Grand Strategy Annex

Ontological Saturation.—One way in which a concept can be considered narrow would be because only one (or a few) objects fall under its extension. This is the case of “natural satellite of the Earth”—an example employed by Frege. This example, however, isn’t necessarily narrow in the sense of having a narrow extension; it is in another sense a highly general concept because it is a special case of the very general concept of a moon. If, at some future date, the solar system is flooded with many asteroids, say, from some extraterrestrial close encounter, the Earth could acquire many additional natural satellites, and then the concept “natural satellite of Earth” could have a great many objects fall under its extension. The fact that this concept can have a changing extension reflects a generality compatible with its current narrowness. The conceptual simplicity of “natural satellite of Earth” betrays its generality, even if a single object, or no object at all, falls under the concept; in this case, the intension is simple, and that simplicity can yield a narrow or a wide extension. A complex intension more readily yields a narrow extension, and an intension might be narrow in more than one way, but that is because there are an infinitude of forms of particularism that could render an intension narrow. We can arrive at particularism by specifying many properties (restricting the extension by expanding the intension) or through the use of highly particularistic concepts, but highly particularistic concepts are naturally complex, i.e., they tacitly incorporate a greater complexity of intension. The concept “natural satellite of Earth” can be made less complex by eliminating the qualifier “natural” and by substituting any planet for “Earth,” but it can also be made more complex by specifying the diameter or orbital distance or even surface features of the natural satellite. When we think of “The Moon” in all is particularity we could be said to entertain the concept of the Moon, but this is misleading, like Hegel’s “concrete universal,” which isn’t a concept at all. A concept is, as Frege noted, “unsaturated,” but any concrete individual is particular in virtue of its ontological saturation.

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Projects and Questions.—There is more than one way to enter into a given philosophical tradition. Thomas Williams in his lectures “Reason and Faith: Philosophy of the Middle Ages” said that the philosophical project of the Middle Ages was “faith seeking understanding,” and he says in these lectures, “Their project is my project.” That’s one way to enter into a philosophical tradition. I don’t share Williams’ interest in the philosophical project of the Middle Ages, but I do share his interest in the philosophy of the Middle Ages. I can say of Augustine, for example, that the questions he asked and attempts to answer are the questions that interest me. So I could say, “Their questions are my questions.” That’s another way to enter into a philosophical tradition. Of course, these two overlap, “Their project is my project” and “their questions are my questions” obvious will share much of their substance. It’s a difference of emphasis and approach.

The Pessimistic Weltanschauung.—Both Schopenhauer and Spengler are understood to be pessimists (rightly or wrongly), but their philosophies of history are quite different—one might even say radically different. This could be taken as a demonstration that pessimism in and of itself does not dictate any particular philosophy of history, even in its rough outlines. That is to say, there is no pessimistic philosophy of history. We imagine that pessismism as an attitude will shape all that follows from this perspective, but no. The metaphysical views of Schopenhauer and Spengler are much more the drivers of their respective philosophies of histories than their pessimism; ultimately, their pessimism is epiphenomenal to their metaphysics.

Podcast:          https://open.spotify.com/episode/4HAzDJUwloZlwnSy6q86XL?si=9R78xOBMTcqtTeQSu_QFDA

Growth and Contraction.—There is a sense in which scholarship incorporates into itself conventions that allow individuals with very different instincts to collaborate. Note the collaboration is a higher standard of cooperation than communication, and a much higher standard of cooperation than mutual participation in civil society. We can effectively communicate with many more individuals than those with whom we can collaborate, and we can mutually participate in civil society with a yet much larger number of individuals than with whom we can communicate. In an open and growing society, the increasing integration of civil society contributes to the expansion of communication, and the expansion of communication contributes to wider collaboration as greater numbers of persons are drawn into actively participating in society. On the other hand, one of the hallmarks of a hidebound and stagnant society that there is an attempt to exclude those with whom we cannot effectively cooperate in civil society, making the scope of civil society as narrow as that of the scope of cooperation. 

The Paleontology of Knowledge.—A fossil observation could be defined as an observation made under a different epistemic regime than that of today, so that to treat it as an observation for the purposes of contemporary knowledge it has to be interpreted within the contemporary epistemic paradigm. This translation from one epistemic paradigm to another will always pose problems of translation (pace Quine on the indeterminacy of translation). A later human civilization may have to translate our science into terms that made sense for them, allowing for our ellipses and our eccentric biases, as we attempt to translate past systematic attempts to formulate knowledge into our own systematic attempt to formulate knowledge, but there will never be any precise equivalents because of the indeterminacy of translation. This is a humbling realization for us, since our epistemic regime places a high value on precision, but another interesting consequence follows from this. All historical observations are fossil observations, with the possible exception of the history of the present. But the history of the present might just as well be called primary source material and not really history at all; we might with some justification reserve the term “history” only for accounts of the past written in an era following an era which has lapsed. Or we could simply distinguish history based on fossil observations and history based on living observations, but however we do it, the longer the period of history that we cover, the more likely we are to make use of fossil observations. Is it this that has prevented history from becoming a science, because history attempts to combine into a single synthesis fossil observations from several distinct epistemic regimes, none of which are commensurable?

Podcast:          https://open.spotify.com/episode/4KmNKqBUfhkLwdDvxdEIM0?si=xCi4oOpOT-C82bR0DzBwFA

Observational Fossils.—Given that a lone contemporary (or even predecessor) of Copernicus could have formulated heliocentricism with evidence then available, and that this discovery might have gone entirely unnoticed, we could frame another speculative scenario in which the lost and re-discovered astronomical work contained some innovation not known to Copernicus, and possibly not even known to us. In this scenario, the lost and re-discovered manuscript is not a mere historical curiosity, but a striking and perhaps even revolutionary contribution to thought. We have long passed the point where ancient observations could force any revision in our scientific theories, so we can rule out the possibility of any contribution in the form of improved techniques or technologies of observation. However, the discovery of an observation since lost or forgotten, like the lunar observations on 18 June 1178 recorded by Gervase of Canterbury, postulated to have been the impact that formed the Giordano Bruno crater on the moon, might make us aware of something we didn’t otherwise know about, which can then be assimilated not only into contemporary knowledge, but also the observations themselves can be assessed from the perspective of contemporary methodology. Precisely because we do subject such observations to contemporary critique, the further any observations recede into the past, the more likely they are to be questioned and the less compelling the evidence appears. The 1178 observations remain controversial because of the vernacular in which they were described and the lack of confirmation from independent sources. Such observations can be theoretically fruitful in the sense that they pose a problem for the explanation of what exactly was observed. Past observations, then, can be of some value, but can we say the same for theory? Can we make a clean distinction between observation and theory that would allow for theory to remain viable even as observation becomes problematic? Could any past theoretical innovation be valuable to contemporary science, so that some long lost manuscript contained unknown secrets of the cosmos? While for the purposes of philosophy of science we may want to distinguish observational and theoretical terms, in practice observation and theory are tightly-coupled: observations drive theory and theory drives further observation. This means that the increased precision of observation drives increased precision in theory, and both are carried forward together by increased precision of measurement. Once the error bars of measurement exceed the observational parameters of past theory, both observation and theory of two distinct periods of human knowledge increasingly diverge, and their relevance to each other declines. This may be one mechanism of paradigm shift, but it’s not only such mechanism.     

Counterfactual Heliocentrism.—Suppose someone searching in a neglected archive comes across a manuscript by an astronomer that lays out the Copernican heliocentric theory of cosmology. Further suppose that this predates Copernicus, and suppose that subsequent research reveals that the author in question had access to astronomical observations of at least the level of sophistication of those to which Copernicus had access, so his conclusions are as well-founded as those of Copernicus. Any late medieval astronomer could have had copies of Ptolemy’s Almagest and the Alphonsine Tables, both of which Copernicus relied upon, and Copernicus had no decisively new observational technique or technologies. And seeking to soften the blow of his conclusions, Copernicus, in the best medieval tradition, deferred to an ancient authority: Aristarchus of Samos, none of whose works survive, but Archimedes in The Sand Reckoner records Aristarchus’ heliocentrism. Any medieval astronomer could have had this reference too. Now further suppose that our fictional astronomer died in obscurity, and no one looked at his manuscript until its discovery in the 21st century. We cannot know that there is no manuscript like this. Copernicus did not have especially good astronomical data, what he had was what others at the time had, and his innovations were primarily theoretical. Others could have reached the same conclusions. To what degree would we need to re-write the history of astronomy and of modern science in the light of such a discovery? If we count Copernicus as the beginning of the scientific revolution, should we shift our identification of the advent of modern science to this earlier figure? What is the value, and what is the historical status, of a scientific discovery that influences no one at the time, and no one in subsequent history until it is rediscovered at a time when it is a mere curiosity? Science has many instances of anticipations, more or less explicit, and of simultaneous discovery, so this is question that recurs to us with some regularity. In this fictional scenario is the heliocentric anticipation the origin of anything? Or in its isolation, its position outside customary frameworks of influence, is to not rather a dead end?  

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A Spengerlian Thought.—Consider the difference between the enthusiastically Faustian man, who is eager both to transcend and to transgress, who never sees a mountain he doesn’t want to climb, and who, in climbing, is fascinated with every step forward, drawn as though by a magnet, and the tragically Faustian man, who dreads the spur to action that goads him forward. The enthusiastically Faustian man is bursting with energy, difficult to restrain, headstrong in making his way and scarcely noticing those who fall by the wayside. He not only knows triumphs, but glories in them as his just due; he celebrates the deeds of his life with a clean conscience. Theodore Roosevelt was the very embodiment of enthusiastic Faustian man. The tragically Faustian man, on the other hand, is unhappily compulsive in the expansiveness of his life. He is driven forward in a kind of torment, always doubting, always hesitating, but driven forward nevertheless. He envies the sage of the East his perfect quietude in the lotus position, admiring that which we cannot bring himself to do. If he rests, he is discontent, and if he continues, he is discontent. He is a man at cross purposes with himself. Goethe’s Faust is an obviously tragic Faustian man, and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus the more so. Insofar as Spengler took Goethe as his model, his Faustian man was tragic, but Faustian man is not intrinsically tragic. And Goethe’s tragedy was a tragedy with salvation in the end, so not even the most tragic of tragic Faustians—he is, in a sense, the Aristotelian mean of Faustian man.