The Ashtray: The Author of the ‘Quixote’ (Part 4)
By ERROL MORRIS
Errol Morris on photography. Tags:
4.
THE AUTHOR OF THE QUIXOTE
I have suggested that Kuhn had created his own reductio ad absurdum – not unlike the proof of the incommensurability of √2. If everything is incommensurable, then everything is seen through the lens of the present, the lens of now. All history is Whiggish history. There is no history. There is no truth, just truth for the moment, contingent truth, relative truth. And who is to say which version of the truth is better than any other, if we can’t look beyond the paradigm in which we find ourselves. But there is a messier problem. Why stop at historical relativism? Why not imagine each and every person in a different island universe? And indeed, Kuhn at least in one instance seems to embrace that possibility. In one particularly bizarre passage in “The Road Since Structure,” he suggests that his critics are writing about two different Thomas Kuhns – Kuhn No. 1 and Kuhn No. 2.
I am tempted to posit the existence of two Thomas Kuhns. Kuhn No. 1 is the author of this essay and of an earlier piece in this volume. He also in 1962 published a book [The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]. Kuhn No. 2 is the author of another book by the same title…To me Kuhn’s claim – that there are two Thomas Kuhns plus two books by the same name and author – suggests that there may be no coherent reading of Kuhn’s philosophy. Kuhn, of course, sees it differently. For Kuhn, the multiplicity of Kuhns and Kuhn-authored-books-with-the-same-title provides further proof of his belief that people with “incommensurable” viewpoints can’t talk to each other. That they live in different worlds. He writes, “This collection of essays…provides an extended example of what I have elsewhere called partial or incomplete communication – the talking-through-each-other that regularly characterizes discourse between participants in incommensurable points of view.” [65]
That both books bear the same title cannot be altogether accidental, for the views they represent often overlap and are, in any case, expressed in the same words. But their central concerns are, I conclude, usually very different. As reported by his critics (the original is unfortunately unavailable to me), Kuhn No. 2 seems to make points that subvert essential aspects of the position outlined by his namesake. [64]
Courtesy of The University of Chicago PressKuhn’s remarks remind me of a story by Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote.” Instead of two Cervantes, Borges imagines a second author, Pierre Menard, a fictional character, who manages to recreate “Don Quixote,” word for word with the original. And yet, creates an entirely different work of art. Borges writes, “[Menard] did not want to compose another Quixote — which is easy — but the Quixote itself. Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide — word for word and line for line — with those of Miguel de Cervantes.” [67] [68]
Borges’s story – quite likely an elaborate literary joke – has spawned a world of commentary. What is history – a collection of real events or of subjective memories? Borges compares two identical passages from the “Quixote,” part one, chapter 9 — one written by Cervantes, the other by Menard:
Gustavo Doré…truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.Written in the 17th century, written by the “lay genius” Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history.
Menard, on the other hand, writes:
…truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor. [69]Borges elaborates on how this same passage means something completely different to Menard. According to Menard.
History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding.What is being argued here? That every text is endlessly reinterpreted? That every reader re-writes the book they are reading? That our beliefs change over time? That history changes the meaning of history? And how does Borges fit into this? Does Borges see himself as Menard or Cervantes? Neither? Both? [71]
Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. The final phrases — exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor —are brazenly pragmatic. [70]
Gustavo DoréIn Borges’s review of “Citizen Kane,” “An Overwhelming Film,” published in 1941, he called the movie “a kind of metaphysical detective story… Forms of multiplicity and incongruity abound in the film: the first scenes record the treasures amassed by Kane; in one of the last, a poor woman, luxuriant and suffering, plays with an enormous jigsaw puzzle on the floor of a palace that is also a museum. At the end we realize that the fragments are not governed by any secret unity: the detested Charles Foster Kane is a simulacrum, a chaos of appearances.” Borges concluded by quoting Chesterton, “there is nothing more frightening than a labyrinth that has no center.” [72]
Citizen KaneYears ago, Bertrand Russell wrote “Nightmares of Eminent Persons” (1954). (Supposedly, he was trying to meet alimony payments.) Among the various nightmares – the Mathematicians’s Nightmare, Stalin’s Nightmare, the Psychoanalyst’s Nightmare, Dr. Bowdler’s Nightmare – is the Existentialist’s Nightmare. At the conclusion of the nightmare, the existentialist is screaming, “I don’t exist. I don’t exist.” Poe’s raven appears, speaking in the voice of the French poet Mallarmé: “You do exist. You do exist. It’s your philosophy that doesn’t exist.” [73]
Spokesman PressWhich brings me to Alice’s question to Humpty Dumpty in “Through the Looking-Glass.” It addresses the issue: can words mean anything we want them to? Humpty-Dumpty is suggesting an “authoritarian” theory of meaning. Words mean whatever I want them to mean. It is easy to see it as an earlier version of “The Ashtray Argument.” [74] [75]
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory,’ ” Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’ ”
“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything, so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. “They’ve a temper, some of them—particularly verbs, they’re the proudest—adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs—however, I can manage the whole lot! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!” [76]
The Victorian WebJohn Tenniel’s illustration “Alice Meets Humpty,” from Lewis Carrol’s “Through the Looking Glass” (1865)*******
The question that lingers: was Kuhn’s philosophy an assault on truth? Had he turned history into a vast prison – something like Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon – a circular building with cells along the circumferance. And then thrown away the key? “These cells are divided from one another, and the prisoners by that means secluded from all communication with each other, by partitions in the form of radii issuing from the circumference towards the centre… The apartment of the inspector occupies the centre; you may call it if you please the inspector’s lodge.” [77] No prisoner can communicate with any other prisoner, only with the inspector. Unlike Bentham’s panopticon, however, Kuhn’s prison is a prison in time, not space. 
The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. IV, 172-3I believe that the ashtray incident was motivated by Kuhn’s own doubts about his work, as well as his annoyance with me. My belief was reinforced by a recent memoir, “Little Did I Know” (2010) by Stanley Cavell, who had been at Harvard with Kuhn in the 1950s and subsequently a junior faculty member with him at the University of California-Berkeley.
Kuhn was in the process of writing “Structure.” And as it turns out, Kuhn had Wittgenstein and Hitler on his mind. Was Kuhn, like any good Jewish boy of the period (myself included), struggling with the meaning of the Third Reich? If there are no absolute value judgments to be made about one historical period (read: paradigm) or another, what about the Nazis? Following a department meeting, Kuhn had accompanied Cavell home for a drink.
…talking past midnight Tom was becoming agitated in a way I had not seen. He suddenly lurched forward in his chair with a somewhat tortured look that I had begun to be familiar with. “I know Wittgenstein uses the idea of ‘paradigm.’ But I do not see its implications in his work. How do I answer the objection that this destroys the truth of science? I deplore the idea. Yet if instruction and agreement are the essence of the matter, then Hitler could instruct me that a theory is true and get me to agree.” My reply I cast as follows, using the words I remember using then. “No he could not; he could not educate you in, convince you of, show you, its truth. Hitler could declare a theory to be true, as an edict. He could effectively threaten to kill you if you refuse to, or fail to, believe it. But all that means is that he is going to kill you; or perhaps kill you if you do not convince him, show him, that you accept and will follow the edict. I don’t say this is clear. But it is something I cannot doubt is worth doing whatever work it will take to make clear.” Tom’s response was startling. He arose almost violently from his chair, began pacing in front of the fireplace, saying something like, “Yah. Yah.” What causes conviction? What, perhaps rather, may undo an unnoticed conviction? [78]I asked Cavell about this passage. About Kuhn and Wittgenstein and about how Wittgenstein had opened the door to relativism.
STANLEY CAVELL: Kuhn really was terribly alarmed that Wittgenstein was denying the rationality of truth. That somehow, everything, was going to come down to agreement. It would be circling around that… Which I don’t think is a non-issue. I think it’s quite real.The actual quotation is from paragraph 241 of “Philosophical Investigations”:
ERROL MORRIS: And what were your feelings about it?
STANLEY CAVELL: …that it was a genuine issue, that Wittgenstein was opening that up. Part of it was a matter of getting down, in the mud, and figuring out what “agreement” meant.
ERROL MORRIS: This would be in “Philosophical Investigations”?
STANLEY CAVELL: Yes. “Philosophical Investigations.” That’s what we talked about. The early Wittgenstein, as far as we were concerned, was frozen history. Nobody was really interested in trying to make that work, it was “Philosophical Investigations” that was really hot. The issue about what human agreement could establish, and how deep that agreement was. Wittgenstein’s quote, “We don’t agree in judgement, we agree in form of life.” Whether that meant that knowledge of the universe was relative to human forms of life. We went around the track with that a lot, and, why not?
“So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?” –– It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life.This passage, as well as many others in “Philosophical Investigations,” has produced extended commentary. But Wittgenstein, notoriously difficult to pin-down, at least in this one instance, seems to be saying what he’s saying. And he opens the door (or the lid of Pandora’s Box) to a relativistic notion of truth. [79] [80] In paragraph 241, it’s agreement between human beings that decides what is true or false. It suggests that we could agree that the earth is flat and that would make it so. So much for the relationship between science and the world. And yet, Kuhn made peace with this idea. He even made it the cornerstone of his philosophy of science. A couple of years later in “Structure,” Kuhn would write, “We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, implicit or explicit, that changes of paradigm bring scientists and those that learn from them, closer and closer to the truth.” [81]
[64] Thomas Kuhn,”The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-93.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press.2000, pp. 123-124. Karl Popper published a book called “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge” (1963), a book expanding on the ideas in his seminal book, “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” (1934). “The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-73,” which occupies a similar position in the development of Kuhn’s thought, might be more appropriately called “Contradictions and Obfuscations.”
[65] Thomas Kuhn, “The Road Since Structure: Philosophical Essays, 1970-93,” Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2000. pp. 124.
[66] Donald Davidson, “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 47, pp. 5-20. 1973-1974.
[67] Jorge Luis Borges. “Pierre Menard: Author of the Quixote.” Collected Fictions. New York: Viking. 1998.
[68] The entire passage, “…historians must and ought to be exact, truthful, and absolutely free of passions, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor love, should make them swerve from the path of …truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor. In this account I know there will be found all that can be rightly desired in the most pleasant history, and if something of value is missing from it, in my opinion I maintain that the fault lies with the dog who was its author rather than with any defect in the subject.”
[69] This passage in Borges (and, consequently, also in Menard and Cervantes) concerns the nature of historical truth. Cervantes is a historical realist; Menard, a historical relativist. For Cervantes history is objective; for Menard, history is socially constructed.
[70] An updated version of the “conflict” between Menard and Cervantes is embodied in an quote from a Bush aide. It appeared in a New York Times Magazine article, Oct. 17, 2004, and was later attributed to Karl Rove. It pits those that are influenced by facts against those that (take your pick) create them or make them up. “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
[71] Jorge Luis Borges, “Selected Non-Fictions,” New York: Viking. 1999. p. 258-9. In Alberto Manguel’s memoir, “In Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, he argued that a book changes according to the reader’s attributions… Pierre Menard is, of course, an invention, a superb and hilarious imagining, but the notion that a text changes according to the reader’s assumptions is old… Once, after noting that we read now Dante in ways he couldn’t have imagined…Borges recalled an observation by the 9th century mystic, Scotus Erigena. According to the author of On the Divisions of Nature, there are as many readings of a text as there are readers…” Indeed. What is novel is the claim that Menard and Cervantes cannot be compared.
[72] The actual quote is from a Father Brown mystery, “The Head of Caesar,” “‘What we all dread most,’ said the priest in a low voice, ‘is a maze with no center. That is why atheism is only a nightmare.’ ‘I will tell you everything,’ said the red-haired girl doggedly, ‘except why I am telling you; and that I don’t know.’” Borges presumably translated Chesterton into Spanish, and it was translated back into English in a slightly different form. From “a maze with no center” to “nothing is more frightening than a labyrinth with no center. Nevertheless, Borges’s interpretation of Chesterton’s English translated from Spanish back into English is perfectly intelligible. In fact, I prefer the Chesterton after the two translations. G.K. Chesterton. “The Head of Caesar,” “The Wisdom of Father Brown.” Dodd, Mead. 1924.
[73] Bertrand Russell, “Nightmares of Eminent Persons,” London: Bodley Head. 1954, pp. 36-39. The illustrations by Charles W. Stewart, an ex-ballet dancer, are extraordinary. Here is his obituary in The Independent.
[74] I have occasionally fantasized about a possible seminar with Humpty Dumpty, Wittgenstein, and Quine.
[75] A Wittgensteinian might be tempted to see this as an example of “private language,” and hence, impossible. But Humpty Dumpty’s language isn’t private, it’s publicly imposed by Humpty Dumpty.
[76] Lewis Carroll, “Through the Looking-Glass.” London: Macmillan. 1872.
[77] http://cartome.org/panopticon1.htm
[78] Stanley Cavell, “Little Did I Know: Excerpts From Memory.” Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 2010. Cavell, also wrote, “Once, lingering over too much coffee and many too many cigarettes, after a particularly resonant blast of disagreement from him, I replied: ‘Tom, please do not address me. I am not a convention.’ He was shocked, put his forehead to the table, and banging it gently several times, he said, in rhythm, and softly: ‘I know. I know I do that.’”
[79] This is, of course, my interpretation. With Wittgenstein, there are bound to be disagreements. There are many philosophers who would argue vociferously that Wittgenstein is not a relativist. However, here is a relevant passage from the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” entry on Wittgenstein, “In Wittgenstein’s terms, agreement is required ‘not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments’ (PI 242), and this is ‘not agreement in opinions but in form of life’ (PI 241)… Used by Wittgenstein sparingly — five times in the Investigations — this intriguing concept has given rise to interpretative quandaries and subsequent contradictory readings. Forms of life can be understood as changing and contingent, dependent on culture, context, history, etc; this appeal to forms of life grounds a relativistic reading of Wittgenstein…” Definitions, judgments, agreement in opinions. I can see in Wittgenstein’s “forms of life” an early version of Kuhn’s paradigms. Groups of people who use language in the same way, disagreements and agreements about the rules, etc. Evidently, given the passage in Stanley Cavell’s memoir, Kuhn saw an early version of his paradigms in Wittgenstein’s form of life.
[80] Kuhn may have wanted to formalize Wittgenstein’s idea that were are “trapped” in language, that there is no independent way of determining “true” from “false.” But to formalize Wittgenstein correctly, Kuhn would have to abandon any distinction between “true” and “false” even within a given paradigm.
[81] Thomas Kuhn, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1996 p. 170.
