tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post5462694699492560826..comments2023-10-30T12:26:15.822+01:00Comments on Research as a Second Language: Academic ImaginationThomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-32279873100456971282013-04-09T11:45:14.181+02:002013-04-09T11:45:14.181+02:00I'm beginning to associate another modernist p...I'm beginning to associate another modernist poem iwth this discussion: Stevens, "The Man with the Blue Guitar."Andrew Shieldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-66453652273173872152013-04-08T17:11:58.132+02:002013-04-08T17:11:58.132+02:00Well, I may be a bit more a constructivist (or eve...Well, I may be a bit more a constructivist (or even idealist) than you. The facts are as they, but all facts are imaginable. (If it cannot be imagined it is not a fact. The fact is that which can be imagined.) <br /><br />There are lots of interesting issues about the relationship of intuition to imagination. Intuition is the immediate presence of a fact in experience. In a sense, it's the imposition of a fact on the imagination, the way the facts can sometimes dominate imagination (making their denial impossible. Descartes, we might say, correctly intuited the fact of his own existence, but not, apparently, the existence of his own body, which he imagined he could do without.)<br /><br />Concepts govern our ability to imagine facts in various ways. A theory is a system of concepts and such a system will condition both intuition and judgment.<br /><br />It's more or less, as you note, Kantian. And, like Kant, these kinds of considerations might not really solve any deep philosophical issues. They just set up a system of definitions between what Wittgenstein called "super-concepts". It's fun, though.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-51923042734323288172013-04-08T11:10:07.699+02:002013-04-08T11:10:07.699+02:00Could we say the following?
The facts are as they...Could we say the following?<br /><br />The facts are as they are, independent of the imagination. Academic imagination provides pictures of the way in which they can be meaningfully joined up. A scientific model, say, is imaginative. And a model is not a mere bundle of facts, it is also a particular arrangement of these facts, which connects them and thus makes them visible, i.e. anschaulich, open to intuition, anskuelige. Presskornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03480116067878605339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-59723273736291363812013-04-08T07:02:03.535+02:002013-04-08T07:02:03.535+02:00There are definitely connections between "wor...There are definitely connections between "world view", "world picture", and imagination. But I wouldn't identity the imagination with a world view. The world view is, perhaps, the imagination directed in a general way towards the facts. It guides (and sometimes dominates) the imagination in its work. It is probably much more accurate, as you suggest, to say that our world-view guides the way we pass from images to judgments. There is a difference between Urteilskraft and Einbildungskraft. Even scholars need to keep their imaginations "free" of judgment, at least for a time.<br /><br />As Gide said, "Please don't understand me too quickly." He might have meant: do not rush to judgment.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-38538280923309717642013-04-07T11:19:04.302+02:002013-04-07T11:19:04.302+02:00Thinking along:
What brings unconnected facts int...Thinking along:<br /><br />What brings unconnected facts into meaningful contact with each other is a Welt-bild. But if imagination is a way of making such pictures of facts, imagination is not itself a Welt-bild, it is a Welt-anschauung. Not a mere world-picture, but a world-“view”, a way of seeing things in a certain way. But as we know from Kant, the field of anschauung is also the proper domain of judgment. That is to say, (academic) imagination is what is connects a vision of world with judgments about it, i.e. what connects vision with making claims and defending them. As Goethe said, the foundation of science, the academy, is Anschauende Urteilskraft.<br />Presskornhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03480116067878605339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-89837378750286374602013-04-04T08:08:57.721+02:002013-04-04T08:08:57.721+02:00Unfortunately, the struggle for the hearts and min...Unfortunately, the struggle for the hearts and minds of Texas school children is carried out on both sides by people who think that schools should indoctrinate students. Many of those who talk about "inspiring" students to "pursue lives in science" etc. could just as well be talking about devotion to some exotic deity.<br /><br />Those who think that the classroom should offer a social environment in which ideas are discussed freely and openly, in a dialogue between people who actually hold them (on the bases on which they actually developed them), are attacked from both sides. The result is that the schools become an intellectual wasteland. Teachers and students don't speak their minds, but mouth official truths.<br /><br />"Critical thinking" can be as much a "doctrine" as a faith can be. After Dawkins and Harris, I'm no longer comfortable with "science" or "rationality" as banners under which to fight the the good fight.<br /><br />To whom am I addressed, then?<br />To the imagination, of course!<br /><br />*<br /><br />Williams' remarks about the university were probably directed mainly at the humanities. (Though perhaps, inspired by Pound, also at history, economics, and the still-nascent social sciences of his day.) As for his profession, there's that line about the "contagious hospital" in Spring and All (11), which suggests his kookiness. (As always, and as my above comments probably suggest, I don't use "kook" pejoratively but descriptively.) I think Williams probably had a basic respect for medical science, with a small s. I don't think he would like the Big Science/Big Pharma complex we have today. And I think he would see the universities as Pound's "obstructors of knowledge" in this area too. As Williams puts it in Paterson: <a href="http://books.google.dk/books?id=ao2cNpNn5ZcC&lpg=PA33&vq=knowledge&pg=PA34#v=onepage&q=knowledge&f=false" rel="nofollow">"The outward masks of the special interests that perpetuate the stasis and make it profitable."</a>Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-40153830060332177382013-04-04T07:36:27.410+02:002013-04-04T07:36:27.410+02:00The idea that the university "indoctrinates&q...The idea that the university "indoctrinates" reminds me of the Texas School Board's campaign against teaching "critical thinking," which they saw (rightly?) as an attempt to undermine religious faith.<br /><br />*<br /><br />I wonder about the role of Williams's "day job" in all of this. He was critical of the university, as you point out, but he went to university and received his professional training there (in Germany, too, if I remember correctly). The poet may have been critical, but what did the doctor think about it? (A separation that Williams himself would surely have rejected, of course.)Andrew Shieldshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02804655739574694901noreply@blogger.com