Julian Thomas wrote:
> This would explain why antiquarianism/archaeology really got going in
> the modern era, and why there has been such a close relationship between
> archaeology and the state, from Gustavus Adolphus and Charles II
> onwards. It is also, I think, why states have been happiest to support
> archaeology in a culture-historic mode, which seeks to identify bounded
> cultural areas which correspond with ethnic entities. Culture-history
> promotes the myth of the 'imagined community' (discuss)!
and Bjorn Andersson wrote:
> This theory is considered "bad", or not politically correct, when nazis do
> it in order to claim more space for the german reich, or when present
> capitalist states do it for, more or less, the same reason. And as well to
> construe a national heritage that could be sold to tourists.
>
> But the paradox is that when aboriginal peoples all over the world use the
> same approach in order to preserv their respective way of life, "as it
> always have been", then all of a sudden, the culture-history approach is
> "good" and politically correct.
>
> Indeed this is strange. I don't know what to think about it. But my first
> interpretation of this archaeological dilemma, is that archaeological
> approaches and theories are political instruments which are used to serve
> certain interests for certain kinds of people. Therefore, theoretical
> debates should not revolve around what theory of what philosopher is
> "right". Like "Heidegger is right, Hempel is wrong", or vice versa. It's
> the political and ethical use of the theories and approaches that should be
> No. 1 on the theorical agenda.
>
> This is not to say that we shouldn't discuss the contents of the theories
> themselves, just that the cognitive can't be separated from the social.
" The uses of a great professor are only partly to give us knowledge;
his real purpose is to take his students beyond knowledge into the
transcendental domain of the unknown, the future and the dream--to
expand the limits of the human consciousness." (Loren Eiseley)
As I see it,there is then a burden upon each individual to discover or
establish where they fit,(as an individual,as a scientist,as a scholar,etc),in to the
spectrum of "certain kinds of people with certain interests" because unless that
primary basis is found,how can one evaluate "political and ethical usage",
other than merely and lazily following ones' local cultural norm,be it aboriginal or nazi,
or by leveraging some other second-hand "political and ethical usage" ?
Where does the "myth of the imagined community " live ?
"We learn about our culture in many ways, including reading and writing,
watching television, being deliberately taught by parents and school
teachers, and by listening to the conversations of others. In any
consideration of memetics, from its origins in Dawkins's work, right through
to the present, we count as memes all of the cultural behaviours passed on
in these various ways, including everything from fashions and habits, to
political ideologies and scientific theories." (Susan Blackmore)
I believe that,to be truly scientific,it is desirable to sequestrate oneself from
that cultural conditioning.(My preferred route toward that stance is zen).
Most of science 'as is' prides itself on 'objectivity','avoiding bias',etc.But it
seems to me that even in the simplest formulation 'A causes B',a fundamental
error is built in,because 'A causes B' is meaningless without an observer.
The observer is implicit and assumed in the formulation,but invisible and unmentioned.
And what could that observer be,except a biological creature,a human being ?
'Everything said is said by an observer'.(Maturana & Varela)
So we are obliged to gaze into the observer.This is not 'navel-gazing',or
narcissism or solipsism.This is true 'scientia',the quest for knowledge,
understanding,explanation.
"(Autopoiesis)makes us wonder
about the self-production of the ideational process that produces the
theories that we expose about living beings. In a sense autopoiesis always
implicitly calls for it's theory to understand the grounds of the production
of the theory itself. In fact, we find ourselves enacting the process of
theorizing autopoietic phenomena. The nub of paradox that is autopoietic
theory has the same characteristics of the autopoietic system itself. That
is to say an external theorist cannot understand the outcome of an
autopoietic theorists thoughts about phenomena, because it does not fit into
the traditional cause and effect framework. The autopoietic theorist somehow
becomes fused with his theory within the magical circle around the
paradoxicality. The autopoietic theorist has entered this circle and has
taken up a different relation to his theory than the normal theorist. This
is like the fusion of the living and the cognitive within the autopoietic
system. The fact that the traditional theorist cannot understand the results
of the autopoietic theorizing is like the closure of the autopoietic system
to the external observer. This essential change of status of the autopoietic
theorist stems from the fact that autopoietic theorizing is essentially
rooted in Process Being not in the pretense of stasis of normal Theory that
seeks to produce knowledge relationships that will not change. Instead
autopoietic theory is a lot like the other humanistic disciplines developed
in this century: namely Phenomenology, Dialectics, Hermeneutics and
Structuralism."(Kent Palmer)
So where does this lead ? Maybe Merleau-Ponty's 'Wild Being' ?
"Wild Being is as strange to us of the Western Tradition as Quantum Mechanics
and Relativity were to those who inhabited the Newtonian world. We are so
used to thinking in terms of dualities that it is almost impossible for us
to think of the chiasmic fusion of dualities just prior to their entry into
complete non-duality. When we speak of complete non-duality we have in mind
what David Loy calls NONDUALITY in his book on the relation between Asian
philosophies and Western philosophies. Non-dual states of thought,
perception, and action are the ground from which Asian religion and
philosophy begins. In the Western Tradition we have done our best to ignore
and repudiate these non-dual states, except in some forms of mysticism which
we subsequently devalued. Therefore we do not have the tools in our culture
to talk about these non-dual states that have been so important to other
cultures. Thus when the meta-levels of Being lead us back toward this common
ground it is difficult think about the implications of the unthinkability of
the fifth meta-level of Being and it is even more difficult in some ways to
think about the partial non-duality of Wild Being (the fourth meta-level of
Being)." (Kent Palmer)
Chris.
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