Hi Ken,
Great post. Many thanks. I enjoyed reading your analysis and discussion of
hermeneutics and the post before.
I would be interested in how you, or anyone else, sees that your explanation
of subjective and objective knowledge and understanding extends, differs or
is transformed when the language of representation and shared communication
is mathematics rather than conventional spoken language.
Many of us see the world via the perspective of formal symbolic mathematical
representation rather than spoken language.
Three interesting things that differ about when maths is used as language
for understanding the world are: the use of formally exact representation
(where necessary increasing the level of abstraction to ensure precision);
focus on abstraction and meta-abstraction of characteristics of situations,
experience and understanding; and, the ready ability of mathematical
language to extend perception, knowledge and representation of that which
is perceived beyond experiences (e.g. going beyond 4 dimensions).
I welcome your thoughts.
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Tuesday, 22 April 2014 4:05 PM
To: PHD-DESIGN PHD-DESIGN
Subject: Re: Knowledge
Dear All,
As a quick follow-up to my note on knowledge, I'd like to add that some
forms of knowledge depend entirely on subjectivity.
Hermeneutics and all forms of interpretive inquiry require and depend
entirely on the person that interprets. Consider the concepts of the
hermeneutical horizon or the hermeneutical spiral. We disclose or create
meaning and understanding at the interface between two hermeneutical
horizons, the horizon of that which we interpret, and the horizon of our
past experience and our own knowledge.
Meaning and knowledge arise from the meeting of the two horizons. This has
profound implications.
The first of these is that hermeneutical knowledge is always subjective and
can only come into being through subjectivity.
The second is that each instance of hermeneutical inquiry is located within
the being and from the perspective of a single, existential creature. Each
instance of hermeneutical understanding is direct and personal, and every
instance of shared hermeneutical understanding
The third is that all hermeneutical interpretations depending on this
subjective capacity must, in some respect, differ from all others because
each is anchored in a human experience that differs in some respect to all
others.
Even so, there is some distinction to be made between that which we may know
as an objective world and our subjective understanding of that world.
Herbert Blumer (1969: 21) writes nicely about this, "... an empirical
science presupposes the existence of an empirical world. Such an empirical
world exists as something available for observation, study and analysis. It
stands over against the scientific observer, with a character that has to be
dug out and established through observation, study and analysis. This
empirical world must forever be the central point of concern. It is the
point of depa1rture and the point of return in the case of empirical
science. It is the testing ground for any assertions made about the
empirical world. Reality for empirical science exists only in the empirical
world, can be sought only there, and can be verified only there."
When we use materials, we act in the empirical world. When we design things
for people, we act in their empirical world, and we encounter the horizons
of their experience as an existing world external to our knowledge and
interpretation.
The layered quality of objective and subjective worlds makes addressing
these issues a challenge. I was recently reading a chapter in Richard
Sennett's (2012) book on human cooperation that illuminates the issue. In a
chapter titled, "The 'Great Unsettling.' How the Reformation Transformed
Cooperation," Sennett (2012: 96-129) explored the ways in which the nature
of customs and social interaction transformed and developed cooperation from
medieval times to early modern times. Sennett opens by looking at a painting
by Hans Holbein the Younger titled The Ambassadors. This well-known picture
hangs in the National Gallery in London. Sennett uses the imagery and
iconography of the painting to shed light on three major themes - religious
ritual, the workshop, and civility. This is an interpretative inquiry that
draws on Sennett's experience and skill as a sociologist, looking into
social change through historical artifacts and evidence, drawing on sources
that range from dancer and dance historian Jennifer Homans or science
historian Steven Shapin to novelist Henry James and sociologist Norbert
Elias. All these come together in the light of Sennett's background and
experience, and from this, he discloses a world to us.
The world as each of us perceives it depends on the many aspects of who we
are - our history, our personality, our experiences, our mindset - all the
features that constitute the person and lifeworld each of us is and has.
Thus it is that each interpreter understands, speaks, and evokes a different
world. The subjectivity of the existential individual is a necessary part of
the hermeneutical horizon from which each person speaks and writes, and
Sennett's subjective self summons and interprets a world as only he can do.
Even so, this world has objective features, and the subjective
interpretation captures and reveals objective features that other observers
capture and reveal in different ways, all of them in some way recognizable
and all building a deeper and richer picture of the objective world.
It is the nature of hermeneutical inquiry to develop and examine both the
subjective and the objective. Hermeneutics can range from the purposely
ridiculous (f.ex., Cernea 2006) to the most painstaking and careful
scholarship (f.ex., Lubac 1998, 2000, 2009). The four senses of exegesis in
the original art of hermeneutics were allegory, typology, tropology, and
anagogy. Today, we use hermeneutics to understand and disclose a message, a
text, or a world as its creators intended it, as the first witnesses or
recipients understood it, as we may interpret it now, and as it may unfold
over time - with or without teleological implications.
All this requires an inwardness and subjectivity together with an outward
objectivity. These function in dialectical relationship one to the other.
With respect to subjective knowledge as contrasted with objective knowledge,
however, intention and purpose make a massive difference. Soren
Kierkegaard's subjective personal knowledge has a different quality and goal
than Michael Polanyi's. For Kierkegaard (see, f.ex., 1983a, 1983b),
knowledge of the world is less essential than knowledge of the inward and
the eternal.
Herman Melville (1983 [1851]: 845) could have been summarizing Kierkegaard
in the sermon that Father Mapple delivers in Chapter Three of Moby Dick:
"But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure
delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is
deep. Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low? Delight is to him
- a far, far upward, and inward delight - who against the proud gods and
commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self. Delight
is to him whose strong arms yet support him, when the ship of this base
treacherous world has gone down beneath him."
Polanyi's personal knowledge (1974 [1958) was an effort to understand moe
deeply what we may know of the world and how we may know it. It was an
effort to understand the relationship between the subjective world through
which we build our experience and the objective world that we hope to
understand - Blumer's obdurate reality. Polanyi was a physical chemist as
well as a sociologist and philosopher, and his inquiry into knowing and
knowledge (Polanyi 1969, 1974 [1958]) extended far beyond the realm of tacit
knowledge (Polanyi 2009 [1966]) that constitutes only one way of knowing
among many.
There are many kinds of subjectivity, and their goals and purposes are
different. Some kinds of subjectivity help us to know the world, others to
know the self; some help us to design for others, some to suit ourselves.
To get to the heart of this conversation requires serious inquiry. If we are
going to dig into epistemology, it requires more than a passing thought. In
acknowledging that value and even the necessity of the subjective, it is
useful to note that depth and clarity are a necessity even with respect to
the subjective.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor |
Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | University email
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Private email
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830
462 | Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University |
Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook
University | Townsville, Australia
--
References
Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism. Perspective and Method.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Cernea, Ruth Fredman, ed. 2006. The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Kierkegaard, Soren. 1983a [1843]. Fear and Trembling. (and) Repetition.
Kierkegaard's Writings, Vol. 6. Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Soren. 1983b [1849]. The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian
Psychological Exposition For Upbuilding And Awakening. Kierkegaard's
Writings, Vol. 19. Edited and Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Lubac, Henri de. 1998. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. Vol.
1. Trans., M. Sebanc. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company.
Lubac, Henri de. 2000. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. Vol.
2. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Lubac, Henri de. 2009. Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture.
Volume 3. Trans. E.M. Macierowksi. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
Melville, Herman. 1983 [1851]. Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby Dick. New York:
Library of America.
Polanyi, Michael. 1969. Knowing and Being, Essays by Michael Polanyi. Edited
by Marjorie Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Polanyi, Michael. 1974 [1958]. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical
Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Polanyi, Michael. 2009 [1966]. The Tacit Dimension. Foreword by Amartya Sen.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
--
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