Nehamas 1985_Convergence and Methodology

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Convergence and Methodology in Science and CriticismAuthor(s): Alexander NehamasSource: New Literary History, Vol. 17, No. 1, Philosophy of Science and Literary Theory(Autumn, 1985), pp. 81-87Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468980

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Convergence and Methodology in Science

and Criticism

Alexander Nehamas

IN THE Polemical Introduction to Anatomy of Criticism,Northrop

Frye wrote that

at no point is there any direct learning of literature itself. Physicsis an or-

ganized body of knowledgeabout nature, and a student of it says that he is

learning physics,not nature. Art, like nature, has to be distinguishedfromthe systematic study of it, which is criticism.... Literature is not a subject of

study, but an objectof study: the fact that it consistsof words ... makesusconfuse it with the talking verbaldisciplines.The libraries reflect our con-fusion by cataloguingcriticism as one of the subdivisionsof literature.Crit-

icism, rather, is to art what historyis to action and philosophyto wisdom:averbal mitationof a humanproductive powerwhichin itselfdoes not speak.l

Frye's absolute distinction between literature and its study may pro-voke serious doubts among those who want, as many do today, to

show that criticism, along with other disciplines, lacks an ultimatelysound, indubitable, and unrevisable basis. Indeed, we would do well

to question Frye's view that the practice of our libraries reflects a

confusion. On the contrary, we should insist that criticism, history,and philosophy are not purely discursive, imitative representationsof

voiceless, productivehuman activities.

History,or

historiography,can, after all, inform action, and philosophy, one hopes, sometimes

produces wisdom. Criticism need not be taken as anything other than

an integral part of literature, a literary genre in its own right whose

explicit and immediate, though by no means only, subject is literature

itself. Still, within the context of discussing the connections between

philosophy, science, criticism, and literature, Frye's distinction, suit-

ably tempered, is useful and important.A provisional distinction between criticism and literature seems to

me particularly apt whenever the issue of convergence becomesa

topic in comparisons of philosophy of science and literary theory.

Failing to mark this difference results in a serious unclarity about

what exactly is being compared to what, and often leads to the wrong

comparison. Let me try to make this point in greater detail.

Many philosophers of science no longer accept the view that science



NEW LITERARY HISTORY

as a whole is as a matter of fact progressing toward a single, over-

arching, complete, and unrevisable theoretical account of the world.

We have given up the idea, or the hope, that all our scientific theories,incorporating the truths contained in their predecessors and elim-

inating their errors, are cumulatively converging upon the single final

truth about the world. Nevertheless, a more modest ideal of local as

opposed to global convergence, or of convergence in some specific

respects, has survived the radical criticisms of Feyerabend and of the

first edition of Kuhn's Structureof ScientificRevolutions.2Mary Hesse,for example, though she agrees with these and other writers that

there is no such thing as the convergence of the conceptual frame-

work of theories towards universalizable truth, points out that stillnatural science is instrumentallyprogressive. There is instrumental

progress in the sense that we have vastly increasing possibilities of

predicting and controlling empirical events by means of experimen-tation and theory construction. 3 But even such modest convergencehas seemed enough to many people to justify a radical distinction

between science and literature, since it is quite obvious that there is

absolutely nothing, for example, for the epic or the novel or the prose

poem to converge toward.In the relevant sense, literature has always

been essentially directionless. This has always seemed, and will con-tinue to seem, to constitute an insurmountable difference between

the two practices. This difference has often been interpreted to the

cognitive detriment of literature, and it has sometimes prompted the

unhelpful Romantic reaction of trying to attribute to literature the

capacity to yield higher or essentially particular knowledge.

Hilary Putnam, who refuses to accept what he calls a second-class

status for our nonscientific practices, has recently presented a dif-

ferent defense.4 Putnam claims that scientific theories are convergent

in the sense that later theories within a single science will typicallyinclude their predecessors as limiting cases, applicable within a care-

fully circumscribed narrow domain under specific conditions. But he

also draws a sharp distinction between the equations contained within

a theory and the world view associated with it. And he argues that it

is only the equations of earlier theories, and not their world views,that are included as special cases within their successors: There is

no sense in which the world view of Newtonian physics is a 'limitingcase' of the world view of general relativity, or a 'limiting case' of the

world view of quantum mechanics. There is no more evidence thatscience converges to one final world view than there is that literature

or morality converge to one final world view (p. 239). This, Putnam

believes, softens the contrast between science and literature. In ad-

dition, he continues, despite the fact that no convergence of world

view is possible either in science or in literature, we do sometimes

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CONVERGENCE IN SCIENCE AND CRITICISM

get things right, and he cites Newton and Matthew Arnold as writers

who, in their different domains, did on occasion hit upon the truth

(p. 239). This is no doubt correct. But Putnam goes on to point outthat Newton's statement that the tides are caused by the gravitational

pull of the sun and the moon has already been reinterpreted in the

light of general relativity and will continue to be reinterpreted as

newer and more sophisticated theories are developed. This alludes

back to the point that the equations of earlier theories often appearas limiting cases of the equations of their successors. But since this

does not seem possible in any way in the case of literature, one maybe left with the uneasy impression that, after all is said and done,

there still is a sense in which science progresses and in which literaturedoes not. And this, for some, may once again be sufficient groundsfor the view that our nonscientific practices lack the first-class status

that Putnam, and I, would want to secure for them.

Let us now consider Putnam's example of Matthew Arnold, for it

shows, I think, what his argument really is; it also shows that, giventhat argument, Putnam's general conclusion, which we quoted above,is misleading. Why, we should ask, is Newton not compared to

someone who, unlike Arnold, truly deserves the comparison, to a

writer of the caliber of Homer, St. John of the Cross, or Proust? Andas soon as the question is put, its answer becomes obvious: because

there is no sense in which Homer, St. John, or Proust, whatever the

magnitude of their achievement, got things right as Newton got the

explanation of the occurrence of the tides right. And it is, I think,

just this feature of the situation that generates our commonplacedoubts regarding the cognitive reliability of literature.

It is my central claim in these comments that such doubts are in-

evitable as long as we compare science and literature on the issue of

convergence, for in this context this is simply the wrong comparison.We need not accept anything beyond the least controversial version

of Frye's view in order to see that if science is the study of nature,

then, for our current purposes, we must compare it not to literature

in general but to criticism in particular. For criticism, though it is, as

we have said, a literary genre in its own right, is still the study of

literature, as it often is the study of itself. Within the terms of this

analogy, science is to nature as criticism is to literature. And to askwhether literature converges toward the truth as much, or as little,

as science is as fruitless as it is to ask whether nature itself is conver-gent. It is just for this reason that Putnam, who is after all concernedwith interpretation rather than with literature as a whole, is led to

cite a critic, an interpreter, and not a poet or a novelist in his com-

parison to Newton.5

Once we see clearly that criticism and not literature in general is

83




the proper term of comparison to science, we can see the issue of

convergence from a fresh point of view. Of course, criticism is not

instrumentally progressive, since it does not aim at predicting and

controlling empirical events, nor can earlier interpretations become

in a literal sense limiting cases of their successors. Yet later interpre-tations of literary texts, even as they add to the total number of lit-

erary texts to be interpreted, constantly build upon (some of) the

views presented in earlier criticism. The grammatical investigationsof Aristophanes of Byzantium and of Aristarchus, the allegorical

readings of the Neoplatonists, the textual and historical researches

of Wolff and his followers, the study of the oral tradition by Parryand Lord, the vast number of specific historical, biographical, psy-

chological, linguistic, sociological, analytic, imagistic, structural, and

other examinations, even further developments within the genre of

the epic itself and ever-new treatments of the specific features and

characters of the Odysseywithin the literary tradition-all this pro-vides us with a better understanding of at least some aspects of this

text than we have ever had before. This is not to say that our global

understanding of the Odysseyas a whole is deeper than it has ever

been(except

in the sense wejust saw),

since it is not clear that this

text is a single whole, the single, final interpretation of which we are

as a matter of fact approaching. We may actually have to believe that

this is the case while we are engaged in interpreting it, but even our

own constraints on what such an interpretation must be like are sub-

ject to change over time. Such a belief, I think, is common to scientists

and critics alike and does not distinguish one group from the other.6

Further, later interpretations of a literary text often preserve views

reached in earlier readings, though they also provide a different ac-

count,a

reinterpretation,of the

groundsof such views. And in

this,again, we find a parallel to the reinterpretation of Newton's expla-nation of the tides within the framework of general relativity. Paul

de Man, for example, argues that The Birth of Tragedycannot be givena consistent reading because its rhetorical structure radically under-

mines its explicit content and thus its unity. He still, however, begins

by quoting Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe's comment that this text would

be, in the final analysis, Nietzsche's only genuine 'Book' and tries

to account for this partially correct impression within the terms of

his own moregeneral reading.7It could be argued, of course, that our progress with respect to a

text like the Odysseys far from overwhelming, since so much of this

text still defies interpretation. But this is hardly surprising. On theview I am proposing, each text is to its many interpretations what theworld is to the many theories that are directed toward it, and each

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CONVERGENCE IN SCIENCE AND CRITICISM

text is as inexhaustible as the world (though not all texts are, unfor-

tunately, equally interesting). Progress is global in neither case; and

in criticism as well as in science, again in the words of Mary Hesse:

Pragmatic success and approximate laws are always relative to par-ticular local phenomena. Even if these phenomena extend to the

galaxies, they never encompass the possibly infinite universe, and

however extensive they are in space, they are necessarily very local

in comparison with the whole past and future of the universe in time.

The whole of the data is never in, and there is always room for

further conceptual revolution, however accurate the current theoryis for current purposes. Newton's explanation of the tides and Par-

ry's explanation of Homer's repetition of key formulaic phrases arenot after all so different either in scope or in kind.

Can, then, such a demonstration of a parallel between science and

criticism on the issue of convergence, assuming that the sketchy and

programmatic remarks made here can be filled out, vindicate some

of the claims of criticism to our serious attention? It might, if Putnam

is right in his view that what troubles people about interpretation... is not its lack of methodology but its lack of convergence (p.

238). But

though

Kuhn and de Man, with whom Putnam is

engaged,may not have been troubled by criticism's lack of methodology,others, I think, have been-E. D. Hirsch is notable among them.8 A

whole new argument, I think, is needed to address such concerns.

These concerns, it seems to me, are the targets of Richard Rorty and

Stanley Fish, who try to argue, not that criticism does after all

have a methodology, but that, contrary to our intuitive views, science

does not.9 And their position is that criteria of acceptability in science

as well as in criticism are determined not through objectively and

universallyvalid

principlesbut

through intersubjective agree-ment among the members of the relevant scientific and interpretivecommunities.

This is a particularly complicated issue, and all I can do about it

here is simply to make a plea. Even Putnam, whose approach on this

matter is more conservative than that of Rorty and Fish, is willing to

attribute a normative, historical dimension to scientific method, thus

allowing it to change over time.10 There clearly is much to be said

for some version of this historical and social conception of method

andrationality.

But what has notyet

been said isanything concretelyhistorical or social. We still do not know what constitutes an interpre-

tive community, what qualifies one to be a member of such a group,to how many such communities a single person can belong, how much

disagreement a community can tolerate without breaking down. It

seems obvious that the answers to these questions must be specific,

85




historical, and institutional; we cannot expect a general theory of how

such groups are formed, maintained, and dissolved. Not every com-

munity, just because it is a community, is as legitimate as every other

(just as not every interpretation, as proponents of this view insist, is

equally acceptable). We need to investigate the origins of a commu-

nity, its presuppositions, its goals, its explicit as well as its ideologicalinterests and values, its underlying and guiding views and commit-

ments. We must, on a case-by-case basis, be prepared not only to

describe but also to evaluate such communities. To accomplish this

multiple end we must engage in the historical or genealogical ac-

counts initiated by Nietzsche, and sometimes practiced by Foucault,

even if we do not share all their assumptions. In particular, we donot need, in order to engage in such investigations, to accept Fou-

cault's view, which is obvious in all but his most recent writings, that

we cannot evaluate and change the practices involved in such com-

munities or systems of thought.The philosophy of science used to be one of the least historically

conscious branches of philosophy. Literary theory came about in

large measure as a reaction to the excesses of what used to be known

as literary history. It is as ironic as it is exhilarating to see that the

philosophy of science now suggests that its newly found historical

dimension be transferred to literary theory, while literary theory of-

fers to the philosophy of science a broader and vastly richer notion

of explanation and interpretation than had ever seemed before

possible.

UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH

NOTES

1 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism Princeton, 1957), pp. 11-12.

2 Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London, 1975); Thomas Kuhn, The Structureof

ScientificRevolutions (Chicago, 1962).3 Mary Hesse, Revolutions and Reconstructions n thePhilosophyof Science(Bloomington,Ind., and London, 1980), p. xi. All subsequent references are to the same page of

Hesse's book. A similar view can be found in Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History

(Cambridge, 1981), pp. 175-76, 185.4 Hilary Putnam, The Craving for Objectivity, New LiteraryHistory,15 (1984), 229-

39. Parenthetical references to Putnam are all to this essay.5 We should note, however, that Putnam consistently discusses morality in parallelto criticism, and the question arises whether moral philosophy would not have beenthe proper institution in this context.

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CONVERGENCE IN SCIENCE AND CRITICISM 87

6 I have tried to articulate such a view in The Postulated Author: Critical Monism

as a Regulative Ideal, CriticalInquiry,8 (1981), 133-49.

7 Paul de Man,Allegories of Reading

(New Haven and London, 1979),p.

83.

8 E. D. Hirsch, Jr., Validityin Interpretation New Haven and London, 1967).9 Richard Rorty, Method, Social Science, and Social Hope, in Consequences f Prag-matism(Minneapolis, 1982), pp. 191-210, and Texts and Lumps, New LiteraryHistory,this issue. Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? (Cambridge, Mass., 1980) and

Anti-Professionalism, New LiteraryHistory, this issue.

10 Putnam, Reason, Truthand History, p. 185.

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