LaSPA

O LaSPA mudou de endereço

Published 19/04/2021 Não categorizado Leave a Comment

É com alegria que, após 10 anos aqui na empresa “wordpress.com”, comunicamos a mudança de endereço eletrônico do Laboratório de Sociologia dos Processos de Associação. O novo site do LaSPA pode ser acessado no endereço: laspa.slg.br. Lá é possível encontrar versões revisadas e atualizadas de quase todos os posts deste site, além de muitos outros recursos e informações.
Este site não será imediatamente apagado, mas não será mais atualizado. Uma síntese histórica desses 10 anos do LaSPA no “wordpress.com” pode ser encontrada aqui.

Comte e progresso em Durkheim (2007)

Published 28/03/2021 Durkheim Leave a Comment

PROGRESSO HUMANO é IDEOLOGIA (pois não existe humanidade ou natureza humana-psicológica, apenas sociedades particulares ou espécies sociais)

[A]té o presente, a sociologia tratou mais ou menos exclusivamente não de coisas, mas de conceitos. Comte, é verdade, proclamou que os fenômenos sociais são fatos naturais, submissos a leis naturais. Deste modo, ele implicitamente reconheceu seu caráter de coisas, pois na natureza só existem coisas. Mas, quando, saindo dessas generalidades filosóficas, ele tenta aplicar seu princípio e extrair a ciência nele contida, são idéias que ele toma por objeto de estudo. Com efeito, o que faz a matéria principal de sua sociologia é o progresso da humanidade no tempo. Ele parte da idéia de que há uma evolução contínua do gênero humano que consiste numa realização sempre mais completa da natureza humana, e o problema que ele trata é descobrir a ordem dessa evolução. Ora, supondo que essa evolução exista, sua realidade só pode ser estabelecida uma vez feita a ciência; portanto, só se pode fazer dessa evolução o objeto mesmo da pesquisa se ela for colocada como uma concepção do espírito, não como uma coisa. E, de fato, é tão claro que se trata de uma representação inteiramente subjetiva que, na prática, esse progresso da humanidade não existe. O que existe, a única coisa dada à observação, são sociedades particulares que nascem, se desenvolvem e morrem independentemente umas das outras. Se pelo menos as mais recentes continuassem as que as precederam, cada tipo superior poderia ser considerado como a simples repetição do tipo imediatamente inferior, com alguma coisa a mais; poder-se-ia, pois, alinhá-las umas depois das outras, por assim dizer, confundindo as que se encontram no mesmo grau de desenvolvimento, e a série assim formada poderia ser vista como representativa da humanidade. Mas os fatos não se apresentam com essa extrema simplicidade. Um povo que substitui outro não é simplesmente um prolongamento deste último com algumas características novas; ele é outro, tem algumas propriedades a mais, outras a menos; constitui uma individualidade nova, e todas essas individualidades distintas, sendo heterogêneas, não podem se fundir numa mesma série contínua, nem, sobretudo, numa série única. Pois a seqüência das sociedades não poderia ser figurada por uma linha geométrica; ela assemelha-se antes a uma árvore cujos ramos se orientam em sentidos divergentes. Em suma, Comte tomou por desenvolvimento histórico a noção que dele possuía e que não difere muito da que faz o vulgo. Vista de longe, de fato, a história adquire bastante claramente esse aspecto serial e simples. Percebem-se apenas indivíduos que se sucedem uns aos outros e marcham todos numa mesma direção, porque têm uma mesma natureza. Aliás, como não se concebe que a evolução social possa ser outra coisa que não o desenvolvimento de uma idéia humana, parece natural defini-la pela idéia que dela fazem os homens. Ora, procedendo assim, não apenas se permanece na ideologia, mas se dá como objeto à sociologia um conceito que nada tem de propriamente sociológico. (Durkheim 2007:19-21)

Foi por ter desconhecido a existência de espécies sociais que Comte julgou poder representar o progresso das sociedades humanas como idêntico ao de um povo único “ao qual seriam idealmente referidas todas as modificações consecutivas observadas nas populações distintas”. É que, de fato, se existe apenas uma única espécie social, as sociedades particulares não podem diferir entre si a não ser em graus, conforme apresentem mais ou menos completamente os traços constitutivos dessa espécie única, conforme ‘exprimam’ mais ou menos perfeitamente a humanidade. Se, ao contrário, existem tipos sociais qualitativamente distintos uns dos outros, não se poderá fazer que eles se unam exatamente como as seções homogêneas de uma reta geométrica, por mais que os aproximemos. O desenvolvimento histórico perde deste modo a unidade ideal e sim- plista que lhe atribuíam; ele se fragmenta, por assim dizer, numa infinidade de pedaços que, por diferirem especificamente uns dos outros, não poderiam ligar-se de maneira contínua. A famosa metáfora de Pascal, retomada depois por Comte [ _{Comte (1978:69, 70) apresenta a “célebre fórmula filosófica de Pascal” como “a primeira noção racional de progresso humano”, consistindo em “fazer predominar de modo progressivo os eminentes atributos que distinguem a mais nobre humanidade da simples animalidade, a saber, de uma parte, a inteligência, de outra, a sociabilidade, faculdades naturalmente solidárias que mutuamente se servem de meio e de fim”. COMTE, Auguste. 1978. Catecismo positivista. 13^a Conferência (Transição Peculiar ao Ocidente). (Trad.: Miguel Lemos) In: Os Pensadores. São Paulo: Abril Cultural, pp.117-318. [1852]}], mostra-se assim desprovida de verdade. […] Mas como fazer para constituir tais espécies? (Durkheim 2007:78-9)

“Uma vez, diz ele [Comte], que o fenômeno social, concebido em totalidade, não é, no fundo, senão um simples desenvolvimento da humanidade, sem nenhuma criação de faculdades quaisquer, tal como estabeleci anteriormente, todas as disposições efetivas que a observação sociológica puder sucessivamente revelar deverão portanto se verificar, pelo menos em germe, nesse tipo primordial que a biologia construiu de antemão para a sociologia.” [Cour de philos. pos., p.333.] É que o fato dominante da vida social, segundo ele, é o progresso e, por outro lado, o progresso depende de um fator exclusivamente psíquico, a saber, a tendência que leva o homem a desenvolver cada vez mais sua natureza. Os fatos sociais derivariam inclusive tão imediatamente da natureza humana que, nas primeiras fases da história, poderiam ser diretamente deduzidos sem necessidade de recorrer à observação [Cour de philos. pos., p.345.]. É verdade que, como Comte reconhece, é impossível aplicar esse método dedutivo aos períodos mais avançados da evolução. Mas essa impossibilidade é puramente prática. Deve-se ao fato de a distância entre o ponto de partida e o ponto de chegada ser muito grande para que o espírito humano, se resolvesse percorrê-la sem guia, não corresse o risco de se extraviar [Cour de philos. pos., p.346.]. Mas a relação entre as leis fundamentais da natureza humana e os resultados últimos do progresso não deixa de ser analítica. As formas mais complexas da civilização não são senão vida psíquica desenvolvida. Assim, ainda que as teorias da psicologia não sejam suficientes como premissas ao raciocínio sociológico, elas são a pedra de toque capaz de provar sozinha a validade das proposições indutivamente estabelecidas. “Nenhuma lei de sucessão social, diz Comte, indicada pelo método histórico, mesmo com toda a autoridade possível, deverá ser finalmente admitida senão após ter sido racionalmente ligada, de uma maneira direta ou indireta, mas sempre incontestável, à teoria positiva da natureza humana.” [Cour de philos. pos., p.335.] Portanto [para Comte] é sempre a psicologia que terá a última palavra. (Durkheim 2007:100-1)

EXPLICAR DE MANEIRA CAUSAL (i.e., um fato explicando o outro) O PROGRESSO

[S]e realmente a evolução social tivesse sua origem na constituição psicológica do homem, não se percebe como ela teria podido se produzir. Pois então seria preciso admitir que ela tem por motor algum impulso interior à natureza humana. Mas qual poderia ser esse impulso? Seria aquela espécie de instinto de que fala Comte e que leva o homem a realizar cada vez mais sua natureza? Mas isso é responder à pergunta com a pergunta e explicar o progresso por uma tendência inata ao progresso, verdadeira entidade metafísica cuja existência, de resto, nada demonstra; pois as espécies animais, inclusive as mais elevadas, de maneira nenhuma são movidas pela necessidade de progredir, e, mesmo entre as sociedades humanas, há muitas que se comprazem em permanecer indefinidamente estacionárias. Seria esse impulso, como parece acreditar Spencer, a necessidade de uma maior felicidade, que as formas cada vez mais complexas da civilização estariam destinadas a realizar sempre mais completamente? Seria preciso então estabelecer que a felicidade aumenta com a civilização, e expusemos alhures todas as dificuldades que essa hipótese levanta [DTS]. Não é tudo. Ainda que um ou outro desses dois postulados devesse ser admitido, nem por isso o desenvolvimento histórico se tornaria inteligível; pois a explicação resultante seria puramente finalista, e mostramos mais acima que os fatos sociais, assim como todos os fenômenos naturais, não são explicados pelo simples fato de se mostrar que eles servem a algum fim. Quando se provou que as organizações sociais cada vez mais elaboradas que se sucederam ao longo da história tiveram por efeito satisfazer sempre mais esta ou aquela de nossas inclinações fundamentais, nem por isso se fez compreender como elas se produziram. O fato de serem úteis não nos ensina o que as fez existir. Ainda que se explicasse como chegamos a imaginá-las, traçando como que o plano antecipado capaz de nos representar os serviços que poderíamos esperar delas – e o problema já é difícil –, o desejo do qual elas seriam assim o objeto não teria a virtude de tirá-las do nada. Em uma palavra, admitindo-se que essas inclinações são os meios necessários para atingir o objetivo perseguido, a questão permanece inteira: como, isto é, de que e através de que esses meios foram constituídos? (Durkheim 2007:110-2)

Não se costuma dizer que a história tem precisamente por objeto encadear os acontecimentos segundo sua ordem de sucessão? Mas é impossível conceber de que maneira o estado em que a civilização se encontra num momento dado poderia ser a causa determinante do estado seguinte. As etapas que a humanidade percorre sucessivamente não se engendram umas às outras. Compreende-se bem que os progressos realizados numa época determinada na ordem jurídica, econômica, política, etc, tornem possíveis novos progressos; mas em que os primeiros predeterminam os segundos? Eles são um ponto de partida que permite ir mais adiante; mas o que é que nos incita a ir mais adiante? Seria preciso admitir então uma tendência interna que leva a humanidade a ultrapassar constantemente os resultados adquiridos, seja para se realizar completamente, se- ja para aumentar sua felicidade, e o objeto da sociologia seria descobrir a ordem segundo a qual se desenvolveu essa tendência. Mas, sem voltar às dificuldades que semelhante hipótese implica, a lei que exprime esse desenvolvimento nada teria de causal. Uma relação de causalidade, com efeito, só pode se estabelecer entre dois fatos dados; ora, tal tendência, que se supõe ser a causa desse desenvolvimento, não é dada; é apenas postulada e construída pelo espírito com base nos efeitos que se atribuem a ela. Trata-se de uma espécie de faculdade motora que imaginamos sob o movimento, a fim de explicá-lo; mas a causa eficiente de um movimento só pode ser um outro movimento, não uma virtualidade desse gênero. Portanto, tudo o que obtemos experimentalmente, aqui, é uma série de mudanças entre as quais não existe vínculo causal. O estado antecendente não produz o conseqüente, mas a relação entre eles é exclusivamente cronológica. Assim, nessas condições, toda previsão científica é impossível. Podemos perfeitamente dizer como as coisas se sucederam até o presente, não em que ordem elas se sucederão daqui por diante, porque a causa de que supostamente dependem não é cientificamente determinada, nem determinável. Geralmente, é verdade, admite-se que a evolução prosseguirá no mesmo sentido do passado, mas isso em virtude de um simples postulado. Nada nos garante que os fatos realizados exprimam de maneira bastante completa a natureza dessa tendência para que se possa prejulgar o termo a que ela aspira com base naqueles pelos quais passou sucessivamente. Inclusive, por que seria retilínea a direção que ela segue e imprime? […] Eis aí, de fato, a razão de o número das relações causais, estabelecidas pelos sociólogos, ser tão restrito. Com poucas exceções, das quais Montesquieu é o mais ilustre exemplo, a antiga filosofia da história limitou-se unicamente a descobrir o sentido geral em que se orienta a humanidade, sem procurar ligar as fases dessa evolução a alguma condição concomitante. Por mais que Comte tenha prestado alguns grandes serviços à filosofia social, os termos nos quais ele coloca o problema sociológico não diferem dos precedentes. Assim, sua famosa lei dos três estados nada possui de uma relação de causalidade; ainda que fosse exata, ela não é e não pode ser mais que empírica. Trata-se de uma visão sumária da história transcorrida do gênero humano. É muito arbitrariamente que Comte considera o terceiro estado como o estado definitivo da humanidade. Quem nos diz que não surgirá outro no futuro? Do mesmo modo, a lei que domina a sociologia de Spencer não parece ser de outra natureza. Ainda que fosse verdade que tendemos atualmente a buscar nossa felicidade numa civilização industrial, nada assegura que, posteriormente, não venhamos a buscá-la em outra parte. Ora, o que faz a generalidade e a persistência desse método é que na maioria das vezes se viu no meio social um meio pelo qual o progresso se realiza, não a causa que o determina. (Durkhei 2007:118-20)

O PROGRESSO É INTERNO À CADA POVO (nascimento, juventude, vida adulta, declínio, morte), MAS COMPARÁVEL ENTRE DIFERENTES POVOS (desde que comparados na mesma idade)

[U]ma sociedade não cria completamente sua organização; ela a recebe pronta, em parte, das sociedades que a precederam. O que lhe é assim transmitido, no decorrer de sua história, não é o produto de um desenvolvimento seu, portanto não pode ser explicado se não sairmos dos limites da espécie de que ela faz parte. Somente os acréscimos que se juntam a esse fundo primitivo e o transformam podem ser tratados dessa maneira. Porém, quanto mais nos elevamos na escala social, tanto menor é a importância dos caracteres adquiridos por cada povo comparados aos caracteres transmitidos. Aliás, essa é a condição de todo progresso. Assim, elementos novos que introduzimos no direito doméstico, no direito de propriedade, na moral, desde o começo de nossa história, são relativamente pouco numerosos e pouco importantes, comparados aos que o passado nos legou. As novidades que se produzem não poderiam portanto ser compreendidas se primeiro não fossem estudados aqueles fenômenos mais fundamentais que são suas raízes, e estes só podem ser estudados com o auxílio de comparações muito mais extensas. Para poder explicar o estado atual da família, do casamento, da propriedade, etc., seria preciso conhecer quais são suas origens, quais os elementos simples que compõem essas instituições, e, sobre esses pontos, a história comparada das grandes sociedades européias não nos daria grandes esclarecimentos. É preciso remontar mais acima. […] Conseqüentemente, para explicar uma instituição social, pertencente a uma espécie determinada, iremos comparar as formas diferentes que ela apresenta não apenas nos povos dessa espécie, mas em todas as espécies anteriores. Trata-se, por exemplo, da organização doméstica? Constituiremos primeiramente o tipo mais rudimentar que possa ter existido, para em seguida acompanhar passo a passo a maneira como ele progressivamente se complicou. Esse método, que poderíamos chamar genético, efetuaria de uma só vez a análise e a síntese do fenômeno. Pois, por um lado, nos mostraria em estado dissociado os elementos que o compõem, pelo simples fato de nos mostrar esses elementos acrescentando-se sucessivamente uns aos outros; ao mesmo tempo, graças ao extenso campo de comparação, ele seria bem mais capaz de determinar as condições de que dependem a formação e associação desses mesmos elementos. Conseqüentemente, só se pode explicar um fato social de alguma complexidade se se acompanhar seu desenvolvimento integral através de todas as espécies sociais. A sociologia comparada não é um ramo particular da sociologia; é a sociologia mesma, na medida em que ela deixa de ser puramente descritiva e aspira a explicar os fatos. […] No decorrer dessas comparações extensas, comete-se com freqüência um erro que falseia os resultados. Algumas vezes, para julgar em que sentido se desenvolvem os acontecimentos sociais, simplesmente se comparou o que se passa no declínio de cada espécie com o que se produz no começo da espécie seguinte. Procedendo deste modo, acreditou-se poder afirmar, por exemplo, que o enfraquecimento das crenças religiosas e de todo tradicionalismo nunca podia ser mais que um fenômeno passageiro da vida dos povos, porque ele só aparece no último período de sua existência para cessar assim que uma nova evolução recomeça. Mas, com semelhante método, corre-se o risco de tomar como marcha regular e necessária do progresso o que é efeito de uma causa muito diferente. De fato, o estado em que se encontra uma sociedade jovem não é simplesmente o prolongamento do estado em que haviam chegado no final de sua carreira as sociedades que ela substitui, mas provém em parte dessa própria juventude que impede que os produtos das experiências feitas pelos povos anteriores sejam todos imediatamente assimiláveis e utilizáveis. Assim, a criança recebe de seus pais faculdades e predisposições que só tardiamente entram em jogo em sua vida. Portanto é possível, para retomar o mesmo exemplo, que o retorno do tradicionalismo observado no começo de cada história seja devido, não ao fato de que um recuo do mesmo fenômeno só pode ser transitório, mas às condições especiais em que se acha colocada toda sociedade que começa. A comparação só pode ser demonstrativa se eliminamos esse fator da idade, que a perturba; para tanto, bastará considerar as sociedades comparadas no mesmo período de seu desenvolvimento. Assim, para saber em que sentido evolui um fenômeno social, iremos comparar o que ele é na juventude de cada espécie com aquilo em que se transforma na juventude da espécie seguinte, e, conforme apresentar, de uma etapa a outra, maior, menor ou igual intensidade, diremos que ele progride, recua ou se mantém. (Durkheim 2007:240-3)

DURKHEIM, Émile. 2007. As regras do método sociológico. (Trad.:Paulo Neves) São Paulo: Martins Fontes. [1994]

O fato social elementar em Tarde (2011)

Published 18/03/2021 Tarde Leave a Comment

TARDE, Gabriel. 2011. As leis sociais: um esboço de sociologia. (Trad.: Francisco T. Fuchs) Niterói: Editora da UFF. [1898]

PORMENORES-INFINITESIMAL (com referência à ideia de elementos químicos)

Eu creio que é impossível explicar as dessemelhanças às quais me refiro – mesmo que fossem apenas essas desigualdades de posição e essa caprichosa distribuição de matéria através do espaço – pela hipótese, tão cara aos químicos (que são, quanto a isso, os verdadeiros metafísicos), de elementos atômicos perfeitamente semelhantes. Creio que a pretensa lei de Spencer sobre a instabilidade do homogêneo nada explica, e que, por consequência, a única maneira de explicar a floração de exuberantes diversidades à superfície dos fenômenos é admitir no fundo das coisas uma tumultuosa infinidade de elementos caracterizados individualmente. Assim, do mesmo modo que as similitudes de massa foram resolvidas em similitudes de pormenor, as diferenças de massa, grosseiras e bem visíveis, se transformaram em diferenças de pormenor infinitamente sutis. E assim como as similitudes de pormenor permitem explicar por si mesmas as similitudes de conjunto, as diferenças de pormenor, essas originalidades elementares e invisíveis que eu vislumbro, permitem igualmente explicar por si mesmas as diferenças aparentes e grandiosas, o pitoresco do universo visível. (Tarde 2011:26)

HEREDITARIEDADE (hábito exteriorizado) COMO REPETIÇÃO VITAL

E a biologia, síntese da zoologia e da botânica, nasceu no dia em que a teoria celular mostrou que, tanto nos animais como nas plantas, a célula era o elemento infinitamente repetido, primeiramente a célula germinal, e depois todas as outras que dela procedem; e que o fenômeno vital elementar é a repetição indefinida, em cada célula, dos modos de nutrição e de atividade, de crescimento e de proliferação, cujo depósito tradicional ela recebeu de herança e transmitirá fielmente à sua posteridade. Essa conformidade aos precedentes que se chama de hábito ou de hereditariedade – digamos, numa palavra, hereditariedade, já que o hábito é uma hereditariedade interna e a hereditariedade é um hábito exteriorizado – é a forma propriamente vital da repetição; tal como a ondulação ou, em geral, o movimento periódico, é sua forma física, tal como a imitação, como veremos, é sua forma social. (Tarde 2011:27)

O FATO SOCIAL ELEMENTAR é INTER-CEREBRAL

Felizmente, à sombra e ao abrigo dessas ambiciosas generalizações, trabalhadores mais modestos se esforçavam, com mais sucesso, para anotar leis de pormenor de uma solidez bem diferente. Eles eram linguistas, mitólogos, sobretudo economistas. Esses especialistas da sociologia perceberam várias relações interessantes entre fatos consecutivos ou concomitantes, relações que se reproduziam a cada instante nos limites do pequeno domínio que eles estudavam: encontra-se na Riqueza das Nações de Adam Smith, na Gramática comparada das línguas indo-européias de Bopp e na obra de Dietz, para ficar nesses três exemplos, uma enorme quantidade de observações desse gênero, nas quais se exprime uma similitude entre inumeráveis ações humanas como a pronúncia de certas consoantes ou de certas vogais, as compras e as vendas, a produção e o consumo de certos artigos, etc. É verdade que essas similitudes, nelas mesmas, deram lugar a leis imperfeitas, relativas ao plerumque fit, quando os linguistas ou economistas tentaram formulá-las em leis; mas é porque se teve demasiada pressa para enunciá-las, antes mesmo de se discernir, no seio dessas verdades parciais, a verdade geral que elas implicam, o fato social elementar que a sociologia persegue obscuramente e que ela deve atingir para realizar-se. […] Muitas vezes pressentiu-se que essa explicação geral das leis ou pseudo-leis (econômicas, linguísticas, mitológicas ou outras) cabia à psicologia. Ninguém compreendeu isso com mais força e clareza do que Stuart Mill. No fim de sua Lógica, ele concebeu a sociologia como a psicologia aplicada. O problema é que ele não exprimiu seu pensamento com suficiente precisão, e a psicologia à qual ele se dirigiu para obter a chave dos fenômenos sociais era a psicologia meramente individual, aquela que estuda as relações internas entre impressões ou imagens no interior de um mesmo cérebro, e que acredita dar conta de tudo, nesse domínio, pelas leis de associação desses elementos internos. Assim concebida, a sociologia se tornava uma espécie de associacionismo inglês aumentado e exteriorizado, e perdia sua originalidade. Não é exatamente ou unicamente a essa psicologia intra-cerebral, é antes de tudo à psicologia inter-cerebral, que estuda o estabelecimento de relações conscientes entre muitos indivíduos, que convém pedir o fato social elementar, cujos grupamentos ou combinações múltiplas constituem os fenômenos ditos simples, objetos das ciências sociais particulares. O contato de um espírito com outro é, com efeito, na vida de cada um deles, um acontecimento à parte, que se destaca vivamente do conjunto de seus contatos com o resto do universo e dá lugar aos estados de alma mais imprevisíveis (e mais inexplicáveis pela psicologia fisiológica). (Tarde 2011:30-1)

QUANTIFICAÇÃO, SOCIOLOGIA e ESTATÍSTICA

Quando eu disse que toda ciência verdadeira chega a um domínio próprio de repetições elementares, inumeráveis e infinitesimais, é como se eu já houvesse dito que toda ciência verdadeira fundamenta-se em quantidades que lhe são específicas. A quantidade, com efeito, é a possibilidade de séries infinitas e de repetições infinitamente pequenas. Eis porque eu me permiti insistir sobre o caráter quantitativo das duas energias mentais que, como dois rios divergentes, banham a dupla face do eu, sua atividade mental e sua atividade voluntária. Negar esse caráter é declarar a impossibilidade da sociologia. Mas não se pode negá-lo sem recusar a evidência, e esta é a prova de que as quantidades em questão são propriamente sociais: sua natureza quantitativa aparece tanto melhor, e fere o espírito com maior vivacidade e clareza, quando são consideradas em massas mais amplas, sob a forma de correntes de fé ou de paixão popular, de convicções tradicionais ou opiniaticidades costumeiras, abraçando grupos humanos mais numerosos. Quanto mais cresce uma coletividade, e mais se eleva ou apequena uma opinião, ou seja, a crença ou o querer nacional, afirmativo ou negativo, em relação a um objeto dado – alta ou baixa exemplarmente expressa pelas cotações da Bolsa – mais ela se torna suscetível de medida e comparável aos movimentos de pressão atmosférica ou à força viva de uma queda d’água. É por isso que a estatística se desenvolve com crescente facilidade à medida que os Estados crescem; o êxito da estatística, cujo objeto próprio é pesquisar e discernir quantidades verdadeiras na barafunda dos fatos sociais, é proporcional à sua obstinação de medir, no fundo, por meio dos atos humanos que adiciona, massas de crenças e de desejos. A estatística dos valores da Bolsa exprime as variações da confiança pública no sucesso de tais ou tais empresas, na solvência de tais ou tais Estados devedores, e as variações do desejo público, do interesse público, ao qual se dá satisfação por essas dívidas e por essas empresas. A estatística industrial e agrícola exprime a importância das necessidades gerais que reclamam a produção de tais ou tais artigos e a suposta conveniência dos meios necessários para satisfazê-las. A consulta da estatística judiciária, em suas enumerações de processos e delitos, só é interessante porque a travessia de suas linhas permite, ano após ano, a leitura da progressão ou regressão dos desejos públicos engajados em vias processuais ou delituosas: por exemplo, a tendência ao divórcio ou ao roubo, e também a proporção de esperanças públicas voltadas para certos processos ou delitos. A estatística populacional, que sob muitos aspectos é meramente biológica e diz respeito à propagação da espécie, também é sociológica na medida em que diz respeito à duração e aos progressos das instituições sociais, e exprime o crescimento ou o decréscimo do desejo de paternidade e de maternidade, bem como da crença geral de que a felicidade é obtida a partir do casamento e das uniões fecundas. (Tarde 2011:33-4)

FATO SOCIAL e IMITAÇÃO

Voltemos ao casal social elementar que mencionei anteriormente, não o casal do homem e da mulher que se amam – esse casal, considerado do ponto de vista sexual, é puramente vital – mas o casal de duas pessoas, seja qual for o sexo a que elas pertencem, no qual uma age espiritualmente sobre a outra. Eu afirmo que a relação entre essas duas pessoas é o elemento único e necessário da vida social, e que ele consiste sempre, originalmente, em uma imitação de um pelo outro. […] O incontestável é que dizendo, fazendo, pensando não importa o que, uma vez engajados na vida social, nós imitamos outrem a cada instante, a menos que nós inovemos, o que é raro; e ainda é fácil mostrar que nossas inovações são, em sua maior parte, combinações de exemplos anteriores, e que elas permanecem estranhas à vida social enquanto não forem imitadas. […] Assim, o caráter constante de um fato social, seja ele qual for, é imitativo; e esse caráter é próprio e exclusivo dos fatos sociais. […] Com efeito, não é evidente que povos rivais ou mesmo inimigos tendem a se fundir à medida que assimilam suas instituições? Assim, é certo que cada novo ato de imitação tende a conservar ou fortificar o laço social, não apenas entre indivíduos já associados, mas também entre indivíduos ainda não associados, de modo que a imitação prepara a associação de amanhã, ou seja, tece agora, por meio de fios invisíveis, aquilo que irá se tornar um laço manifesto. (Tarde 2011:35-7)

SOCIOLOGIA MODERNA é INFINITESIMAL

O que eu tenho a ressaltar no momento é que a sociologia, assim compreendida, difere das antigas concepções que reinavam sob esse nome tal como a astronomia moderna difere da dos gregos, ou tal como a biologia, a partir da teoria celular, difere da história natural de outrora. Dito de outro modo, ela repousa sobre um fundamento de similitudes e de repetições elementares e verdadeiras, infinitamente numerosas e extremamente precisas, que substituíram, como matéria primeira da elaboração científica, um pequeno número de falsas ou vagas – e decepcionantes – analogias. (Tarde 2011:38-9)

O ANTI-DURKHEIM

Em resumo, essa concepção é quase o inverso da concepção professada pelos evolucionistas unilineares e também por Durkheim: ao invés de explicar tudo pela pretensa imposição de uma lei de evolução que constrangeria os fenômenos de conjunto a se reproduzir, a se repetir identicamente numa certa ordem, ao invés de explicar o pequeno pelo grande, o detalhe pelo conjunto, eu explico as similitudes de conjunto pela acumulação de pequenas ações elementares, o grande pelo pequeno, o conjunto pelo pormenor. Essa maneira de ver está destinada a produzir na sociologia as mesmas transformações que a introdução da análise infinitesimal produziu na matemática. (Tarde 2011:39 nota 25)

FAZER A CIÊNCIA SOCIAL A PARTIR DAS CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS (o anti-organicista)

Antes que se descobrisse algum fato astronômico elementar, como a atração descrita pela lei newtoniana, ou pelo menos a gravitação elíptica, houve conhecimentos astronômicos heterogêneos – uma ciência da Lua, selenologia, uma ciência do Sol, heliologia – mas não a astronomia. Antes que se descobrisse um fato químico elementar (afinidades, combinações em proporções definidas), houve conhecimentos químicos, químicas especiais, do ferro, do estanho, do cobre, etc., mas não a química. Antes que se descobrisse o fato físico essencial – a comunicação ondulatória do movimento molecular – houve conhecimentos físicos: ótica, acústica, termologia, eletrologia, mas não a física. A física tornou-se físico-química, a ciência da natureza inorgânica inteira, quando entreviu a possibilidade de explicar tudo pelas leis fundamentais da mecânica, ou seja, quando acreditou descobrir, como fato inorgânico elementar, a reação igual e contrária à ação, a conservação da energia, a redução de todas as forças em formas de movimento, o equivalente mecânico do calor, da eletricidade, da luz, etc. Enfim, antes da descoberta das analogias existentes, do ponto de vista da reprodução, entre os animais e as plantas, nem mesmo havia uma botânica e uma zoologia, mas botânicas e zoologias, ou seja, uma hipologia, uma cinologia, etc. Mas a descoberta de similitudes só conferia uma unidade muito parcial a todas essas ciências esparsas, a esses membra disjecta da futura biologia. A biologia somente nasceu de fato quando a teoria celular veio mostrar o fato vital elementar, o funcionamento da célula (ou do elemento histológico) e sua proliferação, perpetuada pelo óvulo, ele mesmo célula, de modo que a nutrição e a geração passaram a ser encaradas sob um mesmo ângulo. […] Muito bem, trata-se agora de fazer, similarmente, a ciência social a partir das ciências sociais. Já houve, com efeito, ciências sociais, ao menos esboçadas, prelúdios de ciência política, de linguística, de mitologia comparada, de estética, de moral, uma economia política já bem avançada, muito antes que houvesse o embrião de uma sociologia. A sociologia supõe um fato social elementar. E ela o supõe com tal força que, enquanto não havia chegado a descobri-lo – talvez porque ele estivesse na sua cara, se me perdoam essa expressão – ela sonhava com ele, ela o imaginava sob a forma de uma dessas similitudes vãs e imaginárias que atravancam o berço de todas as ciências, e acreditava dizer algo de profundamente instrutivo ao conceber uma sociedade como um grande organismo, o indivíduo (ou, segundo outros, a família) como a célula social, e toda forma de atividade social como uma função de tipo celular. Eu já fiz os maiores esforços, juntamente com a maior parte dos sociólogos, para desembaraçar a ciência nascente dessa estorvante concepção. (Tarde 2011:41-2)

ELEMENTO MATEMÁTICO

[F]oi somente a partir da invenção do cálculo infinitesimal, quando se desceu até o elemento matemático indecomponível cujas repetições indefinidas tudo explicam, que a fecundidade matemática apareceu em sua plenitude. (Tarde 2011:44 nota 26)

FÍSICA e QUÍMICA (dos 4 elementos à tabela periódica)

A física e a química, tal como a astronomia, começaram com falsos contrários. Os quatro elementos concebidos pelos primeiros físicos se opunham dois a dois: a água e o fogo, o ar e a terra. Imaginavam-se antipatias inatas entre determinadas substâncias. Vieram à luz ideias mais sãs sobre a verdadeira natureza das oposições físicas e químicas quando se descobriu o caráter de algum modo oposto dos ácidos e bases, e sobretudo das eletricidades de nome contrário, assim como a polaridade luminosa. A ideia de polaridade, que desempenhou um papel tão grande nas teorias físico-químicas, marcou um enorme progresso sobre as concepções anteriores; e agora ela mesma está sendo explicada pela noção de ondulação, que a abrange ou está em vias de abranger. Assim como a luz, o calor e a eletricidade aparecem como propagações esféricas ou lineares de vibrações infinitesimais e infinitamente rápidas, a combinação química tende a ser considerada como um entrelaçamento de ondas harmoniosamente unidas: mas aqui nós já tocamos nos domínios da adaptação. Até mesmo a atração foi muitas vezes explicada por pressões de vibrações etéreas. Seja como for, é evidente que as gravitações elípticas dos astros, apesar da diferença de dimensão, são comparáveis às ondas físicas, esse vai-e-vem de moléculas segundo elipses muito alongadas, e que nos dois casos existe ritmo ondulatório. Em suma, podemos ver como o progresso das ciências estendeu e aprofundou o campo da oposição, substituindo vagas oposições qualitativas por oposições quantitativas precisas e ritmadas, tecido da teia do mundo. A maravilhosa simetria das formas cristalinas próprias a cada substância química é a tradução gráfica, a expressão visual dessas oposições rítmicas entre os inumeráveis movimentos que a constituem. E não seria precisamente a essa ritmicidade dos movimentos interiores dos corpos que se deveria pedir a explicação última da lei de Mendeleev, que nos mostra os grupos de substâncias formando escalas superpostas e periodicamente repetidas, teclado ao qual faltam, aqui e ali, algumas teclas que descobriremos com o passar do tempo? (Tarde 2011:51)

HESITAÇÃO INDIVIDUAL e REVOLUÇÃO SOCIOLÓGICA

Os economistas já prestaram um valoroso serviço à ciência social substituindo a guerra, como fator-chave da história, pela concorrência, espécie de guerra não apertas adocicada e atenuada, mas ao mesmo tempo reduzida e multiplicada. Por fim, se nosso ponto de vista for adotado, será preciso considerar que, no âmago daquilo que os economistas chamam de concorrência dos consumidores ou dos coprodutores, existe uma concorrência de desejos e de crenças; e se essa luta que constatamos entre as formas industriais for generalizada e estendida a todas as formas linguísticas, religiosas, políticas, artísticas e morais da vida social, veremos que a verdadeira oposição social elementar deve ser buscada no próprio seio de cada indivíduo social sempre que ele hesita entre adotar ou rejeitar um novo modelo que lhe é proposto: uma nova locução, um novo rito, uma nova ideia, uma nova escola de arte, uma nova conduta. Essa hesitação, essa pequena batalha interna, que se reproduz milhões de vezes a cada momento da vida de um povo, é a oposição infinitesimal e infinitamente fecunda da história. Ela introduz em sociologia uma tranquila e profunda revolução. (Tarde 2011:55)

RAIOS IMITATIVOS, IRRADIAÇÃO IMITATIVA e HESITAÇÃO COMO FATO SOCIAL ELEMENTAR

Eis porque eu tinha razão ao dizer que é preciso buscar a oposição social elementar, porém não, como se poderia acreditar à primeira vista, na relação entre dois indivíduos que se contradizem ou se contrariam, e sim nos duelos lógicos e teológicos, nos combates singulares de teses e antíteses, de quereres e não-quereres cujo teatro é a consciência do indivíduo social. Sem dúvida é possível que me perguntem: mas então qual é a diferença entre a oposição simplesmente psicológica e a oposição social? Ela é diferente em virtude de sua causa e, sobretudo, pelos seus efeitos. Em virtude da causa: um solitário recebe em seus sentidos duas percepções aparentemente contraditórias, e hesita entre dois juízos sensitivos: um que lhe diz que determinada mancha vista a distância é um lago, outro que lhe diz o contrário; eis uma oposição interna cuja origem é inteiramente psicológica, e que é um caso infinitamente raro. Pode-se afirmar sem medo de errar que todas as dúvidas e hesitações de que sofre o mais isolado dos homens, nascido na mais selvagem das tribos, devem-se a um encontro nele ocorrido, seja entre dois raios de exemplos que vieram interferir em seu cérebro, seja pelo cruzamento entre um raio de exemplos e uma percepção dos sentidos. Ao escrever, eu hesito frequentemente entre duas locuções sinônimas, e cada uma delas apresenta-se como preferível à outra na circunstância dada: aqui, dois raios imitativos interferiram em mim, ou seja, duas séries de homens que, a partir do primeiro inventor de uma dessas palavras e do primeiro inventor da outra, chegaram até mim. Pois eu aprendi cada uma dessas palavras de um indivíduo que a aprendeu de outro, e assim por diante, remontando até o primeiro indivíduo que a pronunciou. (Mais uma vez, é isso que eu chamo de raio imitativo; e a totalidade de raios desse gênero, provenientes de um inventor, de um iniciador, de um inovador qual quer cujo exemplo se propagou, é o que eu chamo de irradiação imitativa. A vida social se compõe de um denso entrecruzamento de irradiações desse gênero, entre as quais ocorrem inumeráveis interferências.) Outros exemplos: eu sou juiz e hesito entre uma opinião que se funda sobre uma série de decisões baseadas nas orientações de determinado autor, por exemplo, Marcadé ou Demolombe, e uma opinião oposta que se apoia numa outra série de decisões emanadas de tal outro comentador; mais uma vez, interferência entre dois raios imitativos. A mesma coisa acontece quando eu hesito entre o gás e a eletricidade para iluminar meu apartamento. Mas quando um jovem camponês, diante do pôr do sol, não sabe se deve acreditar na palavra de seu professor (que lhe assegura que o cair da noite deve-se a um movimento da Terra e não do Sol) ou no testemunho de seus sentidos, que lhe dizem o contrário, existe um único raio imitativo que, por intermédio de seu professor, liga-o a Galileu. Tanto faz, pois isso basta para que sua hesitação, sua oposição interna e individual, seja social em virtude de sua causa. […] Mas é sobretudo pelos seus efeitos (ou melhor, por sua ineficácia) que a oposição simplesmente individual difere da oposição social elementar, que também é, entretanto, individual. Por vezes a hesitação do indivíduo permanece encerrada nele, e não se propaga (nem tende a se propagar) imitativamente entre seus vizinhos; nesse caso, o fenômeno permanece puramente individual. Na maioria dos casos, porém, a própria dúvida é quase tão contagiosa quanto a fé, e todo aquele que devém cético num meio fervoroso logo se tornará o foco de um ceticismo que irá irradiar-se ao seu redor: será possível, nesse caso, negar o caráter social do estado de luta interna que caracteriza cada um dos indivíduos desse grupo? (Tarde 2011:62-4)

FENÔMENOS SOCIAIS e CIÊNCIA têm SENTIDOS INVERSOS

Detenho-me para notar que, por causa dessa passagem do pequeno ao grande, do pequeno muito numeroso ao grande extremamente raro, a evolução da guerra, e de todo fenômeno social em geral, parece contradizer a evolução das ciências tal como vem sendo exposta aqui. No entanto, ela constitui, de fato, sua contra prova e confirmação. É justamente porque tudo no mundo dos fatos caminha do pequeno ao grande que, no mundo das ideias, espelho invertido do primeiro, tudo caminha do grande para o pequeno e, pelo progresso da análise, só atinge os fatos elementares verdadeiramente explicativos em último lugar. (Tarde 2011:67)

CONCORRÊNCIA, MONOPÓLIO e ASSOCIAÇÃO

Em resumo, a concorrência se desenvolve em círculos concêntricos que vão se ampliando. Mas a ampliação da concorrência tem como condição e como razão de ser a ampliação da associação. Da associação ou do monopólio, objetar-se-á. Que seja, mas o monopólio é apenas uma das duas soluções possíveis para o problema da concorrência, assim como a unidade imperial é apenas uma das duas soluções possíveis para o problema da guerra. Um desses problemas pode ser resolvido pela associação dos indivíduos, assim como o outro pode ser resolvido pela confederação dos povos. De resto, o próprio monopólio, à força de estender-se, se torna mais brando, e caso ele se tornasse universal em certas modalidades de produção (termo ao qual ele tende e que Paul Leroy-Beaulieu julgou, erroneamente a meu ver, para sempre e absolutamente inatingível), seria provavelmente mais suportável, em certos casos, do que o estado de concorrência aguda que ele teria substituído. A concorrência tende a uma monopolização, ao menos parcial e relativa, ou a uma associação de concorrentes, tal como a guerra tende ao esmagamento do perdedor ou a um tratado favorável com ele, a uma pacificação igualmente parcial e relativa. O crescimento dos Estados conquistadores contribuiu para isso. Estou ciente de que os grandes Estados modernos, tomando o lugar dos feudos da Idade Média, fizeram reinar uma paz bastante incompleta, e até aqui bastante curta, mas cuja extensão e duração vão aumentando, tal como os exércitos grandiosos de hoje em dia. Negar que a concorrência culmine no monopólio (ou na associação) e imaginar que se está defendendo a concorrência de seus detratores é, ao contrário, recusar a única desculpa que se poderia alegar: como se, para defender o militarismo dos ataques de que ele é objeto, nos esforçássemos para demonstrar que a guerra não produz a paz depois da vitória. É bem verdade que a guerra só produz a paz para renascer da própria paz, e numa escala ainda maior; do mesmo modo, a concorrência só se apazigua momentaneamente na associação para renascer da própria associação, sob a forma de rivalidades entre associações, corporações, sindicatos e assim por diante; mas chega-se assim, finalmente, a associações gigantes que, não podendo mais expandir-se, só poderão, depois de travarem seus combates, associar-se. (Tarde 2011:72-3)

OPOSIÇÃO, ASSOCIAÇÃO e REPETIÇÃO

[É] repetindo-se por imitação que a invenção – a adaptação social elementar – se difunde e se fortifica, tendendo, pelo encontro de uma de suas irradiações imitativas com uma irradiação imitativa emanada de alguma outra invenção, antiga ou nova, a suscitar ora novas lutas, ora (diretamente ou por meio dessas lutas) novas e mais complexas invenções, que em breve também irão irradiar imitativamente, e assim por diante, ao infinito. Notemos que tanto o duelo lógico como a síntese lógica, tanto o elemento social da oposição-luta como o elemento social da adaptação têm necessidade da repetição imitativa para socializar-se, para generalizar-se e crescer. A única diferença é que a propagação imitativa do estado de discórdia interior entre duas ideias, ou mesmo do estado de discórdia exterior entre dois homens que escolheram uma dessas ideias, irá fatalmente sofrer um desgaste e pôr fim a essa discórdia dentro de um determinado tempo, pois todo combate é fatigante e culmina numa vitória; enquanto a propagação imitativa do estado de harmonia (ao mesmo tempo interno e externo) alcançado pela iluminação de uma nova verdade, síntese de nossos conhecimentos anteriores e comunhão de nosso espírito com todos os espíritos que comungam com ela, não tem razão alguma para deter-se e se fortificará ao avançar. Dos três termos comparados entre si, o primeiro e o último ultrapassam largamente o segundo em altura, em profundidade, em importância e talvez em duração. A única utilidade do segundo, a oposição, é a de provocar uma tensão das forças antagonistas aptas a suscitar o gênio inventivo: a invenção militar que, ao dar a vitória a um dos lados, momentaneamente põe fim à guerra; a invenção industrial que, adotada ou monopolizada por um dos rivais da indústria, lhe assegura o triunfo, e momentaneamente põe fim à concorrência; a invenção filosófica, científica, jurídica ou estética que interrompe bruscamente inumeráveis discussões, mesmo que seja para dar origem, mais tarde, a novas discussões. Eis aí a única utilidade, a única razão de ser da oposição; mas quantas vezes a invenção pela qual ela clama deixa de atender ao seu chamado! Quantas vezes a guerra abate o gênio ao invés de estimulá-lo! E quantos talentos são esterilizados pelas polêmicas da imprensa, pelos de bates parlamentares, pela vã esgrima dos Congressos! Tudo que se pode afirmar – e que confirma o que já foi dito – é que a ordem histórica de preponderância sucessiva das três formas de luta é precisamente a de sua aptidão a estimular a inventividade: com efeito, passa-se de uma era em que a guerra é preponderante a uma fase em que a concorrência predomina, e enfim a discussão. Além disso, numa sociedade que se civiliza, a troca se desenvolve mais rapidamente do que a concorrência, a conversação se desenvolve mais rapidamente do que a discussão, e o internacionalismo, mais rapidamente do que o militarismo. (Tarde 2011:78-9)

GRAUS de ADAPTAÇÃO (a si e aos outros)

Um agregado qualquer é um composto de seres adaptados entre si, seja uns com os outros, seja num conjunto subordinado a uma função comum. Agregado significa adaptat. Mas, além disso, diversos agregados que possuem relações entre si podem ser coadaptados, constituindo um adaptat de um grau superior. Seria possível distinguir, desse modo, uma infinidade de graus. Para simplificar, façamos uma distinção entre apenas dois graus de adaptação. A adaptação de primeiro grau é aquela que ocorre entre os elementos do sistema considerado; a adaptação de segundo grau é aquela que os une aos sistemas que os cercam, àquilo que podemos chamar, muito vagamente, de seu “meio”. O ajustamento a si mesmo difere muito, em toda ordem de fatos, do ajustamento a outrem, tal como a repetição de si (hábito) difere da repetição de outrem (hereditariedade e imitação), tal como a oposição a si mesmo (hesitação, dúvida) difere da oposição a outrem (luta, concorrência). Muitas vezes esses dois tipos de adaptação, em certa medida, se excluem mutuamente; é o caso das constituições políticas, onde se observa com bastante frequência que as mais coerentes, as mais logicamente deduzidas (apresentando portanto o mais alto grau de adaptação de primeiro grau) são as menos adaptadas às exigências de seu meio tradicional e costumeiro, e que, reciprocamente, as mais práticas são as menos lógicas. A mesma observação aplica-se às gramáticas de tantas línguas, às religiões, às belas-artes, etc.: a única gramática perfeita, com regras sem nenhuma exceção, é a do… volapuque. Ela também é aplicável aos organismos: há entre eles alguns que são perfeitos, mas que não são viáveis, e que se tornariam mais viáveis se fossem menos perfeitos. A perfeição de sua acomodação pode atrapalhar sua flexibilidade. (Tarde 2011:85-6)

FINALISMO INDUTIVO

Os partidários das causas finais fizeram tudo o que podiam para desacreditar a ideia de finalidade. Não é menos certo, no entanto, que os primeiros balbucios da ciência datam do momento em que essa noção foi introduzida, mesmo que de forma mística e bem pouco racional, na concepção do mundo. Diante da visão do céu estrelado, com que sonhou a ciência primitiva? Com uma adaptação imensa, única, quimérica, nascida da ilusão que aprendemos a chamar de geocêntrica, segundo a qual todas as estrelas existem para a Terra; a Terra, e sobre ela uma cidade ou um burgo seriam o único foco de interesse do firmamento, perpetuamente inquieto acerca do destino desses seres efêmeros que nós somos. A astrologia foi o desenvolvimento lógico dessa grandiosa e imaginária adaptação do céu à Terra e ao homem. A verdadeira astronomia não somente fez desaparecer essa absurda harmonia, mas também quebrou a unidade da harmonia celeste ao dividi-la em várias harmonias parciais, tão numerosas quantos os próprios sistemas solares, coerentes neles mesmos e simetricamente coordenados, porém ligados entre si por liames muito vagos e duvidosos, agrupados em nebulosas informes, em constelações esparsas de resplandecente desordem. Desde sempre apaixonada pela ordem, a razão humana logo teve de renunciar à sua busca pelas marcas mais evidentes de uma coordenação divina na totalidade do mundo – o Cosmos, o mais alto objeto de sua admiração. Ela teve de descer ao sistema solar para encontrá-las, e quanto mais ela conhecia deste pequeno mundo, mais encontrava nos detalhes, e não no conjunto desse belo agrupamento de massas, os motivos para extasiar-se. Mais do que as relações entre os próprios planetas, era a relação de cada um deles com seus satélites, e mais ainda, era a superfície de cada um desses globos, sua formação geológica, seu regime de águas, que revelavam um acordo perfeito e surpreendente. Doravante, já não é mais em direção à imensa abóbada celeste que a alma religiosa deve voltar-se para adorar a sabedoria profunda que move este mundo; agora, é para o cadinho do químico que ela deverá olhar se quiser escrutar o mistério das harmonias físicas mais precisas e maravilhosas, ainda mais admiráveis do que a mixórdia estrelada: as combinações químicas. Se, por meio do uso de um microscópio suficientemente forte, pudéssemos perceber o interior de uma molécula, ficaríamos muito mais fascinados pela mescla prodigiosa de movimentos elípticos e circulares que provavelmente a constituem do que com o jogo, no fim das contas bastante simples, dos grandes piões celestes! […] Se passarmos do mundo físico ao mundo da vida, também constataremos que o primeiro procedimento da razão foi conceber a criação orgânica inteira, vegetal e animal, como uma única e grandiosa adaptação aos fins da humanidade, destinada à sua nutrição, diversão, proteção, e também para avisá-la sobre perigos ocultos. As práticas divinatórias e o totemismo, difundidos desde as origens entre todos os povos, têm o mesmo fundamento. E os progressos do saber podem muito bem ter dissipado essa ilusão antropocêntrica, mas algo dela permaneceu no erro científico que reinou durante tanto tempo entre os filósofos naturalistas: o de representar a série paleontológica como uma ascensão em linha reta até o homem, e o de encarar cada espécie viva ou extinta como uma nota num grande concerto chamado de Plano divino da natureza, edifício ideal e regular cujo apogeu era o homem. Penosamente, à força dos desmentidos acumulados pela observação, ele precisou desprender-se de uma ideia que lhe era tão cara, reconhecendo que não é nas grandes linhas da evolução dos seres (tão ramificadas e tortuosas), e nem mesmo nos grandes agrupamentos de espécies diferentes em faunas e floras regionais (apesar da notável adaptação revelada nos casos de comensalismo ou em determinadas relações entre insetos e flores) que a natureza demonstra no mais alto grau sua maravilhosa potência de harmonia, mas sim nos detalhes de cada organismo. A meu ver, os partidários das causas finais comprometeram a ideia de finalidade ao empregá-la de maneira abusiva e errônea, mas não excessiva; ao contrário, eu poderia criticá-los por terem feito dessa ideia, com seus hábitos mentais unificadores, um uso demasiadamente restrito. Não existe um fim na natureza, um fim em relação ao qual todo o resto seria um meio; o que existe é uma multidão infinita de fins que tentam servir-se uns dos outros. Cada organismo, e cada célula de cada organismo, e talvez cada elemento celular dentro de cada célula, possui sua própria pequena providência particular. Assim, tal como antes, também aqui somos levados a pensar que a força harmonizadora – ao menos aquela com a qual a ciência tem o direito de ocupar-se, sem negar a possibilidade de que alguma outra exista – não é imensa e única, exterior e superior, mas infinitamente multiplicada, infinitesimal e interna. A bem dizer, a fonte de todas as harmonias vitais (às quais temos um acesso cada vez mais restrito à medida que nos afastamos desse ponto de partida para abranger um campo mais vasto) é o óvulo fecundado, interseção viva de linhagens que se encontraram ali, num cruzamento às vezes feliz, início de novas aptidões que irão, por sua vez, se difundir e propagar, graças à seleção dos mais aptos ou à eliminação dos menos aptos. (Tarde 2011:86-9)

A ADAPTAÇÃO SOCIAL ELEMENTAR é INTRA-CEREBRAL

Diremos agora que a adaptação social elementar é, no fundo, a que existe entre dois homens, um dos quais responde, com palavras ou ações, à questão proposta pelo outro, plenamente verbalizada ou tácita? Pois a satisfação de uma necessidade, assim como a solução de um problema, é uma resposta a uma questão. Diremos então que essa harmonia elementar consiste na relação entre dois homens, na qual um deles ensina e o outro aprende, um ordena e o outro obedece, um produz e o outro consome, na qual um é ator, poeta, artista, e o outro é espectador, leitor, amador? Ou diremos que eles se reuniram e fizeram uma obra em colaboração? Sim, é isso que diremos, pois embora nessa relação entre dois homens esteja implicada uma relação entre modelo e cópia, trata-se de algo bem diferente. […] A meu ver, no entanto, é preciso levar a análise ainda mais longe e, como já indiquei, buscar a adaptação social elementar no próprio cérebro, no gênio individual do inventor. A invenção que está destinada a ser imitada – pois aquela que permanece encerrada no espírito de seu autor não é socialmente relevante – é uma harmonia de ideias que é a mãe de todas as harmonias entre os homens. Para que exista uma troca entre produtor e consumidor, e para que, em primeiro lugar, exista um dom para o consumidor, o dom da coisa produzida (pois a troca é a dádiva tornada mútua, e como tal, vem depois da dádiva unilateral), é preciso que o produtor tenha inicialmente duas ideias: a da necessidade do consumidor ou donatário, e a de um meio apto a satisfazê-la. A adaptação exterior que chamamos de dádiva, e em seguida de troca, não teria sido possível sem essa adaptação interior de duas ideias. Do mesmo modo, a divisão de trabalho entre vários homens que executam as diversas tarefas de uma mesma operação, anteriormente executada por um único homem, não teria sido possível se ele não tivesse a ideia de conceber essas diversas tarefas como partes de um mesmo todo, como meios para um mesmo fim. No fundo de qualquer associação entre homens, existe originariamente, repito, uma associação entre as ideias de um mesmo homem. (Tarde 2011:92-3)

RELAÇÃO ENTRE PROGRESSOS (em extensão e em compreendão)

É desse progresso intrínseco que queremos falar, ou seja, da tendência de uma invenção, de uma adaptação social dada, a se complicar e intensificar ao adaptar-se a outra invenção, a outra adaptação, engendrando desse modo uma nova adaptação que, por meio de outros encontros e outras alianças lógicas do mesmo gênero, conduzirá a uma síntese mais alta, e assim por diante. Esses dois progressos – o progresso de uma invenção em extensão por meio de sua propagação imitativa, e seu progresso em compreensão, de algum modo, por meio de uma série de alianças lógicas – são certamente muito distintos, porém longe de serem inversamente proporcionais (apesar da oposição habitual, concernente a outros aspectos, entre a extensão e a compreensão das ideias), eles marcham paralelamente e são inseparáveis. A cada aliança cerebral de duas invenções em uma terceira —quando, por exemplo, a ideia da roda e a ideia da domesticação do cavalo, depois de se propagarem independentemente (talvez durante séculos), se fundiram e harmonizaram na ideia de carro – foi preciso, necessariamente, que a imitação operasse para aproximá-las em um mesmo cérebro, tal como foi preciso, para o surgimento de cada uma delas, que seus elementos fossem trazidos para o espírito de seus autores por meio de diversas irradiações de exemplos. Melhor ainda, a cada síntese de novas invenções, geralmente é preciso uma irradiação imitativa mais vasta que as precedentes. Existe um entrelaçamento contínuo entre essas duas progressões, a progressão imitativa, uniformizadora, e a progressão inventiva, sistematizadora. Elas estão ligadas entre si por um vínculo que, sem dúvida, nada tem de rigoroso (pois, por exemplo, uma série de árduos teoremas pôde desenrolar-se no cérebro de um Arquimedes ou de um Newton sem nenhuma contribuição de elementos trazidos por sábios estrangeiros no decorrer de cada uma dessas descobertas), mas esse vínculo é suficientemente costumeiro para nos fazer acreditar que constataremos um crescimento da extensão do campo social e da intensidade das comunicações sociais, e uma ampliação e aprofundamento das nacionalidades (senão dos Estados), sempre que crescerem a riqueza das línguas, a beleza arquitetônica das teologias, a coesão das ciências, a complexidade e a codificação das leis, a organização espontânea ou a regulamentação dos trabalhos industriais, o regime financeiro, a coordenação e a complicação administrativas, os refinamentos e a variedade da literatura e das belas-artes. (Tarde 2011:95-6)

ACOPLAMENTOS LÓGICOS

[Q]uer se trate de uma síntese de ações, de uma invenção científica ou industrial, religiosa ou estética (em uma palavra, teórica ou prática), podemos chamar de “acoplamento lógico” o procedimento elementar que a formou. Com efeito, qualquer que seja o número de ideias ou atos sintetizados numa teoria ou máquina, jamais existe uma combinação de mais do que dois elementos de cada vez, adaptados entre si no cérebro do inventor ou de cada um dos inventores que colaboraram sucessivamente para sua formação. Em sua Sémantique, Michel Bréal fez uma observação muito perspicaz a respeito da linguagem que sustenta esta minha observação geral: “qualquer que seja o comprimento”, diz ele, “de uma palavra composta, ela jamais compreende mais do que dois termos. Essa regra não é arbitrária: ela decorre da natureza de nosso espírito que associa suas ideias em pares.” Em outra passagem relativa às figuras esquemáticas pelas quais James Darmesteter tentou tornar visível a evolução dos sentidos das palavras de acordo com diferentes vias, o mesmo autor escreve: “é preciso lembrar que essas figuras complicadas só têm valor para o linguista: aquele que inventa o novo sentido (de uma palavra) esquece momentaneamente todos os sentidos anteriores, salvo um, de maneira que as ideias sempre se associam de duas em duas.” E isso sempre acontece, tal como nas oposições entre ideias, como já vimos. Seria fácil, porém tedioso, mostrar a generalidade desse processo; bastaria flagrar sucessivamente cada descoberta ou aperfeiçoamento no momento em que ela é adicionada à descoberta anterior, seja na esfera científica, jurídica, econômica, política, artística ou moral. Em vez disso, é preferível indicar por que é assim, e como isso se torna possível e necessário. […] Por um lado, isso se deve essencialmente ao fato de que a marcha do espirito, seu funcionamento elementar, consiste em passar de uma ideia a outra ligando as duas por um juízo ou por uma volição: por um juízo que mostra a ideia do atributo implicada na ideia do sujeito, ou por um ato de vontade que encara a ideia do meio como estando implicada na ideia da finalidade. Por outro lado, se o espírito passa de um juízo a outro juízo mais complexo, e de uma volição a outra, mais compreensiva, é porque à força de repetir-se mentalmente em virtude dessa dupla forma de imitação de si mesmo, que chamamos de memória e hábito, um juízo termina por enrodilhar-se numa noção, fusão de seus dois termos doravante soldados e indistintos; e uma volição, um desígnio, acaba transformando-se num reflexo cada vez menos consciente. Por causa dessa transformação inevitável – que ocorre em larga escala, socialmente, sob os nomes respeitáveis de tradição e costume – nossos antigos juízos tornam-se aptos a integrar, agora como noções, um novo juízo; e nossos antigos desígnios tornam-se aptos a integrar um novo desígnio. Da mais baixa à mais alta operação de nosso entendimento e de nossa vontade, esse procedimento é o mesmo; e não existe descoberta teórica que seja algo além da junção judiciária de um atributo, ou seja, de antigos juízos, a um novo sujeito, assim como não há descoberta prática que seja algo além da junção voluntária de um meio, ou seja, de um antigo fim, anteriormente desejado por si mesmo, a um novo fim. Por meio dessa alternância, ao mesmo tempo tão simples e tão fecunda, de mudanças inversas que se sucedem indefinidamente, o juízo e a finalidade de ontem se tornam a noção simples e o simples meio de hoje, que suscitarão o juízo ou a finalidade de amanhã, e assim por diante; e foi de acordo com esse ritmo social, e também psicológico, que todos os grandes edifícios de descobertas e invenções que despertam nossa admiração foram construídos: nossas línguas, nossas religiões, nossas ciências, nossos códigos, nossas administrações, e decerto nossa organização militar, nossas indústrias, nossas artes. […] Quando consideramos uma dessas grandes coisas sociais – uma gramática, um código, uma teologia – o espírito individual parece tão diminuto ao pé desses monumentos, que a ideia de enxergar nele o único construtor dessas gigantescas catedrais parece ridícula aos olhos de alguns sociólogos; e como estes não percebem que com isso renunciam à possibilidade de explicá-las, pode-se perfeitamente desculpá-los por serem levados a dizer que tais obras são eminentemente impessoais. Apenas mais um passo levaria a postular (como meu ilustre adversário Durkheim) que, longe de serem funções do indivíduo, elas são seus fatores, existindo independentemente das pessoas humanas e governando-as despoticamente ao projetar sobre elas sua sombra opressiva. Mas como essas realidades sociais – pois se eu combato a ideia do organismo social, estou longe de contradizer a de um certo realismo social, que precisaria ser definido – como, repito, essas realidades sociais foram produzidas? Eu admito de bom grado que, uma vez que foram produzidas, elas se impõem ao indivíduo, às vezes de maneira coercitiva, o que é raro, e mais frequentemente por persuasão, por sugestão, pelo prazer singular de que gozamos, desde o berço, ao nos impregnar com os exemplos dos mil modelos existentes em nosso ambiente, como uma criança ao sugar o leite de sua mãe. Eu admito isso, mas como esses monumentos grandiosos aos quais me refiro foram construídos, e por quem, a não ser por homens e esforços humanos? (Tarde 2011:98-100)

SÍNTESE

É hora de terminar, e para rematar, façamos um resumo das principais conclusões às quais fomos conduzidos e busquemos sua significação de conjunto. Vimos que toda ciência vive de similitudes, de contrastes ou de simetrias, e de harmonias – ou seja, de repetições, oposições e adaptações – e indagamos qual é a lei de cada um desses três termos, bem como a relação de cada um deles com os demais. Vimos que o espírito humano, apesar de sua propensão natural – que a princípio parece tão legítima – a ater-se aos maiores fenômenos, aos mais imponentes, aos mais prestigiosos, para explicar os menos visíveis, foi irresistivelmente conduzido a encontrar o princípio das coisas, em toda ordem de fatos, nos fatos mais recônditos, cuja fonte, a bem dizer, continua insondável para ele. Essa constatação deveria causar-lhe uma grande surpresa, mas não foi assim, pois o hábito da observação científica nos familiarizou com essa reversão da ordem sonhada pelo pensamento nascente. Assim, a lei da repetição, quer se trate da repetição ondulatória e gravitacional do mundo físico, ou da repetição hereditária e habitual do mundo vivo, ou da repetição imitativa do mundo social, é a tendência de passar por via de amplificação progressiva de um infinitesimal relativo a um infinito relativo. A lei de oposição não é diferente: ela consiste em uma tendência a amplificar-se numa esfera sempre crescente a partir de um ponto vital. Socialmente, esse ponto é o cérebro de um indivíduo, a célula desse cérebro onde se produz, pela interferência de ondas imitativas vindas de fora, uma contradição entre duas crenças ou dois desejos. Essa é a oposição social elementar, princípio inicial das mais sangrentas guerras, assim como a repetição social elementar é o fato individual do primeiro imitador, ponto de partida de um imenso contágio de moda. A lei de adaptação, por fim, assemelha-se às anteriores: a adaptação social elementar é a invenção individual a ser imitada, ou seja, a feliz interferência entre duas imitações, inicialmente num único espírito; e a tendência dessa harmonia – que na origem é toda interior – é não somente exteriorizar-se ao se difundir, mas ainda acoplar-se logicamente, graças a essa difusão imitativa, com alguma outra invenção, e assim por diante, até que, por meio de complicações e harmonizações sucessivas de harmonias, apareçam essas grandes obras coletivas do espírito humano: uma gramática, uma teologia, uma enciclopédia, um corpo de direito, uma organização natural ou artificial do trabalho, uma estética, uma moral. […] Assim, em resumo, é certo que tudo vem do infinitesimal, e acrescentemos, é provável que tudo a ele retorne. Ele é o alfa e o ômega. Tudo o que constitui o universo visível, acessível às nossas observações, tudo isso provém, como sabemos, do invisível e do impenetrável, de um nada aparente do qual sai, de maneira inesgotável, toda a realidade. Se nós refletíssemos sobre esse estranho fenômeno, ficaríamos admirados com a potência do preconceito, ao mesmo tempo popular e científico, que faz com que todo mundo – tanto um Spencer como um desavisado – olhe para o infinitesimal como algo insignificante, ou seja, homogêneo, neutro, sem nada de característico ou espiritual. Ilusão inextirpável! E ainda mais inexplicável na medida em que também nós, como todos os seres, estamos destinados a voltar em breve, pela morte, a esse infinitesimal de onde saímos, esse infinitesimal tão desprezado, que poderia muito bem ser, no fundo – quem sabe? – todo o verdadeiro além, o único refúgio póstumo, procurado em vão nos espaços infinitos… Seja como for, que razão teríamos para julgar a priori, sem conhecer o mundo elementar, que apenas o mundo visível, o mundo espaçoso e volumoso, é o teatro do pensamento, a sede de fenômenos variados e viventes? Como podemos supor tal coisa, quando a cada instante vemos emergir um ser individual, com sua fisionomia própria e radiante, do fundo de um óvulo fecundado, do fundo de uma parte desse óvulo, de uma parte que quanto mais a procuramos, mais vai se circunscrevendo e esvanecendo, até não sei que ponto inimaginável? Esse ponto, fonte de tamanha diferença, como julgá-lo indiferenciado? Eu sei bem qual é a objeção que me aguarda: a pretensa lei da instabilidade do homogêneo. Mas ela é falsa, ela é arbitrária, ela foi imaginada expressamente para conciliar um preconceito (o de acreditar que aquilo que é indistinto aos nossos olhos é indiferenciado em si mesmo) com a evidência das diversidades fenomenais, das exuberantes variações viventes, psicológicas e sociais. A verdade é que apenas o heterogêneo é instável, e que o homogêneo é essencialmente estável. A estabilidade das coisas está em razão direta de sua homogeneidade. A única coisa na Natureza que é (ou parece ser) perfeitamente homogênea é o Espaço geométrico, que não mudou desde Euclides. Tem-se a intenção de dizer simplesmente que o menor germe de heterogeneidade, ao ser introduzido num agregado relativamente homogêneo, como o fermento na massa, provocará nele uma diferenciação crescente? Isso eu contesto: num país ortodoxo, de unanimidade religiosa ou política, a introdução de uma heresia ou de uma dissidência tem muito mais chances de ser rapidamente reabsorvida ou expulsa do que de crescer às expensas da Igreja ou da política reinantes. Eu não nego a lei de diferenciação em suas aplicações orgânicas ou sociais, mas ela estará sendo muito mal compreendida caso impeça a visão da lei de uniformização crescente que se mistura e se entrelaça com ela. Na realidade, a diferenciação da qual se quer falar é antes a adaptação da qual falamos; por exemplo, a divisão do trabalho em nossas sociedades não passa da associação ou coadaptação progressiva de trabalhos diversos por meio de invenções sucessivas. Circunscrita em seus primórdios às tarefas caseiras, ela vai se repetindo e ampliando sem cessar, estendendo-se primeiramente à cidade, na qual as diversas tarefas, outrora semelhantes umas às outras, porém diferenciadas interiormente, tornam-se diferentes umas das outras, mas separadamente mais homogêneas; depois torna-se nacional, e em seguida internacional. Assim, não é verdade que a diferença vá aumentando, pois se a cada instante aparecem novidades e outras diferenças, também desaparecem antigas diferenças; e levando em conta essa consideração, não teremos nenhuma razão para pensar que a soma das diferenças, se é que é possível somar coisas que não têm uma medida comum, tenha aumentado no universo. Algo muito mais importante do que um simples aumento de diferença acontece sem cessar: a diferenciação da própria diferença. A própria mudança vai mudando, e num sentido determinado, que nos encaminha de uma era de diferenças cruas e justapostas, como de cores berrantes que não combinam, para uma era de diferenças harmoniosamente nuançadas. Seja lá o que se possa pensar dessa maneira de ver, é inconcebível que, segundo a hipótese de uma substância homogênea eternamente submetida à disciplina niveladora e coordenadora das leis científicas, tivesse jamais podido existir um universo como o nosso, deslumbrante em seu desmedido luxo de surpresas e caprichos. O que poderia nascer a partir do perfeitamente semelhante e perfeitamente regra do, a não ser um mundo eterna e imensamente tedioso? Do mesmo modo, a essa concepção corrente do universo como formado por uma poeira infinita de elementos, todos semelhantes no fundo e dos quais a diversidade teria emergido sabe-se lá como, eu me permito opor minha concepção particular que o representa como a realização de uma multidão de virtualidades elementares, cada qual caracterizada e ambiciosa, cada qual trazendo em si seu universo distinto, seu universo próprio e de sonho. Pois o número de projetos abortados por ele é infinitamente maior do que o número de projetos desenvolvidos; e é entre os sonhos concorrentes, entre os programas rivais, muito mais do que entre os seres, que acontece a grande batalha pela vida que elimina os menos adaptados. Dessa forma, o subsolo misterioso do mundo fenomenal seria tão rico em diversidades – embora sejam outras diversidades – quanto o patamar das realidades superficiais. (Tarde 2011:109-13)

Ciência para cientistas sociais (Law e Lodge 1984)

Published 07/12/2020 Law , Lodge Leave a Comment

LAW, John; LODGE, Peter. 1984. Science for social scientists. London: Macmillan Press.

UM LIVRO SOBRE CIÊNCIAS NATURAIS

It is thus a book about natural science, about how it is practised, and about how it changes, that has been written with the special interests of social scientists in mind. But it is, it needs to be emphasised, very much a book about natural science. (Law e Lodge 1984:3)

REALISMO

Our primary aim, then, is to build a picture of the practice of science that is realistic. (Law e Lodge 1984:3)

COMPROMETIMENTOS-INTERESSES SOCIAIS (orientados por figuras de autoridade) LIMITAM PERCEPÇÃO

Social commitments can sometimes distort observation, but on the other hand, all observation depends upon and would be impossible without social commitments. […] [T]here is so much that might be observed in the world that it is absolutely necessary to limit perception to certain connections. (Law e Lodge 1984:4)

It is […] social commitments, transmitted by such figures as parents and teachers, that select for us the things to which we should attend. Whether in science or in everyday life, as a general rule we adopt these cues as our own and ignore most of the observations that we might make of the objects that pass before our eyes. (Law e Lodge 1984:5)

All knowledge – not simply other people’s knowledge of which you happen to disapprove – is directed by social interests of one kind or another. (Law e Lodge 1984:6)

CIÊNCIA e SENSO COMUM

science is neither more rational nor closer to reality than other forms of thought. (Law e Lodge 1984:5)

there is no fundamental methodological distinction between science and common sense (Law e Lodge 1984:5)

CLASSIFICAÇÃO

We start with an assertion: human beings have the capacity to classify phenomena into groups. […] The capacity to classify is something that we all possess and it is something that we do routinely. (Law e Lodge 1984:15)

Unlike the propensity to classify which we have just discussed [which is “natural”], the actual classifications adopted appear to be conventional. (Law e Lodge 1984:19)

When we talk, then, of classification, we are talking of two different but related things. First we, are talking of an inbuilt psychological propensity to order and sort, to reduce to a relatively simple order, and second, we are talking about learned preferences for grouping the products of classificatory propensities into conventional classes. (Law e Lodge 1984:19)

O RELEVO DO MUNDO (lumps)

We exist in a perceptually lumpy world, then, and are dependent on that lumpiness for our sanity. (Law e Lodge 1984:16)

RECONHECIMENTO

recognition (that is to say, immediate visual classification) can be achieved even though we do not necessarily have a clear and explicit idea about what the different members of the class have in common. (Law e Lodge 1984:22)

The capacity to recognise objects as boats is quite clearly a learned skill. But it is learned in such a way that it sinks below the level of consciousness and influences immediate perception. (Law e Lodge 1984:22)

SIMILARIDADE e INFORMAÇÃO

When we notice similarity […] and classify we lose information. […] By treating unique events (and all situations and events are unique) as instances of general classes we have lost something. (Law e Lodge 1984:22)

CLASSIFICAÇÃO e AGRUPAMENTOS

we not only classify, order and sort our lumpy environment, but we tend to see the classes as coming together in packages. (Law e Lodge 1984:24)

we are endowed with a natural capacity to link classes of events together, to cross-classify. (Law e Lodge 1984:24)

In making these connections we are noticing two kinds of links: the first instance of fire is seen as being similar to the second instance of fire. This burn is perceived as being similar to that burn. But the spatial and temporal relationship between fire and a painful burn is also noticed. (Law e Lodge 1984:24)

CARRO

Think of the skills involved in driving a motor car, of changing the gears and of avoiding other traffic as we make progress down a road. We know (we do not think about it, we know) how to change gear correctly and in the direction for which we are aiming. We know that a certain set of manipulations will lead the engine to cease labouring and give the vehicle a new surge of power. We know that the truck that is approaching us will in fact pass us on the other side of the road. We have learned, by association and inference, that these are the typical links between classes (or, if you prefer to think of it this way, the manner in which certain phenomena typically behave). And we know about these links in general without having to think about them. We go, as it were, on autopilot. (Law e Lodge 1984:25)

LIKE (tipo, que nem)

we often classify and make connections between classes without having directly experienced the lumpiness of physical stimuli and their association. (Law e Lodge 1984:26)

‘You musn’t eat earthworms, they’ll make you sick!’ […] First let us consider the conditions of the intelligibility of such a statement. For it to mean anything at all the child must know about eating, earthworms and sickness. […] But suppose, for the sake of argument, that […] the child has never been sick. Assuming, as is probable, that it nevertheless has some conception of sickness, this will have been learned indirectly via the association of classes that lead, in the end, to physical events that are recognisably similar. […] ‘What’s sickness, Daddy?’ […] ‘Well it’s when you’re put to bed because you feel ill. You know, like when Granddad was poorly last year.’ […] ‘You mean, like when the rabbit died?’ (Law e Lodge 1984:26-7)

This is an important point. Not all learning need be via direct empirical experience, suitably structured. Much learning takes place via chains of terms that, in the end, have empirical implications. (Law e Lodge 1984:26-7)

CLASSIFICAÇÃO ABSTRATA

we can learn to make connections between classes without directly experiencing the lumpiness of physical stimuli. (Law e Lodge 1984:28)

human beings can learn to use terms or classes and make connections between classes without directly relating those classes and associations to what we have called ‘physical lumpiness’. It suffices that such links be indirect. (Law e Lodge 1984:28)

APRENDER FRANCÊS

it is quite impossible to learn French from a French-French dictionary. To learn the meaning of French words we either have to interact with a French speaker who points out objects and names them or we have to have recourse to a dictionary where approximate English equivalents – terms which already have a direct or indirect empirical referent for the learner – are indicated. (Law e Lodge 1984:28-9)

CLASSIFICAÇÃO e PREDIÇÃO

When classes are established and inferentially linked together human beings have taken the moves that are necessary for predictions to be made. (Law e Lodge 1984:29)

UMA REDE SOBRE O CAOS

As individuals […] move through each day they make use of this network, the similarity relations and the links of association, to make sense of the perceptually lumpy phenomena that they encounter. That is, they use this network to impose some kind of order on what they see and to make predictions on the basis of that order. (Law e Lodge 1984:33)

In order to detect and order one’s environment the observer therefore imports a network, as a set of preconceptions (or if you like, prejudices) which permit him or her to structure sensations and make sense of what is being observed. We have earlier discussed the way in which socially validated (but practically workable) cues are transmitted. (Law e Lodge 1984:135)

ECONOMIA de REDE (a rede de Ockham)

On the whole human beings prefer an economical account of phenomena. (Law e Lodge 1984:33)

human beings try to construct classes that are as general as possible and seek to link those classes together by means of associations that are also as widespread as may be. There is, in other words, a drive for generality and inclusiveness. (Law e Lodge 1984:34)

CRITÉRIOS CLASSIFICATÓRIOS (herança cultural)

though some kind of intrinsically detectable similarity lies at the root of species identification, the particular similarities picked out depend on other criteria. This is, of course, a corollary of a point which we made earlier: that classification involves us in a loss of information. (Law e Lodge 1984:38)

the lumpy perceptual raw material is susceptible to imputations of similarity and difference in more than one way. Such raw material does not by itself impose a single possible classification. It offers us a variety o f possibly detectable similarity relations and in our classification we pick up one (Law e Lodge 1984:38)

perception and classification, even for apparently stable objects, is not given in the lumpiness of the natural world alone, but rather in an interaction between nature and accepted ways of seeing, an interaction that exploits some and ignores the rest of the many similarities offered to us by nature. (Law e Lodge 1984:40)

EXTENSÃO, INTENSÃO [extension, intension] e SENTIDO RETICULAR

philosophers have spilled much ink over the question of meaning. Some, for instance, have sought to show that the meaning of a term is nothing more than its extension – the class of objects to which it applies. Most, however, have found this definition unsatisfactory on the grounds that it ‘misses out’ on something, or more formally, that two terms may have the same extension but ‘mean’ different things. In the case of network theory this is so. A change in intension does not necessarily reveal itself in a corresponding change in extension, for attention to different similarities and differences may lead to identical classes of objects. Thus, the importance of intension can be a little difficult to see in practice unless there is a simultaneous change or difference in extension. (Law e Lodge 1984:41)

The term ‘mammal’ is not simply dependent on the objects that it properly describes, but also on its boundary relations with such neighbouring classes as ‘fish’ and ‘reptiles’. Accordingly, it is necessary to argue that meaning depends upon both extension and intension, for it is intension that relates to and defines such boundary relations. (Law e Lodge 1984:42)

in the course of such manoeuvres the intension of the class of ‘mammals’ is being altered and adjusted. The meaning of the term, properly applied, is being resited in the course of a process that may be described as tinkering with the network. (Law e Lodge 1984:42)

AS ASSOCIAÇÕES DE OCKHAM (simples e preditivas, condições de coerência)

Those associations that have relevance for action (‘Eating earthworms makes you sick’) are not, however, ignored. Rather, they are linked with other similar associations, and a tie of some generality is forged. This, of course, is just another guise for the drive for conceptual economy that underlies the production of networks, a principle of economy that has, as a consequence, the tendency to create associations of increasing simplicity and sometimes, at least, of predictive power. (Law e Lodge 1984:48)

The tendency to economy, to see new links as being like old, is absolutely fundamental to this understanding of human cognitive activity. […] The principle of economy is one of the most important ordering features of a network of associations. We may therefore describe it as a coherence condition: it helps to determine what goes with what and what form the network will take. Now, however, we should reiterate a warning that we made earlier. The operation of the coherence condition of economy on perceptually lumpy phenomena does not uniquely determine the form that a network will take. (Law e Lodge 1984:49)

NATUREZAS-CULTURAS (homologias)

cultures […] have, as it were, prepackaged, and in many cases divergent, similarities to which attention is properly to be directed. (Law e Lodge 1984:49)

Different experiences, different interests and, most important for our present purposes, different social maps or networks combine to lead us to a wide variety of solutions, not only in conceptions of social life, but in the networks of association as they apply to natural phenomena. (Law e Lodge 1984:51)

Models that are developed in one area of experience (for instance the social) will be applied to other areas such as the natural because it is economical to do so. If associations can be ordered via such models, then the latter will be used. (Law e Lodge 1984:52)

all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is constitutively conventional. That is to say, it is a cultural construct. It is not unambiguously determined by nature. Rather it results from an interaction between perceptual lumpiness, the coherence conditions with which we have been naturally endowed (that is, the propensity to seek economical associations) and the coherence conditions which are made culturally available to us, for instance in the form of preferred models. Thus empirical knowledge, knowledge of events in the world, is also conventional knowledge. There is no inherent tension between empirical knowledge and social convention. Empirical knowledge cannot be other than convention. (Law e Lodge 1984:52)

PURPOSE

The crucial thing to note, then, is that similarities are noted, classes built up and links erected between classes in accordance with the purposes for which a taxonomy is being made. As a description of the animals of the earth, the above classification is of no use if the interest is rather in the extent to which they are a danger to life or have economic value for man. (Law e Lodge 1984:68)

O CASO do CASUAR (cassowary)

Both classifications, the European and the Karam, result in loss of information. Yet both are workable from the standpoint of their respective cultures. To say that one or the other is true (or false) is simply wrong. Each classification selects from the (dis)analogies that exist, naturally, between instances of birds, cassowaries and men. Social coherence conditions assist in making that selection. (Law e Lodge 1984:70)

PRAGMÁTICA ASSOCIATIVA-RETICULAR-PERSPECTIVISTA (não é teoria da correspondência)

There is what is called ‘correspondence theory’. […] [I]t generally asserts that true knowledge is that which may be attached to relatively stable observation via definite ‘rules of correspondence’ and that, under these conditions, true knowledge ‘corresponds’ to reality. Then there is the ‘pragmatic’ or ‘instrumental’ theory, which asserts that true knowledge (or at least that which is taken to be true) is that which works most satisfactorily. It is obvious that the network theory lies on the instrumental or pragmatic side of this divide, for according to the theory, no knowledge can completely represent reality. […] Knowledge may appear or be treated as if it completely represents reality from the standpoint of the network theory. This is because, for practical purposes, it predicts reality or allows human beings to interact satisfactorily with their environments. (Law e Lodge 1984:70)

networks correspond to reality, but from a particular point of view only (Law e Lodge 1984:71)

3 BASIC ASSUMPTIONS

First, we have adopted a materialist stance. That is to say, we have assumed that there is a material world which makes itself known to us via what we have described as ‘perceptual lumpiness’. Second, we have made a psychological assumption about human beings – that they are capable of noticing similarities and associations between these perceptual lumps, and have a propensity to create economical classifications. And third, we have indicated (though we have yet to consider the matter in detail) that the forms taken by classification are influenced by social convention. (Law e Lodge 1984:73)

ANTIMARXISMO

in the absence of successful communist revolution in advanced capitalist societies, and given the presence of such revolution in such precapitalist societies as Russia and China, the scientific Marxist should have abandoned his hypothesis and searched for a more general alternative – one that encompassed the empirical findings and was susceptible to further test. (Law e Lodge 1984:74)

NÃO EXISTEM DADOS BRUTOS

we have seen that observation depends not only on nature, but also on the operation of coherence conditions and among these coherence conditions we have noted the importance of culturally transmitted convention. This means, if we might put it informally, that there are no ‘raw data’. All data are ‘partially cooked’. (Law e Lodge 1984:76)

those natural or social scientists who conceive of themselves as collecting ‘raw data’ are obviously mistaken. (Law e Lodge 1984:77)

there is no such thing as raw data. The network theory suggests that the data are constituted in part via the operation of coherence conditions. (Law e Lodge 1984:79)

A ESTABILIDADE SOCIOCULTURAL do SISTEMA SENSÓRIO-MOTOR

Our perception of the everyday world achieves a solidity and stability that is altogether massive. Even in less everyday situations such as the biology class, it is now entirely impossible for us to look down an appropriate microscope and avoid seeing the cells. Perhaps more interestingly, it is almost impossible to remember why it was we could not see them until we were given appropriate social cues. In retrospect, all that we can say, rather lamely, is that we had no idea of the size of what we should be seeing. […] Perception, once acquired, becomes largely automatic and extremely obstinate in its persistence. (Law e Lodge 1984:90)

[T]he structure and stability of a network is a function of its workability. […] There is […] a strong relationship between network structure and utility and this relationship is usually tested in the course of action. Networks are not idly created. They have some practical relevance – they are used by human beings to guide their interactions with the environment – including the social environment. […] But if networks are to guide action, then there must be knowledge not only of the outside world, but also of one’s own actions, their relationship with external events and, most crucially, an ability to monitor and control one’s own motor actions. (Law e Lodge 1984:97)

Here we want to suggest first, that motor skills are closely related to perceptual networks, second, that the former are, or rest upon, a particular kind of knowledge and third, that they are acquired, in a manner analogous to perceptual knowledge, by an interaction between perceptual lumpiness (partly within the body) and authority-given cues about which associations between those lumps should be attended to. (Law e Lodge 1984:97)

TÉCNICAS DO CORPO (ensino-aprendizagem)

Sometimes it is easier for the teacher to demonstrate the appropriate action rather than describe it. […] The success of a demonstration depends on the ability of the novice to detect the salient features of the action by means of conventional perceptual classification. (Law e Lodge 1984:100)

Like the acquisition of a network of perceptual terms, the acquisition of appropriate motor skills rests upon practice. Neither perception nor action are abstract. It is not possible to learn how to see or do with recourse to verbal categories alone. Though the latter can be important, they have, as it were, to be tried out. Perceptual links have to be detected. Association between motor activity and a given outcome has to be noticed. The skills necessary for a desirable or workable outcome have to be demonstrated and then exercised. Skill, then, rests upon or is itself constituted by a form of knowledge, knowledge about how to manipulate the body in order to achieve a given goal. […] Arguably, skilled movement might be understood in terms of educated perception (Law e Lodge 1984:101)

The important point is that skill is a form of knowledge or ‘know-how’, it is practical, it can only be learned in practice and, as with other forms of knowledge, authority and convention play a vital role by offering cues about which objects and actions properly go with which. (Law e Lodge 1984:101)

CONHECIMENTO PRÁTICO DISTRIBUÍDO-TÁCITO NÃO-VERBAL

Knowledge, a network of associations and actions, was available to them [those who “spent some time in the Canadian laboratory”] but they could not verbalise that knowledge to the extent that it was successfully transmissible as talk. The skill had to be passed across in the course of demonstration. (Law e Lodge 1984:102)

The centre of gravity of the cognitive content of science lies below the explicit and in the tacit. (Law e Lodge 1984:102)

TEORIA de REDE de ASSOCIAÇÕES por SIMILARIDADE

network theory rests upon the assumption that human beings are endowed with the capacity to notice similarities between perceptual objects and associations despite the fact that, formally, all objects and associations of objects are unique and never repeated. A network of workable classes is built up by ignoring the visible differences between cases and by assuming that it is the similarities which should be exclusively attended to. Objects are treated as ‘the same’ even though, in strict terms, they are different. (Law e Lodge 1984:104)

REDE COMO HIPÓTESE e METÁFORA (as if)

When we say that an object is a boat, one way of describing what we are doing is to say that we are making a hypothesis. We are saying that in ways of which we are not necessarily entirely clear, the new object looks to us to be like past objects that we have classified as boats. We are saying that we will treat it as if it is the same as those past objects. We will assume that from a practical or workable point of view it may be treated as if it has the attributes of past boats. The network theory, then, leads us to the following rather important conclusion: all knowledge is constitutively metaphorical. […] It is metaphorical because it tells us to treat objects or associations as if they were the same as prior objects or associations. (Law e Lodge 1984:104-5)

All classifications and associations propose a similarity which is provisional. The workability of all classes and associations is hypothetical. What we are doing when we use them is to say ‘let’s treat the new experience as if it is like past experiences that we have so classified’. We are attempting a metaphorical extension. (Law e Lodge 1984:105)

O CASO DALTON (as if)

Thus Dalton’s line of argument led him to presume that if one compound of A and B were known, the chemical formula would probably be ‘AB‘; if two were known, their formulae would probably be ‘AB‘ and ‘AB2‘ (or ‘A2 B‘); and so on. Furthermore his theory enabled him to predict how the atoms would be arrayed spatially. […] As a consequence of this approach Dalton was thus able to draw up a list of possible combinations of two (or more) different types of atoms, with an indication as to which would be the most probably discovered in nature. […] Dalton had established an eminently workable way of depicting atomic combination. However, we have not yet indicated the real triumph of this approach. Such simplifying assumptions permitted Dalton to calculate a list of relative atomic weights. Thus, knowing that eight ounces of oxygen combined with one ounce of hydrogen, it was a simple matter to calculate their relative weights as eight to one. (Law e Lodge 1984:110)

Dalton’s ‘chemical revolution’ laid the foundations of nineteenth-century chemical practice; it was quantifiable; it was practical; it suggested many fruitful lines for further exploration. (Law e Lodge 1984:111)

We can easily use the language of network theory to make this point. We can represent Dalton as saying ‘let us treat matter as if it were the same as solid little balls which repel identical kinds of little balls’. […] This is, ofcourse, a metaphor. No one supposes that the atoms were exactly like the diagrams or models that Dalton had executed. (Law e Lodge 1984:111)

Dalton was considered, both by his contemporaries and successors, to be an absolutely outstanding chemist. On this basis he achieved a scientific status in Britain that was second to none, though he was personally a modest man. Chemical atomism, efficacious as it was in terms of natural accounting, prediction, and control, also had the ultimate effect of conferring high scientific and social status on Dalton. His operations in relation to natural accounting had their effect on his social circumstances. (Law e Lodge 1984:132)

REDE-METÁFORA

A metaphor brings with it, or indeed is constituted by, a whole set of possible associations or connotations. A metaphor is, itself, a network. […] Metaphorical redescription involves the transfer from one domain to another of a whole network of classes and their associations. And this network offers a model, provides a template as it were, for thinking about the events that have been so redescribed. […] [O]verall they offer a model for thinking about problematic phenomena. (Law e Lodge 1984:111-2)

PLAUSIBILIDADE

In each of these cases the plausibility of the account lies in the fact that singular events – say, findings about chemical combination or the attitudes of working-class people – can be connected to a model that reinterprets them by classifying them and linking them with other classes in some kind of ordered manner. They are, in other words, plugged into a network where they can be ascribed a certain significance. Looked at in this light, then, a theory is a relatively explicit section of a network metaphorically extended to new phenomena. (Law e Lodge 1984:112)

INSTITUCIONALIZAÇÃO da METÁFORA

[A] description that passes as literal is simply one that has been institutionalised within a given social context. Where such institutionalisation has occurred, then the sense of novelty that people sometimes associate with metaphor is lost. All seems routine, and it is forgotten that there are, in principle, other ways of talking that would highlight other similarities and differences. (Law e Lodge 1984:113)

TEORIA

Theory, then, in this view, is the inevitably metaphorical extension of an at least partially explicit section of a network to describe, account for or explain phenomena that can be placed within the ambit of its classificatory system. […] It accordingly offers some kind of plausible story and it furthermore suggests, by means of these connotations, how, and in what directions, it might be further extended: what further bits and pieces it might connect together, what other ultimately idiosyncratic lumps in the environment might be treated as if they were the same in this, that or the other way. To summarise, then, perhaps the best way of expressing it is to say that theory offers a model – a way of thinking about the world – that relates instances together by means of metaphorical extension. (Law e Lodge 1984:113)

METÁFORA REDE

a metaphor is a bridge: it is saying ‘see x as being similar to y, and see them both as being similar to z‘, and so on. Furthermore it offers, as we have seen, a network of associations with which to think about experience. (Law e Lodge 1984:104)

if metaphor is a bridge between two different areas of experience or knowledge, it does not sustain a one-way traffic only. (Law e Lodge 1984:114-5)

RECONFIGURANDO A REDE

‘in the attempt to eradicate misfits, all terms and links in a network are at risk for alteration. This includes terms with a direct empirical referent’. We have made this point again in the context of metaphor because we want to emphasise that this revisability, what we have just described as the two-way traffic across the bridge, is absolutely no cause for concern. […] A notorious example is the two-way traffic between the theory and practice of artificial intelligence and computing on the one hand and the theory of human cognitive capacity and performance on the other. Another is the transfer between biological and social Darwinism that took place in the latter part of the nineteenth century. […] As we have seen, all knowledge involves transfer and revision. (Law e Lodge 1984:115)

RACIONALIZAÇÕES

not all theories seem to have predictive power. Rather they seem to have the character of rationalisations. They are utilised to render explicable events that have already occurred. For a number of reasons this is especially the case for the social sciences. […] Their generality lies not necessarily in their specific applications which are often retrospective and historically specific. It lies, rather, in the network of links between classes that may be mobilised in the course of any given explanatory account. (Law e Lodge 1984:115-6)

EXPLICAÇÕES

even apparently specific explanations depend upon the metaphorical extension of networks or parts thereof to new domains. However, it is also worth noting that different societies have different kinds of explanatory preferences. Some like to explain events with reference to the deity whereas others adopt a strictly impersonal and naturalistic mode. Some place man at the centre of the explanatory network, whilst others put him at the periphery. Some adopt theories that explain events in terms of a future ideal state towards which the cosmos is tending, while others prefer an approach which emphasises the relationship between what is to be explained and previous events. Though such explanatory modes come and go it happens to be the case that the dominant explanatory approach for natural (as opposed to social) events in the secularised West is impersonal and causal. Natural science in particular adopts this mode. Events are explained in terms of prior conditions and as the result of the operation of naturally-occurring causes. (Law e Lodge 1984:117-8)

NEUTRALIDADE de REDE

[I]f theory is an explicit section of a network offering a plausible story about empirical phenomena, then what is taken to be plausible is clearly in part a matter of social convention. Thus, though we may find explanation in terms of natural selection highly acceptable, the biblical account of creation may seem (and is) highly plausible for other social groups. The corollary of this is that the plausibility or workability of a theory is a socially-contingent matter. The evaluation of theories as more or less workable is something that can only be done from within a given social context. Since the establishment of our preferred modes of explanation will always seem to us, from our particular standpoint, like the triumph of reason and truth over irrationality and falsehood, we have, at least for analytical purposes, to exercise caution in our use of terms like progress. While we are concerned with explaining events we will, of course, prefer our own explanations to their alternatives. This is because we stand within a social context. When we want to stand back and see how knowledge functions and is produced, however, we have to abandon such parochial judgements. The network theory describes knowledge, but does not in general evaluate it as better or worse. (Law e Lodge 1984:118)

[N]etworks are constructed by detecting similarities and differences between perceptual lumps and organising these in conformity with workable and economical coherence conditions. An implication of this view is that there is no such thing as raw data – no such thing as a neutral observation language. (Law e Lodge 1984:146)

WHY NATURAL SCIENCES?

[N]atural sciences are enormously important in industrialised society in at least two ways. First, they constitute an economic resource, a factor of production. Second, and almost more important for our purposes, they are used as a major resource in social control. They legitimate actions by governments, companies, by powerful groups everywhere. A phrase such as ‘scientists have shown’, properly used, can silence counter-argument. (Law e Lodge 1984:122)

AÇÃO-REDE-MAPA

If a network allows the individual to interact satisfactorily with his or her environment, then it is upheld and reinforced. If, on the other hand, the behaviour of the environment is unpredictable from the standpoint of the network […] then this network is undermined and susceptible to change. However, in order to judge network workability, the individual has to ask questions of it. The network is not an idle set of terms disconnected from reality. It is a tool that may be used when the individual is trying to achieve a goal or solve a problem. It is an instrument, fashioned for certain purposes. It is a resource that allows the individual to move from A to B in his or her environment. It is, as we saw, like a map that will serve certain interests and not others. (Law e Lodge 1984:125)

CONHECIMENTO e INTERESSES

Knowledge is developed and altered because it does things for people, it helps them to achieve their goals. To understand the extent to which people are able to align their knowledge – to agree upon the facts of the matter – it is therefore necessary to understand their interests. In the abstract we may guess that where people share interests, then it will be relatively easy for them to achieve conceptual agreement. This is because they are asking their knowledge to do similar things. Where, however, interests are divergent, conceptions about what is true, right and proper will vary. This is because, conversely, they are requiring different things of their knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:125-6)

REDES CIENTÍFICAS

Scientific networks may become rhetorical resources to be used by protagonists for political or other broad social purposes. But in order for them to operate effectively in this way, they have to be workable in two respects. First, they have to account for what are generally taken to be the facts of the matter – ideally, not only after the event but also beforehand. Preferably, then, they offer the possibility of prediction and control. On the other hand, as we have just indicated, they have to be a workable social tool with which to rationalise the preferred position and lambaste the other side. There is a close relationship between these two. […] It is therefore, important from the standpoint of broad political and social interests to maintain the practical workability of the knowledge in which an investment has been made. (Law e Lodge 1984:130)

A OPERACIONALIDADE DE UMA REDE É UMA FUNÇÃO DE SEU USO (natural ou social)

The workability of a network is a function of the purposes for which it is used. Analytically it may be hypothesised that knowledge is constructed and deployed for two main purposes. First, it may be used to describe, account for and explain events with the aim of interacting more satisfactorily with the natural and social worlds. This we will call an interest in natural accounting, prediction and control (though we should make clear that we use the term ‘natural’ here to encompass inanimate, animate and social). Second, it may be used for social advantage: to defend, legitimate, or rationalise a general social position which is advantageous to the person deploying or the audience using the knowledge. This we will call an interest in social control and legitimation. The former is used before the event: it is practical knowledge and has predictive power. The latter is used after the event: it justifies and normalises. It is impractical in the immediate sense that one cannot base one’s actions upon it. Rather it defends one’s actions, and presents them as natural. […] In practice all knowledge is guided by a concern with, or at least has implications for, both these spheres. (Law e Lodge 1984:131)

A EXTENSÃO DO COMPARTILHAMENTO DE CONHECIMENTO é UMA FUNÇÃO DO COMPARTILHAMENTO DE INTERESSES

a proper understanding of the growth and alteration of knowledge must depend upon an analysis of the field of interests in which that knowledge is functioning. In other words, it depends on an understanding of the practical and social work which that knowledge has to do. Networks, then, are resources that are used to advance interests. Where there are common interests we may expect that so long as everything else is equal, it will be relatively easy to align those networks. People will be able to agree on the facts of the matter. Where interests are divergent, this will be next to impossible. Thus, the extent to which knowledge is shared is, at least in part, a function of interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:132)

A TEORIA RETICULAR do CONHECIMENTO é PRAGMÁTICA

[T]he network theory of knowledge […] suggests that knowledge is to be seen as a tool or instrument and does not freewheel in the abstract. It is rather constructed for a purpose – it is used to achieve goals. (Law e Lodge 1984:134)

networks are tools for doing a given job. They may do that job perfectly satisfactorily and ‘logically’, while at the same time having a set of loose ends around their margins. (Law e Lodge 1984:152)

CRUZAMENTO DE INTERESSES NATURAL-SOCIAL

[A]ll knowledge develops under the auspices of two types of interest: an interest in natural accounting, prediction and control on the one hand and an interest in social control and legitimation on the other. Further, whatever the motives of the individual, all knowledge typically has consequences in both of these dimensions. Knowledge directed primarily by an interest in natural accounting normally has social control implications. Knowledge directed by an interest in social control is typically legitimated with reference to its supposed power of natural accounting. (Law e Lodge 1984:134)

The network theory of knowledge suggests […] that interests guide and direct the growth of all knowledge. We have suggested that all knowledge is a function of interests in natural accounting and social legitimation. […] In general, […] the operation of social interests leads to the careful scrutiny of aspects of nature (or social behaviour) which might otherwise have remained unexamined. In other words, it leads to the development of natural knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:135)

they [the phrenologists] sought to validate their social interests by means of natural accounting (Law e Lodge 1984:138)

O SUCESSO DE UMA IDEIA DEPENDE DE ELA SER ADOTADA POR UM PÚBLICO

It is the interests of the audiences for knowledge that are most important for understanding its growth, because in general it appears that if there is a demand for knowledge, then someone will cater for that demand. The form that that provision will take depends upon the existing state of knowledge. It depends, in other words, upon the intellectual resources that are available at the time. Phrenology happened to be available to the middle class in early nineteenth-century Edinburgh – and was adopted as its own. Nevertheless, there are many ideas available as resources and the old notion of ‘an idea whose time has come’ obliquely and correctly implies that it is not so much the ideas that are important as the availability of a suitable clientele. (Law e Lodge 1984:139)

INTERESSE-REDE

The network/interest explanation for the detailed knowledge created in the course of the debate […] suggests that the development of detailed and esoteric knowledge of a set of lumps in nature is likely to take place if there are pressing social interests for this development. […] Science is not best understood as a disinterested inquiry by truth-seeking intellects. Rather, interests may lead to a focus on esoteric matters that were previously of little or no interest. They may lead to the generation of new and satisfactory empirical knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:141)

ALINHAMENTO DE REDES-INTERESSES

[T]he extent to which actors are able to agree about the facts of the matter – that is, the extent to which they are able to align their networks – depends on the extent to which their interests are aligned. (Law e Lodge 1984:143)

RESSONÂNCIA RETICULAR e A FORÇA DOS ARGUMENTOS

Our argument is as follows: since networks are built up under the auspices of a variety of interests, we may expect ‘the same’ phenomena to be susceptible to interpretation in a variety of different ways. We may, furthermore, expect arguments to be essentially inconclusive on purely intellectual grounds. People will not adopt a position or change their views on the basis of an argument alone, however persuasively that argument may be mounted. Or, to put it another way, arguments do not, in and of themselves, have any force. Persuasion results rather from the interaction between the presented argument and the interests and network of the person who is at the receiving end. An argument thus has force when it mobilises the interests and network of the hearer, not because it is intrinsically powerful. An argument that appears to be powerful is thus one that is successful in that mobilisation. An argument that appears to be weak is one which is not. (Law e Lodge 1984:143-4)

A persuasive argument is one that engages with the actor’s workable networks and interests. A ‘logical’ argument is one that runs along lines that the hearer knows and to which he is committed. Conversely, a ‘questionable’ argument is one that fails in this engagement and has nothing in common with the perceptual, social and intellectual commitments of those to whom it is addressed. To rephrase this, it can be seen that an argument or set of ideas can only have power against a background of socially-cued coherence conditions. (Law e Lodge 1984:148)

MATERIALISMO

Our position is […] materialist. It suggests that people operate with ideas, are active in relation to ideas, and have a choice as to whether or not to accept them or act upon them. (Law e Lodge 1984:144)

SOCIOLOGIA RETICULAR DO CONHECIMENTO

The fate of knowledge is thus dependent upon social contingency. It rises and falls, or changes its significance in parallel with the social circumstances or fate of different ‘carrier’ groups. The network/interest theory of knowledge thus points us in the direction of the sociology of knowledge if it is our concern to understand the fate of ideas. (Law e Lodge 1984:150)

PEOPLE ARE INDUCTIVE LEARNING MACHINES

people may be seen as inductive learning machines: if two classes have gone together in the past then, everything else being equal, it ,will be assumed with a high degree of confidence that they will go together again when next encountered. (Law e Lodge 1984:151)

network theory treats human beings as inductive learning-machines. People are seen as selecting among the many similarities and differences in their environments on the basis of social cues. In this way networks of classes are established, and objects are treated as ‘the same’ or ‘different’. It will also be recalled that not all those classes have direct empirical referents – that is, not all can be directly related to physical ‘lumps’ in the environment, even though they are all so tied in some way and there are no entirely abstract terms. (Law e Lodge 1984:232-3)

DEDUÇÃO (condições de coerência)

any justification of deduction presupposes itself – it cannot be independently justified. There is, accordingly, no independent rational reason for accepting deduction. If deductions are accepted, it is not because this is logical, but because we work that way – because of the unjustified, matter-of-fact operation of psychological coherence conditions. (Law e Lodge 1984:152)

LÓGICA = CONVENÇÃO [problema…]

The answer to our original question ‘Is logic simply a convention?’ is thus clear. If by logic one means the natural workings of the mind, then the answer is ‘No’. If by logic one means that which passes as an acceptable argument in a culture, or from the standpoint of a philosophical system, then the answer is ‘Yes’. (Law e Lodge 1984:153)

RESSONÂNCIA RETICULAR

What are the forces that tend to produce […] divergence? […] [T]he latter is caused by one or all of the following: differing experience, differing interests and differing socially-structured similarity relations – that is to say, differing cultures. All of these are a function of position in social structure […]. Our position in social structure makes available licensed ways of doing and seeing, interests us in certain goals and diverts us from others. Provisionally, then, it seems likely that those who occupy similar positions will tend to operate in terms of similar networks. They have been taught similar ways of doing and seeing, have acquired similar habits and become committed to similar goals. (Law e Lodge 1984:155)

SOCIALIZAÇÃO CIENTÍFICA (Kuhn)

scientific training, which is typically long and rigorous, leads to a relatively high probability of practical network alignment among specialists. They share relevant socially-structured similarity relations and, given the circumstances in which they find themselves, this in turn often leads to the generation of similar professional interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:155)

Scientific socialisation involves a lengthy, detailed and thorough exposure to the received scientific theories, metaphors and preferred modes of manipulation and perception. If we look […] at the experience of the pupil in the biology class […] we see many of the basic features of scientific socialisation: there is an authority, someone (or something) who knows the accepted ways of seeing, doing and thinking; there is a novice, someone who is prepared to accept those received ways without fundamental question; and the process of learning involves practice, it involves manipulation and physical exploration in order to link the network proffered by the teacher to perceptual lumps available in a chosen part of the environment. (Law e Lodge 1984:156)

We see here, then, something that may be characterised as the transmission of a culture. A network is being transmitted lock, stock and barrel. The apprentice scientist is not being taught to put prejudice to one side. He is most certainly not being taught to question received wisdom. He is rather being turned into a scientist precisely by acquiring that wisdom or prejudice, call it what you will. (Law e Lodge 1984:157)

EMPIRISMO RETICULAR

the only test of network alignment is its workability: are all concerned able to agree about the extension and intension of terms in practice? Only if practice produces problems do differences in usage become manifest. Our point is that any prior agreement about extension and intension does not, by itself, guarantee that agreement will be reached under future circumstances. (Law e Lodge 1984:156)

AUTORIDADE

First let us consider the role of the scientific teacher or textbook. […] [T]hese may be seen as sources of authority […]. They both offer cues about the proper ways of seeing, doing and thinking. They are, in other words, prejudiced guides to nature. (Law e Lodge 1984:156)

HOMOLOGIAS ESTRUTURAIS SEMIÓTICO-MATERIAIS DOS TEXTOS CIENTÍFICOS

a science text typically presents a theory together with exemplary applications of that theory. Here, like the fourth form biology teacher, it suggests how the preferred theoretical network may appropriately be linked to nature. (Law e Lodge 1984:157)

A AQUISIÇÃO DE UMA REDE por UM CIENTISTA-CRIANÇA

it is not possible to learn the proper use of terms if these ‘freewheel in mid-air’, unattached to applications or instances of use. Rather, the proper extension of a term must be learned before it can be appropriately used. As a child learned, by guided trial and error, to distinguish between trucks and cars and learned what physical lumps may be treated as ‘the same’ and therefore properly classified as trucks, so the apprentice scientist learns to see events as instances of the operation of physical laws or classes. In this way the child and the scientist both come to be competent language-users. Situations that were previously seen as disparate become classified as similar. Similarity relations (to use Kuhn’s expression) are thus acquired. (Law e Lodge 1984:158)

scientific socialisation is organised in such a way as to generate a relatively high chance of practical consensus – a high probability that the networks of practitioners will be aligned for practical purposes (Law e Lodge 1984:159)

The biographies and hence the experience and social cues of scientists are standardised for many professional matters within each specialist community. Those who do not fit in, who fail to learn the received network, who fail to acquire the intellectual perceptual and practical habits and routines are dropped by the wayside. They fail their exams and leave school or are diverted into other walks oflife. (Law e Lodge 1984:159)

scientists are taught to link empirical instances to general and explicitly theoretical explanatory schemes. […] What they are doing is simultaneously manipulating the relatively theoretical and relatively empirical parts of the appropriate network. The theory […] is extended and altered until it takes a form that is more easily applicable to the recalcitrant empirical instances. At the same time, however, the relatively empirical parts of the network are also subject to manipulation. Nature is, as it were, ‘put through the hoop’ until data that can be reasonably connected with the appropriate parts of theory have been constructed. (Law e Lodge 1984:166-7)

ETNOMETODOLOGIA do PROBLEMA

A phenomenon familiar to … students of science … provides a clue. The[se] … regularly report that they have read through a chapter in their text, understood it perfectly, but nonetheless had difficulty solving a number of the problems at the chapter’s end. Ordinarily, also, these difficulties dissolve in the same way. The student discovers, with or without the assistance of his instructor, a way to see his problem as like a problem he has already encountered. Having seen the resemblance, grasped the analogy between two or more distinct problems, he can inter-relate symbols and attach them to nature in the ways that have proved effective before . . . . The resultant ability to see a variety of situations as like each other, as subjects for f = ma or some other symbolic generalisation, is, I think, the main thing a student acquires by doing exemplary problems, whether with a pencil and paper or in a well-designed laboratory. (Thomas Kuhn apud Law e Lodge 1984:158)

KUHN

If Kuhn’s characterisation of scientific learning is correct, then it differs little in principle from other kinds of learning. It involves authority, drill and the practical application of terms or explanatory schemes to a wide range of instances that, thereafter, are habitually treated as the same. In addition, since specialist scientists arguably undergo a broadly similar pedagogical experience, first at school and then at university, to a fair extent they share such specialist culture. Thus, although there are differences between different kinds of specialists, within each area a culture is shared for practical purposes, at least some of the time. It is this shared culture that allows the research scientist to proceed without argument about the ‘basics’, for the basics have long ago been settled and built into the content and form of what is transmitted in the course of scientific pedagogy. The basics, then, form the habits of scientific perception and reasoning. According to Kuhn it is only on rare occasions when puzzles arise which seem to defy solution in terms of the received scientific wisdom, that the basics are called into question and the cultural framework is subjected to scrutiny. (Law e Lodge 1984:158-9)

A CIÊNCIA TENDE A PROMOVER CONSENSO

insofar as they have bought into a similar scientific culture and perceive its potential utility, the interests of scientists will be aligned and they will act in common to preserve the integrity of their presumptively shared cultural resources and procedures. (Law e Lodge 1984:160)

relevant experience, relevant habits and relevant socially-structured similarity relations are all substantially shared, and these in turn tend to generate similar aims and courses of action in any given situation. Hence interests are also likely to overlap substantially. Science is thus an institution that tends, when everything else is equal, to generate practical consensus within its branches – though it is frequently the case that everything else is not equal. (Law e Lodge 1984:160)

ANOMALIA, INTENSÃO E EXTENSÃO

confronted with an anomaly, both the extension and intension of the term ‘polyhedron’ become a subject for negotiation. The discovery of an anomaly raises the question of extension: is it or is it not to be counted as a polyhedron? At the same time, of course, the intension of the term – what the instances properly have in common – becomes questionable. (Law e Lodge 1984:162)

Where interests are shared, then it should be relatively easy to arrive at an agreement about the proper way of extending networks to handle anomaly. (Law e Lodge 1984:162)

CONDITIONS FOR NETWORK ALIGNMENT

network alignment is a function of social circumstances, including especially shared biography, shared social experience and shared position (or interests). Networks do not enforce their own uniform extension or application. Alignment can, accordingly, only be practically achieved in appropriate social circumstances. (Law e Lodge 1984:162-3)

PRAGMÁTICA DO CONHECIMENTO

If it [knowledge] is accepted and if it is extended in agreed ways, then this must be because actors have achieved a practical agreement about the utility of that knowledge in a particular extension. (Law e Lodge 1984:164)

FORCING NATURE INTO THE PARADIGM

Closely examined … that enterprise seems an attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies. (Thomas Kuhn, apud Law e Lodge 1984:167)

NORMAL SCIENCE MATERIALISM

The materialist alternative is the only answer. Normal science solutions, which depend upon the workable and practical agreement of all concerned, are only possible because the relevant actors have, through experiencing similar socialisation, acquired similar habits of thought and ways of seeing and in addition, are also subject to a similar field of interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:168)

A AÇÃO-REDE PERUTZ-KENDREW (retroalimentação, amplificação)

Thus, when Perutz and Kendrew finally published their structure determinations of haemoglobin and myoglobin, these solutions were greeted with acclaim. There was no controversy about whether or not they had properly extended the method. […] Their efforts were channelled, in particular, by an informal agreement about what constituted the most interesting and important problems remaining to be solved. Such an agreement (often found in specialist areas of science) of course contributes to and helps to structure the field of interests. It defines how the goal of natural prediction and control may be best articulated, while at the same time having implications for social control. The person who solves an ‘interesting’ problem will receive recognition and social rewards of one kind or another – in this case the Nobel Prize! Thus, the publication of a solution for the structure of myoglobin (a very ‘interesting’ case) would, so long as it conformed to the standards of technical acceptability, immediately achieve considerable acclaim. The successful scientist would not only have advanced the field of X-ray crystallography but at the same time his or her own standing in that field. And this, of course, is what actually happened. There was no difficulty about the practical alignment of networks under such circumstances. A success for Perutz and Kendrew instantly became a success not only for them, but for the entire field. The method was correspondingly revealed in its increased power, and all crystallographers benefited in some measure from this reflected glory. (Law e Lodge 1984:167-8)

TUDO PODE MUDAR SEMPRE

one is never warranted in assuming that an area of normal science will continue in that mode just because it has so existed up until the present time. (Law e Lodge 1984:169)

the fact that networks have been previously aligned in workable solutions is no guarantee at all that this happy state of affairs will necessarily continue into the indefinite future. A new instance which challenges the existing wisdom and fragments the community of scientists may, in principle, arise at any time. (Law e Lodge 1984:171)

O ANÔMALO É A REGRA

Our starting-point is the proposition: the experience of anomaly is widespread. That this is the case can be seen if we remember that any given network inevitably handles only a small part of the available information. Similarities and differences might have been constructed in quite different ways. There is much in nature that is beyond the inevitably limited grasp of any given network. Anomalies and unexplained happenings are rife. To speak metaphorically, there are always things going on at the periphery of one’s vision that one cannot make out properly. It is a characteristic of human cognitive activity that this will be the case. Much will escape scrutiny, or simply be inexplicable. (Law e Lodge 1984:171)

DUAS MANEIRAS DE LIDAR COM UMA ANOMALIA (culpar o método ou o experimento, nunca a rede)

the results might be explained by saying that the experimental method is altogether unreliable, and would be best abandoned; or they might be explained by saying that these particular results (though not the method as a whole) are unreliable and therefore best ignored. To put this in slightly different language, we may say that the scientists are presented with a problem: a misfit that, if taken seriously, will generate an anomaly. It will force them to alter either the experimental or the theoretical aspects of their networks. (Law e Lodge 1984:172-3)

SHIT HAPPENS (Murphy)

In general we might also note that it is a routine experience, both within and outside science, that things often go wrong. This is sometimes called Murphy’s Law: ‘If things can go wrong, then they will‘. If, every time that things go wrong the results have to be taken with total seriousness, the networks of knowledge in terms of which we operate would rapidly degenerate. So each time that things go wrong, a decision has to be made: is this the result of a genuine anomaly, or is it simply a result of the operation of Murphy’s Law? Most of the time, like the biochemists, we are protective of our networks, and assume that the latter is the case. And most of the time it transpires that our decisions are perfectly workable. (Law e Lodge 1984:173-4)

THE FIRST LINE OF NETWORK DEFENSE (deny anomalies)

There is much evidence that troublesome misfits are routinely denied the status of anomalies. Indeed, we might say that this is the first line of network defence. (Law e Lodge 1984:174)

THE SECOND LINE OF NETWORK DEFENSE (adapt)

It sometimes happens, however, that misfits are recognised and become the object of considerable attention. Under such circumstances a number of possible outcomes are possible, some of which are described by Kuhn for the case of natural science. First, the anomaly may be ‘normalised’. After further study and manipulation of either or both of the more theoretical and more empirical parts of the network, these may be reconciled. Thus further empirical investigation may lead to the realisation that, in fact, the anomaly is readily explicable in terms of available theory or method. Alternatively, rather more major, but still reformist theoretical revision may assimilate the troublesome anomaly. More typically, however, these two processes occur alongside one another. (Law e Lodge 1984:174)

THE THIRD LINE OF NETWORK DEFENSE (transform)

If anomaly denial and network shuffling are common responses to misfits, another possible outcome is that of radical network change. Kuhn calls such transformations ‘scientific revolutions’ (Law e Lodge 1984:175)

O CASO URANO

consider briefly the case of the discovery of the planet Uranus. Sir William Herschel, using a telescope greatly superior to those of his predecessors, observed that one of the bodies examined appeared to have the form of a disc rather than being a point source of light like most stars. Further observation revealed that this disc had motion relative to the stars and Herschel concluded that he had discovered a comet. After further observation, however, Lexell calculated the probable orbit of the body, and decided that it was planetary in nature. As a result, Uranus became a new planet and a comet was deleted from the astronomical network. In addition, various stars were removed from the latter, as a number of observers had, in the previous century, seen what was now taken to be Uranus but had, at the time, been interpreted as stars. (Law e Lodge 1984:174-5)

CRITÉRIOS PARA A OPERACIONALIDADE do CONHECIMENTO

one of the criteria for the workability of knowledge is that it should account for, predict, and permit control of the natural world in a reasonably economical manner. A theory that requires revision each time a new natural phenomenon is discovered – in other words a theory that runs into a series of accounted anomalies – tends to lead to doubts and questions among its adherents. (Law e Lodge 1984:176-7)

DO FLOGISTO AO OXIGÊNIO

We have to say, then, that phlogiston theory was better because it seemed to the majority o f contemporary chemists to be a better tool for handling the problems with which they were primarily concerned. Given their mental habits and the circumstances in which they found themselves, it was predominantly in their interests to opt for the promise of oxygen theory rather than to stay with the well known but accountably unsatisfactory theory of phlogiston. (Law e Lodge 1984:179)

Note the way in which interests enter the picture. No scientist was forced to change by the knowledge itself. That much is clear, because such individuals as Priestley were not converted. If scientists chose to adopt oxygen theory this was because of their assessment of the relative utility of this new tool compared with the old, given their particular interests. If scientists disagreed about the profitability of the theory, this must, in principle, be explained with reference to differences in experience, socialisation, situation and mental habits. (Law e Lodge 1984:179)

REALISMO

Generally speaking network theory is permissive with respect to social science. It tells us little, for example, about the kinds of models that might best be utilised in exploring social science problems. This is because […] it is essentially descriptive rather than prescriptive. It only becomes prescriptive when a theory under scrutiny breaches what it takes to be a realistic theory of knowledge. We have already seen at least one case of this: since it is a materialist theory which suggests that people direct ideas rather than ideas directing people […] alternative idealist conceptions of the role of knowledge are seen as unrealistic. (Law e Lodge 1984:184)

as a result of having adopted network theory, those alternative accounts for the generation of knowledge which assume good knowledge is to be explained in a manner that differs from bad knowledge, should be rejected as unrealistic. (Law e Lodge 1984:184)

STRONG PROGRAM

Our approach is, then, broadly consistent with what David Bloor has called the ‘strong programme’ of the sociology of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:185)

CIÊNCIA AZANDE

if the procedures adopted by the Azande to preserve their beliefs are unsatisfactory, then so, too, are at least certain parts of modern science. (Law e Lodge 1984:194)

The [network] theory [of knowledge] argues that we classify and discriminate perceptual lumps in a way that workably serves our interests. It notes, further, that this involves an inevitable loss of information, that there will be loose ends, misfits, that will require some kind of explanation. One way of handling misfits, as we saw in the last section, is to grant them the status of anomalies and to reorganise the more theoretical aspects of the relevant networks. But there is no necessity for such a course to be followed. It will be adopted only in those cases where, for one reason or another, it serves the social interests of at least some of those who are involved. The procedures preferred by the biochemists and the Azande are thus a function of their lack of interest in challenging the misfit-producing beliefs. (Law e Lodge 1984:194)

LÓGICA, CIÊNCIA E MAGIA

Logic, or at any rate the capacity to classify, distinguish and notice incompatibility or misfit, is something common to both science and magic. Differences are located in the premises, networks, or beliefs in which the actors have invested. (Law e Lodge 1984:195)

PENSAMENTO SELVAGEM

The natives, then, appear to be reasonable. (Law e Lodge 1984:195)

savages process information in much the same way as anyone else. Psychological coherence conditions are shared by all human beings. The networks that they create are thus eminently workable. They constitute a practically-adequate guide to interaction with the world, given the interests by which they are directed. That there are differences between primitive and scientific knowledge is indisputable. These differences should, however, be explained in ways that do not breach the requirements of impartiality and symmetry. They should be explained, in other words, in terms of the same kinds of factors. The network theory suggests what the latter will be. Differences will be caused by the different social locations within which knowledge is generated, and the different purposes for which it is used. They will, in other words, be a function of social interests. Differentiation leads to the possibility of highly esoteric scientific knowledge, it raises the chances that scientists will adopt a non-conservative stance in relation to their knowledge because it rewards certain kinds of change, it fosters divergent and changing fields of interests and it increases the likelihood that scientific knowledge will be dissociated from a major interest in global social control. (Law e Lodge 1984:199)

SOLIDARIEDADE MECANICA x ORGÂNICA

In sum we might say that the interdependence of actors and institutions makes it highly probable that networks will be less conservatively handled in the long run in differentiated societies than in their undifferentiated neighbours. (Law e Lodge 1984:198)

O TRUQUE MODERNO (segundo Latour)

By embracing the theory of plate tectonics in geology one does not thereby call into question the basic methods of social control in the United States. The same option is not typically available in an undifferentiated society. There, a major challenge to natural knowledge is, at one and the same time, likely to be a challenge to the religious and political order, for these are all sustained in mutually supporting, or at least mutually interrelated, structure. Knowledge about the world is at one and the same time knowledge about society and its proper mode of functioning. A challenge to Zande witchcraft beliefs is simultaneously a challenge to the legal system and the political structure. Our point then is that it is much easier to innovate in a society where one’s innovations have no obvious and immediate effects elsewhere – where no major consequences for social control or legitimation appear to follow. (Law e Lodge 1984:198-9)

NARCISISMO AVALIATIVO

Children are sometimes presented with tests that purport to measure their educational progress. If their answers to these tests correspond to the expectations of the tester, then the children are held to be competent in certain respects. If they do not, then this is held to reflect upon their inferior puzzle-solving capacity. (Law e Lodge 1984:201)

CIENTISTA CRIANÇA (CIÊNCIA-SENSO COMUM)

Children use their networks to perceive and act in practically workable ways. They are able to theorise explicitly about the connections between classes and they are, of course, able to extend classes to deal with instances that are novel. They act, therefore, like scientists. At the level of cognitive operation there is no difference. Common sense is like science – or perhaps it would be better to say that science is best seen as the application of common sense to esoteric phenomena that are not ordinarily of interest. (Law e Lodge 1984:202-3)

ELOGIO DA PRAGMÁTICA RETICULAR

People operate with classificatory networks which rest upon a selection of similarities and differences, and ignore others. They see, act and theorise in terms of these networks. Since networks do not impose their own extension, there may be doubt about the best way to interpret events that are easily open to interpretation in more than one way. In such cases people may enter into negotiations to try to maximise the likelihood that the extension will be in a way that workably serves their interests. Our conclusion, then, is that the network theory of knowledge is appropriately applied indifferently to all forms of knowledge, whether ancient or modern, scientific or common sense, high status or low. It is simply a statement about the universal ways in which human beings create workable generalisations about their circumstances, and thus exemplifies the principles of impartiality and symmetry with respect to all belief systems. (Law e Lodge 1984:204)

DESCRIÇÃO e PRESCRIÇÃO

When partial and asymmetrical analysis is proposed then there is often a global interest not only in description, but also in prescription. Those authors who create such ‘criteria of demarcation’ are trying to prescribe rules of intellectual hygiene for those whose interests are far different from their own. (Law e Lodge 1984:205)

network theory is not a prescriptive theory at all. It does not tell people to have no standards. Rather it describes what appear to be certain basic features of knowledge. One of these features is that the standards which people adopt appear to be context-dependent, not general. What they take to be an adequate explanation thus depends upon their problems, interests, training and their social location in general. It is easily observed, in other words, that the standards of argument vary between contexts. This kind of descriptive relativism does not, therefore, advocate anarchy or hedonism. It says, on the contrary, that there are standards, but that these are local and thus variable between contexts. (Law e Lodge 1984:226)

MARX

Marx is having recourse to a correspondence theory of knowledge and using this to erect a distinction between science (which gets to the essence) and ideology (which preoccupies itself with appearances). (Law e Lodge 1984:210)

IMPARCIAL e SIMÉTRICO (programa forte)

An impartial and symmetrical theory – one that notes that an interest in prediction and control invariably coexists with an interest in social control, persuasion and legitimation – seems quite adequate if the aim is the more parsimonious explanation of the growth of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:221)

ANTI-IDEOLOGIA

terms such as ‘ideology’ and ‘ideological determination’ have no place in a symmetrical theory of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:222)

RELATIVISM

Relativism is a doctrine which says that what passes as true or rational knowledge is always a function of the circumstances in which it is produced. It goes on to say that there can, accordingly, be no final or context-free criteria to show that one belief system is preferable to another – that all such criteria are themselves context-dependent. (Law e Lodge 1984:223)

If the [network] theory [of knowledge] is correct, then all knowledge is a function of circumstances – an emergent consequence of the interaction of the natural world and social cues. (Law e Lodge 1984:223)

RACIONALISMO x RELATIVISMO

If one is predisposed to make absolute judgements about the superiority of one’s own beliefs, then one will be predisposed to rationalism. If, on the other hand, one is prepared to concede that one’s views cannot be ultimately validated and accordingly is willing to accept a certain level of cognitive uncertainty, then one may be prepared to entertain a version of relativism. The advantage of so doing, as we have sought to show throughout this book, is that symmetrical analysis of the ‘true’ and the ‘false’ becomes possible, with a corresponding possibility of explanatory parsimony. (Law e Lodge 1984:227)

Why are philosophers so concerned to moralise? Why are they so willing to demarcate in terms of intellectual criteria? And why do they so roundly reject the relativism of the network theory? We have already hinted at an answer. Their professional interests lead them to do so and the reason is this: if the network theory of knowledge is realistic, then such differences as there are between belief-systems must be located not in rules of intellectual hygiene but rather in the social location of the believers. Obviously, strictly conceptual rules cannot discriminate between different systems of knowledge if the real difference is located in social interests. If this is indeed the case, then it is to social science that we shall have to turn to understand such differences as there may be. It is small wonder, then, that so much philosophy preaches the autonomy of good knowledge from common sense and social interests. Once that autonomy is lost it will be difficult to define a prescriptive role for epistemology – a condition which must come perilously close to having no role at all. (Law e Lodge 1984:228)

TUDO SEMPRE PODE MUDAR

As with natural knowledge, we cannot ever know that our social knowledge coincides with that of other people. To put it more formally, even with complete agreement about the extension of a social term at a given time there may still be subsequent disagreements with respect to either intension or extension. (Law e Lodge 1984:235)

SOCIAL-CLASSIFICATÓRIO

social scientists and historians have wished to explain social events – that is, events that achieve their status by virtue o f the classificatory acts of those concerned. (Law e Lodge 1984:236)

SELETIVIDADE CLASSIFICATÓRIA

all systems of classification emphasise a small sub-set of the possible similarities or differences to be found in the world, and social knowledge does not differ in this respect from natural knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:237)

COMPREENSÃO

verstehen – the act of acquiring competent use of the networks of the culture under study (Law e Lodge 1984:238)

FRENOLOGIA e BURGUESIA

if one is interested in the phrenology debates, then it is also interesting to note that in this context social factors operated to lead a bourgeoisie to adopt phrenological beliefs because, for a variety of reasons, these were unacceptable to the elites that they wished to displace. Correspondingly, had this social interest not been operating, everything else being equal there would have been no school of phrenology and no controversy. (Law e Lodge 1984:241)

CAUSALIDADE RETICULAR-METAFÓRICA

Posed in network theory terms, then, causes may be seen as interestingly or relevantly explicit narrative re-descriptions. They are, as it were, the links in the plausible story that is always involved in metaphorical re-description, links that achieve their plausibility from their position in another domain. (Law e Lodge 1984:241)

CAUSA e RAZÃO

It will by now be clear that causes in the sense just defined may be identical to reasons – think of the relationship between the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and the onset of the First World War. They may be related to, but not the same as, reasons – think of the phrenology example just cited. Or they may, indeed, be entirely divorced from reasons, as in many natural-science explanations. It will also be clear that reasons may or may not be causes. (Law e Lodge 1984:241)

ÉTICO-ÊMICO

The only requirement placed upon the analyst is that the translations inevitably involved in converting native to social-science categories should be workable for practical purposes. The social science re-description should defensibly relate to the categories of the natives. There is certainly no reason why native systems of reasoning should not form part of a ‘causal story’ assembled by the social scientist – why a translated version of the reasons imputed to natives should not be treated as part of an efficacious chain. (Law e Lodge 1984:241)

SOCIO-LÓGICA

categories are logically related not by virtue of any properties that inhere in them, but rather because they are treated as logically related within a given culture. What counts as a logical relationship is thus a function of social negotiation and the interests of the negotiating parties. What counts, therefore, as a proper ‘translation’ of native concepts (to use the looser term that we prefer) is variable. And, as the ethnomethodologists have endlessly demonstrated, what were previously taken as acceptable translations may, if there is an interest so to do, be represented as inadequate. (Law e Lodge 1984:242)

SOCIOLOGIA IMPARCIAL, SIMÉTRICA e CAUSAL

‘Meanings’ do not distinguish social from natural science in any fundamental manner. […] Accordingly, social science need not only be impartial and symmetrical. It can, in addition, be causal in explanatory form. (Law e Lodge 1984:243)

CIÊNCIAS SOCIAIS=NATURAIS

the social sciences cannot be distinguished from the natural sciences in terms of their explanatory structure. They are both properly causal in idiom, just as they avoid the temptation to explain the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ in different idioms. (Law e Lodge 1984:245)

CONTROVÉRSIAS CIENTÍFICAS são RESTRITAS O SUFICIENTE PARA SEREM RESOLVIDAS E CONTROLADAS

Quite a large part of natural science practice is directed by an interest in social legitimation that has direct consequences for or refers to only a small and highly differentiated audience. Such audiences often have ways of concluding the disputes that do arise within a limited period of time. (Law e Lodge 1984:250)

CONTROVÉRSIAS SOCIOLÓGICAS são AMPLAS DEMAIS PARA SEREM RESOLVIDAS E CONTROLADAS

In the social sciences the situation is frequently quite different. Global interests in social legitimation operate or, to put this in terms of audiences, much social science knowledge is directed, whether intentionally or not, at large non-specialist audiences in a manner that either serves or is designed to manipulate their interests. Furthermore, these social-science audiences are not simply larger. They also lack the social means to conclude disputes that are available to restricted and differentiated natural science audiences. To put this differently, it is quite rare that controversy will be quickly and decisively concluded because the protagonists will lack the means for engaging in successful social control. The audiences and their interests will be too heterogeneous to allow a single social-science view to develop. Accordingly, it is the failure to develop differentiated and esoteric social-science fields that explains the endemic state of controversy that is to be found in so much social science. As a result, much social-science knowledge plugs directly or indirectly into global concerns with social control and manipulation- concerns that are typically though not necessarily at variance with an interest in prediction and control. (Law e Lodge 1984:250)

BABEL SOCIOLÓGICA

The Marxists will offer one (or more likely, more than one) analysis of, say, sport, while the functionalists will offer another, or others. They will argue and these arguments, being a function of different interests, will not be open to resolution in a manner acceptable to both sides. (Law e Lodge 1984:251)

NO GRAND SOCIAL THEORY

suspicion has to be directed at those whose work is directed by a desire to synthesise a ‘unified social science’. The social conditions for such an enterprise do not exist and however worthy such an ecumenical enterprise may appear at first sight, it is, in fact, ill-founded. (Law e Lodge 1984:252)

The pragmatic network/interest theory of knowledge that has been argued in this text, stresses, as we have noted, that knowledge selects from and simplifies nature. Much is lost, but given the particular interests that direct the knowledge, this does not matter. The idea that it would, in some way, be possible to fit all these ‘perspectives’ together is obviously untenable. (Law e Lodge 1984:252)

MACAQUEAR CIÊNCIAS NATURAIS

a plausible, if not in some absolute sense the best, way to proceed is to identify a particular specific interest in prediction and control in relation to a particular subject-matter (or a set of related subject matters), adopt or adapt a set of intellectual tools that appear to be appropriate to the subject-matter from the standpoint of the interest, and push those tools (that is, networks) as hard as they will go. We are suggesting, therefore, that social scientists mimic, insofar as this is possible, the research activity of natural scientists who do not spend their time worrying about questions of global social control or how to unify their work with that of all other scientists, but rather aim to solve much more restricted and localised problems. […] We are suggesting, then, that social scientists should commit themselves to the specific objectives of particular research programmes. We are suggesting that they attempt to identify soluble puzzles. And we are suggesting that, so far as possible, they, like Kuhn’s ‘normal scientists’, solve those puzzles by means of metaphorical extension, borrowing from adjacent networks, and the rest. (Law e Lodge 1984:252-3)

there is no reason why a sense of puzzle-solving and advance should not be achieved within particular and more limited communities of practitioners. ‘Progress’, albeit progress for a limited number of people only, can be achieved if practitioners eschew the temptation to pursue global concerns about social control and the desire to spend too much of their time in ultimately fruitless negotiations with those with whom they have little in common, but rather develop their own particular puzzle-solving tradition. (Law e Lodge 1984:253)

AGENTES

The network/interest theory approach forcibly suggests that agents have to be seen as active sense-making beings. They must be seen as doing things with their knowledge, fashioning it and extending it in accordance with their interests. They are not like puppets, and are most certainly not to be understood as ‘cultural dopes’. (Law e Lodge 1984:255)

NÃO-NEUTRALIDADE DE REDE

The network/interest theory states that all knowledge is a constructed simplification. Even the most empirical aspects of any given network are thus subject to change. To put it in the language of philosophy, there is no such thing as a neutral observation language. (Law e Lodge 1984:256)

NEUTRALIDADE DE REDE

The network/interest theory of knowledge suggests that judgements of the quality of systems of belief should have no role with respect to their explanation. It is consistent with the tenets of impartiality and symmetry and seeks the most general possible explanation for the origins of belief in general. It thus explains both those beliefs that are held to be false and those that are held to be true in terms of the same kinds of causes. (Law e Lodge 1984:256)

CIÊNCIA = SENSO COMUM

The network/interest theory takes a view of the nature of science, and its conceptual and methodological similarity to non-science. This implies, prescriptively, that first, the common assumption that science is epistemologically different from non-science has to be rejected. (Law e Lodge 1984:256)

O QUE OS SOCIÓLOGOS DEVERIAM FAZER? (resolver problemas, como qualquer cientista)

social scientists should allow themselves to be directed by social interests to focus on particular problems that may be soluble in terms of particular networks. A corollary of this suggestion was that, while they may wish to borrow elements from outside networks, these borrowings should be treated as utilisable resources. They should not, repeat not, be used as Trojan horses to introduce the specialist problems, preoccupations and pretensions of the disciplines from which they are borrowed. (Law e Lodge 1984:258)

FILOSOFIA E SOCIOLOGIA (cada um com seus problemas)

philosophy is a practice, or set of practices, like any other discipline. And since it is like any other discipline, we may treat it as a resource in our own work. If bits and pieces are useful, they may by all means be borrowed and adapted. But, whatever the philosophers may say, there is no need to take their complaints seriously when these originate from and advance a different set of prescriptive interests. These preoccupations do not form a part of our practice. Philosophers do not use our networks as we do. They are not trying to solve our puzzles and they are not directed by our interests. By all means let them pursue their practice, for who are we to make judgements of a technical nature about issues integral to philosophical practice? By all means, therefore, let them complain when we break their rules. But we should not take those complaints seriously unless they happen to coincide with our own problems and our own concerns. Let us, therefore, pursue our practice and pursue it unashamedly. (Law e Lodge 1984:261)

We believe that we have thereby drafted a declaration of independence from philosophy – a declaration of independence that takes the form of an empirical understanding of the nature of knowledge. Ironically, of course, we have used the writing of Mary Hesse in the course of doing this. But, as we have tried to argue, there is nothing unacceptable about such borrowing from the standpoint we have adopted – nothing objectionable so long as what is borrowed is treated as a manipulable resource. Social science needs the self-confidence to treat philosophy as a resource rather than as a master. (Law e Lodge 1984:262)

EVOLUCIONISMO

We may predict that as societies become more complex so knowledge will become more differentiated and esoteric. We may not, however, assume that other esoteric knowledge will look like ours. Remember that any given network is only one possible way of categorising similarity and difference. (Law e Lodge 1984:276 nota 9)

A EXTENSÃO e a NOVIDADE

according to network theory all network applications must be seen as extensions to novel instances. There is, however, an obvious and important pragmatic distinction between extensions recognised as novel and those considered to be routine. (Law e Lodge 1984:275-6 nota 8)

EXPERT MERCENÁRIOS

To put it crudely, experts are always available for hire if the price is right. (It is, after all, in their interests to find a clientele). All contemporary scientific cum political controversies illustrate this. There are experts for and against nuclear power. There are experts for and against the control of atmospheric sulphur dioxide emission by coal-fired power-stations. There are experts for and against the fluoridation of the water supply (though the anti-fluoridation lobby is the less attractive client in this case). There are experts for and against herbicidal spraying. And so on. (Law e Lodge 1984:271 nota 8)

COMO SE VÊ

The fact, that is, that we ‘see’ things without any difficulty under ordinary circumstances does not mean that we would have to see them in that (or any) way without the appropriate cues from proper authority. (Law e Lodge 1984:267 nota 2)

Glossário reticular de Law e Lodge (1984)

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Glossário reticular de Law e Lodge (1984:285-8)

Transcrição quase integral do glossário oferecido ao final de Science for social scientists, de Law e Lodge (1984). Termos em negrito possuem entradas próprias no glossário.

ANOMALY: Troublesome inconsistency, frequently between the more theoretical and the more empirical sections, within a network. The term ‘misfit’ is used for an inconsistency that is not held to be troublesome or one that may be easily resolved. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

CAUSE: A term used in a wide variety of ways in different philosophies of science. In network theory terms, the more interesting and explicit links transferred in the course of metaphorical redescription. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

CLASS: A term in a network whose meaning (like that of all other classes) is determined by its relationship with other terms in that network (see intension) and the objects, events or relationships in the world to which it is applied (see extension). (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

COHERENCE CONDITIONS: The principles which organise the structure of a network. Some of these are assumed to arise from the way in which human beings perceive and classify information and may thus be called psychological coherence conditions. Others appear to be culturally defined and are described as social coherence conditions. Psychological coherence conditions are presumptively common to all networks, whereas social coherence conditions may differ between cultures. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

CORRESPONDENCE THEORY: A theory of knowledge which claims that true knowledge is that which corresponds to that which it describes. This may be contrasted with a pragmatic theory of knowledge which criticises correspondence theory for vagueness. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

EMPIRICISM: The doctrine that knowledge arises from sense experience. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

EPISTEMOLOGY: The theory of knowledge; a branch of philosophy. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

EXTENSION: The objects, events or relationships described or covered by a term. Closely related to intension. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

FALSIFICATIONISM: Popper’s preferred scientific method: that scientists should (i) construct bold but empirically falsifiable theories, (ii) attempt to falsify them and that, having succeeded in this, they should (iii) then proceed to construct a more general but empirically falsifiable theory. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

FUNCTIONALISM: An explanatory model in social science that stresses that social events and institutions are interconnected and mutually influential. In addition, it often advocates teleological explanation (phenomena are explained in terms of the functions they are supposed to play) and may also imply the use of an organic metaphor for society. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

IDEALISM: The doctrine that the explanation of phenomena should be posed in terms of the power of ideas or the ideal: that reality is non-material. This is often set against materialism. (Law e Lodge 1984:285)

IDEOLOGY: A widely and diffusely used term normally used to describe knowledge that is (i) directed by social (e.g. class) interests, (ii) distorts reality by concealing its true (for instance, exploitative) nature, yet (iii) is nevertheless workable in day-to-day practice. The theory of ideology has been particularly developed in Marxist writing. Claim (ii) above is incompatible with the pragmatism of the network theory. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

IMPARTIALITY: A part of the strong programme of the sociology of knowledge, the assumption that both true and false knowledge require explanation. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

INCOMMENSURABILITY: The impossibility of translating one system of belief into the language of another; often posed in terms ofthe non-existence of a neutral observation language. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

INDUCTION: The process of deriving general claims from empirical instances, and hence going beyond those instances. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

INTENSION: Loosely, the meaning of a term (but see also extension). In network theory the properties in terms of which objects, events and relationships grouped together in a class are held to exhibit similarity. Thus the intension of the term ‘mammal’ includes ‘air breathing’ but not ‘terrestrial habitat’. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

INTEREST IN NATURAL ACCOUNTING, PREDICTION AND CONTROL: One of the two basic interests that are assumed to underlie all knowledge. In this case, the aim is to describe, account for and explain events in order to interact more satisfactorily with the natural and social worlds. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

INTEREST IN SOCIAL CONTROL AND LEGITIMATION: The other basic interest that is assumed to underlie all knowledge. Here the aim is to defend, legitimate or rationalise a general social position advantageous to the group deploying or using the knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

INTERESTS: Explanatory attributes imputed to individuals or groups in order to understand their actions and knowledge. It is assumed that all knowledge is constructed and deployed (i) with the purpose of interacting more satisfactorily with the natural and social worlds and (ii) with the purpose of ensuring social advantage. In order to explain the generation and use of knowledge it is thus necessary to make a hypothesis about the problems which the knowledge is designed to resolve. The imputed interests are in turn used to explain what count as important problems. Though they relate to both motives and purposes, it is important to note (i) that they are properly used of social groups and not just individuals, and (ii) that they are structural and relational, i.e. a function of the relationship between groups. It should be emphasised that, just as the attribution of knowledge is an hypothesis, so too is the imputation of interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

MARXISM: A set of explanatory models (and political commitments) originally associated with the writing of Marx that stresses the importance of (i) the material in general and the economic in particular; (ii) economic class, class antagonism and class contradiction; (iii) qualitative, and sometimes revolutionary, social change; and (iv) the importance of ideology in concealing class contradiction. Marxism is now a wide family of often incompatible doctrines. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

MATERIALISM: The doctrine that the explanation of phenomena (and in particular knowledge) must start with the assumption that there is a material world, that reality is material. This is often set against idealism. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)
meaning: See intension, for a network theory interpretation. (Law e Lodge 1984:286)

METAPHOR: In the network theory of knowledge all classification is seen as metaphorical because it treats objects, events or relationships as if they were the same as other objects despite the fact that there are always dissimilarities. Hence there is no incompatibility between scientific theory and metaphor. Scientific theories are constitutively metaphorical. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

NETWORK: A set of interrelated classes. More generally, a model for talking about knowledge, i.e. about the way in which both individuals and cultures classify and interpret events, objects or relationships in the world. The model does not discriminate strongly, as do some theories of knowledge or description, between theoretical and observational terms. It further assumes all terms (and hence the structure of the network) to be revisable. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

NETWORK THEORY: A particular theory of knowledge or description. See network. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)
NEUTRAL OBSERVATION LANGUAGE: A language of observation that is assumed to be independent of theory and hence relatively stable. […] [It is] [a]ssociated with correspondence theory[…] [.] [N]etwork theory denies the possibility of a neutral observation language. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

NORMAL SCIENCE: Science proceeding under the auspices of, and articulating a paradigm. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

OSTENTION: The definition of a term by naming while showing or pointing out the phenomenon in question. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

PARADIGM: A term from Kuhn’s history of science which refers to the complex of theoretical, methodological, practical and metaphysical commitments shared by a group of scientists. In Kuhn’s view the role of the practical is of particular importance. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

PRAGMATIC THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE: A theory which argues that knowledge, even scientific knowledge, is best seen as a tool for dealing with practical problems. Thus the test of the adequacy of knowledge in this view is its workability in practice and not the degree to which it corresponds to what it describes (see correspondence theory). Network theory is a pragmatic theory of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

REFLEXIVITY: A part of the strong programme of the sociology of knowledge. The assumption that the sociology of knowledge can explain its own derivation in terms of the same kinds of factors as the derivation of other systems of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

RELATIVISM: A doctrine that asserts that there are no absolute standards against which the adequacy of a system of knowledge may be measured. Standards are rather local. The network theory is relativistic. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: A term from Kuhn’s history of science which refers to the major conceptual changes that occur from time to time in the history of science. These are interpreted as the abandonment of one paradigm by a group of scientists in favour of another. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

SCIENTISM: The inappropriate adoption of a conception of science as a model for explanation in another domain. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

SYMMETRY: A part of the strong programme of the sociology of knowledge. The assumption that all knowledge, and in particular that which is held to be true and that which is held to be false, may be explained in terms of the same kinds of factors. (Law e Lodge 1984:287)

TELEOLOGY: Explanation of phenomena not in terms of prior causes but rather in terms of their consequences. (Law e Lodge 1984:288)

THEORY: A relatively explicit section of a network taking the form of a ‘plausible story’ that has been metaphorically extended to new phenomena, and which is held to describe, account for or explain these. (Law e Lodge 1984:288)

VERSTEHEN: Loosely, the act of understanding the beliefs of another individual or group. It is often defined as the successful acquisition of the language of a group. In network theory, the acquisition and competent use of the network of the culture in question. (Law e Lodge 1984:288)

WELTANSCHAUUNG: World outlook, outlook on life. (Law e Lodge 1984:288)

WORKABILITY: A term used of networks in the pragmatic network theory of knowledge: a way of talking of the fact that the test for adequacy of a network is not its correspondence to reality but rather how well it serves the purposes of those who deploy it. (Law e Lodge 1984:288)

LAW, John; LODGE, Peter. 1984. Science for social scientists. London: Macmillan Press.

Proposições de Law e Lodge (1984)

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Network theory axioms by Law & Lodge (1984)

Segue abaixo a transcrição das 161 proposições que John Law e Peter Lodge distribuíram ao longo dos 24 capítulos de Science for social scientists (Law e Lodge 1984). As proposições estão na sequência original, mas foram organizadas por mim em temas que não correspondem exatamente à divisão original dos capítulos do livro.

CLASSIFICATION
[1] [Classification] is something for which human beings have a natural psychological capacity. (Law e Lodge 1984:23)
[2] Part of this capacity is built into our brains. We notice and associate certain kinds of stimuli. (Law e Lodge 1984:23)
[3] We do this unconsciously, using stimuli which come to us from the outside world. (Law e Lodge 1984:23)
[4] Part of the capacity is learned. There are culturally prescribed classes into which we slot phenomena. (Law e Lodge 1984:23)
[5] This too is normally an unconscious phenomenon. (Law e Lodge 1984:23)
[6] It depends on the recognition of similarity between objects, though the nature of that similarity may be obscure. (Law e Lodge 1984:23)
[7] All classification involves loss of information. (Law e Lodge 1984:23)

ASSOCIATION (cross-classification)
[8] Human beings are capable of associating classes together in a manner identical to their ability to notice similarity between the objects that go to make up a class. (Law e Lodge 1984:30)
[9] Much of this cross-classification operates below the level of consciousness – again it is perceptual. (Law e Lodge 1984:30)
[10] Cross-classification can be learned either directly (via empirical association) or indirectly (via linkages with other already usable classes). (Law e Lodge 1984:30)

LEARNING ASSOCIATIONS
[11] Even indirect learning has in the end to be tied down to the empirical via chains of classificatory associations. (Law e Lodge 1984:30)
[12] All directly or indirectly learned associations may be either true or false. (Law e Lodge 1984:30)
[13] Cross-classifications may take the form of predictions. (Law e Lodge 1984:30)

NETWORKS
[14] Cross-classification leads to a densely interrelated set of classes which, following [Mary B.] Hesse, we call a ‘network’. (Law e Lodge 1984:43)
[15] Despite the complexity of networks these are ordered by a search for simple, economical and general classes and interconnections. (Law e Lodge 1984:43)
[16] This does not imply that there is a single ‘best’ classification for all individuals. (Law e Lodge 1984:43)

MISFITS and NETWORK ALTERATION
[17] In the search for economy of classification misfits occur. (Law e Lodge 1984:43)
[18] In the attempt to eradicate misfits, all terms and links in a network are at risk for alteration. (Law e Lodge 1984:43)
[19] This includes terms with a direct empirical referent, because such terms rest upon a small selection from an indefinite number of possible similarity relations. Other similarities might be chosen. (Law e Lodge 1984:43)
[20] It follows that empirical descriptions are not dependent on nature alone (though nature makes them possible). (Law e Lodge 1984:43)

MEANING (intension & extension)
[21] The meaning of any term depends, in addition, upon its position in a network, both with respect to the objects referred to by that term (extension) and the properties with which those objects are seen as being similar (intension). (Law e Lodge 1984:44)
[22] Agreement about extension does not entail agreement about intension. (Law e Lodge 1984:44)
[23] The extension and intension of a term are both susceptible to alteration as the result of changes elsewhere in the network. (Law e Lodge 1984:44)

COHERENCE CONDITIONS (economy, maximizing; cultural conventions)
[24] Association between classes can take a variety of forms: definition, law, empirical generalisation, empirical finding, indicator or tacit perceptual assumption. (Law e Lodge 1984:52-3)
[25] These forms are not rigidly distinct. One type of association may turn into another if the conditions are right. (Law e Lodge 1984:53)
[26] Coherence conditions are the principles by which a network is ordered and structured. (Law e Lodge 1984:53)
[27] The most basic coherence condition is economy. Human beings try to simplify their mental maps by detecting similarity between new experience and old classes. Thus, they try to maximise the ordering power of their existing networks. (Law e Lodge 1984:53)
[28] Naturally misfits may be perceived. Then network change (either to the old classes or the new phenomenon) may take place. (Law e Lodge 1984:53)
[29] The coherence condition of economy does not determine a unique network for all human beings because the latter experience different biographies, have different interests and have different explanatory principles made available to them in the course of socialisation. (Law e Lodge 1984:53)
[30] Such socially transmitted explanatory principles are also coherence conditions. They include preferred models and modes of explanation. (Law e Lodge 1984:53)
[31] It follows that all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is constitutively conventional. (Law e Lodge 1984:53)

LINK PROBABILITY
[32] The links in a network vary in strength. This strength may for certain purposes be measured as the probability of that link. (Law e Lodge 1984:60)
[33] Confirmation theory has attempted to quantify that probability. In particular, personalist probability theory proposes that the strength of a link be treated as the rational degree of belief in that link. (Law e Lodge 1984:60)
[34] This may be calculated in a number of ways, though Bayes’s theorem has been particularly useful in attempting to mimic the acquisition of knowledge by a ‘human learning-machine’. (Law e Lodge 1984:60)
[35] Given two classes, A and B, the probability that A is associated with B may or may not be the same as the probability that B is associated with A. (Law e Lodge 1984:60)
[36] Probabilities may take any value between plus one (identity, invariant empirical link, complete correlation) and zero. (Law e Lodge 1984:61)
[37] Over time the links between classes may vary in terms of probability. (Law e Lodge 1984:61)
[38] All classes in a network may, in principle, be linked with all others. (Law e Lodge 1984:61)

LINK UTILITY
[39] However, a principle of economy is at work here. Links are not actually constructed unless they are of some use. (Law e Lodge 1984:61)
[40] The utility of a link between classes is partially independent of its probability value(s). (Law e Lodge 1984:61)

PRAGMATIC NETWORK ADEQUACY-ACCURACY
[41] The adequacy of a map or plan depends upon the purposes for which it is used. There is no such thing as a completely accurate map for all purposes. (Law e Lodge 1984:71)
[42] Even apparently accurate photographs vary in the extent to which they are workable from any given standpoint. (Law e Lodge 1984:71)
[43] The same is true for networks. They do not completely represent reality. Rather, they depict it for certain purposes. (Law e Lodge 1984:71)
[44] The reason for this is that the construction of networks rests upon the selection of a small number of similarities and associations from the vast range of possibilities. There is always a loss of information. (Law e Lodge 1984:71)
[45] The loss of information involved in network construction means that if the network is used for other purposes it is likely to prove inadequate. (Law e Lodge 1984:71)
[46] The network theory is thus in accord with instrumental or pragmatic rather than correspondence theories of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:72)

DESCRIPTION & PRESCRIPTION (truth)
[47] Given that the term ‘truth’ is closely associated with correspondence theory, it might, on balance be better to abandon its use. (Law e Lodge 1984:72)
[48] Our account of the generation of knowledge, unlike that of most philosophies of science, is descriptive in intent. (Law e Lodge 1984:83)
[49] Nevertheless certain implications of the network model suggest that some features of prescriptive philosophies of science are unrealistic. (Law e Lodge 1984:83)

COHERENCE CONDITIONS (críticas a Mills e a Popper)
[50] Thus, the network theory suggests that all data are sensitive not only to perceptual ‘lumpiness’ but also to the operation of coherence conditions. (Law e Lodge 1984:83)
[51] This is incompatible with those philosophies of science – for instance, Mills’ inductivism and some versions of Popper’s falsificationism – which rest upon the contrary assumption that data can be constructed in the absence of coherence conditions. (Law e Lodge 1984:83)
[52] In practice a test of theory against data must be seen as a test of one kind of coherence condition (theory) against another (theoretically-selected perceptual lumpiness). (Law e Lodge 1984:83)
[53] The network model also suggests that it is impossible to abandon all knowledge simultaneously, though radical but piecemeal reconstruction of the whole is quite possible. This is incompatible with Popper’s insistence that falsified theory be rejected outright. (Law e Lodge 1984:83)
[54] Despite its failure to consider coherence conditions, Mill’s theory of induction is correct in one important respect – its stress on the importance of the detection of similarity and association. (Law e Lodge 1984:83)
[55] Likewise, Popper’s theory which stresses the role of theoretical activity (as opposed to induction) is also correct in this respect. (Law e Lodge 1984:84)
[56] Finally, network theory suggests that two-language conceptions of science which draw a basic distinction between terms and axioms, dictionaries and empirical observations, overstress such distinctions. In practice, though distinctions such as these do exist, those who are primarily concerned with the description of conceptual change are better advised to treat them as practical differences which may change over the course of time. (Law e Lodge 1984:84)

LEARNING & AUTHORITY
[57] Learning involves the discrimination of perceptual objects into classes. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[58] Authority provides cues about conventional discriminations (though authority in turn is built upon the basis of workable perceptual cues). (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[59] Perceptual grouping (‘seeing’) is not something that is given in the perceptual lumpiness of the world alone. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[60] Once a usable perceptual classification has been established it is remarkably difficult to break this down. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[61] It follows that the sense of perceptual stability which we all routinely experience does not necessarily constitute evidence against the existence of a learned component in perception. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[62] Cues from authority will only be entertained and permanently accepted if they are workable: perceptual lumpiness must endorse what authority tells is to be seen. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)

LEARNING & PRACTICE (sensorymotor)
[63] Since classes group perceptual phenomena, learning must forge a link between perceptual lumpiness and class. It is intensely practical. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[64] Learning new classes depends upon extension from classes that are already practically usable. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[65] Thus certain classes may be ‘empty’ without direct empirical referent, but still usable. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[66] Finally, scientific knowledge and learning is like all other knowledge. It too is intensely practical. (Law e Lodge 1984:96)
[67] The workability of knowledge is typically tested in the course of action. (Law e Lodge 1984:103)
[68] If knowledge is a guide to action, it must classify not only perceptual lumpiness in the outside world, but also perceptual lumpiness in the body and determine the relationship of the former with the latter. In addition it must include the ability to monitor and control internal perceptual lumpiness (action). (Law e Lodge 1984:103)
[69] There is thus a close relationship between perception and action. Action depends upon perception and may in turn make it possible. (Law e Lodge 1984:103)
[70] As in the case of simple perception, the provision of authoritative cues is important in the classification and association of perceptual lumps and actions. (Law e Lodge 1984:103)

OSTENTION (performance)
[71] It is often easier to demonstrate action rather than to describe it. (Law e Lodge 1984:103)
[72] In some cases it is not possible to describe a skill fully. Direct modelling may be necessary. Polanyi rightly stresses the role of direct modelling in the natural sciences with his notion of ‘tacit knowledge’, though it is certainly the case that some knowledge can be transmitted without such direct modelling. (Law e Lodge 1984:103)
[73] As is the case for perception, the only way of acquiring such a skill is through practice. (Law e Lodge 1984:103)

METAPHORICAL REDESCRIPTIONS
[74] In classifying – that is to say, in asserting a similarity – we treat new objects as if they were the same as old objects, even though this cannot be the case. (Law e Lodge 1984:118)
[75] Thus, all knowledge is metaphorical. It treats different objects as if they were identical. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[76] Metaphorical redescription involves the transfer from one domain to another, or from past to present experience, of a network of classes and their associations. It thus provides a model for thinking about events that have been so redescribed. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[77] Theory in science and social science is constitutively metaphorical, since it involves the extension of partially explicit networks of classes to new instances. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[78] The fact that knowledge in general and theory in particular is metaphorical is concealed where applications have become institutionalised. Under such circumstances people sometimes mistakenly believe that they have achieved literal description. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[79] Scientific reasoning, like all other, can be seen as metaphorical redescription. Metaphor is not unscientific. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[80] Thus science cannot be distinguished from non-scientific knowledge by virtue of an absence of metaphor. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[81] Metaphor (the application of a network) can be seen as a bridge which carries a two-way traffic. New experience alters the extension of the terms of the network and may influence their intension. This affects the application of those terms to previously described phenomena. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)

PREDICTION-CAUSALITY or EXPLANATION-PLAUSIBILITY
[82] Many, but not all, theories have predictive potential. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[83] In the social sciences in particular, many explanations are best seen as rationalisations. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[84] Explanations vary in their degree of generality. However, specific explanations depend on generally accepted assumptions about the relationship between classes. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[85] Styles of acceptable theory vary greatly between social structures. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[86] In natural science, theories are normally posed in an impersonal and causal mode. (Law e Lodge 1984:119)
[87] The plausibility of a theory depends heavily upon what passes as an acceptable mode of explanation in a given social structure. (Law e Lodge 1984:120)
[88] It follows that the evaluation of the workability of a theory is something that can only be done from within a given social context. The network theory itself is neutral between particular empirical theories. (Law e Lodge 1984:120)

KNOWLEDGE & INTEREST-BELIEF (natural accounting, social control & network alignment)
[89] Knowledge is constructed under the auspices of interests and may be seen as a resource designed to advance those interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:133)
[90] The growth of knowledge can only be analysed if the field of interests in terms of which it was developed is understood. (Law e Lodge 1984:133)
[91] Where actors or groups share interests, they have a tendency to align knowledge, and agree on the ‘facts of the matter’, as the same questions are being posed of the knowledge. Where interests are divergent there is a tendency to controversy. (Law e Lodge 1984:133)
[92] At the most general level, the relationship between social interests and knowledge is contingent. There is no necessary relationship between social position and belief. However, in given circumstances social interests become linked to particular belief systems as actors buy into the latter and use them to advance their interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:133)
[93] It is useful to hypothesise that knowledge is developed under the auspices of two interests: a practical interest in natural accounting, prediction or control; and a retrospective interest in social control or legitimation. (Law e Lodge 1984:133)
[94] Knowledge directed primarily by an interest in social control and legitimation normally achieves its aim in part by successful prediction, accounting, or control. Knowledge directed by a primary concern with prospective accounting has additional social control implications. (Law e Lodge 1984:133)
[95] The network/interest theory of knowledge suggests that science is not pure in the sense that it involves a disinterested search for truth. The search for knowledge is inevitably directed by interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:141)
[96] Often the interests are those of important audiences. Thus experts seek clienteles for their expertise and knowledge may be constructed by experts with the interests of those clients in mind. (Law e Lodge 1984:142)
[97] The operation of external social influences is not necessarily inimical to the production of workable empirical knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:142)
[98] Social interests may lead scientists to a detailed and entirely workable study of matters that had not previously attracted attention. (Law e Lodge 1984:142)
[99] Since belief is a function of prior learning and interests, it follows that arguments and ideas are powerless in and of themselves. They are only persuasive if they interact with prior belief and interest in a way that appeals to the hearer. (Law e Lodge 1984:153)

MATERIALISM
[100] Idealism is thus an unacceptable explanatory doctrine in the social sciences. Materialism, which suggests that people operate with and manipulate ideas (rather than vice versa) is the preferred mode. (Law e Lodge 1984:153)
[101] The rise and fall of knowledge is thus attributable to the fate of those who believe it and to their social context, rather than to any intrinsic power or weakness of the ideas themselves. The study of knowledge in this way is usually called the sociology of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:153)

SOCIO-LOGIC (coherence conditions)
[102] What passes as a ‘logical’ argument is one that is in conformity with psychological and social coherence conditions. Since the latter are variable, what passes as a logical argument is also variable. (Law e Lodge 1984:153)
[103] Deduction cannot be logically justified. If people accept deductive arguments it is simply because they work that way. (Law e Lodge 1984:154)
[104] An argument can always be saved from a display of logical inconsistency by means of classificatory adjustment. Logic is thus a defeasible tool. (Law e Lodge 1984:154)

NORMAL SCIENCE SOCIALIZATION (network alignment)
[105] Practical network alignment is most likely where experience, social cues and interests are shared by all concerned. (Law e Lodge 1984:163)
[106] Science is an example of an institution which is designed to align relevant experience, social cues and interests, and hence to maximise the chance of network alignment. (Law e Lodge 1984:163)
[107] Scientific socialisation is a lengthy, rigorous, authooritative and practical process. It teaches students the proper ways of seeing, interpreting and understanding natural phenomena. (Law e Lodge 1984:163)
[108] Despite such shared socialisation, network alignment can only ever be achieved for practical purposes. This is because, in the face of anomalous empirical instances, the network itself offers no guide as to how it should be revised. This is, of course, a matter of choice. A decision has to be made. (Law e Lodge 1984:163)
[109] Continuing network alignment thus rests upon a continuing shared view about what constitutes the best decision, and hence on continuing shared interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:163)
[110] Practical alignment of networks occurs in certain areas of science – those areas that Kuhn calls ‘normal science’ – which fulfil the conditions described in proposition [105]. (Law e Lodge 1984:169)
[111] Normal science activity is in many ways similar to scientific socialisation. It involves a consensual attempt to bridge the gap between relatively theoret- ical and empirical parts of the appropriate network by manipulating both theory and data to achieve a workable match. (Law e Lodge 1984:169)

ANOMALIES (troublesome misfits)
[112] The fact of a past tradition of normal science does not guarantee that this will continue. Each new result may, in principle, be judged anomalous and lead to crisis or fragmentation. (Law e Lodge 1984:170)
[113] Any network will generate misfits, that is, instances that are not easily interpretable in terms of obvious network extension. This follows from the fact that a network necessarily involves loss of information. (Law e Lodge 1984:180)
[114] Whether such misfits are accorded significance and noticed as anomalies depends upon a decision by the actors concerned, which is in turn a function of their conceptual habits and social interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:180)
[115] Once a misfit has been accorded the status of an anomaly, there are further decisions that have to be made about how the anomaly will be handled. A range of options is available, though it should be understood that these overlap, or shade into one another. (Law e Lodge 1984:180)
[116] Where actors are strongly committed to their networks, there is a wide armoury of legitimations and excuses available which permits them to discount the apparent anomaly and preserve the network unaltered. This is an extremely common strategy. (Law e Lodge 1984:180)
[117] Sometimes, however, the anomaly is accorded significance. In this case a further set of possibilities is opened up. The anomaly may finally be reconciled with the network through the manipulation or revision of either or both the theoretical and empirical ends of the network. (Law e Lodge 1984:181)
[118] Another possible outcome is radical network change. In science this is sometimes called a ‘scientific revolution’, though there are always elements of continuity however radical the change (see proposition [53]). (Law e Lodge 1984:181)
[119] There is no easy or overall sense in which the new network may be said to be superior to that which preceded it. The best we can say is that it served the interests of the relevant actors more satisfactorily. (Law e Lodge 1984:181)
[120] The outcome of the interaction between potential anomaly and network, like standard network extension, is thus a function of social interests and conceptual habits. (Law e Lodge 1984:181)

PRIMITIVE BELIEFS & SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION-COMPLEXITY
[121] If network theory is realistic, then both those beliefs that are thought to be true and those taken to be false should be explained by the same kinds of factors. We should, therefore, be ‘impartial’ with respect to truth and falsity and ‘symmetrical’ in explanatory approach. (Law e Lodge 1984:187)
[122] Primitive beliefs are as rationally based as our own. Primitives, like us, construct networks that adequately serve their practical interests. The psychological coherence conditions that underlie their networks are identical to ours. Accordingly we should explain their beliefs in the same way that we explain ours – impartially and symmetrically. (Law e Lodge 1984:199-200)
[123] Like scientists, primitives defend their networks by refusing to turn misfits into anomalies. (Law e Lodge 1984:200)
[124] Differences between scientific and primitive networks result from differences between the social contexts in which they are produced. Science is produced in social context that encourages certain kinds of change. (Law e Lodge 1984:200)
[125] Social differentiation tends to encourage network change. It does this for three reasons: (a) it may favour the active generation of esoteric knowledge; (b) it may foster a relatively non-protective attitude towards established belief; (c) it tends to provide opportunities for the generation of knowledge with few social control implications. (Law e Lodge 1984:200)

COMMON SENSE
[126] Like scientists, children and lay-adults operate in terms of networks. Though the content of these networks differs, overall they exhibit the same properties – the selection of similarity, difference, association and the rest. There is, in short, no ‘epistemological break’ between common sense and science. Impartial and symmetrical analysis of the two is appropriate. (Law e Lodge 1984:206)
[127] Common sense networks dictate their extension no more than do scientific networks. Events are susceptible to classification in more than one way, and where interests are divergent, negotiations about the ‘proper’ extension of a term may occur as actors seek applications that best accord with their own interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:206)

MARXISM & IDEOLOGY (Mannheim X Barnes)
[128] Marx offers a theory of ideology that rests in part upon a correspondence theory of knowledge, but also contains a strong pragmatic element. (Law e Lodge 1984:221)
[129] The correspondence theory relates to certain basic and purportedly real class-interests. The pragmatic element assumes that knowledge is a function of practice in a social structure. (Law e Lodge 1984:221)
[130] In so far as Marx explains the beliefs of groups in his theory of ideology, the explanation rests on the latter pragmatic theory and is accordingly in conformity with the tenets of impartiality and symmetry. (Law e Lodge 1984:221)
[131] Mannheim’s theory is similar to that of Marx, having elements of both a correspondence and a pragmatic theory of knowledge. The latter predominates. However, the distinction between ideology and ‘situationally congruous’ knowledge rests upon a modified correspondence theory of knowledge and thus breaches the tenets of impartiality and symmetry. Attributions of ‘ideology’ tend to become devoid of meaning in the pragmatic theory. (Law e Lodge 1984:221)
[132] Barnes’ theory – that of knowledge as a tool directed by two great interests, one an overt interest in prediction and control and the other a concealed interest in social legitimation – does not breach the tenets of impartiality and symmetry and is pragmatic in nature. (Law e Lodge 1984:221)
[133] However, all knowledge is directed in part by a concealed interest in social control, though this may coincide with an overt interest in prediction and control. Thus, to argue (as does Barnes) that certain knowledge – that directed by at least the former interest – is ideologically determined is unsatisfactory. (Law e Lodge 1984:222)
[134] To sustain an attribution of ideological determination it would be necessary to distinguish between local and global concerns with social control, and identify ideological determination with the latter. (Law e Lodge 1984:222)
[135] There seems to be little reason for making this distinction. It would, accordingly, be best to assume that terms such as ‘ideology’ and ‘ideological determination’ have no place in a symmetrical theory of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:222)

RELATIVISM
[136] The network theory has relativistic implications because it notes that the success of argument and conceptions of what constitutes the truth can only be understood if the local circumstances of the production of knowledge are considered. There are, in other words, no general criteria for determining the truth or superiority of any network. (Law e Lodge 1984:228)
[137] Arguments against relativism from translation are not persuasive. Those that are based on claims about the universal nature of certain logical operations either fail to discriminate between languages or depend upon particular contextual judgements of the nature of these operations. Those that work from a version, however disguised, of the concept of a neutral observation language are inconsistent with the conception of observation found in network theory. (Law e Lodge 1984:228-9)
[138] The network theory is not relativistically self-defeating because it does not make final claims about its own correspondence with reality. (Law e Lodge 1984:229)
[139] The network theory does not suggest that knowledge is distorted by the operation of psychological or social influences. It notes, instead, that such influences direct the way in which empirically adequate networks are constructed. (Law e Lodge 1984:229)
[140] Network theory, in its relativism, does not deny or undermine intellectual standards. It simply notes that standards are locally generated. (Law e Lodge 1984:229)
[141] Nevertheless, ‘rationalism’ and relativism are incommensurable. Just as rationalism does not show that relativism is essentially flawed, so relativism cannot demonstrate that rationalism is wrong. (Law e Lodge 1984:229)

VERSTEHEN in NATURAL/SOCIAL SCIENCE (emic X ethic adequate causal stories)
[142] Members of a culture learn about social kinds in the same way as they acquire knowledge of natural kinds. Social institutions are acquired in this way, practically, from the interaction of ‘lumps’ in the environment and social cues. (Law e Lodge 1984:243)
[143] The act of verstehen involves the acquisition of a social network in this way. (Law e Lodge 1984:243)
[144] If it wishes to explain categories constituted in social networks, social science must to some extent use verstehen. (Law e Lodge 1984:243)
[145] However, the interests of social scientists differ from those of the members of the culture they are studying. Accordingly, what counts as an adequate account of a culture is a function in part of those interests, and that account or translation may properly differ from the native’s own version. (Law e Lodge 1984:243)
[146] In comparative analysis the social scientist treats as ‘the same’ parts of different cultures that, in principle, differ from one another. However, in doing so, he or she differs not at all from the natural scientist who also compares unlike with unlike. Accordingly, there is nothing wrong with comparative social science that is not wrong with comparative natural science. The problem in both cases is a practical one: is the comparison workable? (Law e Lodge 1984:243)
[147] The fact that links in networks of social explanation are weak is no reason for abandoning a language of causality. There are many weak links in networks of natural explanation. (Law e Lodge 1984:243)
[148] Since the interests of the social scientist differ from those of the people that he or she is studying, so too will their networks. Networks of the former, in seeking to account for actions of the latter may include some links or ‘causal stories’ which correspond to reasons available to the latter, and some which do not. There is no reason for the analyst to limit him or herself to those links available in native culture. Indeed, (see [149]) it is most unlikely that a satisfactory social-science explanation could do so. (Law e Lodge 1984:244)
[149] Adequate ‘causal stories’ are those that explain or account for an interesting, unusual. or otherwise noticeable event. They are explanatory because they re-describe the event in question by locating it in a different network. (Law e Lodge 1984:244)

SOCIAL SCIENCES as PUZZLE SOLVING
[150] The requirement sometimes imposed by social scientists that analysts’ explanations must be logically tied to those of the natives ignores the fact that what counts as a logical tie is negotiable and a function of interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:244)
[151] In the social sciences there are typically divergent views and understandings of phenomena of interest. (Law e Lodge 1984:254)
[152] This often arises because the analyses offered are directed at large non-specialist audiences, have major implications for social control and are subject to analysis from the standpoint of a variety of different interests. (Law e Lodge 1984:254)
[153] A unified social science would be facilitated in a society where all sponsoring interests were aligned – that is to say, a totalitarian society. (Law e Lodge 1984:254)
[154] Ecumenical attempts to unify social science by fitting together its components as in a jigsaw are likely to fail in the absence of an alignment of interests because they rest upon a correspondence theory of knowledge. (Law e Lodge 1984:254)
[155] A plausible way of working in social science is to select resources that have bearing on a limited range of puzzles and attempt to solve those puzzles while substantially ignoring alternative practices unless these can, in turn, be treated as resources. (Law e Lodge 1984:254)
[156] Successes will only be local, but they will at least be successes. (Law e Lodge 1984:254)
[157] This approach is not ‘irrational’. It rather notes that rationality or adequacy is something that can only be determined locally. (Law e Lodge 1984:254)

SOCIAL SCIENCE IS NOT PHILOSOPHY
[158] The network theory is not only descriptive. It also has prescriptive implications, suggesting, for instance, that agents are active, that ‘empiricist’ and ‘ecumenical’ approaches to social science are likely to fail, and that science cannot be distinguished from social science in terms of its methods. (Law e Lodge 1984:262)
[159] The social sciences are not short of prescriptions, many of which come from philosophy. These are often presented in terms of an historical discussion of the development of philosophy. (Law e Lodge 1984:262)
[160] This type of prescription should not normally be taken seriously, because it comes from outside social science practice. There is no reason why social scientists should define their practice in terms congenial to the imperialist claims of another practice, that of philosophy. To do so is an unwarranted failure of nerve. (Law e Lodge 1984:262)
[161] Instead, social scientists should have confidence in their own locally defined practices, and simply treat philosophy as a resource like any other discipline. (Law e Lodge 1984:262)

LAW, John; LODGE, Peter. 1984. Science for social scientists. London: Macmillan Press.

O nooscópio de Pasquinelli e Joler

Published 01/10/2020 Joler , Pasquinelli Leave a Comment

PASQUINELLI, Matteo; JOLER, Vladan.2020. The Nooscope manifested: artificial intelligence as instrument of knowledge extractivism. KIM research group (Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design) and Share Lab (Novi Sad), 1 May 2020 (preprint forthcoming for AI and Society). https://nooscope.ai

CARTOGRAFANDO OS LIMITES DA IA

The Nooscope is a cartography of the limits of artificial intelligence (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:2)

MAPAS (debater perspectivas parciais)

Any map is a partial perspective, a way to provoke debate. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:2)

A MISTIFICAÇÃO DA INTELIGÊNCIA ARTIFICIAL DO SÉCULO XXI (exploração econômica do conhecimento fantasiada de automagia)

In the expression ‘artificial intelligence’ the adjective ‘artificial’ carries the myth of the technology’s autonomy: it hints to caricatural ‘alien minds’ that self-reproduce in silico but, actually, mystifies two processes of proper alienation: the growing geopolitical autonomy of hi-tech companies and the invisibilization of workers’ autonomy worldwide. The modern project to mechanise human reason has clearly mutated, in the 21st century, into a corporate regime of knowledge extractivism and epistemic colonialism. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:2)

NOOSCÓPIO (aprendizado de máquina como mecanismo para magnificar o conhecimento)

machine learning is just a Nooscope, an instrument to see and navigate the space of knowledge (from the Greek skopein ‘to examine, look’ and noos ‘knowledge’). (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:2)

BIAS NO APRENDIZADO DE MÁQUINA (alucinação estatística como o novo regime de verdade-prova-normatividade-racionalidade)

In the same way that the lenses of microscopes and telescopes are never perfectly curvilinear and smooth, the logical lenses of machine learning embody faults and biases. To understand machine learning and register its impact on society is to study the degree by which social data are diffracted and distorted by these lenses. This is generally known as the debate on bias in AI, but the political implications of the logical form of machine learning are deeper. Machine learning is not bringing a new dark age but one
of diffracted rationality, in which, as it will be shown, an episteme of causation is replaced by one of automated correlations. More in general, AI is a new regime of truth, scientific proof, social normativity and rationality, which often does take the shape of a statistical hallucination. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:2)

AI is not a monolithic paradigm of rationality but a spurious architecture made of adapting techniques and tricks. Besides, the limits of AI are not simply technical but are imbricated with human bias. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:3)

IA : MÁQUINA A VAPOR :: TEORIA DO APRENDIZADO : TERMODINÂNICA

AI is now at the same stage as when the steam engine was invented, before the laws of thermodynamics necessary to explain and control its inner workings, had been discovered. Similarly, today, there are efficient neural networks for image recognition, but there is no theory of learning to explain why they work so well and how they fail so badly. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:3)

APRENDIZADO DE MÁQUINA (dataset+algoritmo+modelo)

As an instrument of knowledge, machine learning is composed of an object to be observed (training dataset), an instrument of observation (learning algorithm) and a final representation (statistical model). (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:3)

BIAS HISTÓRICO

Historical bias (or world bias) is already apparent in society before technological intervention. Nonetheless, the naturalisation of such bias, that is the silent integration of inequality into an apparently neutral technology is by itself harmful. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:4)

BIAS DO DATASET

Dataset bias is introduced through the preparation of training data by human operators. The most delicate part of the process is data labelling, in which old and conservative taxonomies can cause a distorted view of the world, misrepresenting social diversities and exacerbating social hierarchies (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:4)

BIAS O ALGORITMO

Algorithmic bias (also known as machine bias, statistical bias or model bias, to which the Nooscope diagram gives particular attention) is the further amplification of historical bias and dataset bias by machine learning algorithms. […] Since ancient times, algorithms have been procedures of an economic nature, designed to achieve a result in the shortest number of steps consuming the least amount of resources: space, time, energy and labour. 13 The arms race of AI companies is, still today, concerned with finding the simplest and fastest algorithms with which to capitalise data. If information compression produces the maximum rate of profit in corporate AI, from the societal point of view, it produces discrimination and the loss of cultural diversity. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:4)

O PROBLEMA-EFEITO CAIXA-PRETA

The black box effect is an actual issue of deep neural networks (which filter information so much that their chain of reasoning cannot be reversed) but has become a generic pretext for the opinion that AI systems are not just inscrutable and opaque, but even ‘alien’ and out of control. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:4)

A ASCENSÃO DOS MONOPÓIOS DE IA DO SÉCULO XXI

Mass digitalisation, which expanded with the Internet in the 1990s and escalated with datacentres in the 2000s, has made available vast resources of data that, for the first time in history, are free and unregulated. A regime of knowledge extractivism (then known as Big Data) gradually employed efficient algorithmsto extract ‘intelligence’ from these open sources of data, mainly for the purpose of predicting consumer behaviours and selling ads. The knowledge economy morphed into a novel form of capitalism, called cognitive capitalism and then surveillance capitalism, by different authors. It was the Internet information overflow, vast datacentres, faster microprocessors and algorithms for data compression that laid the groundwork for the rise of AI monopolies in the 21st century. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:5)

TUDO COMEÇA NA BASE DE DADOS DE TREINAMENTO (ação humana fundacional)

Data is the first source of value and intelligence. Algorithms are second; they are the machines that compute such value and intelligence into a model. However, training data are never raw, independent and unbiased (they are already themselves ‘algorithmic’). The carving, formatting and editing of training datasets is a laborious and delicate undertaking, which is probably more significant for the final results than the technical parameters that control the learning algorithm. The act of selecting one data source rather than another is the profound mark of human intervention into the domain of the ‘artificial’ minds. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:5)

CATEGORIZAÇÕES PARCIAIS

The semiotic process of assigning a name or a category to a picture is never impartial; this action leaves another deep human imprint on the final result of machine cognition. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:5)

Machine intelligence is trained on vast datasets that are accumulated in ways neither technically neutral nor socially impartial. Raw data does not exist, as it is dependent on human labour, personal data, and social behaviours that accrue over long periods, through extended networks and controversial taxonomies. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:5)

O REFLUXO DA IA SOBRE A CULTURA DIGITAL

The voracious data extractivism of AI has caused an unforeseeable backlash on digital culture: in the early 2000s, Lawrence Lessig could not predict that the large repository of online images credited by Creative Commons licenses would a decade later become an unregulated resource for face recognition surveillance technologies. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:6)

2012-2019

If 2012 was the year in which the Deep Learning revolution began, 2019 was the year in which its sources were discovered to be vulnerable and corrupted. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:6)

IA = RECONHECIMENTO DE PADRÃO

[T]he Nooscope diagram exposes the skeleton of the AI black box and shows that AI is not a thinking automaton but an algorithm that performs pattern recognition. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:7)

PERCEPTRON

The archetype machine for pattern recognition is Frank Rosenblatt’s Perceptron. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:7)

A NOVA RAZÃO DO MUNDO (extração-reconhecimento-geração automática de padrões)

Regardless of their complexity, from the numerical perspective of machine learning, notions such as image, movement, form, style, and ethical decision can all be described as statistical distributions of pattern. In this sense, pattern recognition has truly become a new cultural technique that is used in various fields. For explanatory purposes, the Nooscope is described as a machine that operates on three modalities: training, classification, and prediction. In more intuitive terms, these modalities can be called: pattern extraction, pattern recognition, and pattern generation. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:7)

A DISTRIBUIÇÃO ESTATÍSTICA DE UM PADRÃO

The business of these neural networks, however, was to calculate a statistical inference. What a neural network computes, is not an exact pattern but the statistical distribution of a pattern. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:7)

MODELO ESTATÍSTICO ALGORÍTMICO

Algorithm is the name of a process, whereby a machine performs a calculation. The product of such machine processes is a statistical model (more accurately termed an ‘algorithmic statistical model’). (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:8)

APRENDIZADO = ALCANÇAR “BOA REPRESENTAÇÃO”

(Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:)

MODELOS SÃO ERRADOS, MAS ÚTEIS

‘All models are wrong, but some are useful’ — the canonical dictum of the British statistician George Box has long encapsulated the logical limitations of statistics and machine learning. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:10)

O MAPA E O TERRITÓRIO

AI is a heavily compressed and distorted map of the territory and that this map, like many forms of automation, is not open to community negotiation. AI is a map of the territory without community access and community consent. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:10)

RECONHECIMENTO DE IMAGEM-PADRÕES (trabalho da percepção)

image recognition (the basic form of the labour of perception, which has been codified and automated as pattern recognition) (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:10)

APRENDIZADO DE MÁQUINA (mapa estatístico)

Machine
learning is a term that, as much as ‘AI’, anthropomorphizes a piece of technology: machine learning learns nothing in the proper sense of the word, as a human does; machine learning simply maps a statistical distribution of numerical values and draws a mathematical function that hopefully approximates human comprehension. That being said, machine learning can, for this reason, cast new light on the ways in which humans comprehend. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:11)

APRENDIZADO DE MÁQUINA como MINIMIZAÇÃO MATEMÁTICA

As Dan McQuillian aptly puts it: ‘There is no intelligence in artificial intelligence, nor does it learn, even though its technical name is machine learning, it is simply mathematical minimization.’ (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:11)

APROXIMAÇÃO À FORÇA BRUTA

. The shape of the correlation function between input x and output y is calculated algorithmically, step by step, through tiresome mechanical processes of gradual adjustment (like gradient descent, for instance) that are equivalent to the differential calculus of Leibniz and Newton. Neural networks are said to be among the most efficient algorithms because these differential methods can approximate the shape of any function given enough layers of neurons and abundant computing resources. Brute-force gradual approximation of a function is the core feature of today’s AI, and only from this perspective can one understand its potentialities and limitations — particularly its escalating carbon footprint (the training of deep neural networks requires exorbitant amounts of energy because of gradient descent and similar training algorithms that operate on the basis of continuous infinitesimal adjustments).3 (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:11)

ESPAÇOS MULTIDIMENSIONAIS DE DADOS

The notions of data fitting, overfitting, underfitting, interpolation and extrapolation can be easily visualised in two dimensions, but statistical models usually operate along multidimensional spaces of data. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:12)

O TRUQUE DA REDUÇÃO DIMENSIONAL-CATEGORIAL

AI is still a history of hacks and tricks rather than mystical intuitions. For example, one trick of information compression is dimensionality reduction, which is used to avoid the Curse of Dimensionality, that is the exponential growth of the variety of features in the vector space. […] Dimensionality reduction can be used to cluster word meanings (such as in the model word2vec) but can also lead to category reduction, which can have an impact on the representation of social diversity. Dimensionality reduction can shrink taxonomies and introduce bias, further normalising world diversity and obliterating unique identities. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:13)

CLASSIFICAR E PREVER (vigiar e governar)

Classification is known as pattern recognition, while prediction can be defined also as pattern generation. A new pattern is recognised or generated by interrogating the inner core of the statistical model. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:13)

Machine learning classification and prediction are becoming ubiquitous techniques that constitute new forms of surveillance and governance. […] The hubris of automated classification has caused the revival of reactionary Lombrosian techniques that were thought to have been consigned to history, techniques such as Automatic Gender Recognition (AGR) (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:14)

PREVER (reduzir o futuro-desconhecido ao passado-conhecido)

Machine learning prediction is used to project future trends and behaviours according to past ones, that is to complete a piece of information knowing only a portion of it. In the prediction modality, a small sample of input data (a primer) is used to predict the missing part of the information following once again the statistical distribution of the model (this could be the part of a numerical graph oriented toward the future or the missing part of an image or audio file). (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:13)

O TURCO MECÂNICO

An artwork that is said to be created by AI always hides a
human operator, who has applied the generative modality of a neural network trained on a specific dataset. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:14)

GOOGLE DEEP DREAM (inconsciente maquímico da IA)

In DeepDream first experiments, bird feathers and dog
eyes started to emerge everywhere as dog breeds and bird species are vastly overrepresented in ImageNet. It was also discovered that the category ‘dumbbell’ was learnt with a surreal human arm always attached to it. Proof that many other categories of ImageNet are misrepresented. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:14)

O PODER NORMATIVO DA IA NO SÉCULO XXI

The normative power of AI in the 21st century has to be scrutinised in these epistemic terms: what does it mean to frame collective knowledge as patterns, and what does it mean to draw vector spaces and statistical distributions of social behaviours? (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:15)

AI easily extends the ‘power of normalisation’ of modern institutions, among others bureaucracy, medicine and statistics (originally, the numerical knowledge possessed by the state about its population) that passes now into the hands of AI corporations. The institutional norm has become a computational one: the classification of the subject, of bodies and behaviours, seems no longer to be an affair for public registers, but instead for algorithms and datacentres. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:15)

BIAS ANTI-NOVIDADE-DESVIO

A gap, a friction, a conflict, however, always persists between AI statistical models and the human subject that is supposed to be measured and controlled. This logical gap between AI statistical models and society is usually debated as bias. It has been extensively demonstrated how face recognition misrepresents social minorities and how black neighbourhoods, for instance, are bypassed by AI-driven logistics and delivery service. If gender, race and class discriminations are amplified by AI algorithms, this is also part of a larger problem of discrimination and normalisation at the logical core of machine learning. The logical and political limitation of AI is the technology’s difficulty in the recognition and prediction of a new event. How is machine learning dealing with a truly unique anomaly, an uncommon social behaviour, an innovative act of disruption? (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:15-6)

A logical limit of machine learning classification, or pattern recognition, is the inability to recognise a unique anomaly that appears for the first time, such as a new metaphor in poetry, a new joke in everyday conversation, or an unusual obstacle (a pedestrian? a plastic bag?) on the road scenario. The undetection of the new (something that has never ‘been seen’ by a model and therefore never classified before in a known category) is a particularly hazardous problem for self-driving cars and one that has already caused fatalities. Machine learning prediction, or pattern generation, show similar faults in the guessing of future trends and behaviours. As a technique of information compression, machine learning automates the dictatorship of the past, of past taxonomies and behavioural patterns, over the present. This problem can be termed the regeneration of the old — the application of a homogenous space-time view that restrains the possibility of a new historical event. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:16)

APRENDIZADO DE MÁQUINA como ARTE ESTATÍSTICA

The ‘creativity’ of machine learning is limited to the detection of styles from the training data and then random improvisation within these styles. In other words, machine learning can explore and improvise only within the logical boundaries that are set by the training data. For all these issues, and its degree of information compression, it would be more accurate to term machine learning art as statistical art. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:16)

CAUSA =/= CORRELAÇÃO

Another unspoken bug of machine learning is that the statistical correlation between two phenomena is often adopted to explain causation from one to the other. In statistics, it is commonly understood that correlation does not imply causation, meaning that a statistical coincidence alone is not sufficient to demonstrate causation. […] Superficially mining data, machine learning can construct any arbitrary correlation that is then perceived as real. I (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:16)

According to Dan McQuillan, when machine learning is applied to society in this way, it turns into a biopolitical apparatus of preemption, that produces subjectivities which can subsequently be criminalized. Ultimately, machine learning obsessed with ‘curve fitting’ imposes a statistical culture and replaces the traditional episteme of causation (and political accountability) with one of correlations blindly driven by the automation of decision making. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:16)

PROCESSOS DE SUBJETIVAÇÃO (emancipação do datacentrismo)

How to emancipate ourselves from a data-centric view of the world? It is time to realise that it is not the statistical model that constructs the subject, but rather the subject that structures the statistical model. Internalist and externalist studies of AI have to blur: subjectivities make the mathematics of control from within, not from without. To second what Guattari once said of machines in general, machine intelligence too is constituted of ‘hyper-developed and hyperconcentrated forms of certain aspects of human subjectivity.’ (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:)

SABOTAGEM (ataques, hacks, exploits)

Adversarial attacks exploit blind spots and weak regions in the statistical model of a neural network, usually to fool a classifier and make it perceive something that is not there. […] Adversarial examples are designed knowing what a machine has never seen before. This effect is achieved also by reverse-engineering the statistical model or by polluting the training dataset. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:18)

Adversarial attacks remind us of the discrepancy between human and machine perception and that the logical limit of machine learning is also a political one. The logical and ontological boundary of machine learning is the unruly subject or anomalous event that escapes classification and control. The subject of algorithmic control fires back. Adversarial attacks are a way to sabotage the assembly line of machine learning by inventing a virtual obstacle that can set the control apparatus out of joint. An adversarial example is the sabot in the age of AI. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:19)

TRABALHO FANTASMA

Pipelines of endless tasks innervate from the Global North into the Global South; crowdsourced platforms of workers from Venezuela, Brazil and Italy, for instance, are crucial in order to teach German self-driving cars ‘how to see.’ Against the idea of alien intelligence at work, it must be stressed that in the whole computing process of AI the human worker has never left the loop, or put more accurately, has never left the assembly line. Mary Gray and Siddharth Suri coined the term ‘ghost work’ for the invisible labour that makes AI appear artificially autonomous. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:)

HETEROMAÇÃO

Automation is a myth; because machines, including AI, constantly call for human help, some authors have suggested replacing ‘automation’ with the more accurate term heteromation. Heteromation means that the familiar narrative of AI as perpetuum mobile is possible only thanks to a reserve army of workers. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:19)

INTELIGÊNCIA ARTIFICIAL = DIVISÃO DO TRABALHO = AUTOMAÇÃO DO TRABALHO

the origin of machine intelligence is the division of labour and its main purpose is the automation of labour. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:19)

O TURCO MECÂNICO DO CONHECIMENTO

The Nooscope’s purpose is to expose the hidden room of the corporate Mechanical Turk and to illuminate the invisible labour of knowledge that makes machine intelligence appear ideologically alive. (Pasquinelli e Joler 2020:20)

A perspectiva do vírus (Galloway e Thacker 2007)

Published 24/03/2020 Galloway Leave a Comment

GALLOWAY, Alexander R.; THACKER, Eugene. 2007. The exploit: a theory of networks. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Segue abaixo a tradução das principais passagens do livro ligadas a vírus, entre as páginas 82 e 91.

O objetivo para a resistência política em redes vitais deveria ser a descoberta de brechas [exploits] – melhor ainda seria a heurística inversa: procure por brechas, e você encontrará práticas políticas.

[…]

Em termos de compreensão reticular, uma das maiores lições dos vírus de computador e seus parentes (worms e cavalos de Tróia) é que, como vírus biológicos, eles exploram brechas no funcionamento normal de seus hospedeiros para produzirem mais cópias de si mesmos. Vírus são vida explorando a vida.

[…]

Ao contrário do que muitos pensam, nem todos os vírus de computador são destrutivos (o mesmo pode ser dito em biologia). Vírus de computador podem certamente deletar dados, mas podem também ser demonstrativos (e.g., demonstrar uma violação de segurança), exploradores (e.g., ganhar acesso), ou baseados no distúrbio em vez da destruição (e.g., re-roteando tráfego de rede, sobrecarregando a largura de banda da rede).

[…]

Vírus de computador prosperam em ambientes com baixa diversidade.

Onde houver monopólio tecnológico, haverão vírus. Eles se aproveitam da estandardização tecnológica para se propagarem pela rede. […] Vírus e worms exploram brechas, e nesse sentido são um bom índice para praticas reticulares oposicionistas. Eles propagam através de brechas na estrutura lógica do código de computador. Quando uma brecha é descoberta, a grande homogeneidade de redes computacionais permite ao vírus se propagar amplamente com relativa facilidade. Redes são, nesse sentido, um tipo de amplificador massivo para a ação. Algo pequeno pode se transformar em algo grande muito facilmente.

Basta possuir um computador para saber que a disputa entre os vírus e os antivírus muda diariamente; é um jogo de gato-e-rato. Novos vírus são constantemente reescritos e lançados, e novos pacotes e atualizações são constantemente carregadas em websites.

[…]

Vírus de quinta geração, ou vírus “polimórficos”, integram aspectos da vida artificial e são capazes de modificarem a si mesmos enquanto eles se replicam e propagam através das redes. Tais vírus contêm uma seção de código – uma “máquina de mutação” – cuja função é continuamente modificar o seu código de assinatura, desta forma escapando, ou ao menos confundindo, o programa antivírus. São, poderíamos dizer, exemplos de vida artificial.

Vírus como os vírus de computador polimórficos são definidos pela sua habilidade de replicar sua diferença. Eles exploram brechas na rede.

[…]

Vírus nunca são exatamente iguais. Este é um dos aspectos centrais e mais perturbadores dos vírus biológicos – sua habilidade de introduzirem mutações de maneira rápida e contínua em seus códigos genéticos. […] Essa habilidade permite ao vírus não apenas explorar organismos hospedeiros que anteriormente não lhe eram acessíveis, mas também cruzar sem esforço fronteiras entre espécies, por meio de organismos hospedeiros. Existe uma certa “animalidade” específica ao vírus biológico, já que age como um conector entre formas vivas, atravessando espécies, géneros, filos e reinos. No final do século XX e início do XXI, organizações públicas de saúde como a World Healt Organization (WHO) e os Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) começaram a ver uma nova classe emergente de doenças, doenças causadas por micróbios com alta taxa de mutação e que eram capazes de se espalhar pelo mundo em questão de dias.

Essas “doenças infecciosas emergentes” são compostas por agregados de formas vivas: micróbio-pulga-macaco-humano, micróbio-galinha-humano, micróbio-vaca-humano, our humano-micróbio-humano. Em certo sentido, isso vale para qualquer epidemia: em meados do século XIV, a Peste Negra foi um conjunto de bacilo-pulga-rato-humano, uma rede de contágio parcialmente percorrida por navios de mercadorias ao longo de rotas de trocas.

Vírus biológicos são conectores que transgridem os sistemas de classificação e nomenclaturas que definimos como sendo o mundo natural ou as ciências da vida. Os efeitos dessa rede são, evidentemente, muito pouco desejáveis. Mas seria equivocado atribuir malícia e intencionalidade a uma cadeia de RNA e a um revestimento protéico [protein coating], mesmo que nós humanos insistamos incansavelmente em antropomorfizar os não-humanos com os quais interagimos. Qual é, então, a perspectiva do vírus? Talvez a microbiologia contemporânea possa nos dar uma pista, já que o estudo dos vírus na era da dupla hélice se tornou quase indistinguível da ciência da informação. Essa perspectiva do vírus não tem nada a ver com natureza, animais ou humanos; ela só diz respeito a operações sobre um código (neste caso, uma cadeia única de RNA) que tem dois efeitos – a cópia desse código dentro de um organismo hospedeiro, e a mutação desse código para ganhar acesso a uma célula hospedeira.

Replicação e criptografia são, portanto, as duas atividades que definem o vírus. O que importa não é se o hóspede é uma “bactéria”, um “animal” ou um “humano”, mas sim qual é o seu código – o número, ou numerologia, do animal.

Reiteramos que a perspectiva do vírus funciona por meio da replicação e da criptografia, uma conjunção de dois procedimentos. […] [O] tipo de criptografia envolvido é baseado na mutação e na morfologia, na recombinação e no recálculo como meios de nunca-ser-o-mesmo. A perspectiva do vírus é “criptográfica” pois ele replica essa diferença, esse status paradoxal de nunca-ser-o-mesmo. Sempre novamente, ele nunca é o mesmo. O que nos surpreende não é que o virus seja de alguma maneira “transgressivo”, cruzando fronteiras específicas (no caso de vírus biológicos) ou diferentes plataformas (no caso dos vírus de computador). A perspectiva do vírus, se de fato podemos compreender sua qualidade não-humana, não é qualquer pedaço de código rebelde ou intruso infiltrando “o sistema”. O que nos surpreende é que a perspectiva do vírus apresenta o ser animal e a vida criatural [creaturely life] de maneira ilegível e incalculável, como uma questão de cálculo telúrico [chthonic] e replicação oculta. Essa é a estranha numerologia do animal, que torna irrelevantes as fronteiras entre espécies.

[…]

Vírus são entidades que existem apenas em virtude da contínua replicação de diferença numérica.

[…]

Se os vírus são realmente definidos por sua habilidade para replicar sua diferença, podemos perguntar, o que permanece idêntico através das mudanças? Uma resposta é que o que permanece igual é a estrutura particular da mudança – permutações de código genético ou digital. Existe um devir-número específico aos vírus, biológicos ou computacionais, uma matemática ou combinatória na qual a própria transformação – via exploração sempre nova de brechas na rede – é a identidade do vírus.

Se vírus de computador é um fenômeno tecnológico envolto numa metáfora biológica, doenças infecciosas emergentes são um fenômeno biológico envolto num paradigma tecnológico. Assim como nos vírus de computador, doenças infecciosas emergentes constituem um exemplo de fenômeno de contra-protocolo.

Dessa forma, a epidemiologia se tornou um método apropriado para estudar vírus de computador. Doenças infecciosas emergentes dependem de, e usam, as mesmas propriedades topológicas que constituem as redes. A mesma coisa que dá à rede seu caráter distribuído, sua horizontalizada, é assim transformada em uma ferramenta para a destruição da rede.

Um exemplo é a identificação da Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) em 2003. […] Muito mais do que uma rede biológica, a SARS une redes de transporte, institucionais e de comunicação (de maneiras que às vezes lembram um romance médico [a medical thriller novel]). Em novembro de 2002, os primeiros casos de SARS (então chamada de “pneumonia atípica”) apareceu na província de Guangdong, no sul da China. Em meados de fevereiro de 2003, a WHO e outras agências de saúde foram alertadas sobre um novo tipo de pneumonia saindo da China. O governo chinês relatou cerca de 300 casos, muitos na região da província de Guangdong. No final de fevereiro, um médico que havia cuidado de pacientes com pneumonia atípica em Guangdong retornou ao se hotel em Hong Kong. A rede biológica se cruzou com a rede de transporte. A WHO estima que esse médico havia, no trajeto, infectado pelo menos doze outras pessoas, que depois viajaram para o Vietnã, Canadá e EUA. Alguns dias depois, médicos de Hong Kong relataram os primeiros casos daquilo que eles começaram a chamar de “SARS”. Algumas semanas depois, em meados de março, agentes de saúde em Toronto, Manila e Singapura relataram os primeiros casos de SARS. Intermediando redes institucionais e de comunicação, a WHO emitiu uma advertência de viagem […], estimulando o controle da passagem em aeroportos para vôos de e para locais como Toronto e Hong Kong. Ao mesmo tempo, a WHO organizou uma teleconferência internacional entre agentes e administradores da área da saúde (incluindo a CDC), concordando em compartilhar informações relativas a casos de SARS. O carregamento de dados de pacientes ligados à SARS para a base de dados da WHO começou imediatamente. A rede profissional se mediou com [interfaced with] a rede institucional, se estendendo até a rede de computadores. Em meados de março, cientistas na CDC sugeriram que um novo [mutated] coronavirus (que causa a gripe comum em muitos mamíferos) pode estar ligada à SARS. Então, em 14 de abril, cientistas no Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, em Vancouver, sequenciaram o DNA do coronavirus SARS em seis dias (o que seria repetido por cientistas alguns dias depois). Em abril de 2003, a SARS continuou a dominar as manchetes dos noticiários, reiteradamente nas capas da Time, Newsweek e U.S. News.

Apesar da notável coordenação e cooperação via diferentes redes, no nível biológico a SARS continuava a transformar e a afetar essas mesmas redes. No início de abril de 2003, o governo dos EUA emitiu uma ordem executiva permitindo a quarentena de pessoas saudáveis suspeitas de estarem infectadas com SARS, mas que ainda não tinham sintomas. Entre março e abril de 2003, medidas de quarentena foram tomadas em Ontario, Hong Kong, Singapura e Beijing. Prédios residenciais, hospitais e espaços públicos como supermercados, cinemas e shopping centers foram todos isolados e sofreram quarentena. Pessoas de Toronto a Beijing foram vistas frequentemente usando máscaras cirúrgicas para evitar a infecção. No final de abril, o avanço da SARS parecia ter se estabilizado. Agentes da WHO afirmaram que os casos de SARS atingiram o pico no Canadá, Singapura, Hong Kong e Vietnam (mas não na China). Muitos países relataram um decréscimo no número de casos de SARS, apesar de nenhuma vacina ter sido desenvolvida. No final de maio de 2003, agentes de saúde dos EUA alertaram que o vírus SARS muito provavelmente reaparecerá na próxima estação de gripe.

Devemos imediatamente notar algo sobre a SARS como uma doença infecciosa emergente. Ela é, em primeiro lugar, um exemplo de rede biológica. Mas ela é também mais do que biológica.

SARS e outras doenças infecciosas emergentes são as novas virologias da globalização; o próprio sentido do termo “doença infecciosa emergente” implica isso. Doenças infecciosas emergentes são produtos da globalização. Isso pois elas são altamente dependentes de uma ou mais redes.

O coronavirus SARS usou três tipos de redes e as uniu em uma só: (1) a rede biológica de infecção (muitas vezes dentro de centros médicos); (2) a rede de transporte de aeroportos e hotéis; e (3) as redes de comunicação de notícias, websites, bases de dados e teleconferências internacionais. Sem uma rede de transporte, o vírus SARS poderia bem ter sido um fenômeno chinês localizado, nunca chegando tão longe quanto Toronto. E enquanto os relatos jornalísticos nos EUA serviram principalmente para educar um público preocupado, eles também serviram para aumentar a ansiedade de uma população já sensibilizada para o bioterrorismo. Mais importante ainda é, talvez, a maneira como o vírus SARS explorou essas redes até o seu esgotamento: prédios em quarentena, imposição de restrições a viagens aéreas, pessoas sendo realocadas ou isoladas.

Doenças infecciosas emergentes como a SARS não apenas operam simultaneamente através de diferentes redes, mas ao fazê-lo também transgridem algumas fronteiras. A lição aqui é que a flexibilidade e a robustez da rede são consonantes com a transgressão de fronteiras.

O vírus SARS, por exemplo, cruza as fronteiras das espécies quando pula de animais para humanos. Ele também cruza fronteiras nacionais em suas viagens entre China, Canadá, EUA e sudeste da Ásia. Ele cruza fronteiras econômicas, afetando a aviação comercial, o turismo e as indústrias de entretenimento, mas também oferecendo iniciativa e novos mercados para corporações farmacêuticas. Finalmente, ele cruza a fronteira entre a natureza e o artifício, ao juntar vírus, organismos, computadores, bases de dados e o desenvolvimento de vacinas. Sua tática é a inundação, um antigo antagonista da rede.

Mas redes biológicas como no caso da SARS não são limitadas apenas a doenças que poderiam ser entendidas como ocorrendo naturalmente. Seus efeitos de rede podem ser vistos em outro tipo de rede biológica – aquela do bioterrorismo.

Pequena história da fotografia (ilustrada) (Benjamin 1994 [1931])

Published 15/02/2020 Benjamin Leave a Comment

BENJAMIN, Walter. 1994. Pequena história da fotografia. (Trad. Sergio P. Rouanet) In: Magia e técnica, arte e política: ensaios sobre literatura e história da cultura. São Paulo: Brasiliense. [1931]

JULIA MARGARETH CAMERON e FÉLIX NADAR

A literatura recente deu-se conta da circunstância importante de que o apogeu da fotografia – a época de [Mary Ann] Hill[lier] [1847-1836] e [Julia Margareth] Cameron [1815-1879], de [Victor] Hugo [1802-1885] e [Félix] Nadar [1820-1910] – ocorreu no primeiro decênio da nova descoberta. Ora, este é o decênio que precede a sua industrialização. (Bemjamin 1994:91)

Mary Ann Hillier foi criada de Julia Margaret Cameron, e assim posou para muitas de suas fotografias. Esta foto é de 1874.

O célebre escritor francês Victor Hugo foi fotografado por Félix Nadar em sua velhice e leito de morte. Esta foto foi tirada próximo de 1870.

LOUIS JACQUES DAGUERRE

Os clichês de Daguerre [as imagens produzidas pelos daguerreótipos] eram placas de prata, iodadas e expostas na camera obscura; elas precisavam ser manipuladas em vários sentidos, até que se pudesse reconhecer, sob uma luz favorável, uma imagem cinza-pálida. Eram peças únicas […]. Não raro, eram guardadas em estojos, como jóias. (Benjamin 1994:93)

Imagem de daguerreótipo produzido por Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre em 1837. Tida como “a primeira”.

DAVID OCTAVIUS HILL

David Octavius Hill, retratista famoso, compôs seu afresco sobre o primeiro sínodo geral da igreja escocesa, em 1843, a partir de uma série de fotografias. Ele próprio tirava as fotos. E foram esses modestos meios auxiliares, destinados ao uso do próprio artista, que transmitiram seu nome à história, ao passo que ele desapareceu como pintor. (Benjamin 1994:93)

Calótipo de David O. Hill e Robert Adamson, tirado ao redor de 1840.

Mas alguns estudos são mais úteis para introduzir a nova técnica que esses retratos: imagens humanas anônimas, e não retratos. A pintura já conhecia há muito rostos desse tipo. Se os quadros permaneciam no patrimônio da família, havia ainda uma certa curiosidade pelo retratado. Porém depois de duas ou três gerações esse interesse desaparecia: os quadros valiam apenas como testemunho do talento artístico do seu autor. Mas na fotografia surge algo de estranho e de novo: na vendedora de peixes de New Haven, olhando o chão com um recato tão displicente e tão sedutor, preserva-se algo que não se reduz ao gênio artístico do fotógrafo Hill, algo que não pode ser silenciado, que reclama com insistência o nome daquela que viveu ali, que também na foto é real, e que não quer extinguir-se na “arte”. […] “E eu pergunto como o adorno desses cabelos / E desse olhar rodeia os seres de antigamente / Como essa boca aqui beijada em torno da qual o desejo / Se enrola, loucamente, como fumaça sem fogo…” (Benjamin 1994:93)

Two New Haven fish wives (David O. Hill e Robert Adamson 1843–5)

Newhaven Fishwives (David O. Hill e Robert Adamson 1843-7)

Mrs Grace Ramsay and 4 unknown women (David O. Hill e Robert Adamson 1845)

Muitas imagens de Hill foram produzidas no cemitério de Greyfriars, em Edimburgo. Nada caracteriza melhor esse período primitivo que a naturalidade com que os modelos aparecem nesse ambiente. Com efeito, segundo uma imagem de Hill, esse cemitério tem o aspeto de um interior, um local solado, rodeado por uma cerca, onde se erguem sepulturas, apoiadas em muros, num gramado, ocas como lareiras, nas quais em vez de chamas, existem epitáfios. Mas esse local não teria hamais provocado um efeito tão impressionante se sua escolha não tivesse obedecido a imperativos técnicos. A fraca sensibilidade luminosa das primeiras chapas exigia uma longa exposição ao ar livre. Isso por sua vez obrigava o fotógrafo a colocar o modelo num lugar tão retirado quanto possível, onde nada pudesse perturbar a concentração necessária ao trabalho. (Benjamin 1994:95-6)

Covenanter’s Tomb, Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh (David O. Hill e Robert Adamson 1843-1847)

KARL DAUTHENDEY

Ou então descobrimos a imagem de Dauthendey, o fotógrafo, pai do poeta, no tempo de seu noivado com aquela mulher que ele um dia encontrou com os pulsos cortados, em seu quarto de Moscou, pouco depois do nascimento do seu sexto filho. Nessa foto, ele pode ser visto a seu lado e parece segurá-la; mas o olhar dela não o vê, está fixado em algo de distante e catastrófico. Depois de mergulharmos suficientemente fundo em imagens assim, percebemos que também aqui os extremos se tocam: a técnica mais exata pode dar às suas criações um valor mágico que um quadro nunca mais terá para nós. Apesar de toda a perícia do fotógrafo e de tudo o que existe de planejado e seu comportamento, o observador sente a necessidade irresistível de procurar nessa imagem a pequena centelha do acaso, do aqui e agora, com a qual a realidade chamuscou a imagem, de procurar o lugar imperceptível em que o futuro se aninha ainda hoje em minutos únicos, há muito extintos, e com tanta eloquência que podemos descobri-lo, olhando para trás. (Benjamin 1994:94)

Foto de Karl Dauthendey com sua noiva Sra. Friedrich em 1957.

KARL BLOSSFELDT

A natureza que fala à câmara não é a mesma que fala ao lhar; é outra, especialmente porque substitui a um espaço trabalhado conscientemente pelo homem, um espaço que ele percorre inconscientemente. Percebemos, em geral, o movimento de um homem que camina, ainda que em grandes traços, mas nada percebemos de sua atitude na exata fração de segundo em que ele dá um passo. A fotografia nos mostra essa atitude, através dos seus recursos auxiliares: câmara lenta, ampliação. Só a fotografia revela esse inconsciente ótico, como só a psicanálise revela o inconsciente pulsional. Características estruturais, tecidos celulares, com os quais operam a técnica e a medicina, tudo isso tem mais afinidades originais com a câmara que a paisagem impregnada de estados afetivos, ou o retrato que exprime a alma do seu modelo. Mas ao mesmo tempo a fotografia revela nesse material os aspectos fisionômicos, mundos de imagens habitando as coisas mais minúsculas, suficientemente ocultas e signifitcativas para encontrarem um refúgio nos senhos diurnos, e que agora, tornando-se grandes e formuláveis, mostram que a diferença entre a técnica e a magia é uma variável totalmente histórica. é assim que, em suas surpreendentes fotografias de plantas, Blossfeldt mostrou no equisseto as formas mais antigas das colunas, no feto arborescente a mitra episcopal, nos brotos de castanheiras e aceráceas, aumentadas dez vezes, mastros totêmicos, no cardo um edifício gótico. (Benjamin 1994:94-5)

Urformen der kunst (Karl Blosfeldt 1928). As “formas das mais antigas colunas”?

Urformen der kunst (Karl Blosfeldt 1928). “Mitra episcopal”?

Urformen der kunst (Karl Blosfeldt 1928). “Mastros totêmicos”?

Urformen der kunst (Karl Blosfeldt 1928). Um “edifício gótico”?

O CASACO DE SCHELLING

Tudo nessas primeiras imagens era organizado para durar […] [.] [A]s próprias dobras de um vestuário, nessas imagens, duram mais tempo. Observe-se o casado de Schelling, na foto que dele se preservou. Com toda certeza, esse casaco se tornou tão importante quanto o filósofo: as formas que ele assumiu no corpo do seu próprietário não são menos valiosas que as rugas no seu rosto. (Benjamin 1994:96)

Wilhelm Joseph von Scheiling (1850)

GERAÇÃO DE TRANSIÇÃO

Essa geração de transição só desapareceu gradualmente. Uma bênção bíblica parece ter favorecido esses primeiros fotógrafos: os [Félix] Nadar, os [Carl Ferdinand] Stelzner, os [Pierre-Louis] Pierson, os [Hippolyte] Bayard, chegaram todos aos noventa ou cem anos. (Benjamin 1994:97)

ÁLBUM DE FAMÍLIA

Foi nessa época que começaram a surgir os álbuns fotográficos. Eles podiam ser encontrados nos lugares mais glaciais da casa, em consoles ou guéridons, na sala de visitas – grandes volumes encadernados em couro, com horríveis fechos de metal, e as páginas com margens douradas, com a espessura de um dedo, nas quais apareciam figuras grotescamente vestidas ou cobertas de rendas: o tio Alexandre e a tia Rika, Gertrudes quando pequena, papai no primeiro semestre da Faculdade e, para cúmulo da vergonha, nós mesmos, com uma fantasia alpina, cantando à tirolesa, agitando o chapéu contra neves pintadas (Benjamin 1994:97-8)

Benjamin e seu irmão numa foto de 1902.

Foi nessa época que apareceram aqueles ateliês com seus cortinados e palmeiras, tapeçarias e cavaletes, mescla ambígua de execução e representação, câmara de torturas e sala do trono, que nos é evocada, de modo tão comovente, por um retrato infantil de Kafka. O menino de cerca de seis anos é representado numa espécie de paisagem de jardim de inverno, vestido com uma roupa de criança, muito apertada, quase humilhante, sobrecarregada com rendas. No fundo, erguem-se palmeiras imóveis. E, como para tornar esse acolchoado ambiente tropical ainda mais abafado e sufocante, o modelo segura na mão esquerda um chapéu extraordinariamente grande, com largas abas, do tipo usado pelos espanhóis. O menino teria desaparecido nesse quadro se seus olhos incomensuravelmente tristes não dominassem essa paisagem feita sob medida para eles. (Benjamin 1994:98)

Franz Kafka em 1888.

EUGÈNE ATGET

Atget foi um ator que retirou a máscara, descontente com sua profissão, e tentou, igualmente, desmascarar a realidade. Viveu em Paris, pobre e desconhecido, desfazia-se de suas fotografias doando-as a amadores tão excêntricos como ele, e morreu há pouco tempo, deixando uma obra de mais de quatro mil imagens. […] [A]s fotos parisienses de Atget são as precursoras da fotografia surrealista, a vanguarda do único destacamento verdadeiramente expressivo que o surrealismo conseguiu pôr em marcha. Foi o primeiro a desinfetar a atmosfera sufocante difundida pela fotografia convencional, especializada em retratos, durante e época da decadência. Ele saneia essa atmosfera, purifica-a: começa a libertar o objeto da sua aura, nisso consistindo o mérito mais incontestável da moderna escola fotográfica. […] Ele buscava as coisas perdidas e transviadas, e, por isso, tais imagens se voltam contra a ressonância exótica, majestosa, romântica, dos nomes de cidades; elas sugam a aura da realidade como uma bomba suga a água de um navio que afunda. […] Quase sempre Atget passou ao largo das “grandes vistas e dos lugares característicos”, mas não negligenciou uma grande fila de fôrmas de sapateiro, nem os pátios de Paris, onde da manhã à noite se enfileiram carrinhos de mão, nem as mesas com so pratos sujos ainda não retirados, como existem aos milhares, na mesma hora, nem no bordel da rua… no.5, algarismo que aparece, em grande formato, em quatro diferentes locais da fachada. Mas curiosamente quase todas essas imagens são vazias. Vazia a Porte d’Arcueil nas fortificações, vazias as escadas faustosas, vazios os pátios, vazios os terraços dos cafés, vazia, como convém, a Place du Te[a]tre. Esses lugares não são solitários, e sim privados de toda atmosfera; nessas imagens, a cidade foi esvaziada, como uma casa que ainda não encontrou moradores. Nessas obras, a fotografia surrealista prepara uma saudável alienação do homem com relação a seu mundo ambiente. Ela liberta para o olhar politicamente educado o espaço em que toda intimidade cede lugar à iluminação dos pormenores. (Benjamin 1994:100-2)

Old shoes (Eugène Atget 1877-1927)

Port d’Arcueil (Eugène Atget)

Place [du] Théâtre Français (Eugène Atget 1926)

O NÃO-LEGADO DE SCHOPENHAUER

[M]esmo o ambiente e a paisagem só se revelam ao fotógrafo que sabe captá-los em sua manifestação anônima, num rosto humano. Mas essa possibilidade é em grande medida condicionada pela atitude da pessoa representada. A geração que não pretendia chegar à posteridade pelas fotografias e que em vez disso se refugiava em seu mundo cotidiano, como Schopenhauer se refugia na profundidade da poltrona, na fotografia de 1850, em Frankfurt (e que por isso mesmo transportou consigo, na foto, esse mundo cotidiano) – essa geração não legou suas virtudes a seus sucessores. (Benjamin 1994:102)

Arthur Schopenhauer (daguerreótipo, 1850)

AUGUST SANDER

August Sander reuniu uma série de rostos que em nada ficam a dever à poderosa galeria fisionômica de um Eisenstein ou de um Pudovkin, e realizou esse trabalho numa perspectiva científica. […] Quer sejamos de direita ou de esquerda, temos que nos habituar a ser vistos, venhamos de onde viermos. Por outro lado, teremos também que olhar os outros. A obra de Sander é mais que um livro de imagens, é um atlas, no qual podemos exercitar-nos. (Benjamin 1994:102-3)

Circus workers (August Sander 1926-1932)

Animismo e autismo (Povinelli 2017)

Published 06/12/2019 Não categorizado , Povinelli Leave a Comment

POVINELLI, Elizabeth A. 2017. The three figures of Geontology. In: Richard Grusin (ed). Anthropocene Feminism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp.49-64.

ANIMISTA = VITALISTA

[T]he animist insists that there is no absence of life because everything has a vital force — there is no nonlife because all is life. (Povinelli 2017:59)

[T]he animist is also within the contemporary idea that we should all be stewards of the earth. (Povinelli 2017:59)

The animist is, in other words, all those who see an equivalence between all forms of life or who can see life where others would see the lack of life. (Povinelli 2017:59)

The political tactic of the animist tends to result in a call for the recognition of the liveliness of the radical Other. (Povinelli 2017:60)

The question the animist poses is what happens when we extend one mode of being to all modes of existence. (Povinelli 2017:61)

NEW CONTEMPORARY COGNITIVE SUBJECTS

[T]he animist includes the recycling contemporary subject and certain ways of portraying and perceiving in a variety of new cognitive subjects. The psychocognitive diagnoses of certain forms of autism and Asperger’s are liable to fall within the animist. Temple Grandin is an exemplary figure here, not merely for her orientation to cows but also for her defense of alternative cognitions that allow for an orientation to nonhuman and nonlife forms of existence and an understanding of these orientations as the drivers of the high-water marks of human society. (Povinelli 2017:59)

[A]s the animist supplants the human as the groundwork of the political and ethical, it maintains a humanist orientation. Take Temple Grandin’s claim that “the really social people did not invent the first stone spear. It was probably an Aspie who chipped away at rocks while the other people socialized around the campfire.” Is she merely instrumentalizing the human subject’s relationship to the rock, or is she substantially leveling the human and nonhuman, life and nonlife, to equal coparticipants in world-making? (Povinelli 2017:60)

TOUCHSTONES (Deleuze, Guattari, Haraway)

A touchstone image comes from Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the body-without-organs and, more specifically, the orchid and the wasp as a prototype of existence as assemblage: a way of thinking about existents as coemergent strata within a common assemblage, each dependent in terms of its substantive form, quality, and mode on its relation to the Other. Another touchstone image comes from Donna Haraway’s concept of the cyborg. (Povinelli 2017:60)

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