Deconstruction, Postmodernism and Philosophy of Science

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words:
Mimesis is never without the theoretical perception of resemblance or
similarity, that is, of that which always will be posited as the condition
for metaphor. Homoiosis is not only constitutive of the value of truth
(aletheia) which governs the entire chain; it is that without which the
metaphorical operation is impossible. (1982, p. 237)
But again there is a problem if one asks what scope this could allow for
discoveries or changes in scientific thinking, given that every link in the
44 Christopher Norris
chain from aletheia (truth), through homoiosis (correspondence or
representation), to mimesis (imitation) and then metaphor (perception of
likeness) is governed by a strictly immobile order of truth-preserving
relations. Only if metaphor were not thus reduced to a properly
subordinate role could one explain how knowledge can at times make
progress by breaking with established patterns of thought or habits of
perception. For it would otherwise forever be held within the limits of an
immutable paradigm extending all the way from ontology, via
epistemology, to logic, grammar, and rhetoric. In which case one could
make no sense of Aristotle s claims for the advancement of human
understanding, whether through good (heuristically productive)
metaphors or indeed through other, more strictly regulated modes of
observation, experiment, theory-construction, etc.
This is not to say, in postmodern-textualist fashion, that since all
language is radically metaphorical scientific language included
therefore it is impossible to theorise metaphor or distinguish its various
structures or modes of operation. Rather, it is to make Bachelard s (and
Derrida s) point: that although such attempts will always fall short of a
full-scale systematic treatment for reasons that Derrida explains in
White Mythology nevertheless they are a part of that continuing
dialectical process through which all advances in knowledge come
about. What resists adequate theorisation is not so much the process
itself as the activity of thought that produces those advances, occurring
as it does most often at a level inaccessible to conscious awareness or
punctual reflective grasp. As I have said, this is where Bachelard marks
his distance from that whole philosophical tradition that comes down
from Descartes to Kant, and thence from Husserl to various schools of
(mainly French) phenomenological thought. It is a distance captured by
Bachelard s phrase rationalisme appliqu�, but also by Popper s idea of
epistemology without the knowing subject and other such ways of
acknowledging the fact that modern science has entered a phase of
development where intuitions can no longer be brought under
adequate concepts.
The following passage from White Mythology again � propos
Aristotle s theory of metaphor may help to make this point more
clearly. The discourse on metaphor , Derrida writes,
belongs to a treatise peri lexos. There is lexis, and within it metaphor, in
the extent to which thought is not made manifest by itself, in the extent
to which the meaning of what is said or thought is not a phenomenon of
itself. Dianoia as such is not yet related to metaphor. There is metaphor
only in the extent to which someone is supposed to make manifest, by
means of statement, a given thought that of itself remains inapparent,
hidden, or latent. Thought stumbles upon metaphor, or metaphor falls to
thought, at the moment when meaning attempts to emerge from itself in
order to be stated, enunciated, brought to the light of language. And yet
Deconstruction, Postmodernism and Philosophy of Science 45
such is our problem the theory of metaphor remains a theory of
meaning and posits a certain original naturality of this figure. (1982,
p. 233)
It is not hard to see how this passage relates to Derrida s early work on
Husserl and his deconstructive readings of various texts in the Western
logocentric tradition. Thus his argument here concerning metaphor
that it marks the non self-present character of thought and language in
general, or the extent to which the meaning of what is said or thought is
not a phenomenon of itself is also the argument that Derrida pursues
in a wide range of other contexts. What is less often noticed is its bearing
on those issues in epistemology and philosophy of science that were
raised within the French critical-rationalist tradition by thinkers like
Bachelard and Canguilhem, and which have also been central to recent
Anglo-American debate. For this is precisely Derrida s case with regard
to Aristotle: that his treatment of metaphor leaves open certain crucial
questions concerning the limits of an anthropophysical account, one
that would treat all knowledge (including that produced by good ,
truth-tropic metaphors) as subject to an order of changeless, immobile
truth grounded in the very nature of human cognitive powers and
capacities.
Thus, as Derrida remarks, [t]his truth is not certain. There can be bad
metaphors. Are the latter metaphors? Only an axiology supported by a
theory of truth can answer this question; and this axiology belongs to the
interior of rhetoric. It cannot be neutral (1982, p. 241). One response
that offered by the current strong textualists and promoters of so-called
postmodern science is to say that truth is indeed a linguistic, a
metaphorical, performative or fictive construct, and that philosophers
are therefore embarked upon a hopeless endeavour when they seek to
theorize its structure and workings in adequate (philosophical) terms.
However this is not Derrida s response, as can be seen from his framing
the above question in a sharply paradoxical but not a purely rhetorical or
dismissive form. Rather, it is a matter for Derrida as for Bachelard of
re-thinking the concept/metaphor relationship (or that between science,
philosophy of science, and the analysis of scientific image and metaphor)
so as to acknowledge those decisive transformations that have occurred [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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