facts? interpretations?

[Doug Millison]

"jbor"
"Language, and thus "knowledge", are taught, learnt: they're not
instinctive. This is neither dogma nor catechism, and there is a solid body of
research on the subject. If you've got an alternative perspective on what is a
very simple proposition to grasp then by all means present it for discussion."


The sun revolves around the earth -- that was a very simple 
proposition to grasp, too.
But it turned out not to be true.

That language is "not instinctive" is far from universally accepted 
as accurate; to the contrary, we seem to be hard-wired for language 
and culture, which appear to possess an evolutionary history that 
preceeds our own, which arise naturally among humans (and other 
animals) and conditioned by our physical make-up-- quite a bit of 
exciting work is underway exploring those areas; an interesting 
starting point is Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its 
Challenge to Western Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, plus 
tons of research that's beginning to uncover the physical components 
of emotions and thought.

Bauerlein does a good job of restating the constructionist position, 
then showing its fundamental weakness:

"One can prove the institutional nature of social constructionism by 
noting how easy it is to question. The weakness of social 
constructionism as an epistemology lies in the fact  that one can 
agree with the bare premise that knowledge is a construct, but 
disagree with  the conclusion that objectivity is impossible and that 
the contents of knowledge are dependent upon the social conditions of 
the knower. Of course, knowledge is  constructed. It must be 
expressed in language, composed methodically, conceived   through 
mental views, all of which are historically derived. Constructionists 
extend the fact that knowledge materializes in cognitive and 
linguistic structures which have social determinants into the belief 
that knowledge has no claim to transcend them. That  knowledge cannot 
transcend the conditions of its origination stems from the notion 
that  cognition is never innocent, that cognition has designs and 
desires shaping its  knowledge-building process, that knowing always 
has an instrumental purpose. This  human dimension is local and 
situational, constructionists argue, a historical context for 
knowledge outside of which the knowledge has no general warrant. Even 
the most  ahistorical kinds of knowledge, the principles of logic, 
mathematics, and science, have a social basis, one obscured by 
thinkers who have abstracted that knowledge from its rightful setting 
and used it for purposes of their own. Thus Martin Heidegger claims 
in a   well-known illustration, "Before Newton's laws were 
discovered, they were not 'true'. . .   .Through Newton the laws 
became true" (Being and Time). We only think the laws preceded 
Newton's conception because, Heidegger explains, that is how entities 
"show themselves."...There is abundant evidence for believing that 
the truth of Newton's laws is independent of Newton's mind, language, 
class, education, etc. The simple fact that persons of different 
languages and cultures   implement those laws effectively implies 
their transhistorical and cross-cultural capacity.   Engineers and 
physicists confirm the laws daily without any knowledge of Newton's 
circumstances. Three hundred years of experimentation and theory have 
altered Newton's laws only by restricting their physical purview. In 
short, Newton's laws have been justified in vastly different times 
and places. Yes, scientists and engineers have  de-historicized 
Newtonian knowledge, pared it down to a few set principles (nobody 
actually reads the Principia). But though abstract and expedient, the 
laws of Newtonian   physics still have a truth-value, and that value 
is related not to Newton's world, but to  how well the laws predict 
outcomes, how reliably they stand up to testing, how useful they are 
in physical domains. To think otherwise is to deny the distinction 
between the contents of knowledge and the  context of their 
emergence. This is an old logical mistake, namely, the genetic 
fallacy:   the confusion of a theory's discovery with its 
justification. Social constructionists overlook  this distinction 
between discovery (the circumstances of a theory's origin) and 
justification  (the establishment of its truth). To them, the idea of 
separating truth from origin  depletes thought of its historical 
reality, and ultimately smacks of formalist methods and  mandarin 
motives. "
http://www.bu.edu/partisanreview/archive/2001/2/bauerlein.html

Where does Pynchon come down on this question?  Hard to say, but 
given his devastating critique of the systems approach, and of 
religious dogma, it's difficult to imagine him applauding a system of 
thought as limited and dogmatic as social constructionism -- the 
world exceeds its grasp quite easily, it founders on self-cancelling 
contradiction ("no facts only interpretation" erases anything like 
certainty for the claim of fundamental truth that its defenders make 
for social constructionism), it fails to capture anything like the 
complex richness of life and thought.
-- 
d  o  u  g    m  i  l  l  i  s  o  n  <http://www.online-journalist.com>