Faculty Corner: Where can we find the truth in higher ed?

Call it "Peirce's Dream." In 1878, the pragmatist C.S. Peirce declared, "The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth . . ." In 1892, his friend, the great William James, pointed out what was necessary if 'agreement by all' was to be achieved. Each of the sciences, he noted, has to begin by sticking to its own problems and ignore the rest. The reason is that each science "accepts certain data unquestioningly." Only when practitioners of each science have solved their own special problem will they be ready to meet with others to deal with those unquestioned data. It is now 2009, more than a century later. There are more 'sciences' today than ever before. And, though the fact goes unpublicized, those who teach the distinct sciences have profound disagreements about their most basic premises. In other words, there is today a hidden chaos - a silent cacophony - at every institution of 'higher learning.'

Begin with the philosophers. After all, our President is looking to them - oh, yes, and to the theologians - to help restore the full Catholic Intellectual Tradition at Assumption. They at least have kept Peirce's and James' dream alive. You can tell that from the Assumption Catalogue. On page 137 it says, "Philosophy is a reasoned quest for and joy in understanding truths which are fundamental to all areas of enquiry." But there's a problem. They can't agree on what philosophy is or on how to interpret Plato's, Aristotle's, Descartes', Heidegger's, et al's texts.

Perhaps the psychology professors can help explain why the philosophers cannot agree. After all, they are the experts, the scientific experts, on how human minds work. Sorry. As Gordon Allport wrote, "Except for a common loyalty to their profession, psychologists often seem to agree on little else," a claim repeated in 1990 by Jerome Bruner, and already verified two years earlier when members of the APA broke away to form the APS.

Perhaps English professors can give a better explanation. After all, nearly everything philosophers teach is based on texts. (None of them ever met Plato, Aristotle, etc.) And, as English professors explain in ENG 220, there are various ways to interpret texts: the "formalist, historical, reader-response, structuralist, and deconstructionist, among others." One wonders, though, whether these professors agree among themselves. One of them observed how difficult it is to get students to write in such a way that their ideas will be crystal clear to their readers. (Reader-response approach?) Another observed that, so long as readers can make a defensible ("scientific" was the word used) interpretation of the text, it doesn't matter if the text does not reflect what the author meant. (Formalist?) A third English professor commented, "No one knows for sure what other people are thinking." (?)

Those who teach sociology might be the ones to explain the lack of consensus on fundamental issues. They note the role of culture, the acquisition of which begins with the family. As Berger and Luckmann, on page 142 of The Social Construction of Reality, point out, "It takes severe biographical shocks to disintegrate the massive reality internalized in early childhood." But do these experts agree among themselves on the nature - even the reality - of culture? If you keep in mind that Clyde Kluckhohn, the great Harvard anthropologist, called culture "an abstraction" on page 28 of his Mirror for Man, you might not be surprised that they agree no more than did those who contributed to the 1963 anthology, Sociology on Trial. When asked about this, one sociology professor recently admitted that, because they are under such pressure to keep up with 'progress' in their sub-disciplinary specialties, most sociologists and anthropologists no longer have time for foundational debates.

Mention of culture reminds us of the history professors. Nineteen of the HIS courses listed in the '07-'08 Catalogue specifically refer to culture or cultural facts. Are they in agreement about what they teach? They weren't in the past. See the essays collected by F. Stern in The Varieties of History from Voltaire to the Present. It is reported that when the University of Chicago asked its history teachers to decide whether to join the division of humanities or the division of social sciences, some went to the former and some to the latter. As for historians in 2009, what explains why they cannot agree on whether Oswald acted on his own or as part of a conspiracy? Or about Pope Pius XII's actions vis-a-vis the Jews? Etc., etc. Culture? Different texts? Different interpretations of texts?

Those questions bring us back to the philosophers who, like historians, depend so heavily on texts. They teach metaphysics (ontology?), basically about what really exists as opposed, for instance, to abstractions. Who better than they to tell us whether texts really exist or are figments of our creative imaginations? For instance, where is the text of Plato's Parmenides, which deals with the contrast between realities and Platonic abstractions? There are millions of copies of dozens of translations of (copies of?) Plato's original text (if it ever existed). But where is 'the' text itself now. Like Clara who asked in 1984, "Where's the beef?", we ask, "Where's the text?" And what would it look like? Greek? Latin? English? Or is "text of the Parmenides" the name for an imaginary, Platonic abstraction, only 'signified' by the millions of copies of...?

In other words, are texts - 'signified' by written words - as imaginary as numbers signified by written numerals? (Which is 'the' number signified by 5, V, 0101, five, quinque, cinq, ...?)

Perhaps if professors assemble and try to hammer out agreement on all the fundamental issues referred to above, Peirce's dream would come true. Or would it?

Does that help to explain "a hidden chaos, a silent cacophony?"

P.S. Longer versions can be found in The Wonderful Myth Called Science, as well as in Logical Fictions.