Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: A Third Collection

Titel: A Third Collection

Stichwort: Methode (allgemein); kein Regelwerk; 3 Grundfragen; Notwendigkeit (14. Jhdt. - Thomas, Aristoteles)

Kurzinhalt: method; question for understanding, reflection, responsibility; From the beginning of the 14 century: that necessary knowledge results from the necessary implication of one concept in another (not Aquinas a. Aristotle)

Textausschnitt: 10/13 Method is not to be confused with anything as pedestrian as a recipe, a prescription, a set of directions. For recipes, and the like, lead only to single results. They may be repeated as often as you please, but the repetition yields no more than another instance of the original product. What may be advertised as the New Method Laundry may clean anyone's clothing, but it will never do anything else. (204; Fs)

11/13 The key instance to method, I feel, lies in the relation between questioning and answering. The questioner, while he does not know the answer, at least intends it. Moreover, the question itself sets a standard that leads to the rejection of insufficient answers; and insufficient answers need not be useless: they may help the questioner to pin down more accurately the precise issue he wished to raise. Further, such clarification may bring to light the existence of intermediate questions that have to be resolved before the initially intended question can be met. There is then an ongoing dynamism in questioning and answering. It heads through insufficient answers to the clarification and, as well, to the distinction of questions; and while this prepares the way to the eventual discovery of relevant answers, those very answers in turn can provide the source and stimulus to a fresh wave of questions. (204f; Fs)

12/13 I have been speaking of this ongoing process as though it occurred between a pair of individuals. But, far more importantly, it can be the common concern of associations of scientists. The members of such associations will have passed successfully through the initiatory ritual of attaining a Ph.D. They will be at home in the technical language which they alone understand and speak. That language will provide the repository of the novel conceptual systems introduced by the pioneers and the renovators in their field. It provides the instrument through which are handed on the ideals that should govern their thinking and the procedures to be followed in their investigations. It is kept alive and up-to-date through congresses, through journals and books, through school libraries, and interdisciplinary undertakings. In this fashion questions raised anywhere can be known elsewhere; they can give rise to an array of insufficient answers that successively beg for a clarification of the issue or issues; and the clarifications will hasten, as far as is possible at the time, the new answers which initial questions may have done more to intimate than to formulate. (205; Fs)

13/13 I have been stressing what I have noted elsewhere, that a method is not a set of rules to be followed meticulously by a dolt but a framework for collaborative creativity.1 But now I have to add that (1) questions are of different kinds, (2) each kind has its own immanent objective and criterion, and (3) the objectives stand in an ascending order with each completing what its predecessor had attained. (205; Fs)

14/13 The first of the kinds is the question for understanding. It arises when one is intelligent enough to experience a lack: one lacks an understanding of some aspect or aspects of the data. As long as that lack continues to be experienced, answers that are proposed and considered will have to be rejected simply because the lack remains. So the objective of the first kind of question is the attainment of an understanding of specified data. The criterion of the attainment of a proper understanding is that answers are proving sufficient, that questions no longer need further clarification, that the initial lack of understanding has been replaced by an insight that grasps why things are so. (205f; Fs)

15/13 The second kind of question is for reflection. Aristotle remarked that we think we understand when we know the cause, know that it is the cause, and know that the effect cannot be other than it is.2 Now the open point in this affirmation is the meaning of "necessity." From the beginning of the fourteenth century, by and large, it seems to have been tacitly assumed that necessary knowledge results from the necessary implication of one concept in another. But such a view cannot, I believe, be foisted on Aristotle or Aquinas. For them the primary object of understanding was the representative image, the example, the instance, in which intelligence grasped the intelligibility of what the image represents. Such a grasp is a conscious intellectual event that, at times, is resoundingly satisfactory. Its formulation in concepts is a further process, equally conscious, and intelligently resting on the content of the insight.3 (206; Fs) (notabene)

16/13 It follows that over and above the abstract necessity that may be elicited from the implication of one abstract concept in another, there is the more concrete necessity that may be intelligently grasped in representative images and, under due provisos, in sensible data. For example, one can ask abstractly what an eclipse is. But one may also refer to a concrete situation in which a man, pointing to the darkening of the moon, asks why the moon is darkened in this manner.4 The abstract question demands an abstract answer, and to proceed from the abstract definition to an actual necessity no number of further abstract necessities are enough. There also is needed an understanding of an existing situation into which the abstractions fit. But if the question is put with regard to a concrete situation in which an eclipse actually is taking place, then an understanding of that situation will grasp not only the cause of the darkening of the moon but also the necessity of that effect. (206; Fs)

17/13 The third type of question regards responsibility. There are responsibilities intrinsic to natural science, others intrinsic to human science, others to religious studies. Our observations, for the moment, must be confined to natural science. In such science there is a responsibility to the data: it is violated when the data are fraudulently produced. There is a responsibility to intelligence or reasonableness, and it is neglected when one overlooks the inadequacy of answers and, no less, when one withholds a qualified assent when further relevant questions are not made available. Finally, there is responsibility regarding the possible products of scientific advance. Because knowing is good, advance in knowing is good. Because the products of science can be turned to evil use by evil will, one's own will becomes evil in approving the evil use. (206f; Fs)

18/13 Such are the three questions, and I have said that their objectives stand in an ascending order. For the second question has its origin in an incompleteness of the first question and answer, and the third question has its origin in an incompleteness of the second question and answer. So our hypotheses and theories remedy our previous lack of understanding; but are they just bright ideas, or do they represent the best available opinion of the day? Still, even a consensus in favor of high probability would not preclude a still further question. New knowledge opens up new possibilities, and possibilities may be put to good or evil use; and so the question of responsibility arises out of the question for reflection and the answer to it. (207; Fs)