But, this isn’t an argument!
Apropos nothing, I offer the following - shamelessly stolen from another blog.
Here is where I found it. Attributed to one Leslie Stephen a name that, I’m afraid, means nothing to me.
He shows us certain facts as they appear to him. If we are so constituted as to be unable to see what he sees, he can go no further. He cannot proceed to argue and analyse, and apply an elaborate logical apparatus. There is the truth, and we must make what we can of it. But, on the other hand, so far as we are in sympathy with him, the proof - if it be a proof - has all the cogency of direct vision. He has couched our dull eyes, drawn back the veil which hid from us the certain aspect of the world, and henceforward our views of life and the world will be more or less changed, because the bare scaffolding of fact which we previously saw will now be seen in the light of keener perceptions than our own.
It’s one way to argue, I suppose. Maybe this is nothing more than “appeal to narrative.” A kind of if you are inclined to believe this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you will believe. So if it fits the narrative you’ve constructed for your world, it is truth. If it fails to fit, it is fiction.
If everything is narrative, maybe this is the best we can hope for.
But I’m inclined to believe that it isn’t all narrative; that there is argument which can do more than appeal to your own prejudices - that can have a truth value other than “this is the kind of thing I am predisposed to believe.”
int my abs (int a)
{
if (a<0) return -a;
else if (a==0) return 0;
else if (a>0) return a;
else
return myabs(a);
}
Carry on. Life is ever so much better without abstraction.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:33 pmLife is much better without abstraction.
Don’t you mean “better without absolutism”
April 25th, 2008 at 6:35 pmI have to go on record as saying that the kind of thing described in the quote I offer above isn’t being presented as altogether a bad thing.
An insight I credit to Walker Percy goes something like this: The whole point of art is exactly that thing quoted above. Take something latent in your brain and give it form, make it conscious. Create insight.
But the problem is that it doesn’t create insight unless you are inclined to the point already. And more importantly, while it is good for creating insight, it isn’t good for establishing truth.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:45 pmFacts without narrative (i.e., theory) are incomprerhensible?
What a shock!
April 26th, 2008 at 10:25 pmOkay, I think the problem here is what Bob thinks a narrative is. He thinks a narrative is a theory. (Or perhaps that a theory is a narrative.)
Plagiarizing again shamelessly from the same blog post that I borrowed this entire entry from, there is no need to shift into logomachy mode, trying to find some ingeniously broad sense of narrative one can insist on, that will save your point.
A long time ago, in a blog far, far away, the point was asserted that all learning is through story, which is why the best and brightest all used to be Literature majors.
I don’t think that’s true, as, for example, I don’t think airplane designers tell each other stories when they are determining rivet specs, for example.
I stole some remarks from CP Snow and EO Wilson that seemed to suggest that learning stories is easy, but doing science is hard because it isn’t learning stories.
Since that time, “story” has become “narrative,” a fair enough reword, but now “narrative” has come to mean “theory.”
We could pretend that “narrative” is so broad as to include anything that could be imagined by the brain, but then it would be a little tautological, and entirely pointless. The question at hand is about stories - the conventional use of the word narrative, I’ll add. But so as not to confuse the issue, I’ll try to use story again instead.
g = GM/R2, for example, isn’t a story.
Neither is the more general theory from which that is generated (F = GMm/R2, F = ma, a = d2x/dt2, whatever).
On the other hand, I’m somewhat sympathetic to Bob’s point, if we drop the insistence that narrative covers theory. I’m sympathetic in the sense that having some kind of organizing structure for knowledge helps one to remember those bits of knowledge and helps one to understand their relationships. Knowing a little calculus helps one to understand the relationship between acceleration and position, for example. Knowing about 1/r2 forces helps one to make sense of orbital motion.
And this idea is connected to story, to be sure.
I believe it was Dorothy Sayers who argued that it was important to teach (British) children the sequence and dates of the Kings of those Isles, because 1) being young, they are naturally good at memorization, and 2) those names and dates would provide a framework for understanding history later in life - not quite a theory, but filling the same role as a framework for knowledge.
That’s the transition to organizing data by story. A narrative structure can do exactly the same thing for us.
So I agree that a story is a way that one can organize and make sense of facts. But I’m not sure it is necessary to have some kind of structure or context to understand a *fact*, however. I think it is possible to find a car crash comprehensible even without a theory of internal combustion engines and friction. If you come upon a Honda wrapped around a telephone pole, I don’t think you need to invent a story to recognize the fact of the wreck.
On the other hand, it sure is tempting to create a story out of it.
When you see some dazed looking 17 year old staggering about next to the car, who can help but imagine the stupid punk kid having a few illegal beers and driving too fast. Goddamn kids these days. Could have killed someone. Hope that teaches him a lesson.
It’s a great story, and you can continue on your way feeling like you have comprehended events.
Even if the kid wasn’t the driver, there was no alcohol, and the car, traveling at legal speeds, was side swiped and knocked out of control by a hit-and-run motorist who fled the scene.
That’s the danger of story. Stories can be compelling ways to organize data even when they are entirely false. Stories are not good ways to get at the truth. That’s why scientists and engineers aren’t in the business of story telling.
There’s another point about theory here, but let me put that in a separate comment.
April 27th, 2008 at 9:21 amOkay, the theory follow-up:
Just as stories can be compelling, but entirely false ways of understanding things (something that every political strategist knows and exploits), so too can be Theory.
Because there is a natural tendency to privilege the theory over the facts on the ground. There’s a great example of this that I just happen to have at my finger tips.
Giulio Libri, one of the foremost philosophers at Pisa in the early 17th C, refused to even look through Galileo’s telescope, since in his theory, heavenly bodies must be perfectly spherical, and not mountainous or craggy as the telescope revealed.
[I even have a reference for that anecdote: =Galileo, Science, and the Church=, Jerome Langford.]
And, of course, this is especially common in political philosophers. Marxists and Objectivists, for example, have relatively simple, comprehensible, and compelling political theories. But, despite being on opposite ends of the spectrum, they share one important thing in common: They aren’t true. And yet, many of the adherents of either have a tendency to insist, like Giulio Libri, that the facts must fit their theories, rather than the reverse.
In the past I’ve attributed this to Physics Envy - since physical theories seem so commendably simple (so long as one doesn’t look to closely) and correct. Maybe correct isn’t the right word: enforceable. Wouldn’t it be great if we could all boil our fields of study down to simple, enforceable laws?
But I’m not sure this is true. I think it is something more akin to what Bob is talking about: finding a story to organize the facts of the world - and the peculiar way in which we insist that it is the story that is True, and not actual things and events. The facts must be deceiving us if they aren’t in accord with our theories.
So I don’t think it is always such a good thing to have a Theory to organize your world. The world is a complicated place, and I don’t think Theories of much of it are adequate to represent it.
April 27th, 2008 at 9:40 amOne last comment, to re-emphasize what I think the original quote was about.
This is a brief excerpt from a music review:
[Gramophone, Dec 2007]
There’s no question that this is a positive review. But, suppose you take a skeptical stance toward this review. You listen to metal, so as far as you are concerned, the music is stupid. There’s no clarity and verve, just a stupid tinkling about on the piano.
There’s no argument in this review in the sense that you can agree or disagree with the premises and thus agree or disagree with the conclusion.
Of course, if you are a fan of French piano music who has listened to this disc, then perhaps you say to yourself “yes, he’s captured that exactly right - clarity and verve are precisely what the pianist is displaying.”
Either you find yourself in sympathy with the review or not. But it isn’t argument.
[Of course, you might have a Theory that French Music is Bad, in which case it wouldn't matter whether or not the reviewer was right. Not that anyone would ever hold such a ridiculous theory.]
April 27th, 2008 at 9:56 amAcually, I have a theory that French ballet music blows, based on having heard way too much of it. and even played some — you haven’t lived until you’ve heard a high school band play music from Orpheus in Hell. He and Eurydice weren’t the only ones. Or have I got Dante and Ovid mixed up?
April 30th, 2008 at 7:23 pmThere are both good narratives and bad ones. The former give shape and use to raw data. The latter simply retell an old story without reference to new data. The Synoptic Gospels are bad narratives.
Although this may be pressing my luck, there are also good corporations and bad ones. The former create utility and agency, the latter destroy both utility and agency.
Ben Goldacre makes a point along the way in an excellent article that data shouldn’t be analyzed robotically.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:27 amThe Goldacre article reminds me of a great American Scientist column on the perils of statistics and the standard deviation. (Which, in addition, explains further the merits of metastudies.)
Unfortunately, the online version is behind a firewall.
“The Most Dangerous Equation”
Ignorance of how sample size affects statistical variation has created havoc for nearly a millennium
Howard Wainer
in American Scientist, v95 no.3
(May-June 2007)
The short version is that small samples are more likely to deviate from the mean. So, for example, some educrats tout studies that show the smallest schools are the ones with the best average performance. (Of course, smallest schools also show the *worst* average performance, and the largest variation from year to year.)
Small towns also have the lowest (and highest) rates of cancer and heart disease.
I can’t recommend the article highly enough. Go get a copy from your library.
May 13th, 2008 at 2:41 pm