Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Titel: Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958-1964

Stichwort: Erklärende Geschichte (explanatory history) in der empirischen Wissenschaft; Lonergan's Schere (lower, upper blade)

Kurzinhalt: A man who really understands his mathematics can write an extremely intelligible history of mathematics, and similarly for these other subjects. The subject can be put together as a whole ...

Textausschnitt: 1.3 Explanatory History

60b Next, explanatory history. Technical history, I said, had a clear assimilation to empirical science, but there is a very important and a very fundamental difference methodologically, and we have been heading to that difference in our discussion, for example, of Bultmann. (Fs)

1.3.1 In Empirical Science

60c In empirical science, the most conspicuous part is the work of observation, of measurement, of collecting measurements, putting them on a graph, curve-fitting, finding a formula; but that is what I call insights, simply the lower blade of the method. The method is a pair of scissors, and it has not only a lower blade but also an upper blade, and the two come together. Galileo proceeded from falling bodies, bodies falling from the leaning tower of Pisa and bodies sliding down inclined planes. He also had an upper blade: the understanding of nature was going to fit into Euclidean geometry. That general assumption was just as much a determinant of his results as the observations and measurements. Newton substitutes for Euclidean geometry a similar deductive science called mechanics. It was a matter of setting down definitions and axioms and deducing things like movement of bodies in central fields of force, discovering that bodies moved just as Kepler had found the planets to move. Again, that mechanics is an upper blade that combines with the lower blade and gives you empirical science. Later, there came, in the place of Newton's mechanics, Einstein's relativity mechanics; and the quantum theory introduces notions of discontinuity and indeterminacy. (Fs) (notabene)

61a There is always operative an upper blade; and the same holds in the other empirical sciences. There is not just simply a matter of proceeding from the data; there is also always operative an upper blade, usually expressed in differential equations or something like that. Can the weakness of technical history, the problem of going beyond the sure points where the data interlock, of having a systematic type of bridgework between those strong points, those piers as it were, be met by the introduction of an upper blade into historical method? (Fs)

61b Now in particular fields that is not only possible but achieved. If you think of such a subject as the history of mathematics, the history of physics, the history of chemistry, of astronomy, geology, biology, technology, medicine, economics, it is quite possible in such a limited field of history to write an explanatory history that goes beyond the interlocking points in the data and satisfies everyone; and that is quite possible because there is a science of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and so on, on which everyone agrees. You cannot write the history of mathematics unless you are a mathematician, you cannot write the history of medicine unless you are a medical doctor; of course, you have to be a historian and know the techniques of the historian, but you also have to have this specialized knowledge, and without it you would be lost. You would not be able to pick out what are data relevant to a history of the field unless you know the subject inside out; you would not be able to pick out what is significant, or when what is significant arose, or what section is fulfilling its promises immediately, and so on. A man who really understands his mathematics can write an extremely intelligible history of mathematics, and similarly for these other subjects. The subject can be put together as a whole, and you have operating in your method not only the lower blade that comes from the interlocking of the data but also the upper blade which is derived from the science at the present time. And that type of history, too, is subject to revision. Insofar as mathematics or physics will further develop, new points will become significant in the future that previously were not; and similarly, insofar as new data come to light, you will have fuller data to connect your history. It is a type of change; it is not falling into a relativism of any sort, but rather it is the same sort of 'subject to change' that is found in the empirical sciences themselves. (Fs) (notabene)