a contradiction in a theory.
You might as well give up.
MYSELF. No. That's when things get interesting. That's when you need a new
analogy for your mathematics.
ME. Analogies. Mathematics. Mathematics has got nothing to do with
analogies.
MYSELF. What about the Turing machine?
ME. I suppose you're saying that it's an idealized machine.
MYSELF. Yes. It's really just a set of rules. After all Turing didn't build his
machine. He used his analogy of a machine to help in using the rules.
ME. Using an analogy helps in following the rules.
MYSELF. The rules don't make any sense without an analogy.
ME. But when you get into trouble, when you get a contradiction ...
MYSELF. Then think of another analogy.
ME. The machine analogy helps you to work out how things will develop.
MYSELF. If you've got your own theory of how machines behave. There's
quite a step from seeing a picture of a machine, and Turing doesn't
even provide us with a picture.
ME. Only a word picture.
MYSELF. The machine, or the phrase "Turing machine", doesn't help a lot.
It's a sort of symbol, just as the picture of the machine is a sort of sym-
bol. You have to learn how to use it. It's a symbol for a kind of sequence
or series of pictures. You don't need the machine, a picture is enough.
ME. The machine, the idea of the machine is just a shorthand.
MYSELF. But with it, it brings a particular technique, which Turing uses in
his paper.
ME. The machine is taken to be a symbol, a mathematical symbol, not only a
symbol but a potential series of symbols.
MYSELF. It passes Wittgenstein's test that we can deal with a picture of the
machine and we don't need the machine. l "
ME. With no photographs or plans the Turing machine, we can only deal
with our picture
MYSELF. In Turing's paper it was a picture painted in words, and funny
tables of mathematical symbols.
ME. The picture of a machine is a special kind of picture.
MYSELF. A picture of the machine seems to have the potential for movement
and suggests a development. l "
ME. But this suggestion of movement is based on expectations.
MYSELF. The tape on the machine isn't allowed to stretch.
ME. It might stretch so that only half of each symbol fitted in the machine.
Or the symbols changed shape and were interpreted differently. Or as
in the Colossus the tape could splinter into pieces and then stick togeth-
er.19 What would happen then?
MYSELF. There are unstated rules about how these abstract machines work,
and some of the rules divorce the whole idea from a world where bat-
teries run down, bearings wear out, tapes get creased, stretch and
break.
ME. Turing's discussion is a piece of mathematics.
MYSELF. Barthes says "There is a depth in the Encyclopaedic image, the very
depth of time which transforms the image into myth."2
Some Enigma Variations 229
ME. What!
MYSELF. The image, the description of a machine given by Turing, is turned
into an activity when you think about the machine operating - over
time.
ME. Like Pinocchio coming to life.
MYSELF. But because the machine is idealized the activity can only be mythi-
cal.
ME. It's funny. I'd not thought of doing maths as drawing a succession of
pictures of a myth. I suppose mathematician's call that a proof.
MYSELF. If one mathematician develops the pictures in the same way as
another, it might be called a proof.
ME. It sounds as though doing maths is like making an inoffensive cartoon!
ME. A man who can answer questions however he likes. He can also say - I
mean type - nothing in a game and let the computer answer the ques-
tions instead.
MYSELF. The third person?
ME. That's the one asking the questions and getting the responses. The one
they're trying to convince, the questioner.
MYSELF. What about the people who made the computer? And are you
going to take the questioner's word that he was or wasn't fooled?
Shouldn't there be a jury? And how d'you know whether the computer
or the man answered the questions? The man could lie about that!
ME. So we'd need some witnesses. Wow! That's quite a circus. They'd all
need to work within the rules. The computer just seems to be a small
part of all of this. I mean all the effort would go into writing the pro-
gram. The computer just runs it. It seems to be a test for the program-
mers. If it's a competition, who would be eligible for the prize?
MYSELF. The computer?
ME. No. The computer is just a medium between the programmers and the
interrogator. It's pretty limited.
MYSELF. Compared to what?
ME. Compared with the 'phone for instance. People are quite happy to talk
to the 'phone and listen to it as though it were a person.
MYSELF. Well, they are talking to a person.
ME. See. You're doing it too. People talk and listen to a machine but say
they're talking to a person.
MYSELF. There's someone at the other end.
ME. Just like the programmers and the machine operators for the computer.
The computer is just a medium. Who are the competitors in this game?
MYSELF. I suppose it's the man and the woman.
ME. And the computer and its design team.
MYSELF. You'd have to do a series of trials and see how often the interroga-
tor got it wrong.
ME. What? Mistook the man for the woman?
MYSELF. Yes and compare that with the number of times the computer was
mistaken for the woman.
ME. And how would you win? How would you know how long each trial
should be?
MYSELF. You'd have to have some rules and some way of scoring.
ME. It sounds more like a sport, like a chess tournament. It doesn't sound
like a serious scientific investigation. People would do it just for the
prize money or national prestige.
MYSELF. Well it was only suggested as a game.
ME. I suppose if we always guessed wrong when the computer was
involved ...
MYSELF. Assumed the woman was a man?
ME. Well, it would undermine our confidence. It would mean that comput-
ers could convince us that what people were saying wasn't to be trust-
ed.
MYSELF. The computer as a kind of propaganda machine. What's new about
propaganda machinery?
ME. The computer as a propaganda machine. That's worrying.
Some Enigma Variations 231
MYSELF. It's not so bad. You know, we're dealing with a machine really.
They use teleprinters. You know that. You'd be able to see it and touch
it. That's a machine.
ME. No, I mean the response is generated by a machine.
MYSELF. Well it might be, sort of, but wouldn't people have made the com-
puter the way it is. That's why we call them machines - because people
had a hand in making them. A computer is not just any old lump of
stuff.
ME. By using the computer you're reading the minds of the people that
made it.
MYSELF. O'you think that's what Turing meant by extrasensory perception?58
ME. It gives them a chance to influence you.
MYSELF. A computer is just a thing like a book or a picture and with books
and things people are really keen to say things about the author or the
artist. The text isn't threatening.
ME. Are you sure about that? Remember "Fahrenheit 451"?6
MYSELF. Where they burnt the books?
ME. There's always someone wanting to ban particular books, pictures,
videos and computer games. But with Salman Rushdie it is almost as
though we had forgotten about the book. It's the author that's threat-
ened.
MYSELF. I don't feel threatened by the books around me. Though they I do
admit that they can have an effect even when people haven't read
them.
MYSELF. Suppose I said a brick was an optical computer, designed to blend
in with its environment.
ME. You're joking.
MYSELF. The brick senses when it is light and when it is dark. When it senses
the light it emits light and it works out, computes if you like, the
amount of light to emit so it's in proportion to the light that it senses.
ME. When it's light the brick appears to be light too.
MYSELF. When it detects darkness ...
ME... .it turns off its emitter. It's funny that's almost convincing. It would
make good advertising copy: "The Intelligent Brick".
MYSELF. The brick's cleverer than you think. It senses the weight on top of it
and pushes up and down exactly the right amount to stop it getting
squashed. It takes time to work out the reaction. If you suddenly put a
load on it and use a high speed camera you can see it bouncing up and
down a bit until it gets the calculation right.
ME. You're saying that we can describe things as intelligent if we choose to.
But I think if it is intelligent then it should be able to adapt to the cir-
cumstances.
MYSELF. Isn't that what the brick does? In response to changes it senses in its
environment, it adjusts its emission of light and the forces it exerts
ME. What you're looking for is feedback.
MYSELF. Well, feedback is just a form of explanation. You can choose to
explain a phenomenon, as though there was feedback or not. It's up to
you.
ME. You mean you don't discover feedback. You put it there. And state-
ments about behaviour, feedback and tests for intelligence will never
232 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
v. Learning
MYSELF. But some people consider not language, but the ability to learn as
the sign of intelligence.
ME. It's difficult to know how you learn, yourself.
MYSELF. And you can't see how other people learn. All you can do is see that
somehow they do. They change what they do. How they do things.
ME. If you could build a machine and it learnt, then you could use instru-
ments to see how it does it.
MYSELF. How would you know it was learning?
ME. By the way it reacted to circumstances.
MYSELF. Not by what went on inside the machine?
ME. No. You'd have to say that it did something new, did something differ-
ently.
MYSELF. Sometimes when people do things differently you say they've made
a mistake.
ME. If you're intelligent you have to explore and when you explore you
sometimes go wrong.
MYSELF. SO if a machine is infallible, it can't be intelligent as well. 55
ME. Making mistakes is a sort of consequence of looking for entirely new
ways of doing thingS. 54
MYSELF. On the other hand, a machine can be relied on, if it doesn't 'break-
down', whereas people like mathematicians make a certain proportion
of mistakes. 54
ME. Why is a breakdown not making a mistake?
MYSELF. Because with a mistake you expect it to be corrected automatically.
ME. You'd wait and see.
MYSELF. And a breakdown wouldn't get corrected.
ME. If you learnt you would expect a change but you wouldn't expect that
to be corrected.
MYSELF. A change in behaviour has to be somehow made legitimate if you
say it's to do with learning. It has to be approved.
ME. We take some changes in behaviour as evidence of learning but some
changes in behaviour will be seen by us as being errors.
MYSELF. And some as a breakdown, a failure.
ME. If the machine changes its behaviour and we find the new behaviour
useful then we might say it has learnt something?
MYSELF. You'd begin to talk about it in a different way.
ME. We'd treat it differently.
Some Enigma Variations 233
MYSELF. Whether it learns or not depends on what you say about it.
ME. Wear and tear can change what a machine does. Exposure to people
and things, experience leads to wear and tear.
MYSELF. If it becomes unusable then you say it's broken. There is a fault. It's
failed.
ME. Yet the machine might be worn but usable. Changed but usable.
MYSELF. Then the change is insignificant.
ME. A machine might be one of a series that were made. Each one is treated
differently by its users. Some machines will begin to behave differently
from the others.
MYSELF. They'll be different right from the beginning and different from the
designer's predictions which are never entirely accurate anyway.
ME. This could happen to any machine.
MYSELF. But the differences are insignificant. Until it wears out and fails.
ME. It may wear out, change its behaviour, but still be usable although we
may have to bang the box first, then it hasn't failed but we'd say it was
temperamental.
MYSELF. As though the machine had a personality.
ME. Personality changes are often tolerable. If they became intolerable then
we'd say there'd been a breakdown.
MYSELF. How subtle does the change have to be to prevent us calling it a
breakdown?
ME. If it is terribly complicated, which is another way of saying you don't
quite understand it all, then you don't know what to expect.
MYSELF. With some machines, like computers and calculators, if you knew
what to expect you wouldn't need the machine.
ME. You're right! That's why you use the machine, because you don't know
what the answer is.
MYSELF. You won't be able to say that what the machine does is right ... or
wrong. Whether it's working ... made a mistake or ... learnt.
ME. It's only useful because you can't or don't want to work things out
yourself.
MYSELF. If the machine is doing something terribly complicated how d'you
know if it's made a mistake?
ME. You'll know. Suppose a machine worked out the interest on your loan
from the bank and the answer was a huge sum or even that the bank
owed you money. You'd know it was wrong. Of course if it didn't go
wildly wrong you might not notice.
MYSELF. You could say that some errors were insignificant.
ME. A mathematician mightn't be happy with that. If it was terribly compli-
cated you'd just have to trust the machine.
MYSELF. How can you trust a machine! Doesn't trust mean being sure that
someone will do the right thing although they have the freedom to do
all sorts of things.
ME. Does a machine have freedom?
MYSELF. In a way. Machines don't always behave the way we expect, that's
why we say they go wrong.
ME. People say machines go wrong, certainly, but I've not heard anyone say
a machine was intelligent when it did something unexpected.
MYSELF. Well, Turing did in a way. He said he was often surprised by com-
234 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
puters. You get a bit lazy and make assumptions rather than working
things out in detail. Your expectations are built on these assumptions.
When the machine works things out it may well get a different result to
the ones you expected because your assumptions weren't valid. 5R
ME. Or maybe you don't know how to work things out. Some expert had
made the machine and you'd trusted the expert.
MYSELF. And the machine. You shouldn't be surprised. You just don't
understand what it's doing. You don't really understand how to use it. l "
ME. Unless it really has gone wrong.
MYSELF. You'd have to get the expert's opinion on that.
ME. You mean if you don't understand ...
MYSELF. You guess, and sometimes your guess is wrong.
ME. To say the machine had learnt we'd have to see some changes in behav-
iour and we'd have to see the new behaviour as useful.
MYSELF. It might not be useful to us.
ME. No we'd have to have a explanation. A sort of story that made it sound
useful to someone.
MYSELF. Or useful to the machine. A story where it was useful to the
machine. A story that gave the machine a purpose.
ME. Describing machines as being intelligent is just another way of describ-
ing a machine. The machine is just a lump of stuff doing whatever
machines do.
MYSELF. Well, maybe even that is a kind of story. Other stories about
machines might make them appear purposeful. New ways of describ-
ing machines can make you believe that the nature of the machines has
changed.
ME. If we believed the stories about machines being purposeful, we'd say
the new behaviour was a sign of learning.
MYSELF. Not a single change in behaviour, but continuing change. Not tran-
sient.
ME. No. A transient change might be a transient fault or a mistaken attempt
to learn that gets corrected.
MYSELF. Or some part of behaviour that we'd not seen before.
ME. A gap in our understanding.
MYSELF. Changes in behaviour have to be consistent if we're to say it's to do
with learning.
ME. But what's consistency? Changes in behaviour can be quite subtle. Not
repeated in exactly the same way. Is it just a lack of contradiction?
MYSELF. If it's inconsistent you might say it doesn't make sense. It's para-
doxical.
ME. It isn't useful any longer.
MYSELF. Like an inconsistency in a mathematical theory where a 'formula is
neither provable nor disprovable'.
ME. A Turing machine trying to prove it would ... continue to work indefi-
nitely without producing any result at all. 54
MYSELF. Much like mathematicians seemed to be doing when they were
working on Fermat's last theorem. 54
ME. I can imagine a Turing machine working with that old paradox, a con-
tradiction, continually discovering 'I am lying' 'Therefore I am not
lying' 'Therefore I am lying' ... Going backwards and forwards. If a
Some Enigma Variations 235
VI. Logic
MYSELF. To explain things we often analyze them. Split them up into parts.
ME. Then you can have theories about the relationships between the parts.
MYSELF. People do this with machines and people.
ME. To explain how they learn.
MYSELF. Or to explain what seems to the mystical by showing that the pure-
ly spiritual is a sort of disturbance of equilibrium in an infinite series of
levers.7
ME. But not the emotions.
MYSELF. The question, at least, has been asked: whether there's a molecular
action of thought, from which a dynamical theory of passions could be
deduced. 7
ME. If we separate things it helps us to find the source of the fault, when
things go wrong.
MYSELF. Of course as people we go about apportioning blame: the machine
had a fault, it was poor design, the programmer made an error, it can-
Some Enigma Variations 237
MYSELF. And Barthes wrote about pictures of machines saying that "the
image has a logical function as well". 2
ME. Looking at it you see logic.
MYSELF. He also wrote that "substance is nothing ... but the progress of rea-
son".2
ME. It sounds as though the hardware is really software. Or all the logic is
in the hardware.
MYSELF. Perhaps they're different ways of looking at the same thing.
ME. How is the software different from writing on paper?
MYSELF. That's all hardware.
ME. And the software is the sense you make of the stored patterns. Just as
the logic is the sense you make out of the writing. The structures you
see in the writing.
MYSELF. You mean software is your view of some hardware?
ME. Not any hardware.
MYSELF. Which bit? You said that when you looked in the box there was
hardware and software.
ME. Yes.
MYSELF. And when you look at the hardware with software written on it...
ME. Not literally written on it...
MYSELF. Written in it? No. If you look at something that you call hardware,
with no software in it, well, does it make any sense? Don't you see pat-
terns in the hardware?
ME. Yes. Perhaps, as a student of these things, I see more than other people.
MYSELF. What you see depends on you and your experience?
ME. Yes. And what other people have taught me.
MYSELF. SO how do I tell the hardware from software?
ME. It's more to do with the way the computer is built. The hardware is
fixed. Once it's designed it doesn't change. Whereas the software you
can alter.
MYSELF. You're not telling me that some designer designs the hardware, a
factory makes it, then we all say "No need to make any changes"?
Don't you get new sorts of computer? Don't people make mistakes in
the design of computers?
ME. No. It's more that making what I call hardware takes more time and
effort than making software.
MYSELF. The designers and makers spend less time making the software
than they do making the hardware?
ME. Less equipment, less investment in making the software. Design is
another matter.
MYSELF. SO the difference between hardware and software is in the way it's
made and the investment in its manufacture?
ME. That's close, but now I start looking into it. It isn't all that clear cut. But
there is one big difference.
MYSELF. What's that?
ME. Software. The software design is written in computer languages, but in
hardware they use diagrams, circuit diagrams and block diagrams.
MYSELF. They don't use diagrams in designing software?
ME. They do, but they're a different style and they seem to have different
concerns.
Some Enigma Variations 239
ME. So you could say that mathematicians communicate, by each one hav-
ing a direct route to the truth. 45
MYSELF. With access to Plato's world directly, they could communicate with
each other better than you would've expected.4-~
ME. That sounds like Turing's suspicions about extra-sensory perception.58
MYSELF. I suppose you could make some kind of sense out of it without the
need for ESP by saying that people have things in common.
ME. It's their humanity that makes them think of similar things.
MYSELF. Some said "Mathematics is buried deep in the mind, far from any-
thing human".23
ME. It's nothing to do with humanity?
MYSELF. It might be their upbringing. After all we're talking about a special
community with quite a common background. They've read the same
books, been to the same lectures.
ME. They jolly well ought to be able to communicate well. I'd be more sur-
prised if they'd got nothing to talk about.
VII. Failure
MYSELF. When things go wrong...
ME. There's the algorithm and the way in which you interpret it. The algo-
rithm could be OK but the maths you're using could be defective.
MYSELF. In what way could the maths be defective?
ME. You could set up the axioms so that there was a contradiction.
MYSELF. You use the maths to model some situation. It either fits the situa-
tion sufficiently well or it doesn't.
ME. If you built a bridge and it fell down, that could be the result of a defect
in your maths. The strength and structure of some bridges depend on
mathematics. 35
MYSELF. Well, that's a bit complicated because there are lots of things that
could have gone wrong. It could be the materials, the way it was put
together, a slip in the calculations, a mistake in a computer program, a
failure in the theory of bridges, freak weather conditions, poor survey-
ing, too big a load, anything.
ME. It could be there's a contradiction in the maths.
MYSELF. That is only a problem if the contradiction arises in your calcula-
tions and you can't think of an interpretation of the contradiction. But if
you don't have an interpretation it's more a problem for physics.
ME. You are using the maths to help you make predictions. If you have
some results that you can't interpret...
MYSELF. They're not much help for predicting. But not wrong.
ME. I suppose the maths could be OK but the algorithm might not be.
MYSELF. Does that make it wrong? It could still be an algorithm even if there
was a slip in it.
ME. It might not be for the calculation you wanted done.
MYSELF. SO it's not wrong but it isn't what you wanted.
ME. What happens if the program doesn't correspond to the algorithm?
MYSELF. The program's what's in the computer's memory and the
242 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
algorithm... It gets tricky because the abstract machine and the algo-
rithm aren't there. Or at least not in this world. They might be in some
mathematical heaven.
ME. You could say that the algorithm is what is written down, before you
transfer it to the computer's memory.
MYSELF. All you've got are marks on paper and they might change when
you look away.
ME. You could say that the algorithm is what is written and, yes you know
it's physical, but it doesn't go wrong as computer hardware goes
wrong. It's a different kind of physical thing and I'd trust paper not to
go wrong.
MYSELF. Well, that's your experience. Let me agree that paper is pretty reli-
able. Or if it goes wrong, you'd notice. Let's say paper is absolutely reli-
able. You work through an algorithm on paper and show it's what you
wanted. Then what?
ME. Because you've done it on absolutely reliable paper. Then you know it
can't go wrong in the machine.
MYSELF. SO you're saying that if you don't get what you expect from a com-
puter, it must be the machine that goes wrong because you know the
algorithm is right. But the algorithm is not in the machine.
ME. Yes it is. It's in the computer's memory.
MYSELF. You said it was written on paper.
ME. It's been copied and what is in the memory corresponds to what is
written on paper. There is a correspondence between what is in the
computer memory and the symbols on the paper. '6
MYSELF. Are you saying the copying, storing in the computer's memory and
comparing are absolutely reliable? They had a lot of trouble with the
early computer memories. They kept on losing pulses in the mercury
delay lines?' Do you remember when they had all that trouble with
alpha particles?
ME. Alpha particles?
MYSELF. The plastic they put around memory chips was slightly radioactive
and as the technology of memories improved, the memory cells got
smaller. People noticed that there seemed to be spurious changes in
what was in the memory.
ME. Someone realized that alpha particles would have quite an impact on
the small memory cells and would change the data in the memories.
MYSELF. They've cured it now.
ME. Are you sure?
MYSELF. I guess I don't have the information, and that's the point. You don't
know whether what is in the computer memory is what you think is
there so what is there cannot be the algorithm because you say the algo-
rithm has been proven to be right and there's no uncertainty in that.
ME. If what is in the memory doesn't correspond to the algorithm, you
would say the memory had gone wrong.
MYSELF. You wouldn't say, if the memory changed or if the comparison sud-
denly didn't work, that one algorithm has moved out and another one
has moved in.
ME. I suppose you might not notice any change.
MYSELF. With a program you can never be sure if it will do what you expect
Some Enigma Variations 243
because in the end a program is part of a physical system and you can't
prove anything about it, absolutely.
ME. If you want to say anything then you need to do tests and make predic-
tions but even that may turn out to be wrong. What do they say?
"Inconclusive relative verifications."IH
MYSELF. If we built a machine based on Turing's outline and the tape
stretched and the results given by the machine deviated from those
predicted we would be inclined to say the design of the machine was
faulty.
ME. Or the machine had failed.
MYSELF. If the machine always produced the wrong result and the tape
always stretched then it would be called a design failure.
ME. What has gone wrong?
MYSELF. You could say tape stretching was part of the design and you just
misunderstood what the machine was supposed to be calculating.
ME. Either the designer used the wrong physical law or you misunderstood
what the machine was for.
MYSELF. If it made mistakes a machine would give itself away by making the
same mistake over and over again, and being quite unable to correct
itself, or to be corrected by argument from outside.54
ME. With a systemic error, you would be inclined to say it was a design
fault, or the permanent failure of a component. Anyway, how can a
machine judge what is a mistake and what is an innovation?
ME. How subtle does the difference have to be to call it a different personal-
ity rather than a fault?
MYSELF. Extremely subtle, especially in something as complicated as a com-
puter. Diderot said that in a stocking making machine "there reigns
among its parts so great a dependence" .17
ME. He's saying that what one part of the machine does depends on the oth-
er parts.
MYSELF. ' ... that were we to remove even a single one, or to alter the form of
those regarded as least important, we should destroy the whole mecha-
nism'.
ME. Same as a computer program any change to any part can wreck what
the computer does.
MYSELF. The machine just follows the rule embodied in the program.
ME. Unless the machine goes wrong!
MYSELF. Of course, machines do go wrong, that is they fail to meet our
expectations.
ME. From time the machine fails to follow the rule.
MYSELF. If we were doing mathematics how would we detect it?
ME. We'd compare it with other results derived in the same way and if they
were different from the one we'd got, we'd say a mistake has been
made. The mistake may be because someone had made a slip, a clerical
error in which case they might repeat the calculation and get a different
result. If the new result agreed with the earlier results - we're back on
course.
MYSELF. Of course, in looking into things we. may find that people, or
machines, have been following the rule in different ways and up to
now, in spite of this they had got the same results. We would then have
244 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
ME. Then we try to find explanations and our explanation depends on what
structures we see in the computer.
MYSELF. How we carve it up into things like hardware and software.
VIII. Mind
ME. You know Turing wrote that it's been shown that there are machines
theoretically possible which will do something very close to thinking.
MYSELF. Turing reckoned that machines can be constructed which will simu-
late the behaviour of the human mind very closely.54
ME. On the other hand he wrote that with a digital computer we can't rely
on common sense.55
MYSELF. The machine interprets whatever it is told in a quite definite man-
ner without any sense of humour or sense of proportion.55
ME. But perhaps Turing had a narrow view of what is meant by thinking...
MYSELF. One of his examples was that computers will for instance, test the
validity of a formal proof in the system of Principia Mathematica, or
even tell whether a formula of that system is provable or disprovable. 54
ME. He's referring to his paper on the Turing machine there. As a mathe-
matician he would see proving theorems and things as thinking hard.
He might not have thought that doing everyday things was to do with
real thinking.
MYSELF. When he said that the ACE can be made to do any job that could be
done by a human computer,55 he must've been talking about doing cal-
culations, or playing games like chess.
ME. I'm sure people think of the machine as though it were a mind, not that
it is a mind. It pays them to think of it as a mind because that seems to
help them predict what it's going to do.
MYSELF. Or at least to explain what machines do sometimes.
ME. But they're probably interested in the apparently irrational things that
machines do. Their common sense or their sense of humour.
MYSELF. Whereas Turing's use of the analogy was more to do with the ratio-
nal and the logical.
ME. What gets you worked up is when you tum the analogy around, so that
if you say computers are like minds, computers can be programmed.
MYSELF. And you jump to the conclusion that people can be programmed.
ME. You know, I don't think people get so worked up about it these days.
MYSELF. As Higgins said "It was interesting at first, while we were on the
phonetics; but after that I got deadly sick of it ... the whole thing has
become a bore".53
ME. Who was Higgins?
MYSELF. You know. The character in Bernard Shaw's play - Pygmalion.
246 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
References
1 Arthur C (1994) Checkmate by Silicon Chip. Financial Times, Friday, May 6, p. 16
2 Barthes R (1980) The Plates of the Encyclopaedia. In: New Critical Essays. Translated by
Richard Howard, Hill and Wang, New York. Reprinted in: Sontag S (ed) (1993) A Roland
Barthes Reader. Vintage, London
4 Ibid. p. 12
5 Boolos GS and Jeffrey RC (1989 edition), Computability and Logic. Cambridge University
Press, pp. 20-22
8 Ibid. p. 201
9 Ibid. p. 205
10 Boyd C (1990) The Turing Shroud - Amazing Archaeological Discovery! Chris Boyd,
Edinburgh.ac.uk
11 Church A (1965) Editorial footnote to [48] Reproduced in: Davis M (ed) Undecidable. Raven
Press, New York, p. 289
12 Campbell-Kelly M (1984) Review of Alan Turing: The Enigma. Simon and Schuster, New
York, 1983 In: Annals of the History of Computing, 6(2):176-178
14 Ibid. p. 67
15 Deutsch D (1985) Quantum Theory, the Church-Turing Principle and the Universal
Quantum Computer. Proceedings of the Royal Society, London, A(400): 97-117
17 Diderot D and Ie Rond D'Alembert J (1865) Encyclopedie. Quoted in: Barthes R The Plates
of the Encyclopaedia. In: New critical essays. Translated by Richard Howard, Hill and Wang,
New York, 1980. Reprinted In: Sontag S (ed) (1993) A Roland Barthes Reader. Vintage, London
18 Fetzer JH (1988) Program Verification: The Very Idea. Communications of the ACM,
31(9):pp.l043-1063
19 Flowers TH (1983) Colossus Design. Annals of the History of Computing, 5(3): 239-252
20 Godel K (1972) Some Remarks on the Undecidability Results. In: Feferman S (ed) (1990)
Collected Works Vol n. OUP, Oxford p.306
21 Good IJ (1979) Early Work on Computers at Bletchley. Annals of the History of Computing,
1(1): 38-48
22 Goranzon Band Karlqvist A (1994) Beyond All Certainty. In: Skill, Technology and
Enlightenment. CookJ and Goranzon B (eds), Springer, London
Some Enigma Variations 247
23 Hall AG (1993) What is Engineering? Putting Engineering on the Map. International Journal
of Engineering Education, 30(2): 99-109
25 Ibid. p. 94
26 Ibid. pp.221-222
27 Hodges A (1983) The Enigma of Intelligence. Unwin, London, 1985, first printing 1983
29 Hofstadter DR (1981) The Turing Test: A Coffeehouse Conversation. In: Hofstadter DR and
Dennett DC (eds) The Mind's I. Harvester Press, Brighton, UK, pp.69-92
30 Huskey HD (1981) From ACE to the G-15 Annals of the History of Computing 3(2): 130-168
32 Kreisel G Review of [50] and [51]. Journal of Symbolic LogiC, 47(4): 900-902
34 McEwan I (1981) The Imitation Game: three plays for television. Cape, London pp.95-175
see also pp.16-20
36 Mavor J, Jack MA and Denyer PB (1983) MOS LSI Design. Addison Wesley, London, p. 83
37 Monk R (1991) Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. Vintage, London, p. 295
38 Norberg AL (1990) Punched Card Machinery. In: Business and Government. Technology
and Culture 31(4): 753-779
40 Penrose R (1989) The Emperor's New Mind. Oxford University Press, p34
41 Ibid. p. 36
42 Ibid. p. 37
43 Ibid. p. 70
44 Ibid. p. 97
45 Ibid. p. 428
47 Phillips EW (1936) Binary Calculation. Journal of the Institute of Actuaries, 67: 187-221.
Reproduced in: Randell B (ed) (1973) The Origins of Digital Computers. Springer
103-105. Reprinted in: Davis M (ed) Undecidable. Raven Press, New York, 1965, pp.289-291
49 Post EL (1947) Recursive Unsolvability of a Problem of Thue. Journal of Symbolic Logic, 12:
1-11. Reprinted in: Davis M (ed) Undecidable. Raven Press, New York, 1965, pp.293-337
51 Pour-El MB and Richards I (1981) The Wave Equation with Computable Initial Data such
that its Unique Solution is not Computable. Advances In: Mathematics 39: 215-239
52 Haugeland J (1991) Representational Genrea. In: Ramsey W, Stich SP and Rumelhart (eds)
Philosophy and Connectionist Theory. Lawrence Erlbaum, NJ, p. 67
53 Shaw GB (1913) Pygmalion. In: The Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw. Hamlyn, London,
1965 p.739
54 Turing AM (1947) Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory. In: Turing S (1959) Alan M.
Turing. Heffer, Cambridge, pp.128-134
55 Turing AM (1947) Lecture to the London Mathematical Society on 20th February 1947. In:
A.M. Turing's ACE report of 1946 and other papers. Carpenter BE and Doran RW MIT Press,
Cambridge, Mass., 1986, pp.l06-124
60 Ibid. p. 70
61 Ibid. p. 74
65 Wilkes MV (1985) Memoirs of a Computer Pioneer. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., p196
66 Wilkes MV (1967) Computers Then and Now. 1967 lecture. In: ACM Turing Award
Lectures. Addison Wesley, 1987
Chapter 24
Throughout almost all the long history of engineering endeavour, there has
been a struggle between two lines with strictly incompatible basic assump-
tions on the nature of humans and the function of technology, on the way of
seeing the world, and on the human's being in the world.
One position, which I refer to as the "closed world" paradigm, suggests
that all real-world phenomena, the properties and relations of its objects,
can ultimately, and at least in principle, be transformed by human cognition
into objectified, explicitly stated, propositional knowledge. Human cogni-
tion and this kind of knowledge would then represent the real-world phe-
nomena so completely that they could be modelled, explained and
simulated in all its aspects, and, consequently, could be reproduced by
smart machines.
The counterposition, which I call the "open development" paradigm,
does not deny the fundamental human ability to form explicit, conceptual,
and propositional knowledge, but it contests the completeness of this
knowledge. In contrast, it assumes the primary existence of practical experi-
ence, a body of tacit knowledge grown with a person's acting in the world.
This can be transformed into explicit theoretical knowledge under specific
circumstances and to a principally limited extent only ("experts know more
than they can put into words", Schon 1983). Human interaction with the
environment, thus, unfolds a dialectic of form and process through which
practical experience is partly formalized and objectified as language, tools
or machines (i.e. form) the use of which, in tum, produces new experience
(i.e. process) as basis for further objectification.
In history, both positions and in particular both kinds of knowledge
(which Ryle also refers to as "knowing that" and "knowing how", Ryle
1987) experienced changing relevance and dominance. Both paradigms
have brought about whole cultures with traditions, institutions, and
philosophies. In the age of enlightenment, the. "closed world" paradigm
has, interwoven with the rise of science and technology, clearly become the
predominant way of seeing the world (at least in the Western hemisphere).
250 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Yet it has, in connection with huge productivity problems and the undeni-
able failures of "artificial intelligence" attempts, run into a crisis in recent
years. This crisis calls for an enlightening of enlightenment.
Sometimes, these two paradigms even show up in the works of the same
persons. The young Wittgenstein, for instance, most incisively formulated
the credo of the closed world: "The totality of all true thoughts is an image
of the world" (TL 3.01). Much of the writing in his later life can be interpret-
ed, however, as an attempt to defeat this position by stating e.g.: "Practice
gives the words their meaning", BuF 317). Two more examples may aug-
ment this aspect: Terry Winograd, who once created one of the most
advanced computer programs to interpret natural language (being con-
strained to a closed microworld, though, Winograd 1973), later came up
with the book "Understanding Computers and Cognition" (Winograd and
Flores 1986) where he developed a fundamental critique of AI. Or take R.
Ackoff, one of the leading figures of operation research, who summarized
his experience: "The future of OR is past", since "managers are not con-
fronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynam-
ic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that
interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are abstrac-
tions extracted from messes by analysis .... Managers do not solve problems,
they manage messes" (Ackoff 1979).
This paper reflects in some more detail on the two paradigms outlined,
with specific focus on production engineering. What appears to be a rather
philosophical struggle turns out to be of highest practical relevance. The
productivity of manufacture to a large extent depends on the usability and
leamability of the (computer) artifacts used and the skills developed
through work. The design and use of artifacts and their effectiveness, in
tum, relate back to the basic question of how humans and machines are
viewed. Developing an adequate model of humans, therefore, forms a nec-
essary basis for the design of usable systems. This general conclusion is
finally exemplified by two software prototypes being developed at the
Institute of Work and Technology to demonstrate the value of artifacts
being designed as tools.
utility theory shortly after World War II, with the development of computer
systems and cognitive science, it became a common and taken-for-granted
belief to see the real-world as a "system" that was considered as being con-
trollable, analyzable, comprehensible, and formally describable. The struc-
ture and dynamics of this "system" were assumed to be subject to complete
formal modelling. Completely formalized mathematical descriptions, or at
least other explicit propositional knowledge, would thus allow for entirely
rational acting, i.e. to achieve chosen objectives under given frame condi-
tions in the best possible way. Moreover, this would allow to imitate human
abilities and replace skills by machine artifacts.
In light of this assumption, it does seem consequent to view the human
mind as a symbol processing machine. This machine is assumed as being a
model to explain human intelligence, or at least to produce intelligent
behaviour. Thus, the computer metaphor became the battle cry of the pro-
pagandists of "artificial intelligence" who now see the old dream that
humans, who making mistakes and are unreliable, can be replaced by supe-
rior machine systems, fulfilled: "German craftsmanship and the well-
known quality work of German skilled workers will no longer be needed in
the future. They will be replaced by flexible systems and intelligent control"
(Grossman, quoted in Landesreport 1987). "A new production structure is
emerging that, ... as an artificial organism with programmed and stored
intelligence, is capable Qf producing goods automatically .... At this higher
stage of development, the factory will need machine intelligence" (Spur
1984, V). It is no wonder that, as a consequence of the "closed world" para-
digm's basic assumptions and beliefs, the social and cognitive distance
between engineers educated in this tradition and skilled workers has grown
considerably and become an almost unbridgeable gap.
There is no doubt that the relative success with which the development of
industrial production has been driven forward by formalizing and automat-
ing human work seems to justify its huge efforts as well as its triumphant
claims and expectations. As long as working processes can be described for-
mally and can be modelled (which is undoubtedly possible under specific
circumstances and in parts), in particular as long as requirements for flexi-
bility of processes and for complexity of products have been rather limited,
the "closed world" paradigm and technology-centred production strategy
found favorable conditions for development. Today, however, the profound
changes in circumstances and market requirements that have taken place
make its drawbacks clearly visible. Ironically, the principal weaknesses
become all the more significant as more far-reaching attempts are undertak-
en to automate more complex production processes in a dynamic environ-
ment.
These difficulties start already, with the fact that when analyzing logical
propositions, symbol-manipulating machines as formal systems do not rec-
ognize the context, and they cannot discriminate between different logical
types such as propositions and propositions about propositions. Therefore,
they get easily caught in antinomies. Moreover, the meaning of a proposi-
tion can normally only be drawn from the context, which, of course, must be
stated explicitly to be analyzable through formal symbol manipulation. This
explication of the context requires that its meaning be decoded which, in
tum, makes it necessary to explicitly represent the context's context and so
252 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Transformation Implementation
Practice Evaluation
basis for further technological developments. Thus, on the one hand one
could design technology within certain limits, because it is the result of
social relations, while on the other hand one must design technology
according to social criteria, because it makes demands on human agents. In
a given situation, the possible scope of design results from the social bal-
ances of power and the limits of objectifying knowledge.
The design process itself requires that the designer anticipates the expect-
ed demands on the human agent while he implements the functions of the
technical system according to the design objectives. For these reasons, the
development of technical systems must not be taken as a pure technical
problem, but must be comprehended as a social relationship within which
the system designers set the conditions under which the users have to act.
Design is an effort to adapt form and social context, to bridge the gap
between the technically feasible (what can be made) and the socially desir-
able (what is useful). Therefore, and due to the fact that there exists only
limited theoretical knowledge, the design process should be organized in a
way that iteratively produces improved versions of the system and that
users can participate in, and jointly reflect on the artifact's use. Furthermore,
system design has to be considered as being part of work design (Ehn 1988,
Adler and Winograd 1992, Brodner 1994). Engineers who comprehend tech-
nology alone do not know much about engineering.
In order to combine the opposing attributes of humans and machines pro-
ductively, some design principles have to be regarded that follow from
these basic considerations on human acting. In the working situation a wide
scope of action has to be allowed with respect to matters and time leaving
initiative, evaluation, and decision making up to humans. Planning as well
as executing tasks must be reintegrated. Furthermore, the working situation
must allow for individual shaping of working conditions, provide sufficient
and varied bodily activities (particularly calling for the use of sensory
capacities), and encourage cooperation and direct interpersonal contacts
(Volpert 1988). For the computer to be used as a tool in this situation, its
256 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Experimental interaction
• UNDO. This allows a completed interaction to be undone in a single
step. This should be possible no matter when in the past it was carried
out in the past, as long as it has been determined in advance by the
user.
• Freezing points. These are frozen states, defined by the user. They pro-
vide a safe and direct return to a controlled and familiar situation. This
feature allows the user to jump (back) across many interaction steps.
• Play Data. These data are objects of the application program. They are
The Two Cultures in Engineering 257
Exploring iteration
• Views. These are hierarchical, map- or net-like representations of the
system's functional structure.
• Interaction graph. This is a visualization of the history of interaction,
using the application program metaphor. This kind of history is not sta-
tic but interactively editable via its visualization.
• Filters. These reduce the interaction graph according to criteria given
by the user, e.g. by skipping steps which did not change any data of
interest.
• Neutral Mode. This means a "conjunctive mode" which switches off all
effects of applications functions. Instead of the triggering of functions
the user finds a short description of what the application function in
regular mode would have produced.
• Scenario Machines. These reduce the spectrum of interaction to a one-
best-way of a pre-determined typical task and guide the user by simu-
lated data all along the solution.
The aim of the FABER project is to develop a tool supporting the designer in
the early phases of mechanical engineering design. The prototype facilitates
and enhances the efficient interactive use of appropriate calculation proce-
dures and other objectified engineering knowledge by design engineers
without replacing their competence. Thus computer support is provided for
both solving numerical tasks (e.g. strength calculation) and in making deci-
sions using engineering design rules (e.g. the selection of a certain material).
Procedural (algorithmic) methods are used for numerical tasks and knowl-
edge-based (logical) methods are used for the processing of design rules to
help the design engineer in decision making. Knowledge based techniques
258 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Client's specifications
No Yes
Estimation
Rule processing
Calculation
Interactive evaluation
References
Ackoff, R, 1979: The Future of Operational Research is Past, Journal of Operational Research
Society 30, No.2, 93-104
Adler, P.S.; Winograd, T.A. (Eds.), 1992: Usability: Turning Technologies into Tools, New York:
Oxford University Press
Bateson, G., 1980: Mind and Nature. A Necessary Unity, Toronto: Bantam Books
Brodner, P., 1994: Design of Work and Technology, in: Karwowski, W.; Salvendy, G. (eds.):
Human Factors in Advanced Manufacturing, New York: Wiley (in print)
Brooner, P.; Hamburg, I.; Paul, H., 1993: Work-oriented Design of Computer Systems for
Engineering Tasks, in: Milller, W.; Senghaas-Knobloch, E. (eds.): Arbeitsgerechte
Softwaregestaltung, MUnster: LIT; p. 107-138.
Coy, W. und Bonsiepen, L., 1990: Erfahrung und Berechnung, Berlin Heidelberg New York:
Springer
Ehn, P., 1988: Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts, Stockholm: The Institute for
Worklife Research
Hofstadter, D.R., 1979: Godel, Escher, Bach. An Eternal Golden Braid, New York: Vintage
Books
Landesreport Baden-Wilrttemberg Nr. 15,1987: CIM in den USA. Evolution mit dem Ziel einer
"arbeiterlosen Fabrik", Stuttgart
Maturana, H.R und Varela, F.J., 1987: Der Baum der Erkenntnis. Die biologischen Wurzeln des
Erkennens, Bern: Scherz
Parnas, D.L., 1985: Software Aspects of Strategic Defense Systems, Comm. ACM 28, 1326-1335
Schon, D.A., 1983: The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, New York:
Basic Books
Spur, G., 1984: Uber intelligente Maschinen und die Zukunft der Fabrik, Forschung -
Mitteilungen der DFG, Nr. 3: I-VIII
Volpert, W., 1984: Maschinen-Handlungen und Handlungs-Modelle - ein Pladoyer gegen die
Normierung des Handelns, Gestalt Theory 6: 70-100
Volpert, W., 1988: What Working and Learning Conditions Are Conducive to Human
Development? IfHA-Berichte No 21, TU Berlin
Winograd, T., 1973: A Procedural Model of Language Understanding, in: Shank, R and Colby,
K. (eds.): Computer Models of Thought and Language, San Francisco: Freeman Press
260 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Winograd, T. and Flores, F., 1986: Understanding Computers and Cognition. A New
Foundation for Design, Norwood: Ablex Pub!.
Karin:
"As a young nurse I was involved as an expert in a training course for child minders. They
were middle-aged women who had several children of their own. They had extensive practical
knowledge of taking care of children. But, now when they entered an educational situation,
262 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
they seemed to lose all that they knew. On occasion we had endless discussions about how to
change diapers. It seemed to me the course complicated what should have been obvious to
them. They wanted to know what was the right way to change diapers or comfort a child.
'What do the experts say?' they asked. I realized it was time to put away the books. I started
talking with them about their practical experiences instead. In fact, they were greater experts
than I was. I am afraid that in matters like this, people's trust in expert knowledge robs them of
their common sense."
Even here, there are those whose judgement is 'better' and those whose
judgement is 'worse'. As a rule the more correct prognoses will issue from
the judgements of those with a better knowledge of mankind.
Can one learn this knowledge? Yes, some can. Not, however, by taking a
A Confrontation between Different Traditions of Knowledge 263
course in it, but through experience. Can someone else be one's teacher in
this? Certainly. From time to time he gives one the right tip. This is what
'learning' and 'teaching' are like here ...
What one acquires is not a technique; one learns correct judgements.
There are also rules, but unlike calculating rules (p.227), they do not form a
system and they can only be applied correctly through experience.
Wittgenstein's reflection on teaching and learning would, if transposed to
nursing, focus attention on apprenticeship. You learn to discern by observ-
ing how more experienced people manage difficult situations.
There are nurses in Sweden who have been influenced by the spirit in
Wittgenstein's later philosophy. It gives them perspectives for reflection on
the limits of science and the meeting between practice and theory in their
work.
What is at stake here is the complicated relationship between general
rules and the concrete perception of the unique case. The rules may work as
guidelines but the priority should lie in considering the unique case.
Reflection on the salient feature of every unique case creates the foundation
for this development of the interdependence between practical and theoret-
ical knowledge.
This draws attention to the role of examples in this kind of knowledge
formation. The examples serve as a basis for reflection.
I started with two examples from conversations with nurses, examples
which might be useful in reflective work. But the best examples for reflec-
tion are usually to be found in literature. I have been working with
Antigone, the tragedy of Sophocles, in reflective work with doctors.
The tragedy shows us a deep human conflict between Creon, the king,
and his niece, Antigone, king Oedipus' daughter. The prehistory of the
tragedy is that Antigone's two brothers have killed each other in battle. The
brother Poyneikos has attacked the city of Thebes in order to destroy it. The
reason for his deed is that he has been cheated out of his right to rule as a
king of Thebes every second year, alternating with his brother Eteokles. It is
his brother who has deprived him of his rights. In the severe conflict that
follows the two brothers are killed and Creon, their uncle, becomes the new-
ly appointed king of Thebes.
His first action is to issue a decree that Polyneikos should not be buried.
He, the traitor, should lie unburied outside the city gate, a prey for birds
and wild dogs. This decree is terrifying in a culture where the citizens' fore-
most obligation is to bury their dead relatives so that they may be reunited
with their family in the kingdom of the dead.
This decree breaks with the most basic assumptions about moral decency
prevalent in this culture. Antigone refuses to obey. She buries her brother
with her own hands. By doing this she refers to the voice of love and the law
of nature which she has to obey.
Two different worlds of values come into conflict with each other.
Creon has created a law without roots in the ordinary citizens' conception
of what is justice. He violates their conception of common decency.
Antigone becomes an advocate of this practical humanism. The play por-
trays the conflict between the civic obligation to obey the ruler and the
obligation of love towards the family.
In conversation with doctors, the tragedy serves as a model for reflection
264 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
upon different conflicts of value in their practical medical work. The drama
also contains passages on the conditions for reflection and deliberation
which usually provoke them to lively discussions. A similar discussion in
the spring of 1993 with research students at Cambridge developed in a dif-
ferent way. Their disciplinary background seemed to dictate what they saw
in the play. The psychologist in the group saw the power conflict between
Creon, the man, and Antigone, the woman, as the main point of the play. A
student of creative arts criticized the structure of the play. It seems to me
that practitioners are the most sensitive to moving tragedies of this kind.
Among academics there is a risk that in analyzing the play it is dissected
into small pieces.
Finally, I would like to raise two questions. What happens in a society
when practical knowledge is made abstract? How should universities meet
the demand for the scientification of, for example, the nursing profession?
One way would be to reject education and training in these fields. Another
would be to widen the traditions of knowledge at universities. There are
traditions in philosophy and literature which might make substantial con-
tributions to the development of practical knowledge.
Chapter 26
1. Introduction
The future of a modem industrial economy depends to a significant extent
on the strength of its manufacturing industry, and the skills of the work-
force. Our focus of attention in this chapter is on engineering skills, their
cultural context, and the extent to which they can be sustained and devel-
oped through an approach to education and training which is based on
competence. It is argued that a broader approach is required, giving due
attention to the tacit knowledge of the skilled worker and the culture of
working life.
2. Government Policy
In the United Kingdom widespread dissatisfaction with industrial perfor-
mance, especially in manufacturing industry, and disillusion with stan-
dards in education and training, has led government to develop a new
approach. British government policy is ostensibly to expand Further and
Higher Education, but to increase the emphasis on competence based quali-
fications as opposed to traditional academic modes of study and assess-
ment. The National Council for Vocational Qualifications was established
by government Uudd 1993] to construct a national system of qualifications
covering the full breadth of industry and employment areas, and all levels
up to and including postgraduate professional qualifications.
Working with Industry Lead Bodies comprising representatives of
employers in different employment sectors, a process of Taylorist decompo-
sition has been carried out on complex tasks, in order to identify the key
competences which are necessary for efficient performance of standard
tasks, set against agreed criteria. Occupations have been classified in a man-
ner corresponding to the Registrar-General's long-established Classification
of Social Class, and Vocational Qualifications are being developed and stan-
dardized for a growing proportion of lower-level occupations. Frequently
the qualifications are to be awarded on the basis of a portfolio of Prior
Experiential Learning, obviating the need for costly absence from work in
266 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
4. Challenging Professionals
Just as trades unions were considered to pose a challenge to government
power in the 1970s and 1980s, professionals are now being placed under
pressure to conform. In a free market economy, where cutting costs is a pri-
mary objective, why should wasteful expenditure be devoted to education
and training beyond the minimum required to secure competent perfor-
mance of standard tasks? Why should the economy, and employers, be held
hostage to the excessive and exorbitant demands of professionals and their
professional bodies for protracted periods of study, and obliged to tolerate
the arcane rituals of professional education and institutional practice? In the
United Kingdom this question has been asked of teachers, doctors, nurses,
firemen, police officers, ambulance men and prison officers: it is hardly sur-
prising that the same challenges are being posed to engineers.
The distinction between work by hand and by brain has been falsely
drawn, as Cooley has argued, and the present generation of computer tech-
nology permits us to end such arbitrary divisions of labour. The same engi-
neer can both think and produce products.
In a society which makes no verbal distinction between the shopfloor
mechanic and the graduate professional, calling both "engineers", the sub-
tleties and rituals of the engineering culture are not recognized. The status
of the British graduate engineer has suffered.
Instead, a Taylorist taxonomy of competences and standards has been
offered, allowing the individual to claim competence in sub-tasks at any
level on demand, and factoring out consideration of underlying knowledge
and understanding, including craft and tacit knowledge. The competence
approach offers cost savings, by declaring attendance at expensive courses
superfluous as long as competence can be demonstrated in the performance
of specified tasks.
The development of high power but low cost computing systems has fur-
ther blurred understanding of skills. Increasingly manufacturing employees
are required to mind machines, enabling unskilled staff to produce high
technology products, but leaving them impotent if the machines malfunc-
tion.
Monk [1993] is right to note that although computers have changed the
work of the engineer, they do not make the engineer redundant:
People are still needed to think about questions of reliability, safety and acceptability; people
bring to bear experience, tradition, experiment and theory in answering these questions and
making judgements about the contradictory evidence. How things are weighed up is affected
by the culture in which the activity is taking place. This is not a task for computers.
Florin [1990, 1991, 1992] and Garanzon [1992] have identified case studies
and accounts of the "practical intellect" with which readers, particularly in
a skeptical European context, can identify. The Springer "Artificial
Intelligence and Society" series, in which the set of books appears, includes
further titles dealing with Human-Centred Systems in engineering, by
Bradner [1990], Corbett et al. [1990] and Rosenbrock [1989]. At Kingston
University we have tried to rise to the challenge with "Managing with
Information Technology" [Ennals and Molyneux 1993], to be followed by a
new series of "Executive Guides" aimed at a management audience con-
cerned with technology topics.
In what some have called the "Third Culture", we reject the over-rigid
demarcation between arts and social sciences on the one hand, and natural
sciences and technology on the other. We see science and technology as
being conducted in a cultural context, and applied with the priority given to
human need. While rejecting a narrow anthropocentric view of the world,
which can have damaging implications for the environment and other
species, we see humans, rather than technology, at the centre of systems.
We regard technological systems as implementations of ideologies, and to
be treated with similar caution: systems are based on models of reality,
often with arbitrary approaches to quantification, and can never be relied
on as substitutes for human judgement.
Engineers, including knowledge engineers, will need to playa central
role in this "Third Culture", but this will require reforms in Engineering
Education. In tum, this requires changes in the broader Educational and
Political System.
If we wish to argue for the existence of a common culture, or a Third
Culture which bridges the worlds of Arts on the one hand and Science and
Technology on the other, then we must acknowledge the major implications
for Education. Narrow vocationalism is destructive of a common culture,
and serves only the interests of a ruling elite, typically drawn from a back-
ground in the Arts. Once professional skills have been destroyed, whether
through automation or narrow vocationalism, it is not clear that they can be
rebuilt: whole professions can vanish never to return.
We may identify common classes of concern across the professions, and
see the case for new cross-disciplinary and international courses which may
serve to enhance solidarity and mutual understanding.
Actors as Professionals
Critics as Engineers
References
Brooner P The Shape of Future Technology: The Anthropocentric Alternative Springer 1990
Brooner P Two Traditions of Engineering Culture presented at "Skill and Technology: Diderot,
Education and the Third Culture", Stockholm, September 1993.
Corbett M, Rasmussen L and Rauner F Crossing the Border: The Social and Engineering Design of
Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems Springer 1990
Ennals R and Gardin J-C (eds) Interpretation in the Humanities: Perspectives from Artificial
Intelligence British Library 1990
Ennals R and Molyneux P (eds) Managing with Information Technology Springer 1993
Gill K Human Centred Systems: Foundational Concepts and Traditions in eds Ennals Rand
Molyneux P 1993
Goranzon B and Cook J (eds) Skill, Technology and Enlightenment Springer 1994
Goranzon B and Florin M (eds) Artificial Intelligence, Culture and Language Springer 1990
Goranzon B and Florin M (eds) Dialogue and Technology: Art and Knowledge Springer 1991
Goranzon B and Florin M (eds) Skill and Education: Reflection and Experience Springer 1992
Goranzon Band Josefson I (eds) Knowledge, Skill and Artificial Intelligence Springer 1988
Judd S Hybrid Managers in Information Technology in eds Ennals R and Molyneux P 1993
Kaura Rand Ennals R Human Centred Systems: The 21st Century Paradigm? Working Paper,
Kingston Business School 1993
Monk J The Politics of Engineering and the Rituals of Engineering Education presented at "Skill and
Technology: Diderot, Education and the Third Culture", Stockholm, September 1993.
Rosenbrock H (ed) Designing Human Centred Technology: A Cross Disciplinary Project in Computer
Aided Manufacture Springer 1989
Lennart Mark, the artist, has given the engineering technologists at the
Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (KTH) a logo. It is an i with a
"human face" - a logo which faithfully represents the ideas that lie behind
the design of the engineering masters program.
***
Industry and other "users" of engineers often stress that engineers must
possess not only purely technical competence and qualities of leadership,
they also need to be competent in the field of economics. It is therefore
important for us to identify the central aspects and the nature of these kinds
of skills. One aspect of economics skills is, of course, knowledge of what we
may call "business administration techniques"; knowledge of both external
and internal accounting and computations for various purposes, including
price-setting and investment. Yet the core of this competence should be the
insight and judgement needed for both the development and application of
technology based on criteria other than purely technical, economic, social,
marketing, organizational, human and ethical considerations. If engineers
are to participate successfully in managing both the design and implemen-
tation of technical applications, they will need the ability to make integrated
assessments. At the same time, it is at least as important to emphasize that
skills in the technical and natural sciences are essential if these integrated
assessments are to be made at all. Without these skills as a basis there is a
risk that the assessments will still miss the point and be as one-sided as a
simple economic calculation, devoid of any real content - the emphasis
being on form rather than on content. Moreover, it is essential that technical
competence extends from basic technology right up to technical applica-
tions.
***
274 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
***
A growing amount of attention is being given to the problem of engineers
with different specializations, for example, design engineers and produc-
tion engineers, failing to communicate with each other on complex or pro-
found professional issues. Not least modem Japanese production
philosophy has emphasized the need for this kind of communication, which
is expressed in the term "concurrent engineering". To the superficial eye,
social measures could perhaps be introduced to alleviate these difficulties,
measures such as meetings, projects and shared coffee breaks. This is also
the prevailing view of the problem and of the way to solve it. But without
ignoring the fact that social contacts are an absolute prerequisite, and with-
out minimizing the problems involved in achieving them - partly because
people in these different occupational categories often work in different
geographical locations - I must emphasize that the core of the problem is
substantially deeper. Engineers who have majored in different specializa-
tions often get different kinds of job and therefore have different practical
experience. They also have different tasks and areas of responsibility. The
design engineer has to focus on the design of the product and its use, while
a production engineer not only concentrates on the manufacture of the
product, he is also responsible for the people who carry out the production.
The even greater differences in views, skills, work tasks etc. between
engineers on the one hand and business managers on the other are a con-
stant source of misunderstandings and poor co-operation.
Wittgenstein's philosophy tells us that concepts, above all their content,
sense and meaning, spring from the concrete practical experience of their
users. Language, concepts and thus the entire professional competency as
such, are thereby also related to occupational training and experience. To
achieve a deep level of communication one must therefore become familiar
with the conditions that obtain in several parts of the whole. One way to
acquire this knowledge is to study the formation of knowledge and the
ways that knowledge is formed in these different areas of competency.
***
Engineering Training with a Human Face 275
Let us take a closer look at the problem that the application of technology in
a given situation raises its own, very complex skill problems. Everyone
agrees that it is essential to have some basic technical knowledge, and an
understanding of those parts of the natural and social sciences that are rele-
vant to the technology to be used. In addition to this, however, we need to
know about the situation in which the technology is to be applied, and also
about the way the situation has developed. The best analogy here may be
one taken from the field of medical care: before a physician can use his bio-
medical, medical and physiological knowledge he must familiarize himself
with his patient's situation and history .
......
We know from experience that an understanding that technology must be
applied and the ability to apply technology are just as fundamental as a
knowledge of mathematics. It follows that a program of education in which
this knowledge and ability is of central importance must take great pains to
ensure that this result is obtained. How is this done? How can one pass on
the understanding that it is the application of technology that gives it its
value? How can one instil the ability to apply technology? Here, if not
before, the considerations we mentioned above (of economics, marketing
etc.), have a part to play - in short, here is where man enters into perceived
reality. It appears that the simplest response is the only response: the pro-
gram of education must contain examples of technical applications. But the
choice of applications and the number of applications to be included must
be made in the light of practical considerations - the number of students,
the resources available etc.
Together with the skills requirements mentioned above, the need for
technical application produces a program of higher education that is made
up of a large number of subjects which are in many respects disparate. If we
are to understand and direct a complex operation we must not only consid-
er both the parts and the whole, we must also consider the environment and
context in which this whole is set. The environment and context may be
purely spatial - the corporation and the markets for a division of a compa-
ny, for example - or they may involve broader aspects and viewpoints such
as a company's results and its economic position compared with its cost
development. We sometimes use the term integration to describe the meld-
ing of the parts to form a whole. It is important that our efforts at integra-
tion are combined with a holistic approach.
The objective of this program of higher education was defined as the pro-
vision of knowledge and understanding of Technology-Economics-
Leadership. It encompasses both the parts and the whole.
The ways that knowledge is formed in the different subject areas must
become a central area of study in a program of higher education that
encompasses such wide differences in perceptions of reality, scientific ideals
and the formation of knowledge as the I-Program. An understanding of
these differences appears to be an essential prerequisite for communication
between the different parts of the program. At the same time, we have very
limited knowledge and understanding of the components that we do not
ourselves represent. Therefore, if we are to act as a bridge between the
276 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
***
The design of a program of education is not confined to planning the com-
ponent subjects. A good syllabus is not enough; the content must also be of
good quality. The other factors that have a decisive influence on the content
and outcome of a course must be considered as well. These include the stu-
dents, researchers and teachers, the "users" of the program, and the direc-
tors of the program.
In a program of education, content and form are related to each other in a
number of fairly intricate ways. It is, of course, obvious that some subjects
need laboratory work to be understood and learnt, while others (for exam-
ple co-operation with and the management of other people) requires some
experience if they are to be at all meaningful.
The form of the program is often addressed as pedagogics, as a distinct
area, separate from the course content. Let me say that, at least when it
comes to training of the nature of the I-Program, this kind of separation is
quite impossible, not least because the form - the pedagogics - must follow
the scientific view, i.e. the perception of what knowledge is and consists of,
how it is formed etc.
Where there is a lack of experience (particularly common experience) new
ideas cannot be based on an existing common language. Things cannot be
said; they must be shown. One way of showing is to present examples, cas-
es, reference facilities etc.
When it comes to the content and form of the program of education, it is
not so immediately apparent that if new knowledge, ideas etc. must be
shown because they cannot be said, this must also be true when people
have to learn something that is new to them. If new scientific findings must
be shown before they are accepted, then good teaching methods for a course
in this field must be based on showing the content. In its tum, the way the
content is shown very much depends on what that content is. In economics,
for example, much of the teaching must take the form of studies of exam-
ples and practical cases. This corresponds to the laboratory work mentioned
above. In more general terms, this means that a large part of economics has
to be studied as a problem-oriented subject and as a complement to the
more common discipline-oriented course structure. Problem-orientation is
also an advantageous way of approaching the whole.
***
Knowledge, which is the result of education that is most frequently dis-
cussed, also appears to be the least permanent of all the things we acquire
through education. At the same time, we often refrain from discussing the
application of knowledge. Here I am referring mainly to two results of edu-
cation that are related to the design of a program of higher education:
That knowledge should be use both to solve problems and to posit prob-
lems is something that can hardly be said, it must be shown. But what hap-
pens when, as is often the case, the program of education focuses entirely on
problem-solving? This is an example of one of the most profound aspects of
every course of education, and which is naturally linked to the problem of
showing what cannot be said that is discussed above.
***
The ability to be able to formulate your own opinions and define your own
objectives is one of the unique and most distinctive qualities of man .
•
Chapter 28
Introduction
The starting point of this study was an observation, made over a number of
years in IT, that two communities of software developers approach their
work in very different ways and rely on different types of knowledge.
Further, it was noticed that the differences were systematic, in that one of
the communities valued the technical skill, while other valued the commu-
nication skill. .
It was realized that while the technical community enjoyed a higher repu-
tation among computer people, it was often the non-technical one which
displayed greater competence in the area of systems analysis. However,
there seemed to be little theory underpinning this competence, and the skill
appeared to be largely unspoken or 'tacit'. Further, there was little move-
ment of staff between the two communities, and the more technical group
seemed unable or unwilling to recognize the other's competence, let alone
to learn from it.
This report is a first step towards exploring these issues. In the longer
term, the research has the following aims:
(b) to name and better understand the tacit (unspoken) knowledge of sys-
tems analysis
(c) to understand why some of this knowledge is unique to the one com-
munity
(d) to consider how the competence might be shared with the other com-
munity.
Here, the attempt is made to describe the two groups, to sketch out some
of the knowledge involved in systems analysis, to provide some insights
into why it is localized in the one group, and to suggest some practical ways
in which the competence might be shared.
280 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Method
The work draws on the author's experience of working in the software
industry for many years. It is not based on a systematic survey, but is the
result of observation and reflection.
It is informed by the following theoretical positions:
ii) the understanding that much knowledge is tacit or unspoken, and that
some of it can possibly never be articulated for logical reasons.
However, this does not mean that this tacit knowledge cannot be
named. Nor does it mean that all knowledge which is currently tacit
can never be articulated.
iii) the recognition that examples can help to convey knowledge which
might otherwise be tacit, and further, that creative narratives may have
greater potential in this regard than flat texts.
Tacit Knowledge
The notion of tacit knowledge underpins the investigation into the knowl-
edge involved in the systems analysis task. There is obviously a problem in
trying to identify tacit knowledge, and the personal histories of the practi-
tioners give some indication of what knowledge is being used. It is also pos-
sible to analyze the social scene for symptoms that tacit knowledge is
involved. These include the way in which the participants organize them-
selves and communicate with each other, as well as an assessment of their
relative success in performing the work. Finally, reflections on the author's
The Systems Analysis Skill 281
own practice as an analyst are used to speculate about how the work is
done.
The aim is to look at what practitioners actually do and the way they
reflect on it, rather than what theorists say they do. It is assumed that the
relationship between theory and practice is problematic. The methodolo-
gies, techniques and tools taught on Systems Analysis courses are therefore
of less interest.
Use of Examples
Specific examples of the two communities of software developers are given
below. They are presented in a series of comparisons, of differences and of
similarities, to highlight what identifies and distinguishes each community.
The differences and similarities are listed under four headings - Staffing,
Organization, Communication and Concept of Knowledge. Together these
help to point to the tacit knowledge being used, either in terms of personal
histories or symptoms of knowing practice.
Subsequently, a key concept in the field of software development is
explored, that of an 'application'. This illustrates some of the consequences
of the differing concepts of knowledge, in the diverse practices of the devel-
opers concerned. It also provides some clues about what knowledge is
involved in the systems analysis task, and how it is seen by practitioners.
Lastly, the author's personal experience as an analyst is presented as an
example of the sort of background that systems analysts may have.
Perhaps later in the research, when the details of the systems analysis task
have been further explored, it may be appropriate to further use the insight
about examples and creative texts to present and share some more detailed
aspects of the knowledge.
This whole study is the result of reflection on the author's long experience
in the software industry. The attempt is being made to make sense of a sig-
nificant anomaly - that familiarity with the accepted theory does not coin-
cide with the best practice.
business software for the operating staff in the company. Other software
groups which are believed to organize themselves in similar ways are those
which service the engineering and defence industries.
The last group worked on Knowledge Based Systems (KBS) in the
Research and Development branch of a leading software house. They
undertook development projects using this technology in order to show
other developers how to apply it. Their job was to transfer the new tech-
nologies to the more traditional development teams. The author has only
encountered a similar approach to development once before, over twenty
years earlier, in the R&D department of a major computer manufacturer.
These groups are compared below: firstly the R&D with the telecomms
developers, and then the telecomms with the insurance developers. The
R&D and the telecomms developers are found to be fairly similar, and are
believed to belong to the technical community of software developers. The
telecomms and insurance groups are very different and seem to come from
different communities. The insurance group can be said to belong to the
non-technical community of developers.
Similarities
Staffing:
Both recruited heavily from graduates in the scientific disciplines, especially
Computing and Engineering, and both had a high percentage of staff with
post-graduate qualifications. They expected their staff to be able to learn
about new technology very quickly and to be competent programmers.
Organization:
A particular development team did not employ different types of special-
ists, but all members were expected to be good programmers and techni-
cians for the hardware and software being used. Different projects recruited
different technical experts: for example, one project might look for 'C' pro-
grammers under Unix, and another would look for Small talk programmers
on Sun workstations. There were different types of technical expertise in the
company, but there was very little variety on anyone development team.
In each company, there was a separate group of Human Computer
Interface (HCI) specialists who could be called in as consultants by a devel-
opment team. Such expertise in the ergonomic and psychological aspects of
systems was little valued by the development teams, who seldom consulted
the HCI people.
Technical knowledge about the operating systems and the databases was
diffused throughout the teams and was not centralized. There would be
members on every team who were particularly interested in this deeper
technical knowledge, and had taken the trouble to educate themselves in
these areas. At the same time they would be expected to develop applica-
tion programs, and their job titles would not differ from those who only
wrote application code.
The Systems Analysis Skill 283
In neither group did the project managers have direct software develop-
ment experience. The managers of the telecomms group came from the
business areas, while those of the R&D group came from Sales or academic
research.
Communication:
Communication about technical matters was informal and generally effec-
tive. Programmers would share their knowledge, give advice, and swap
handy hints as they sat at their screens. They only read manuals as a last
resort.
There was a great reluctance to document anything they had developed,
and such documentation was felt to be at least a chore, and even a waste of
time. They did not find writing the documents a helpful process, and others
often complained that reading them was also unhelpful.
They were very keen to develop prototypes (i.e. quick mock-up programs
which show the users what the screen layouts will be, what the system will
do, etc.) to communicate with their users, because they were more comfort-
able writing code than text. They found prototypes more effective than doc-
uments for communication purposes.
They often had problems in distinguishing between what the system
must do with how it should do it. They wanted to talk about how it would
work, so that they could describe it in technical terms.
Communication with·outsiders was often typified by an excessive use of
jargon which effectively shut other people out from discussions and deci-
sions.
Concept of Knowledge:
Both groups valued theories, and these were drawn from engineering and
mathematics. Science was seen as the highest form of knowledge. The staff
were generally keen on any new technology, and worked hard to keep
themselves up-to-date. They envied those colleagues who worked on the
most advanced technologies. They were not interested in the human aspects
of computing or in the users' business problems. Their interpersonal skills
were often poor.
Differences
Staffing:
There was one major resourcing difference. The telecomms developers had
sometimes worked as engineers out in the business areas, where their users
worked. Every project team seemed to have three or four people who had
this experience. All of the project managers were very experienced, either in
telecomms engineering or in business operations.
The R&D developers were generally much younger. Their systems
knowledge was mostly theoretical, although they had gained practical
experience in programming at the Universities. They had no background
knowledge of their user areas, and little feel for what their customers would
find usable or useful.
284 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Communication:
The R&D groups sometimes had no idea who needed to know what, either
within or beyond the development team. They were also unaware that their
users' attitude to technology may be very different from their own, and
were ignorant about the users' business problems. They had difficulties in
managing the users' expectations about the new systems. In fact, this is
obviously more difficult for a new technology than for an established one.
The telecomms developers communicated about the application among
themselves: informal discussions were held at whiteboards, and any
changes immediately and effectively communicated to those programmers
whose work was affected. However, the lack of simple, formal documenta-
tion meant that many junior programmers did not know how their work fit-
ted into the whole system. In addition, the managers did not know exactly
what the system was going to do or how it was going to do it. They could
only react to problems, rather than forestall them.
There were problems in establishing the requirements of the telecomms
users, because the systems were intended for use in many very different
business areas whose requirements varied. User Committees, consisting of
senior staff, were set up to coordinate requirements. These were very politi-
cal groups. This made it rather difficult to contact any ordinary users direct-
ly. However those developers who had previously worked in the business
areas themselves were often able to steer a systems project in the right direc-
tion in spite of the problem.
The users' (Le. the telecomms engineers') attitude to technology was sim-
ilar to that of the developers, and so there was no great gap to be bridged
here. Again, the experienced people from the business areas could advise
the other developers in this matter.
Organization:
The organization of the telecomms company was deeply hierarchical. There
was some evidence that this caused problems when the senior people on the
User Committee had to be interviewed by the developers: they could not be
interviewed by someone at a much lower level in the hierarchy, but the
development manager might not be sufficiently familiar with the details to
be able to conduct a useful interview.
The R&D people had a much flatter hierarchy and so this was not such a
problem, although some experts did not appreciate being interviewed by
very young staff.
Concept of Knowledge:
Industry knowledge was very highly valued by the telecomms group, and
this often involved experience rather than qualifications. It was realized that
it took considerable time to acquire this relevant background knowledge.
Developers who came in from other industries had to start at the bottom,
almost irrespective of their systems experience.
On the other hand, the R&D developers had little respect for the knowl-
edge of the experts whom they interviewed, and were generally exasperat-
ed at their ignorance. They reified knowledge, regarding it as thing which
could be captured or 'bottled' for future use. They did not anticipate any
problems in specifying all of the preconditions on the rules in their expert
The Systems Analysis Skill 285
systems. This attitude to the knowledge of their users was reflected in the
way they saw the knowledge in the IT industry itself.
Organization:
The insurance developers organized themselves into teams consisting of
systems analysts and programmers. The analysts talked to the insurance
staff about their requirements, and then defined them for the application
programmers.
The more technical jobs, on the other hand, were centralized. For exam-
ple, the systems programmers worked in a single team, specializing in
knowledge of the computers' operating systems. This team of specialists
286 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Communication:
The members of the insurance teams were usually experienced in working
with the other specialists and there was a fairly clear understanding about
who needed to know what.
Communication was typically via simple specification documents at dif-
ferent levels of detail. The systems analysts interviewed the users directly
and specified the requirements before any programmers were involved on
the projects.
There were sometimes misunderstandings: the analyst may have thought
that something was technically viable when it was not. The programmer
may decide to make a minor change for some technical reason, without
appreciating its impact on the user. Basically, there was some tension
between the analysts and the programmers, and some incredulity at each
others' ignorance. It was the manager's job to minimize these problems.
Prototyping was little used except to show screen layouts, sequences, etc.
Concept of Knowledge:
The insurance developers did not value academic or theoretical knowledge
in their staff, but experience was important.
They saw the systems analysis and programming tasks as being very dif-
ferent, requiring different types of people. The analysts needed to be good
communicators, and the programmers needed to be good technicians.
The technical skill was not valued in the company as a whole, and techni-
cians were unlikely to be promoted to the same level as the analysts.
Systems managers tended to be recruited from among the analysts rather
than the programmers.
Systems analysts were expected to be able to work on any application in
the company, or indeed, on any application in the finance sector. It was thus
The Systems Analysis Skill 287
assumed that the analyst could learn enough about the work in any depart-
ment of the company, to be able to specify and design an effective computer
system.
There was little interest in the latest technology for its own sake except
among some of the programmers, and there was also little interest in soft-
ware engineering theory.
The experienced managers all had their own pet theories about what
worked and what did not. Basically, software was developed as it had
always been, and change was resisted.
Similarities
Staffing:
Both communities brought people into the development teams from the
user areas, in an attempt to bridge the communication gap. It was more dif-
ficult to spot this in the telecomms teams, because their ex-users became ful-
ly-competent developers. In the insurance groups, the users stood out more
as they were unable to perform many of the technical development tasks.
Communication:
Both sets of developers were still criticized by their users for failing to
understand what the business problems were. They were thought to be too
remote from the business.
Concept of Knowledge:
Both groups saw the knowledge of the business area as very important, and
difficult to acquire. Both recognized that it took time to gain familiarity with
the way in which the industry operated, and prized the experience.
The high-technology people were proud of the fact that their applications
were very complex. This betrayed a view that to them, the application was
simply 'there', that it was in the nature of things. These developers did not
believe that they could influence the complexity of an application. In this
view, an application was a thing that a developer 'found'.
It was evident that when they interviewed their users about their require-
ments, the high-tech developers took all the requests at face value.
They did not seem to question or explore their relative importance, or to
relate the stated needs to the business and administrative problems experi-
enced by the users. In fact, they spent very little time with their users. They
did not attempt to simplify the requirements. They saw it as part of their job
to be able to handle whatever complexity they may encounter in the user
areas. Such an 'objective' approach may well have its roots in the scientific
training of the developers concerned.
The Systems Analysis Skill 289
seamless whole. They and their users were engaged in very similar work.
Engineers could be users and developers at different times in their careers.
This may have contributed to the problems which they clearly had in
writing functional specifications. These documents define what a proposed
computer system is going to do, but should not mention how it is going to
do it. The telecomms developers simply could not see any sensible distinc-
tion between the what and the how.
When an insurance developer talked about what a system did, she was
talking about insurance: when she talked about how it did it, she was talk-
ing about technology. A telecomms developer only ever talked about tech-
nology - either telecomms technology or development technology.
The technologists were unable to get enough distance between their own
work and that of their users to be able to 'see' it. This is sometimes referred
to as the problem of dedoublement. It is experienced by authors who try to
write about something they are deeply involved in: they find it difficult to
get the necessary distance or perspective.
It is almost as if the high-tech developers understood the business prob-
lem only in terms of the technical solution. To the low-tech analysts, the
telling of a simple story was what constituted understanding in the first
instance: the technical implementation would come later and was not a pre-
requisite for an understanding of the problem.
One of the starting points of this study was the observation that in one par-
ticular area, there was greater competence in the low-tech community than
in its high-tech counterpart. This area was systems analysis.
The systems analysts in the low-tech community were better able to
understand and specify the requirements of their users than were the devel-
opers in the high-tech tradition. It was far more likely that there would be
simple documentation outlining what the proposed system would do, the
system itself would be simpler and require less maintenance, and there
were fewer surprises for the users when the system was installed in their
work area. The requirements specification was quite simply better in the
low-tech communities.
It is not obvious where the roots of the systems analysis work in the low-
tech tradition lie. It may have grown out of the Accounting departments in
large companies, or out of O&M studies. It may be unique to the Finance
sector. It may come from the Humanities tradition in academia, except that
some of its adherents clearly have very little academic background. Part
of it certainly seems to be based on experience. This needs further invest-
igation.
i) Years of working with the users in the appropriate industry sector. This
gives one a 'feel' for what they will regard as a usable system, and also
what sort of system they will find useful. It has a direct bearing on
one's judgement about what to implement. It does not seem to be nec-
essary to gain this familiarity with the actual users of a given system,
but just of the type of users who are typical of an industry sector (e.g.
finance, manufacturing). Research by Human Computer Interaction
theorists now addresses this as User Modelling.
ii) Experience in seeing what computer systems have been found to work.
This involves some contact with working systems developed by other
people, familiarity with the literature, and a track record of working on
one's own successful projects. Experience of systems which do not
work can also be very useful, under certain circumstances. One needs
to learn what is practically feasible and what features of a situation
increase the risks.
vi) The ability to recognize what aspects of a total, complex, messy, busi-
ness situation are relevant to the systems task, appears to depend on
experience. A competent analyst must know what to ignore and what
attend to, and it varies from one project to another. It is a matter of
judgement.
It may be that there are some transferable skills involved in the last three
of the above items, and further reflection on these is necessary. Perhaps they
can be acquired on Humanities courses, or perhaps such courses attract
people who already have them. However, an academic background is obvi-
ously not necessary for acquiring the skills.
ii) discussions with other practicing analysts, and their reflection on their work
iii) meetings with more high-tech developers to establish the extent of the
differences, and further reflection on the possible advantages of their
problem solving strategy
Initially items i) and ii) above are of greatest interest and will be explored
to identify more thoroughly the different types of knowledge involved in
the systems analysis task.
Chapter 29
Comments
Jon Cook
The different pieces in this section all converge on a single question about
the education of engineers. What they separately offer is a sense of the scope
and dimensions of that question, the sense of what is at stake in posing it in
the first place. Peter Bradner's paper identifies the problem in terms of two
different traditions of belief about knowledge and practice. This finds an
echo in the contrast Kate Startin discovers between 'high-tech' and 'low-
tech' professionals in the software industry. Richard Ennals approaches the
same problem from the perspective of national educational policy. Albert
Danielsson provides a case study of what it means in practice to change the
way engineers are educated by linking a technical and scientific education
to an understanding of the cultural and practical forces at work in knowl-
edge formation. Jon Monk's "Enigma Variations" builds on the immediate-
ly preceding section of this volume in its unfolding of the myth of Turing, in
a way that draws out how easily discomforted our assumptions are not sim-
ply about Turing but about what it means to learn, or identify a machine as
intelligent, or establish firm distinctions between hardware and software.
Our knowledge of these things is finely implicated in the languages and cul-
tures we inherit and in a manner that resists all attempts to break out into an
unshadowed world of objective knowledge and transparent procedure.
Ingela Josefson's account of conflicting traditions in the education of nurses
shows that the problems addressed in this section are by no means confined
to the education of engineers. The example she draws on from Sophocles's
Antigone reminds us that the recurring tension between theoretical and
practical traditions of knowledge, between the implementation of abstract
law and the knowledge of the heart, is not subject to some dialectical recon-
ciliation. An educational ethos based upon a confidence in the progress of
knowledge through ever increasing forms of systematic explicitness is likely
to avoid and then be haunted by the stubborn repetitions of tragedy, the
form which addresses the limits of our knowledge and the sheer unavail-
ability of the world to systematic understanding.
The purpose of these comments is not to offer a resume of the various
arguments and analyses put forward in this section. Taken together they all
make a plea for the value of a subordinated and neglected tradition which
values embodied knowledge, the skills that can only be developed fully
through long experience, and the diversity of ways that knowledge can be
298 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
To the extent that traditional industrial skills are still required, it has been assumed that they
can be expressed in terms of specific competencies, for which employees can receive specific
on-the-job training, without requiring lengthy and expensive apprenticeships or formal educa-
tion. Such employees would increasingly be contracted on a casual basis, rather than develop-
ing long-term expertise.
This process is already well under way in the United Kingdom. When
educational objectives are reformed by economic imperatives in this way, it
is unlikely that much attention will be paid, other than at the level of lip-ser-
vice, to the development of a culture of deeply embedded skills and exper-
tise. This is to put the worst case, at least if one of the objectives of the
argument about tacit knowledge and skill is to change educational policy at
national level. It may of course be in the long-term economic interests of
nation states to give priority to tacit knowledge and skill in this way, but
one question that hangs over nation states at the moment is whether they
are able to act in relation to any long-term interest, whatever their aspira-
tions.
But it may be that it is simply not an appropriate objective to seek to influ-
ence the formulation of national educational policy in this way. Should the
education of engineers and other skilled practitioners be linked to and legit-
imated by a conception of national economic interest? Or is some other rela-
tion between knowledge, work, and economy emerging in the papers in this
section, and indeed elsewhere in this book and the related books in this
series? These questions cannot be answered here, but it is worth noting how
closely in the past the education of engineers has been linked to projects of
national construction and aggrandizement; how uneasily figures like
Turing and Wittgenstein fit with ideas of national identity and interest (a
point dramatized in the play Beyond All Certainty); and how important the
issue of the location of ideas and practice is to the pieces collected in this
section.
This last point can be illustrated in a number of ways. One has to do with
a (further) question about the relation between the place of learning and the
place of work. Again there is a familiar assumption: what is learnt in one
place, the site of education, is applied in another, the site of work. In the
case of professional education there is of course an interaction between
these two sites while the qualifications to enter a profession are gained or
ratified. But there is a kind of inertia built into this assumption which is at
Comments 299
Diderot was famous for his digressions: one commentator claims to have sat
and listened to an uncontrollable stream which he satirizes in a manner not
entirely unconvincing. 2 This paper is going to end by suggesting that
Diderot's digressive practice is deeply related to his notion of analogy, as
found in his art criticism, that he is developing a notion of analogy which
will become precisely what links experience in a synthesis (and which is
perhaps a preparation of Kant and 'die Analogien der Erfahrung' in The
Critique of Pure Reason). Such analogy will both regulate the artist's treat-
ment of the beautiful and anchor it to notions of the functionally dynamic.
But - like Diderot - this paper will first move through what seems a digres-
sion about Diderot's digressions on architecture, asking what the relation
between the ideas he is chasing is, and why he harps on about the great
church of Saint Peter's in Rome.
At the end of the Essays on Painting, 1766, there are two last chapters, joki-
ly called My piece on architecture and A little corollary of the preceding - which
seem to be a set of digressions. In them, Diderot proposes the problem of
the size of Saint Peter's in Rome, which is said to be so perfectly propor-
tioned that it does not seem as big as it is. And he goes on to recount a dis-
cussion of illusion in proportions in architecture: some say it is better to
make the building seem bigger than it is. This procedure may lead to disil-
lusion - you may be disappointed when you realize that the building is
actually smaller than your perceptions. Some on the other hand argue that it
is perhaps better to let the proportions work harmoniously together and
then to allow the comparison, which the spectator will infallibly make with
his own size, to cause a gradual realization of the true vastness of the
building. Diderot himself points to the social source of his discussion:
There's the quarrel between gothic and Greek architecture put forward
in all its force, he says. And contemporary with his piece on architecture
is of course the re-entry of the gothic into the realm of publicly acceptable
taste.
Now Diderot got into this question, into this digression, because he had
started his chapter by claiming that if architecture was the founding struc-
ture for painting and sculpture, in return it was to these arts that architec-
ture owed its perfection, because the sense of proportion could only be
304 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
formed by the practice of drawing, that is how an artist forms his eye - and
claimed the example of Michael Angelo and the dome of Saint Peter's. And
after the digression on illusion of size in architecture he goes back to the
question of proportion, in figure painting particularly. I remind you that
analogon is the Greek for proportion. To finish, Diderot argues that architec-
ture has been impoverished by a concern for modules, for perfect ratios,
when it should only recognize "the variety of social conventions", that is
social function.
But the next chapter in the Essays shows the problem: is not such a view
of art relative? Does not Diderot's phrase, "variety of social conventions"3
give away that there would be no common rule to such an art except a fit-
ting to circumstance, it would be completely relative to its society. "Apage
Sophista" he cries, and insists as he does so many times elsewhere: "The
good the true and the beautiful hang together very closely." "What is taste
then?" he asks. "It is a facility acquired by reiterated experiences to seize the
true or the good with the circumstance that makes it beautiful, and to be
promptly and strongly touched by it"(738). And this facility, when it is
unconscious, so that the experiences which enabled the judgment are for-
gotten, is instinct. The example given is once more Saint Peter's in Rome.
Michael Angelo creates the most beautiful possible form for the dome;
when the French mathematician La Hire measures it, he finds that its out-
line is the curve of greatest resistance - the line of thrust. Michael Angelo
was inspired by the experience of the play of dynamic forces in everyday
life, says Diderot: the master carpenter will find the right angle to prop a
crumbling wall up as well as the greatest living mathematician Euler.
Likewise, experience will inspire him to find the optimum angle for the sail
of the windmill. One can recognize here Diderot the editor of the Dictionary
of Arts - one of the names of his great Encyclopaedia, edited with the mathe-
matician d'Alembert.
Now Diderot had exercised these ideas before, in a letter written in 1762,
and here, like the Essays on Painting, it is not at first sight clear what is link-
ing the ideas together for him. But here too, it is a question of instinct.
Instinct is the result of: "An infinity of small experiences which had begun
from the moment we opened our eyes to the light, right up to the one
where, guided secretly by those assays, trials, which we no longer recollect,
we pronounce that something in particular is good or bad, beautiful or
ugly."4 And in apparently the same higgledy piggledy manner, Diderot
trots out the example of St. Peter's, the strut for the wall, and the angle of
the sail of the windmill. It is the notion of function, which seems to enable
Diderot to link the beautiful (the shape of the dome) to the true and the
good. The form which is the most economical and strong for a certain pur-
pose will be the one instinctively felt as "right" in both moral and aesthetic
senses. But if we want to try to go beyond this slightly unsurprising answer
(Diderot speaks of "beauty whose base is always utility" (731)), and the sim-
ple equation of function and utility which is overtly performed in Diderot's
Essays on Painting, then we need to tackle the problem of his digressions, of
the interconnections in his argument. We need to ask: how are we to con-
nect these themes, connected in Diderot's mind since they turn up twice
together: tiny experiences, in the case of architecture physio-dynamic expe-
riences; the problem of taste, and its relation to factors like social organiza-
Diderot, Implicit Knowledge and Architecture 305
tion which may seem to make it dependent on human convention; the ques-
tion of proportion, and whether it is numerical and stable, or whether it
varies according to the same factors as taste.
The answer must start, as did the section of the Essays on Painting, with
Saint Peter's.
Michael Angelo's architecture of Saint Peter's was thought to be perfect.
And French travellers since the seventeenth century traditionally comment-
ed on the perfect proportions of the basilica, and the paradoxical impression
it this produced in the visitor, given its huge size.s Montesquieu in his note-
books of his journey to Italy compares the impression made by Saint Peter's
to pleasure in mountains, of the continuous sense of failure to measure
exactly what one is seeing." This is not the 'sublime avant la lettre', for the
surprise created by the failure to measure does not go so far as to be a feel-
ing of incommensurability; rather it remains a kind of suspension, continu-
ally restarted by changes in perception. It is surely connected with
eighteenth century love of walks and with the subtle consciousness of
dynamic physiological changes not just in visual sensation but in the sense
of internal body space. Kant however, in 1790, referring to such reports, will
in the Analytic of the sublime of the Critique of Judgement argue that this IS the
sublime. It is interesting that he is no longer using the question of the pro-
portions of the church, but the impossibility of taking in the whole. 7
De Brosses - a friend of Buffon, lawyer, intellectual, one of the first writ-
ers who could be called an anthropologist, brings in a factor which pushes
this enquiry on one step: he speaks of the admirable proportion which
means that at first sight the basilica is not striking, because everything is in
place, and admirably proportioned: unlike he says /fa pointed vault in goth-
ic style, or bold arches taken in an oval diameter."R The comparison with
gothic architecture is in Diderot's mind, we have seen.
That Diderot had sustained contact with architects in the 1760s, can be
proved via his letters, as well as via the remarks in the Essays on Painting. It
is this implicit knowledge, developed by the contact with both practical
technology and architectural theory which gives a depth and a richness to
his thinking here. Reflecting about proportion, about analogy as a mode of
thought and its relation to proportion, and relating it to these practices
enables him to escape from the static formal idea of proportion common at
the time, to link it with epistemology, with our organization of experience.
His work does indeed point towards Kant's analogies of experience, though
whether there is actual influence is unproven! Unsurprising perhaps, when
it is a question of implicit or tacit knowledge. Now the second anecdote con-
nected with Saint Peter's that Diderot gives is not found in other writers on
the basilica. The anecdote about the geometer La Hire and his assimilation
of the profile of the dome of Saint Peter's to the curve of greatest resistance
does not for example appear in the great work by Carlo Fontana on the
basilica, though he does compare very carefully the inside and outside pro-
files of the dome. In fact, the dome was actually constructed by della Porta,
J()
gothic days of the saint herself, of King Clovis - and the public are said to
have wanted a subterranean chapel like a Merovingian basilica. A commen-
tator in 1778 promises for instance that "the view from the portico will give
the illusion of the Roman Pantheon".14 This was to be done using not the
practices of classical architecture and contemporary French architects, but
by an entirely new method of support for the dome, a method based on
gothic architecture. Indeed, it is clear from other architects, or writers on
architecture, that the motives behind this were in part economic - the royal
treasury was in a parlous state, and if the church took so long to be complet-
ed it was because of the slow arrival of funds. Yet there were also aesthetic
reasons: gothic architecture pleases because of the illusive effect of its load-
ing, of the sense of thrust and dynamism created by the relation between
the height and the fragility and complexity of the supporting pillars and
buttresses. In that, it was obviously felt to be quite different from the static
effect given by classical proportion in the Greek manner.
How had the gothic architects done this, creating buildings which were
still standing? How had they got their building to stay up? Soufflot from
early on in his career, in a memoir from 1741, shows interest in the technical
questions of how the gothic cathedral supported its mass and admiration of
the daring of the building skills it showed. In the 1741 memoir he wheels on
the comparison between the gothic cathedral where our eyes are deceived
by the proportions into believing them much bigger than they are, and Saint
Peter's, where we believe it much smaller. And one can show that Diderot
had this unpublished memoir in front of him when he wrote the Essays on
painting.
There seems to have been round Soufflot, after the attribution of the com-
mission for Sainte Genevieve, in the early 1760s "a concerted campaign to
convince members of the Academy [of Architecture] of the practicability of
[carrying a complex system of vaults and domes on elegant columns and
light piers]". This campaign was conducted by the men with whom Diderot
was regularly dining - Soufflot, Cochin, and Perronet. 15 It is precisely on this
point, the loading of the dome, that Soufflot is attacked in 1769, after the
commission for Sainte Genevieve was underway, by an old enemy of
Diderot's, Pierre Patte. Patte claims that the building will not be able to bear
the dome. (In fact the pillars did crack, but not for the reasons given by
Patte).16 The proponents of gothic construction say that studying gothic
buildings could be of the greatest utility in order to prove:
... to what an extent we have abused the use of materials in the churches built in Paris in the last
two centuries and to make us drop the prejudice which most architects had and seem to have
that one can only build churches with huge square pillars and arcades, with thick walls and
considerable side walls, for lack probably of having sufficiently examined Notre Dame and
other churches of that type. 17
In the struggle for power which followed, Perronet wrote two remarkable
letters in defence of Soufflot, letters which throw a great deal of light on the
context in which Diderot was working on his own aesthetics: Perronet
points out that the weight of Soufflot's dome is not resting on the pillars, but
is carried by a system of side buttressing, and says he has chosen an elegant
and economical mean between gothic and classic construction.
308 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
The solidity of an edifice must depend more on the relation of active forces to those that are to
resist them than on the size of the pillars or the walls and the disproportionate thickness of the
vaults which in fact tends to make them collapse."
So far he has pointed out that successful architecture is not just propor-
tion, but a relation between active forces of strain and push. But he develops
a remarkable comparison, that Diderot must have loved:
The magic of these edifices consists principally in having constructed them so to say in imita-
tion of the structure of animals, the high weak columns, the nerves, the double arches, the
ogives and tiercerons can be compared to animals' bones, and the little stones and voussoirs
which are only four or five feet in thickness of cut to the flesh of these same animals. These edi-
fices can subsist like a skeleton, or the carcass of ships which seem to be constructed according
to similar models. In imitating nature thus in our constructions, we can with far less material
make very lasting buildings; columns or ribbing weak in appearance, but fortified by abutting
pillars of the same kind, easily hold up light vaults and domes which are in porte faux, which
are not harmful here."
Notes
1 This paper is a version both shortened and developed of one being published in Reflecting
Senses: Appearance and Illusion in Cultural Representation, ed. Walter Paper and Frederick
Burwick, de Gruyter, Berlin, to appear autumn 1994.
3 Diderot, Oeuvres esthitiques, ed. Paul Vemire, Paris, Gamier, 1959, p. 734. Pages hereafter in
the text.
7 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgement, 1790, § 26 (translated JH Bernard, New York and
London, 1966, p. 91): "There is here a feeling of the inadequacy of his imagination for
presenting the ideas of a whole, wherein the imagination reaches its maximum, and, in striving
to surpass it, sinks back into itself, by which however, a kind of emotional satisfaction is
produced".
8 de Brosses, Charles, Lettres familieres sur i'Italie, ed. Yvonne Brizard, Paris, 1931, vol. ii, p.
159.
9 Kant was a voracious reader. But I have not been able to establish whether he might have
had access to a copy of the Correspondance litteraire, the manuscript journal in which the Essays
on Painting appeared.
10 Carlo Fontana, Templum Vaticanum et ipsius origo, cum redificiis maxime conspicuis, Editum ab
310 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
12 See Jacques Heyman, Coulomb's Memoir on Statics: an Essay in the History of Civil Engineering,
Cambridge, 1972, pp. 82-84 for an account of La Hire.
13 Quoted in Monval, Jean, Soufflot, sa vie, son oeuvre, son esthetique (1713-1780), p. 423.
14 Ibid. p. 441.
15 Middleton, Robin H., Viollet Ie Duc and the &tional Gothic Tradition, Cambridge,
unpublished thesis, 1959, vol. II, p. 38. This extremely important study is central to any
understanding of the developments in architecture in the second half of the Eighteenth
Century.
16 Heyman, Jacques, "The crossing piers of the French Pantheon", The Structural Engineer, 63,
1985, pp. 230-234. Heyman shows that the cracking was actually caused by inadequate
workmanship in the preparation of the bedding faces of the stones. Patte's real disagreement
with Soufflot was over the problem of the allowance to be made in constructions for the
illusion of overhang.
18 Ibid. p. 454.
19 Ibid. p. 453.
20 Diderot, Correspondance, vol. ix, p. 125. Cf. Jacques Heyman, The Masonry Arch, Ellis
Horwood Series in engineering Science, Chichester, Ellis Horwood and John Wiley, 1982, p. 62:
"[...] the advance first taken fully by Perronet, in which the internal piers are drastically
reduced in thickness. For a multi-span bridge with more or less equal spans, the internal piers
carry little more than vertical forces, the horizontal thrusts from adjacent spans being roughly
self-equilibrating" .
21 Diderot, Salon of 1767 ed. Jean Seznec and Jean Adhemar, Oxford, 1963, p. 60.
22 Ibid. p. 61.
23 Ibid. p. 61: "the true line, not a tradition, which almost vanishes with the man of taste,
which for a while forms the mind, the character, the taste of the work of a people, of a century,
of a school; ideal model of beauty, true line, of which the man of genius while have the most
correct notion according to climate, government, laws and thecircumstances which produced
him".
24 Diderot, D'Alembert's Dream, in Oeuvres completes, ed. Roger Lewinter, Paris, 15 vols., 1971,
vol. VIII, p. 72: "If a certain phenomenon known in nature is followed by a certain other
phenomenon known in nature, what will be the fourth phenomenon consequent on a third,
wither given by nature, or imagined in imitation of nature".
26 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated Norman Kemp Smith, London, 1970, [1929] p. 211,
A 180/B222.
27 Ibid. p. 212; A 180, B 224. I wonder about Kant's distinction of schema from image in
B181/ A 142, and to what degree there might not be an aesthetic/visual model underlying it,
close to Diderot's distinction "ideal model" and actual attained image.
Chapter 31
The end of the eighteenth century, the age of the Enlightenment, is a period
of doubt and pessimism about the future of mathematics, a feeling shared
by almost all the leading mathematicians of the time. On September 21st,
1781, Lagrange writes to d'Alembert:
I began to sense my 'force of inertia' growing little by little, and I am not sure that I will still be
able to pursue Geometry ten "years from now. It also seems that the mine is almost too deep
already, and that unless new veins are discovered, it will have to be abandoned sooner or later.
Physics and chemistry now offer riches that are more brilliant and easier to exploit, and the
taste of our century also appears to be turned entirely in this direction; it is not impossible that
the chairs of Geometry in the Academies will soon become what the chairs in Arabic now are in
the universities." As early as 1699, Fontenelle made a similar prediction, saying that mathemat-
ics might well soon become complete, while physics, by its very nature, would be endless. In
1808, in his famous Rapport historique sur Ie progres des sciences mathematiques depuis 1789 et sur
leur etat actuel, Delambre writes: "It would be difficult and perhaps rash to analyze the chance
which the future offers to the advancement of mathematics; in almost all its branches one is
blocked by insurmountable difficulties; perfection of details seems to be the only thing which
remains to be done. (... ) All these difficulties appear to announce that the power of our analysis
is practically exhausted, as was that of ordinary algebra with respect to transcendental geome-
try at the time of Leibniz and Newton, and that we need combinations capable of opening up a
new field to the calculus of the transcendents and to the solution of the equations which con-
tain them.'
looks arbitrary. (... ) So, mathematics (... ) are in this book a topic subordinat-
ed to a larger one. The aim is to show how it is possible to give to all the sci-
ences the exactitude which we believe to be the exclusive lot of
mathematics."3 The necessity, the absence of arbitrariness, we found in alge-
bra are those we have in nature. And that is what we need in all the sci-
ences.
Here we find three fundamental ideas expressed by Condillac. First, that
we need to go back to what there is independent of language. Second, that
ordinary, usual languages, or at least the ordinary use of language, are mis-
leading, are masking reality, facts and nature. Third, that there is a link
between the misuses of languages and the misuses of mathematics, and
even a link between the critique of metaphysics and that of mathematics.
Condillac is not far from Leibniz; his langue des calculs is close to Leibniz's
caracteristica universalis, that symbolic artificial language which will not per-
mit chimeras to be created that are not even understood by the person who
proposed them.
Of the many differences between Leibniz and Condillac, there are at least
two important ones that we should note. Leibniz's caracteristica is first and
foremost a method without which our thinking would not be able to get
very far without getting lost. It is intended to provide thought with a filum
Ariadnes, i.e. a tangible and rough means of guidance, as are the lines we
draw in geometry, according to Leibniz. These drawn lines are not the geo-
metrical lines, and it is well known that reasoning on the drawn figure is a
capital sin in geometry. But we need those drawn figures to guide our
thinking and to prompt it to the discovery of truths. The caracteristica, in
Leibniz's own words, has a similar function, and we should not mistake its
symbols for the things themselves. Leibniz's main concern is that thought
can mislead itself and get lost. Condillac's main concern is that languages
put a screen between us and nature, between us and facts. We find in
Condillac the idea of a pre-linguistic, factual knowledge, or of a knowledge
made independent from language even when it is expressed through the
langue des calculs.4 His philosophy tends towards a metaphysics of facts. The
On Mathematics at the Time of the Enlightenment 313
paradox is that the return to facts should go through the creation of a com-
pletely artificial, formal and conventional language. In other words,
Condillac intends to lead us out of the erring ways of artificiality by push-
ing artificiality to its most extreme limit. Condillac thus attempts to recon-
cile Leibniz and Locke. The second important difference between Leibniz
and Condillac which I note here is that Condillac's metaphysics is not a pri-
mary science or philosophy; his metaphysics cannot but be a second-order
science. Just as you could not have good grammarians in the absence of
good poets and authors, the langue des calculs can operate only when some
knowledge has already been acquired. The langue des calculs, and the 'good'
metaphysics as well, presuppose scientific facts. They bring order and foun-
dation to what have already been established as scientific facts. They give
those scientific facts back their foundation and their full significance. This
holds for mathematics as well. Condillac does not repudiate the knowledge
of the mathematicians of his time. This knowledge is, from his point of
view, a raw material which has to be enlightened and brought back to its
source, which is the senses. Otherwise, the langue des calculs would have no
com to mill. But we may note that the idea according to which formalization
is a second order activity was one which was to be fruitful during the nine-
teenth century. Furthermore, from Condillac's standpoint, mathematics
needs to be completely rebuilt. In a way, that is what the nineteenth century
has done, even if it has I10t been done with the idea of founding a new meta-
physics which would stick to the facts.
Diderot's critique of both mathematics and metaphysics is far more radi-
cal than Condillac's. Of the Enlightenment philosophers, he seems to have
been the one who has gone the furthest in the questioning of mathematics.
Clearly, Diderot does not believe in the possibility of constituting such a
language as the langue des calculs. He does not even believe in the usefulness
of such a language. That does not means that we cannot find in his critiques
of mathematics many aspects of Condillac's own, as well as some of
Condillac's philosophical ideas. For Diderot too, the philosopher must start
with facts established by the scientists. We can see Diderot, in particular in
his Elements de physiologie, relying entirely upon the observations made by
contemporary scientists. In some cases this has been misleading. For
instance, we see Diderot following Harvey in the latter's claim that the
semen does not penetrate in the uterus, a fact alleged from observations
made of the Charles I's deer. That seems all the more remarkable when we
consider that this argument was usually used by the supporters of the doc-
trine of preformation and of ovism, who claimed that the preformed germ is
in the egg and that there is therefore only maternal heredity. Diderot, on the
contrary, always strongly defended the principle of biparental heredity, but
he does not contest Harvey's observation. 5 So we can say that Diderot, as a
philosopher, depends upon ideas the precede him. He uses the observations
of the scientists as raw material without discussing them. And he uses them
very freely, unembarrassed by the fact that he disagrees with the general
philosophical or theoretical orientations of those from whom he borrows.
One striking instance of this is the use Diderot makes of the Essay upon the
vital movement by Robert Whytt. He borrows from Whytt his description of
the movement of breath and of blood circulation; he relies upon him for his
observations of involuntary movements and of the effect of some sensitive
314 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
substances which act upon specific parts of the body. But at the same time,
Diderot rejects vigorously the optimistic finalism and the animism of this
Scottish physician. He rejects the claim that matter cannot, of itself, by any
modification of its parts, be rendered capable of sensation, or of generating
motion, as well as the accompanying doctrine of the two substances. He
even uses Whytt's observations to confute those opinions. In general,
Diderot does not discuss scientific observations, but only the doctrine or the
theory in which they might be embedded by those who made them. Diderot
took a definite position in almost all the great scientific controversies of his
time. His positions in those controversies are always linked to his struggles
with his lifelong enemies: the supporters of the doctrines of the liberty of the
soul imprisoned in the body, of the two substances, and of the final causes.
These are his landmarks. They do not prevent him from accepting some
finality in, for instance, physiology, when this finality can be conceived as
remaining inherent to the organization and not as coming from some provi-
dential arbitrariness. For instance, he readily acknowledges that the differ-
ence in the articulation of the jaws in man and in the lizard have
consequences for the shape of the human brain but he rejects the physiolog-
ical differences as an explamnation of the distinctiveness of the human
brain. From that point of view, Diderot is not very far from Darwin.
Diderot's Elements de physiologie is a good example of his conception of the
task of the philosopher, and also of what he calls 'experimental philosophy'.
To take up experimental philosophy is not to engage in the practice of
experiment and scientific observation, nor does it assume an empiricism
like Locke's. To Diderot, experimental philosophy means relying upon the
practice of professionals in any field. From Diderot's standpoint the
philosopher's task does not consist of the elaboration of any kind of meta-
physics or general system which could encompass the whole of knowledge,
gather it into a systematic whole, and lay down its limits. The task of the
philosopher, according to Diderot, starts with the work of scientists, but
also with that of artists or even craftsmen, as born out of practical activities.
Making scientific observations is as practical an activity as that of the actor
performing on a stage or of the craftsman making an armchair.
These activities require professionalism." Diderot, as a philosopher, does
not substitute himself for the scientist, nor for the artist or the craftsman. He
considers the results of their activities and what can be thought on the basis
of them. But he does not assume that those results speak for themselves.
The philosopher defends some very general issues, confronts them with the
knowledge of the professional, in doing so refines his positions and thus
validates them. When Diderot considers the work of a scientist, an artist, or
a craftsmen, he always has in mind his lifelong struggle against supersti-
tion, prejudice, established authorities, morality, general ideas ....
All this has direct links with what Diderot wrote on mathematics.
Nowhere do we see him discussing a demonstration or a mathematical the-
ory, nor trying to establish a better one. He never attempts to put himself in
the place of the mathematician. That does not mean that he was not well-
acquainted with mathematics. Even those who radically disagree with what
he has said about mathematics acknowledge that he was far from ignorant
in that field. Diderot does not criticize mathematics from the inside but from
the outside. He takes doing mathematics as a practical activity. This is the
On Mathematics at the Time of the Enlightenment 315
main meaning of his Lettre sur les aveugles in which he discusses the case of
the blind English mathematician Saunderson. He does not criticize mathe-
matics as such, but the importance given to mathematics in sciences and the
significance attributed to it in philosophy. And his judgements are severe,
radical.
It is in his Lettre sur les aveugles that Diderot develops his criticique. There
he describes abstractions as a common source of errors, saying that geomet-
rical truths are merely identical propositions and are not able to generate
new facts. Later, in 1756, in Pensees sur l'interpretation de la nature, he writes:
"One of the truths which has been announced recently with the greatest
courage and force, and which will certainly have the most advantageous
consequences, is that the field of mathematicians is an intellectual world
where what are assumed to be rigorous truths completely lose this advan-
tage when brought down to earth." And he adds: "We are arriving at the
moment of a great revolution in the sciences. Considering the inclination
that minds, it seems to me, have for ethics, literature, the history of nature
and experimental physics, I dare say that in less than a century we shall not
have three great geometers left in Europe. This science will very soon come
to a standstill where the Bemoullis, Maupertuis, Clairaults, Fontaines, and
d' Alemberts will have left it.'" Still in De l'interpretation, Diderot claims that
it is the task of experimental philosophy to correct the results of geometrical
calculus, that even geometers would agree with this conclusion, that mathe-
matics - in particular transcendental mathematics -leads to nothing precise
without experiment, that it is just a kind of general metaphysics. And he
asks: would it not be quicker to confine ourselves to the results of the exper-
iment? In 1758, d' Alembert leaves the Encyclopedie and Diderot writes to
Voltaire: "The reign of mathematics is over. Tastes have changed. Natural
history and letters are now dominant. At his age, d' Alembert will throw
himself into the study of natural history, and it will be difficult for him to
write a literary work which will live up to the celebrity attached to his
name." In Le reve de d'Alembert, he seems to restate some of Condillac's
ideas. "It is the signs of language which have given birth to the abstract sci-
ences. (... ) Someone said: one man, one horse, two animals; then we said
one, two, three, and the science of numbers as a whole is born. We have no
idea of an abstract word. We observed that all bodies have three dimen-
sions, length, breadth and depth; we have kept ourselves busy with each of
these dimensions, and from that comes all the mathematical sciences. An
abstraction is nothing but a sign devoid of idea. Any abstract science is just
a combination of signs. We have canceled out the idea by separating the
sign from the physical object, and it is only by reuniting the sign with the
physical object that science once again becomes a science of ideas."R
We see that for Diderot too mathematics is, if not a language, just a com-
bination of signs, that these signs are by themselves devoid of any meaning.
That may coincide with the idea that mathematics can be a purely formal,
conventional and arbitrary language. We also note that Diderot urges math-
ematicians to go back to facts and sensations: "Whenever, after a long com-
bination of signs, you ask for an example, you require from the speaker only
that he gives some body, shape, reality or idea, to the successive sounds of
his words, by relating them to experienced sensations"! But as for mathe-
matics, he seems to consider that they have either lost any relation to the
316 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Thus, since the Greeks, we have had attempts either to replace the ques-
tioned postulate with another one, more simple and apparently more self-
evident, or to demonstrate the postulate on the basis of the others so as to
make it a theorem (instead of a postulate). The problem was of the first
importance given that a very great part of geometry depended on the fifth
postulate, in particular the famous theorem on the sum of the angles of the
triangle. We need the fifth postulate to demonstrate that this sum is two
right angles. As for finding a more simple statement for the fifth postulate,
attempts have been quite successful. The Arabs managed to replace it by
what is now called the Payfair postulate: two straight lines which intersect
cannot both be parallel to a third one. 20 In fact, geometers have discovered a
whole range of statements equivalent to the Euclidean fifth postulate. But
only one part of the problem was so resolved and not in a completely satis-
factory way. The idea that geometry should be developed starting with
propositions which on the basis of experience appear as unquestionable
truths was maintained. What is a self-evident proposition is always matter
of debate. As for the second aspect of the problem leading to attempts to
demonstrate the postulate, the failure was complete. More precisely, many
have claimed over the centuries to have demonstrated the postulate, but
Gauss has rejected all those 'demonstrations' for one very precise reason.
Take, for instance, the demonstration proposed by Lambert, who before
Gauss went the farthest in this matter. Lambert attempted to demonstrate
the proposition by reductio ad absurdum. He tried to show that if we replace
the postulate with another proposition in contradiction with it, we are dri-
ven to a contradiction. So it would have been shown that only the Euclidean
postulate does not lead to contradictions and thus is the only one that can be
kept. But in doing this, Lambert has not reached a contradiction properly
speaking but a theorem which, from his standpoint, was impossible on the
grounds of the whole of our experience: "If the third hypothesis was true,
we would have an absolute unit of measure for the length of each lines, the
area of each surface, the volume of each solid, in contradiction with a
proposition that we can count among the principles of geometry and which
no one has contested up to now, namely that such a measure does not
exist." 2! Gauss showed that the existence of such an absolute measure was
not at all impossible, that what seems absurd at first glance might, after a
closer and more careful examination, appear not to be absurd at all. He even
argued that it is impossible to show that such a unit does not exist, that such
a demonstration might be beyond the reach of human reason and of human
experience; finally that it might be only in another life that we might be able
to reach a well-established conclusion on this point. Gauss has been the first
to contemplate the possibility of our space being non-Euclidean. No one
before him could do i,t mainly because of the abstraction-synthesis theory.
Gauss says that, starting with the hypothesis that the sum of the angles of a
triangle is less than two right angles, we arrive at a strange geometry, quite
different from the Euclidean one, which he developed to his entire satisfac-
tion and without encountering any contradiction. And Gauss concludes that
it is impossible to demonstrate the fifth postulate. But that does not mean
that this postulate is true or untrue as well. It depends on what you call true.
If you consider that any proposition which does not lead to a contradiction
is true, then the Euclidean postulate shall be, from this standpoint, consid-
On Mathematics at the Time of the Enlightenment 321
ered to be true. But the third hypothesis, or the equivalent proposition say-
ing that the sum of the angles of the triangle is less than two right angles is
also true. However, if you consider that only what corresponds to the "true
nature of space" to use Gauss's own words, is true, then only one of these
two contradictory propositions should be taken as true, but we have no
means of knowing which one is the good one. As for that "true nature of
space", Gauss says that we know almost nothing about it despite the vain
discourses of the metaphysicians. From this standpoint, many other obscu-
rities can be discovered in our geometry.22
Here we have a very strange situation: two contradictory propositions
which must either be taken at the same time as true, or between which we
cannot decide which is right and which is false. What is worse, for centuries
one of these propositions has been taken as an unquestionable truth on the
grounds of which we can safely develop the whole of geometry, secure in
the belief that we are adhering to the truth and achieving certitude. The
problem of the parallel has alone ruined the paradigm of the classical
knowledge. The strange thing is that Gauss was driven to his conclusion by
his faithfulness to the rigor antiquus, the model of which was the Elements of
Euclid. Taken in all rigor, the Euclidean postulates were not seen as unques-
tionable truths but as demands, demands which anyone wishing to engage
in the proposed discourse must admit. If one refuses those demands, then
one should not try to follow the discourse. In the Elements, there is no men-
tion of the fact that those demands should be self-evident. This is the reason
why, from Gauss's standpoint, we have, discursively at least, two possible
geometries; one Euclidean and another which he labels non-Euclidean. 23 But
Gauss's rigor antiquus includes other aspects which deserve to be considered
here in relation to the problem of the imaginary or complex numbers.
Among the problems which worried mathematicians at the end of the
eighteenth century were the 'vanishing' quantities of analysis (I have
already mentioned this problem}/4 the 'imaginary' quantities and even the
negative quantities. They were in common use despite the fact that these
notions appeared self-contradictory given the conception of numbers at that
time. Whereas for the Greeks only integers were numbers because numbers
were defined by reference to the unity,25 at the end of the sixteenth century,
with Stevin among others, there occurs a redefinition of the concept of num-
ber. Numbers are no more defined in reference to the unity but to the intu-
itive notion of quantity. "A number," said Stevin, "is a measure of
quantity". On the basis of this intuitive redefinition of numbers, it became
possible to consider not only ratios as numbers, but also anything which
could be conceived as a quantity, the non-rationals, for instance the square
roots. 26 The rationale for this extension of the concept of number is the fact
that one can calculate algebraically with ratios and irrational "quantities" as
with integers. This extension of the concept of number coincided with the
development of mathematical physics as well as with that of the application
of algebra. But it also raised problems, given that the algebraic calculus
implied dealing with "negative numbers". The idea of a negative quantity
was very difficult to accept, and has given rise to numerous debates.
Similarly, we can say that the definition of numbers on the basis of the
notion of quantity has helped the development of infinitesimal calculus and
analysis, even if it implied that one has to consider quantities which, from
322 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
one point of view could be taken as zero, and at the same time, but from
another point of view, as not zero. Furthermore, the development of the the-
ory of equations, which had undergone a decisive step with the resolution
of the general third degree equation by Cardan at the end of the sixteenth
century, also raised difficulties inasmuch as it implied the consideration of
"imaginary quantities". The problems of negative, imaginary and vanishing
quantities are among the main concerns of the mathematicians of the end of
the eighteenth century. The abstraction-synthesis theory applied to num-
bers was of no help in solving those problems; quite the reverse.
In a very famous letter to Bessel, dated December 18th, 1811, Gauss
explained that we cannot be satisfied with protesting against the usage of
qualifying the imaginary quantities as 'impossible', or with acknowledging
that their use has never resulted in any contradiction. He shows that in
order to achieve the autonomy of the analysis it is necessary to extend the
theory of functions to functions of imaginary quantities. And he legitimates
this extension by introducing a geometrical analogy:27 the real quantities are
to the line what all the quantities, real or imaginary, are to the plane. And he
introduces there the famous geometrical representation of complex num-
bers.2R In doing so, he is still faithful to the rigor antiquus because he is faith-
ful to the geometrical realism of the Greeks.
Gauss was never satisfied with non-contradiction; he never took non-con-
tradiction as a sufficient proof of existence. Non-contradiction is a necessary
condition. But it is not a sufficient condition. Gauss is not satisfied with the
fact that the use of complex numbers has never introduced contradictions.
That is, for instance, the basis of his criticism of the demonstrations of the
fundamental theorem of algebra proposed by Euler, d' Alembert, Lagrange
and others. Before concluding that an entity exists Gauss requires that we
identify what he calls "an adequate substratum". As for complex numbers,
he finds this substratum in the orientation of space. 2Y Once you have chosen
a conventional orientation on the axis of the real numbers, the left and the
right within the plane, that is to say the conventional orientation on the axis
of the purely imnaginary entities must be defined. Complex numbers are
complex because they combine in a single entity those two orientations.
Gauss praises Kant for having criticized Leibniz's attempt to reduce space
to a pure phenomenal relation between substance. From Gauss's stand-
point, Kant has the merit of having seen in the asymmetry the proof of the
absolute character of spatial positions. But, and this should be stressed, he
criticizes Kant for having said that the orientation of space is a form of our
external intuition. For Gauss, the space has an absolute existence, an exis-
tence independent of our intuition. There we see Gauss breaking with
Kant's idealism and adopting what we might call a materialist position. But
such a materialist position is of a very strange kind. If Gauss needs geome-
try to provide a foundation for algebra and analysis, we have seen that from
his standpoint we know almost nothing of the "true nature of space", which
remains for him the object of geometry. Thus we see Gauss grounding the
whole of mathematics on something we know almost nothing about. Worse,
he grounds the whole of mathematics upon the knowledge of what he has
said to be, for its most fundamental features, beyond the reach of human
reason and experience. We have there a conception of knowledge which is
very new, and which still deserves consideration.
On Mathematics at the Time of the Enlightenment 323
Notes
1 Delambre JB (1810), pp. 125-126.
2 Derrida J (1973).
4 One might see here something which foreshadows what is called 'tacit knowledge'.
324 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
5 It should be noticed that many other scientists have done the same: Malpighi, Spallanzani,
Haller, Bonnet .... Nevertheless, this should not be taken as meaning that Diderot's reliance in
the scientist's observations was not complete. These observations, as observations, and not
their interpretations, are always taken by Diderot as facts beyond discussion.
6 "We exercise our senses as nature has given them to us, and according to what the needs and
the circumstances require. But we do not improve them, we do not learn to see, to scent, to feel,
to listen unless our profession compels us." Diderot (1875), p. 225.
9 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
15 "So Saunderson was seeing with his skin". Diderot (1964), p. 117.
16 Delambre mentions Gauss's book in his Rapport and praises the importance and the
originality of the work, but not to the point of recognizing that it was opening new ways in
mathematics which would allow him to overcome the difficulties which he still believed
insuperable.
18 As when they introduce in calculus infinite series without having previously checked their
convergence.
19 VuilleminJ (1962).
22 For instance, in the definition of the plane as a surface in which there is a straight line
joining any two points, a definition which, according to Gauss contains more than what is
needed for determining the surface and implies a tacit theorem which we should first discover.
23 It is Gauss who has forged this expression instead of those of 'imaginary' geometry, or 'astral'
geometry, or 'impossible' geometry used by his predecessors and by himself as well occasion ally).
25 In Euclid's Elements numbers are defined as multitudes composed of units. This implies
that the Greeks could not conceive the ratios as numbers (they have instead developed a theory
of proportions, or more precisely two theories of proportions, one for numbers - i.e. integers -
On Mathematics at the Time of the Enlightenment 325
and one for magnitudes. The first is the topic of book Vllth of the Elements, the other of book
Vth.) but also the "irrationals", like the square root of two, despite of the fact that they have
discovered the incommensurabilities between magnitudes, in particular that of the side of the
square and its diagonal - which corresponds to the square root of two - or of the side of the
regular pentagon and its diagonal - which corresponds to the "golden number" (.y5 - 1)/2 -
also despite the fact that Archimedes has calculated the first decimals of the "number" 1t, i.e. of
the proportion between the length of the circle and its diameter.
26 It is worth noting that still for Kepler the incommensurables, i.e. for instance the proportion
of the diagonal of the square and of its side, could not be expressed by numbers even if they
could be approached, as much as one wants, by numbers.
27 Given the importance attributed to analogy by Condillac (see once more Derrida (1973), it
would be interesting to develop here a comparison.
28 Gauss is the one who has introduced the expression 'complex numbers' instead of that of
'imaginary' numbers or quantities. The geometrical representation of the complex numbers
had already been proposed, some time earlier, by Argand.
References
Carnot L (1799) Riflexions sur la metaphysique du calcul infinitesimal. This version from reprint
Albert Blanchard, Paris, 1970.
Condillac (1798) La langue des calculs. This version from Condillac Oeuvres philosophiques, vol. 2.
Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1948.
Delambre JB (1810) Rapport sur les progres des sciences mathematiquyes depuis 1789. This version
from reprint Rapports ii I'Empereur sur Ie progres des sciences, des arts et des Lettres depuis 1789, I.
Sciences mathematiques. Belin, Paris, 1989.
Derrida J (1973) L'archeologie du frivole. Foreword to the reissue of Condillac, Essai sur I'origine
des connaissances humaines. Editions Galilee, Paris.
Diderot D (1875) Elements de physiologie. This version from reprint Librairie Marcel Didier,
Paris,1964.
Dieudonne J (1978) Pour I'honneur de I'esprit humain (Les mathimatiques aujourd'hui). Hachette, Paris.
Lambert JH (1786) "Theorie der Parallellinien", Magazin fur reine und angewandte Mathematik,
Lepzig. This version from Engel F (mit Stackel P) Die Theorie der Parellellinien von Euklid bis
auf Gauss, eine Urkundsammlung zur Vorgeschichte der nichteuklidschen Geometrie. Teubner,
Leipzig, 1895.
References
1 Wittgenstein L. (1%1) Tractatus logico philosophicus. Trans!. Paris DF and McGuines BF.
Routlege & Kegan Paul, London.
3 Wittgenstein L. (1974) On Certainty. Trans!. Paul D, Ascombe GEM. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
4 Wittgenstein's Lectures. Cambridge, 1930-1932. From the Notes of John King and Desmond
Lee. Edited by Desmond Lee. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Chapter 33
Mathematics was "bom" of the need to be able to state numbers and carry
out some arithmetical operations with these numbers. The ability to count"
II
The art of story-telling should replace the art of symbols in mathematics lessons! Perhaps in the
perspective of five centuries one might dare to say that the art of printing books and symbolic
abstraction (which presupposes the former) are two important events which mark the begin-
nings of what one may call the decline of dialogue, while the advent of the computer and the
demise of English pub life heralds its end.'
This thought was put on paper ten years ago, and we can now see that
English pub life appears to have survived. Perhaps rhetoric has, in some
sense, returned when the idea of "talking mathematics" - and talking about
mathematics - with school pupils is almost a watchword.
However, there have been obstacles to the development of the role of
mathematics in society in recent decades, and the term "knowledge of
mathematics" has therefore taken on a new meaning.
This is related to some extent to the development of new tools like the
computer and the pocket calculator. But there is a different reason for the
change in the way mathematical knowledge and skills are generally
viewed.
In recent decades, more and more people have begun to talk about "dif-
ferent kinds" of mathematics. There is talk, for example, of situation mathe-
matics and ethno-mathematics, and it is generally agreed that we need a
day-to-day mathematics, separate from the academic discipline. This "new"
kind of mathematics must be rooted in the structure of everyday life instead
of the internal structure of mathematics itself. It must be a part of public
education, and be perceived as an important part of human knowledge and
general cultural training. Thus it must in some sense return from what are
to many people the specialized symbols of mathematics to a more everyday
language.
For some years Denmark's Research Council for Humanistic Studies has
been running an inter-Nordic research project under the heading of
"Mathematics, Teaching and Democracy". One reason for this project is the
increasingly important role of mathematics in society. A growing number of
political and administrative decisions are based on mathematical and statis-
tical material, the presentation of mathematical proofs and arguments that
people with only "basic school mathematics" find it difficult to interpret
and even more difficult to subject to critical analysis.
The Danish research council therefore thinks that this should be given
attention in all education, both at school and in the world of work. It may be
said that the role of mathematics as a humanistic subject has expanded.
Mathematics is no longer just a tool "to describe the world" from the natur-
al sciences viewpoint. This new "variety" of mathematics attempts to recon-
stitute mathematics as a part of public education.
One of the changed roles of mathematics in today's society is the more
widespread use of mathematical models. A mathematical model may be
nothing more than a simple formula, for example the relationship between
highway, speed and time. But these models may be complicated even for
fairly trivial activities, for example the formula which may be used to calcu-
late the costs of using the telephone. In many occupations there are more
Mathematics, Professional Knowledge and Technology 333
A Choosing a strategy
B Carrying out one or more calculations
C Reflecting on the result of the calculation3
to work beyond their level of skill in mathematics with the obvious con-
comitant risks. Their task is to complete phase B, to "follow a rule", perhaps
without knowing anything about phase A, and thus nothing of phase C.
Here are some of the dangers that the Danish Research Council for
Humanistic Studies have pointed to. Bearing in mind the call for a more
general content in mathematics teaching, it may also be true that people
have the "wrong" aspects of mathematics in their education. The concept of
school mathematics has not undergone any notable changes in the reviews
of the national curriculum. The present proposed new primary and sec-
ondary school national curriculum in Sweden is the first sign of a real
change in direction.
Many of the adults interviewed as part of our research on pocket calcula-
tors have told us about the implicit faith they had in this tool and how
because of that faith they did not reflect on the result of their calculations
unless they contained the kind of obvious error that may occur when, for
example, one forgets to enter a decimal point. These people confirm that
they were able to work without mastering phase A, which had been
replaced by an order, a rule or an algorithm. To give an example, one per-
son had been told to work out new prices when the VAT rate changed. This
he did, that is to say, he performed phase B, by using a pocket calculator,
without any real chance of reflecting on the results he obtained. With the
benefit of hindsight he now says that he only reacted when the result devi-
ated significantly from the usual results. "But sometimes I might have
entered 37 instead of 47, and I couldn't possibly have noticed that."
If this ability to "solve problems that one cannot solve" occurs in schools,
the problem can be tackled - provided the teacher notices it. Of course, the
pupils are "under constant supervision".
But how is the same "ability" to be dealt with if it occurs at work or in
daily life?
Until as recently as half a century ago people could earn a living from
being able to count. Occupations such as "counting assistant" and "count-
ing master" describe this kind of work. When electrical counting machines
became common, these specialists in "pen and paper" calculations were no
longer needed.
Today the "counting master" has been replaced by the pocket calculator.
It is easy to learn to use a simple pocket calculator, and it can be put to use
without delay. Or should we say that people "believe" that they can begin
to use it at once. Some of our interviews show that many people don't
know, for example, that simple pocket calculators do not apply the rules of
mathematical priorities. They give the answer 35 when 3 + 4 x 5 is entered,
while if mathematical priority rules are followed the answer is 23, because,
"first multiplication, then addition". The percentage function of pocket cal-
culators is not standardized, posing another, similar problem for their users.
The example also shows some difference in the use of pocket calculators
and computers. Every use of a pocket calculator is a unique event, while a
computer programme can be tested many times before it is used.
Research is also in progress which shows that blindly following rules also
produces errors in other contexts. One example is the interpretation of the
ordinary table of postage charges when working out the cost of a letter
weighing 120 gm. Many failed to "read" the word maximum and added the
336 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
charge for a 20 gm letter to the charge for a 100 gm letter. Another example
is "working out the period of time from March 24th to June 12th". The suc-
cess rate in, for example, year 2 of the upper-secondary school, was only
21%, because a well-known algorithm was applied and the number of days
in March was calculated by subtracting 24 from 3l.
But what are the consequences of the fact that when using these tools one
can evidently produce an answer to a problem that one de facto does not
understand and cannot solve? Should professional knowledge not include
the skill of assessing the feasibility of the answers we get from pocket calcu-
lators or computers?
What kind of training is needed at different levels of professional life to
allow the use of the pocket calculators, computer and other aids like table to
reflect professional knowledge?
Contextless mathematics
In 1991 a study was made of the mathematical knowledge and skills in a
nursing course, with alarming results. The students were given a 65 ques-
tion test in secondary school-level mathematics. The average results were
that the students got only about half the answers righV
These results were reported in the mass media as an example of the skill
of an entire occupational group. Editorial writers claimed that this lack of
knowledge in mathematics made it "deadly dangerous to fall ill", some-
thing which is indeed ultimately true for most of us. There is therefore good
reason to examine more closely this attempt to assess professional knowl-
edge.
To begin with one may note that testing other occupational groups or
groups of students, except students studying subjects with a mathematical
orientation, would give the same result, one reason being that people who
have failed to grasp or have the chance to penetrate "symbolic mathemat-
ics", seem to see mathematics as a collection of unrelated rules and algo-
rithms. if one or more of these rules is forgotten, the problem becomes
unsolvable. Many of these student nurses had certainly not come across
some of the problems in the test since their secondary school days.
Problems like 0.192/0.8 or multiplying 2.8 by % "and give your answer in
decimal form" are not problems you meet in this form in daily life. These
are purely arithmetical problems, that is to say phase B problems, and the
mathematics is wholly contextless. Instead of trying to solve the problem,
people begin to look for rules - "now what was it you did with the decimal
in the denominator?" or, "how do you multiply fractions?" It may be added
that the answers to problems put in this way are uninteresting.
But a purely "rule-following" person who is doing a job finds himself in
the same situation as the student nurses taking the test. The result of a sin-
gle arithmetical operation - with or without using a pocket calculator - is
uninteresting. Thus errors in calculation will not be discovered, with possi-
bly dangerous consequences.
What the student nurses could not do may be described as "certain arith-
metical skills" which may be seen as a part of the ability to solve problems
Mathematics, Professional Knowledge and Technology 337
or deal with situations. The problem 0.192/0.8 can be quickly "worked out"
with the help of a pocket calculator without having to think about "where to
put the decimal point". A (contextless) item of mathematical knowledge
must instead take the form of a discussion of why the answer is greater than
0.192, that is a discussion of phase A and phase C.
But can the result justify questioning the professional skills of nurses? If
so, we should remember that colleges of nursing set a final exam in "medi-
cine dispensing" and students are required to get full marks in this subject
to qualify as nurses. That test is more relevant and contains more than
mathematical "rule-following". The arithmetical task (phase B) is part of the
problem, but it is not the whole problem - all three phases - that is being
tested. This kind of test is thus a more correct way of assessing nurses'
mathematical skills in their profession.
If better knowledge in (traditional) school mathematics would make it
any easier for student nurses to pass this final exam in "medicine dispens-
ing" is another interesting but as far as we know unresearched question. But
it is an example of the very kind of research that must be included in studies
of mathematical knowledge and professional knowledge and which is
therefore an important part of the research project presented here.
Many researchers have pointed out that this is not a real problem for a
pupil who gets the wrong answer to a mathematical problem at school, for
example. The pupil will look at the key, see he has the wrong answer and
try again and again until he has an answer that agrees with the textbook
key. Phase B dominates here, perhaps because mathematics at school con-
centrates mainly on the answer to the problem. Phases A and C are definite-
ly subordinate here. S
The situation is quite different in the world of work (and in daily life).
There is often no - or only one - right answer, and the wrong answer may
have financial and - if we return to the nurses, for example - other, danger-
ous repercussions. If your car breaks down you do not want a mechanic
who has to test several different solutions, you want a professionally skilled
mechanic who only"gets the wrong answer" in exceptional cases.
Introducing computers and pocket calculators in schools and at work is
by no means free from problems. A political decision taken in Sweden in the
early 1980s to introduce the subject of "computer studies" in the nine-year
compulsory school is an example of the difficulties of introducing without
reflection a new tool into school teaching. The evaluation showed that only
a small proportion of the programme was implemented. One reason for this
was that the teachers were badly trained and prepared, with another more
general problem being the artificial world of our schools. From our view-
point this particular issue may be taken up here.
The trial of computer studies as a subject was a mistake. Sweden's new
curriculum for nine-year compulsory and upper-secondary education also
noted that computers must be a self-evident aid in different contexts and in
different subjects - they must be put to use in suitable contexts and not be
isolated as a separate subjects such as "computer knowledge". Pocket calcu-
lators often appear to be introduced in a haphazard way. Many pupils in
upper-secondary education seem to be frustrated by this new aid which
quickly solves columns of problems which they had spent a great deal of
time and effort in learning how to solve on paper. The ability to perform
338 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
pen and paper calculatio.ns also. appears to. be disappearing. There are two.
pro.bable reaso.ns fo.r this. One canno.t immediately use the po.cket calculato.r
in a curriculum that has no.t been planned with this to.o.l in mind, and there
must be a clear and no.n-artificial way o.f justifying the use o.f this aid.
Metho.dical attempts to. intro.duce the po.cket calculato.r illustrate ho.w essen-
tial these the Dries are. There is a clear need to. o.verhaul bo.th the co.ntent and
o.bjectives o.f co.urses. By analo.gy the same kind o.f analysis is essential if
these to.o.ls are introduced at wo.rk.
But the trials also. implicitly demo.nstrate that within the school it is impo.s-
sible to. set clearly-defined go.als fo.r either simple Dr pro.grammable po.cket
calculato.rs. They may be a useful aid in phase B but may - as is indicated
abo.ve - have negative effects o.n phases A and C if used in artificial ways.
When the po.cket calculato.r is introduced outside the scho.o.l, it is introduced
into. a real wo.rld where phases A and C are embedded in professio.nal
kno.wledge and when the calculato.r may sometimes be a technical aid in per-
fo.rming phase B (the dual approach). In o.ther wo.rds it is experience fro.m
the wo.rld o.f wo.rk that may pro.vide the backgro.und to. impro.ved pro.fes-
sio.nal kno.wledge. This may also. guide us in finding ways to. describe what
is meant by using the po.cket calculato.r and co.mputer effectively and with
judgement, as it is put in the new primary and seco.ndary scho.o.l natio.nal
curriculum. It may also. indicate what mathematical kno.wledge is required.
To. problematize this by studying wo.rking life is an impo.rtant aim o.f the
research into. professio.nal kno.wledge and techno.lo.gy. Basically, it is a ques-
tio.n o.f the theo.ry o.f kno.wledge, o.f reflectio.n, which is bro.ken do.wn into.
two. parts. The first part is interpreting a result and reflecting o.n this inter-
pretatio.n. The seco.nd is to. have such a distance to. the "to.o.l" - the co.mput-
er/po.cket calculato.r - that o.ne no. lo.nger blindly trusts the results it
pro.duces.
In co.nclusio.n, let us return to. the wrongly-accused student nurses. The
kind o.f test carried o.ut with them canno.t assess their pro.fessio.nal kno.wl-
edge - and even less improve it. It is far fro.m certain that all the different
co.mpo.nents o.f traditio.nal scho.o.l mathematics fo.rm an impo.rtant basis.
What is needed is first an analysis o.f what mathematical knowledge this cat-
ego.ry needs in o.rder to. deal with the impo.rtant, pro.fessio.nal functio.n o.f
calculating do.sages o.f medicine. The analysis co.ntains studies o.f which
ways and in which co.ntexts the po.cket calculato.r and co.mputer can be
effective aids in the calculatio.n phase witho.ut having an adverse effect o.n
the pro.cess o.f reflectio.n in the assessment phase.
In the same way the mathematical kno.wledge requirements o.f many o.th-
er professio.ns need to. be analyzed. There is probably a co.mmo.n co.re o.f
mathematical requirements in several o.ccupatio.ns. When we kno.w what
that co.re is we can provide the proper educatio.n in mathematics fo.r o.ccupa-
tio.nal training and wo.rking life. It is to. be ho.ped that this pro.ject will make
so.me co.ntributio.n to.wards finding a way to. raise the level o.f professional
knowledge.
This article is based on the programme for a new research project entitled
"Mathematics, Professional Knowledge and Technology" (the MYT project), pro-
duced by Jan Unenge, assistant professor in mathematics and researcher in mathe-
Mathematics, Professional Knowledge and Technology 339
Notes
1 Thompson, J. (1986) Historiens roll i matematikundervisning eller retorikens Aterkomst. In:
Marton, F (ed) Fackdidaktik III. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
5 Perby, M-L. (1988). Den inre vaderbilden. In: Goranzon, B. (ed) Den inre bilden. Stockholm:
Carlssons forlag.
6 Sandahl, A & Unenge, J. (1990). Med miniriiknare fran bOrjan. Erfarenheter fran ett forsok pa
Idgstadiet. ALM-rapport nr. 5. Hogskolan i Jonkoping.
Comments
Magnus Florin
There are two ways of rendering a circle, and they are radically different
from each other. One is by drawing it (in the sand, on paper etc.) and the
other is to express a circle as a mathematical formula. These two ways are
poles apart.
We may discern here links with the traditional contest between "applied"
and "pure" mathematics. We may discuss the matter in terms of a differ-
ence in modality - a difference in mathematics and mathematicians' rela-
tionship with, and dependency on, reality. We may also see here the
successful and revolutionary aspects of the development in seventeenth
century mathematics of a rational, exact and universal mathematical lan-
guage, a language of calculation and far-reaching formalizations beyond
conditionalities and relativities.
The great and remarkable paradox is that the purpose of this language,
untarnished by the continuum of reality, was to correctly and properly
interpret and represent the facts of reality. In other words, an escape from
reality, as Jan Unenge put it in his essay on "Mathematics, Professional
Knowledge and Technology" - but as a way of achieving a desirable return
to reality!
The fascinating story Paul Henry tells in his article is rooted in the verita-
ble crisis that took place in mathematics, to which many of the practicing
mathematicians of the eighteenth century bore witness. It was the mathe-
matics of Descartes and Leibnitz that came to be regarded as a cul-de-sac.
But at that point there was no new, alternative mathematics in sight.
Existing mathematics appeared to be virtually perfected but solipsist in its
self-sufficiency and reminiscent of a metaphysical system. Its pure world
could be seen as being closer to the empty spaces of madness than to human
fellowship.
On the very threshold of this new century, the 1800s, Gauss appears and
completely transforms mathematics. This could hardly have been predicted
on the basis of the questions that the mathematicians of the previous two
centuries had been addressing. As expressed in Paul Henry's remarkable
thinking, the mathematical advances of Gauss could as well be seen from
the view of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, and Diderot in particu-
lar, namely that knowledge is something material, hierarchical and het-
erogenous. There is a relationship between the "geometrical realism" of
342 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Epilogue
Chapter 35
Acting
I begin with a question raised by Christopher Bigsby. "Is there no end to
acting, then?", he asked, "Is it a matter of I perform, therefore I exist?". With
this question, he came close to saying: "Ago, ergo sum"; "I act, therefore I
am". This is clearly correct, but let me try to spell it out a little. According to
Bigsby, "a principal meaning of the verb to act is 'to represent by action,
especially on the stage"'. That way of putting the matter could, however, be
misleading because if by "principal" meaning one intends to indicate the
meaning with the widest range and reach, then, surely, the principal mean-
ing of the verb "to act" is simply "to do" - whatever or whoever it may be
that anyone or anything is doing. There is a second, more restricted sense of
what is means to act, and that is: to do as only humans do. And from there
we might move to a third, no less important but, again, more restricted
sense, closer to that mentioned by Chris Bigsby: namely, so to do as to rep-
resent by doing.
Notice, however, that, if this is how we put it, then this third and most
particularly human mode of doing has built into its performance and
description an element of what Diderot called "dedoublement". It is this
which generates, and generates ambivalently, the possibility of philosophy,
and of hypocrisy, the possibility of wisdom and betrayal and cruelty. All the
familiar characteristics of human action bubble up within this space indicat-
ed by the non-identity of acting (as doing) and acting (as representation).
This, I think, is why Bigsby said that "the actor's role is to threaten" the
"structured language, the form, the ordered context ... with his or her physi-
cal being, to suggest, by his or her very skills, how insecure are the
346 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
categories, the systems, the social and psychological roles in which we oth-
erwise place our faith".
Actors, we might say, perform something like the prophet's role as critic
of idolatry: of our tendency to absolutize and, in desperation, cling to, set
our hearts on, facts and things and objects in the world (especially the
things that we have made, the fantasies and objects of our mind's construc-
tion). And some remarks made by Allan Janik, on Diderot as skeptic, made
me think how close ideologiekritik is, or may be, to the critique of idolatry.
And yet, how rarely, these days, is this connection noted, worked through,
and its implications seriously explored.
Consideration of the role of irony and skepticism might, perhaps, go
hand-in-hand with renewed attention to the question of how it is that (to
use a phrase Jon Monk used in his presentation) we "learn how to learn". In
all our discussions at this conference about education, the spotlight seems to
have been on the problem of being a teacher, rather than on the problem of
learning. This is, I think, symptomatic of a widespread and serious neglect
of the enormously puzzling phenomenon which learning is; a neglect the
sources of which can be traced back, historically, to a dissociation of memo-
ry from argument which lies at the root of some of the most influential pro-
jects of the early modem world.
According to Allan Janik, Diderot voiced "a very important complaint"
against a certain style of philosophical performance and self-presentation to
the effect that "knowledge has been severed from learning". This is well
said, and yet (as one who is no expert diderotien) I would suggest that
Diderot's performance, bearing this complaint, may have been in tension
with his theory.
Recall the headings of the "Systeme Figure des Connoissances [sic!]
Humaines" which Diderot constructed for the 1750 Prospectus for the
Encyclopaedia: Memoire, Raison, Imagination. 5 "Thus it is clearly manifest
that history, poetry, and philosophy flow from the three distinct fountains
of the mind, viz., the memory, the imagination, and the reason" (hence the
former appear as the "vertical" titles of the columns headed by the latter:
history by memory, philosophy by reason, poetry by imagination); "For his-
tory and experience are one and the same thing; so are philosophy and the
sciences" .6
That was not, in fact, Diderot, but Bacon. I find it slightly disturbing, but
most interesting, that, a hundred and fifty years after Bacon, Diderot was
able to take over, apparently in tranquillity, the entire structure of the
Advancement of Learning (with the exception of a somewhat unhelpful shift
in the location of theology!) including that unfortunate feature which I have
already mentioned: namely, the dissociation of memory from argument.
This dissociation is thus still built in, in the late eighteenth century - not,
admittedly, into Diderot's own literary practice or interests, but into his the-
ory and his account of how the Encyclopaedia was to be designed. Now, the
general lesson that I would learn from this has to do with the extent to
which thought-patterns, structures of imagination, continue to shape and
influence our thinking even though, on the occasions that they are explicitly
adverted to, we may reject them as evidently mistaken or outworn.
We have, I think, seen several instances of this during our conference,
whenever we have played the game of "Count the Cultures". All of us have
Diderot and Dialogue 347
said, at one time or another, that of course any dualism of arts and sciences is
superficial, crude, silly. And yet we have continued, to a surprising extent,
to operate on the assumption that this is roughly how things are and can be
talked about. Our behaviour has thus exhibited a curious affinity with
Diderot's relationship to Bacon's scheme of things.
Not much more, I think, needs to be said about the counting the cultures
than that one has only to observe the diversity of discourses and practices in
which people are, in fact, engaged in any modem university to see how ludi-
crous it would be to suppose that they could appropriately be grouped
under anyone, two, three - or even four - significantly illuminating overar-
ching categories. And yet, under combined pressure from the inherited
shapings of the mind and the proclivities of the government funding agen-
cies, we still talk as if universities were almost entirely populated by poets
and particle physicists.
Notes
1 Christopher Bigsby, "Skill of the actor: an understanding of human beings and their
behaviour:, [po ll).
6 Francis Bacon, First Part of the Great Instauration. The Dignity and Advancement of Learning, in
Nine Books (first published, 1605), Book II, Chapter II. Quoted from Joseph Devey, The Physical
and Metaphysical Works of Lord Bacon (London, 1864), p. 78.
7 Alasdair Macintyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopedia, Genealogy and
Tradition (London, 1990), p. 174.
II John Henry Newman, Sermons, Chiefly on the Theory of Religious Belief, Preached before the
University of Oxford (London, 1843), pp. 252-253.
Chapter 36
1. Introduction
The study of professional knowledge is - even if Aristotle might be said to
be its originator - a yo:ung field of research. This makes it a difficult and
demanding area. Lacking an adequate epistemology of practical knowledge
in general, one has to conduct the investigations at the empirical and con-
ceptuallevels Simultaneously, as these aspects are internally related. On the
empirical side, its core is the study of how professional knowledge is devel-
oped and maintained, not only at the level of the individual, but also in the
working group and the community. Research in this field normally takes
the form of case studies.
In recent years the main bulk of research has concentrated on document-
ing and analyzing the effect of information technology on various forms of
professional knowledge. Difficulties connected with eliciting relevant
knowledge for the design of workable computer systems have been exam-
ined - often in active interplay with other alleged conditions for successful-
ly introducing computers into a working place. In case studies of this kind
the researchers are confronted with a mixture of empirical and conceptual
questions that can only be properly handled in an interdisciplinary way.
The study of professional knowledge thus requires close cooperation
between researchers who have made case studies their speciality and
philosophers who have concentrated on the epistemology of practical
knowledge.
difficulties soon emerged. The new technology that was to take over work-
ing duties, simplify routine procedures, and provide support for complicat-
ed judgments and decisions, tended to make people's work restricted,
without context, and insusceptible to overview. These difficulties could be
explained in different ways. By one way of thinking, the obstacles to com-
puterization had to be studied as separate "problems", each of which would
in due course be solved by the mutual adjustment of the users and the tech-
nology. By another radical way of thinking, the difficulties had to be viewed
from the perspective of the theory of knowledge: the confrontation between
the rules laid down by the systems and the practical reality.
The research project entitled Skill and Technology acquired at an early stage
its definitive basis in a succession of in-depth case studies in which the cur-
rent influence of the new technology on Swedish working life was investi-
gated from the perspective of the users. These studies were designed to
provide a picture of the long-term effects of computerization on knowledge
- a perspective that had been almost entirely absent in discussions of the
new technology in working life.
A number of important case studies were subsequently performed.
Photographer Peter Gullers investigated the manufacture of surgical instru-
ments, showing how the instrument maker's skills as craftsmen were in
direct opposition to automation, as regards the preservation and passing on
of their knowledge. His study further showed that the results obtained by
the surgeons were in direct dependence of the professional skills of the
craftsmen, particularly when it came to the development of new instru-
ments. Maja-Lisa Perby, engineer in Technical Physics, watched the meteo-
rologists at Sturup Airport, and showed how their specifically
meteorological knowledge - in the form of a composite "inner weather pic-
ture" - failed to harmonize with the volume of new aids to information.
Ingela Josefson, language researcher at the Swedish Institute for Worklife
Research, has worked with studies of the knowledge characteristically
acquired by nurses, with a view to finding possible relationships to the cur-
rent rationalization and "scientification" of Swedish medical care.
In the case study of the computerization of the work of forest rangers it is
noted that the ability to calculate and the ability to make judgements are
two sides of the same coin. Calculation and judgement make a single whole.
Computerization severed the link between calculation and judgement. No
clear line can be drawn between purely routine and more advanced opera-
tions. This case study provided insight into the relationship between well-
founded experience and calculation - the mathematical model; an insight
which Denis Diderot expressed as follows. "It is a question of calculation on
the one hand, and of experience on the other. If the one is well-founded,
then it must agree with the other."
Themes and Possibilities 353
It is important to emphasize that work on the case studies has not related
solely to working life. It is, of course, natural that there should be feedback
to the activities in which the case studies were performed. But these studies
have also been of outstanding pedagogical importance in the context of
training. In the continuous and intensive activity with courses and seminars
for the universities and other institutes for higher education, this bank of
practical case studies has provided concrete examples of relationships and
contacts between work and the new technology.
This approach has been extremely rewarding, particularly in the long
term, when the students themselves have entered their respective occupa-
tions and started acquiring their own experience.
The project has always uttered itself in courses, seminars, exhibitions and
publications of different kinds, and this striving towards a public discussion
has become steadily more evident in recent years, with the setting up of the
Dialogue Seminar (in collaboration with the Royal Dramatic Theatre and
The Royal Institute of Technology) and the allied periodical Dialoger, which
has rapidly attracted attention as an important cultural vehicle in Sweden.
At the same time, a process of internationalization has taken place. Above
all during the past few years, a network of working relationships has been
built up with research workers in Europe, the USA and Japan. A work by Bo
Goranzon entitled The Practical Intellect. Computers and Skill, at the request of
Themes and Possibilities 355
Key
KS & AI Knowledge, Skill and Artificial Intelligence
Ale & L Artificial Intelligence, Culture and Language: On Education and
Work
D& T Dialogue and Technology: Art and Knowledge
5& E Skill and Education: Reflection and Experience
PI The Practical Intellect: Computers and Skill
ST & E Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: on Practical Philosophy
Craftsmanship
Tempte, Thomas (D & T, ST & E)
Engineering
Brodner, Peter (ST & E)
Cross, Michael (KS & AI)
Ennals, Richard (ST & E)
Monk, Jon (ST & E)
Rosenbrock, Howard H (Ale & L)
Startin, Kate (ST & E)
358 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Leadership
Danielsson, Albert (5 & E)
Janik, Allan (5 & E)
Acting
Bigsby, Christopher (ST & E)
Goranzon, Bo (ST & E)
Josephson, Erland (0 & T, ST & E)
Robinbson, Michael (ST & E)
Translating
Basnett, Susan (0 & T)
Kleberg, Lars (5 & E, ST & E)
Zilliacus, Clas (0 & T)
Basnett, Susan
D&T The Translator's Knowledge (II)
Bergendal, Gunnar
AIC & L Professional Skill and Traditions of Knowledge (III)
Bigsby, Christopher
ST & E The Actor as Paradigm? (II)
Bing, Jon
S& E The Image of the Intelligent Machine in Science Fiction (IV)
Bolton, Malcolm
S&E The Introduction of Information Technology into the Workplace-
Some Practical Considerations (V)
Themes and Possibilities 361
Br6dner, Peter
ST & E The Two Cultures in Engineering (II)
Cannataci, Joseph A
S& E Law and Expert Systems (V)
Cook,Jon
S& E One Culture, Two Cultures, Three Cultures (IV)
S& E Concluding Remarks Part II (VII)
ST & E Comments Section V, Introduction (with Bo G6ranzon) (VII)
Cooley, Mike
KS & AI Creativity, Skill and Human-Centred Systems (V)
Ale & L The New Technology and the New Training: Reflection on the past
and Prospects for the Future (VII)
Cross, Michael
KS & AI The Changing Nature of the Engineering Craft Apprenticeship
System in the United Kingdom (II)
Danielsson, Albert
S& E On Creativity and Development (II)
ST & E Engineering Training with a Human Face (VI)
Deutsch, Steven
Ale & L Unleashing Human Intelligence - More Than A Matter of
Computer Technology (VII)
Davies, Richard
ST & E Thoughts on Acting and the Play Beyond All Certainty (with Jon
Hyde) (VI)
Dreyfus, Hubert L
Ale & L Is Socrates to Blame for Cognitivism (VI)
Engdahl, Horace
Ale & L The Personal Signature (VII)
D&T Dialogue and Enlightenment (IV)
Ennals, Richard
KS & AI Can Skills be Transferable (V)
Ale & L Practical Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Education and
Training (V)
S& E Concluding Remarks Part I: Towards Human Centred Systems
(V), (VII)
ST & E Engineering, Culture and Competence (VII)
362 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Florin, Magnus
D& T Humans and Automatons (III), (IV)
S& E The Dome of Michelangelo (III)
ST & E Comments Section VI
Ford, Bill G
Ale & L A Learning Society: Japan Through Australian Eyes (VII)
Gill, Karamjit S
KS & AI Artificial Intelligence and Social Action: Education and Training
(VII)
Goranzon, Bo
KS & AI The Practise of The Use of Computers. A Paradoxical Encounter
between Different Traditions of Knowledge (I)
D& T Turing's Paradox (IV)
S& E The Metaphor of Caliban in our Technological Culture (IV)
PI The Practical Intellect, Computers and Skills (I)
ST & E Beyond All Certainty (with Anders Karlqvist) (IV), Comments,
Section III (I), Themes and Possibilities, Introduction (with
Magnus Florin)
Gullers, Peter
KS & AI Automation-Skill-Apprenticeship (I)
Ale & L Automation and Skill (I)
Gustafsson, Lars
ST & E Some Reflections on Diderot's Paradox (VI)
Gyllensten, Lars
D&T Intelligence and Creativity (VI)
Hart, Anna
KS & AI Knowledge Acquisition for Expert Systems (V)
Henry, Paul
ST & E On Mathematics at the Time of the Enlightenment and Related
Topics
Hertzberg, Lars
Ale & L Artificial Intelligence and The Empiricist Picture of Thought (VI)
Hilton, Julian
KS & AI Skill, Education and Social Value: Some Thoughts on the
Metonymy of Skill and Skill Transfer (V), (VII)
Themes and Possibilities 363
Hobson, Marion'
ST & E Diderot, Implicit Knowledge and Architecture (III)
Hughes, Rolf
ST & E Comments (III)
Hyde,Jon
ST & E Thoughts on acting and the Play Beyond All Certainty (with Richard
Davies) (VI)
Jameson, Gordon D
AIC & L Design of an Intelligent Tutor System for Use in Medical Education (V)
Janik, Allan
KS & AI Tacit Knowledge, Working Life and Scientific Method (III)
AIC & L Tacit knowledge, Rule Following and Learning (III)
D& T Literature, Reflection, and the Theory of Knowledge (IV)
D& T Reflections on Dialogue (VII)
S& E Caliban's Revenge (IV)
S& E Leadership and Character, or a Little Touch of Harry (II), (IV)
S& E Why is Wittgenstein Important? (III)
ST & E From Montaigne to Diderot (IV)
ST & E Rameau's Nephew. Dialogue as Gesamtkunstwerk for Enlightenment
(IV)
Johannessen, Kjell S
AIC & L Rule-following and Intransitive Understanding (III)
S& E Rule FollOWing, Intransitive Understanding and Tacit Knowledge.
An Investigation of the Wittgensteinian Concept of Practice as
Regards Tacit Knowing (III)
Josefson, Ingela
KS & AI The Nurse as Engineer - the Theory of Knowledge in Research in
the Care Sector (II)
AIC & L Language and Experience (II)
ST & E A Confrontation Between Different Traditions of Knowledge. An
Example From Working Life (II)
Josephs, Herbert
D&T Rameau's Nephew: A Dialogue for the Enlightenment (IV)
S& E Diderot and the Dramatization of Philosophical Thought (IV)
Josephson, Erland
D&T A Dwelling Place for Past and Living Voices, Passions and
Characters (II)
364 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Karlqvist, Anders
ST & E The Legacy of Turing (IV), Beyond All Certainty (with Bo
G6ranzon) (IV)
Kleberg, Lars
D&T Parody and Double-Voiced Discourse: On the Language
Philosophy of Mikhail Bakhtin (IV)
S&E Remarks on the Diderot Project (IV)
S&E The Translator as Actor (II)
ST & E Comments (II)
Lash, Nicholas
ST & E Diderot and Dialogue. Reflections on the Stockholm Conference
(VI)
Lerda, Francesco
S&E Computers and Thought: A Modem Version of Old Illusions (VI)
Lotman, Jurij
D&T Semiotics and the Historical Scorical Sciences (IV)
Masuda, Yuji
AIC & L Technological Information and Information Technology in the
Information Society (VII)
Molander, Bengt
AIC & L Socratic Dialogue: On Dialogue and Discussion in the Formation of
Knowledge (III)
S&E Tacit Knowledge and Silenced Knowledge: Fundamental
Problems and Controversies (III)
Monk,Jon
ST & E Some Enigma Variations (IV)
Naletov, Igor
ST & E The Traditions of Dialogue and the Future of Philosophy (VI)
Nitsch, Ulrich
AIC & L Farmers and Computers (V)
Nordenstam, Tore
AIC & LLanguage and Action (III)
Themes and Possibilities 365
Ostberg, Gustaf
AIC & L How to Make Materials Data Systems Useful for Designers (V)
Ostberg, Olov
KS & AI Applying Expert Systems Technology: Division of Labour and
Division of Knowledge (V), (VII)
Perby, Maja-Lisa
KS & AI Computerization and Skill in Local Weather Forecasting (I)
AIC & L The Inner Weather Picture (I)
Pleijel, Agneta
D&T On the Views on Labour Reflected in Chekhov and the Bible (IV)
Prawitz, Dag
AIC & L Tacit Knowledge - An Impediment for AI? (VI)
ST & E Turing and Wittgenstein - Two conceptions of Reality (VI)
Printz-PcThlson, Goran
ST & E Experiment, Science. Literature (IV)
Pritchard, Peter
KS & AI Knowledge-Based Computer Decision-Aids for General
Practice (V)
Robinson, Michael
5& E Translating the Self (II)
ST & E Actors and Acting (II)
Rosenbrock, Howard H
AIC & L Engineering as an Art (II)
Sallstrom, Pehr
D&T The Essence of Dialogue (IV), (VI)
Schartum, Dag
KS & AI Delegation and Decentralization - Computer Systems as Tools for
Instruction and Improved Service to Clients (I)
Searle, John R
AIC & L Cognitive Science and the Computer Metaphor (VI)
Shaffer, Elinor
ST & E Scientific "Fact-Fictions" (IV)
Sharples, Mike
5&E Controlling the Application of Knowledge-Based Systems (V)
366 Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On Practical Philosophy
Sinding-Larsen, Henrik
0& T Information Technology (II)
Smith, David
S&E The Psychology of Apprenticeship: a Discussion Paper (VII)
Startin, Kate
ST & E The Systems Analysis Skill (II)
Stieg, Gerald
AIC & L "I have no idea where I am going, so to make up for that I go
faster" (VII)
Tempte, Thomas
0& T The Chair of Tutankhamun (I)
ST & E The Practical Intellect and Master-Apprenticeship (I)
Tilghman, Ben R
AIC & LSeeing and Seeing-As (VI)
Toulmin, Stephen
0& T The Dream of an Exact Language (VII)
S& E On From "The Two Cultures" (IV)
ST & E Imaginary Confessions (IV)
ST & E Carved in Stone or Carried by the Wind? (IV)
Unenge,Jan
ST & E Mathematics, Professional Knowledge and Technology (VII)
Valach, Fedor
ST & E Interdisciplinary Scope (VI)
Zilliacus, Clas
0& T Notes on the Metrical and Deictical Problems in Shakespeare
Translation (II)
Name Index