El conocimiento como activo estratégico

The next case not only exemplifies this interaction, but also highlights our observations on interpretation as context-insertion, topicality and the importance of subject delimitation and

therefore of the model ofdisciplinarity in general. The termregression should not be understood

as a negative value judgment: it merely implies increasing the distance to the object in order to see its full extent or critically reflect on its implications. This stated, philosophy seems to provide apparently a more suitable context for such activities:

• “A basic function of philosophy is to analyse and criticise the implicit assumptions behind our thinking, whether it is based in science, culture or common sense”, Heylighen, Cilliers, and Gershenson, 2007.

• “[P]hilosophy has long served another unusual and useful role in intellectual culture; it has acted as an “incubator” for novel, speculative ideas, giving them room to develop to a point where they may become scientifically useful”, Godfrey-Smith, 2003, p. 154.

Therefore,regression could paradoxically be seen as a symptom of innovation, as suggested by

the case ofprematurity (6.2.2.2.3). Alternatively, it could be seen as a way of “going back to the

drawing board” in the wake of the scientific failure of some idea. There are examples to support either way of interpretation.

For example, when one reads the term evolution in a contemporary context (or synchronic

perspective), the almost automatic association – or its “conventional meaning” – would be the concept of the development of species described by the modern synthesis, i.e. “Darwin’s theory

of natural selection combined with population genetics based on Mendel and mathematizised by Fischer, Wright and Haldane” (Schwartz, cited in Gontier, 2006, p. 11). As it is fair to state that the paradigm ofevolution represents aprototype of modern progressive science, its appeal as an import (3.3.1.1) orinter-domain borrowing (3.3.1.2) to disciplines like terminology research can

be readily explained; we can now see how either process of term formation leads to the perception ofretronymy (5.3).

16

It would be interesting to know which subject classification was used to arrive at this clustering of publications, and from which considerations it was derived.

On diachronic inspection, it however emerges that as late as 1913, Webster’s unabridged

dictionary (now incorporated into Cassidy, 2013, my emphasis) still listed a different sense, which suggests that the emergence of the now-dominant sense wascontingent on the development of

the life sciences:

7. (Biol.) That theory of generation which supposes the germ to preexist in the

parent, and its parts to be developed, but not actually formed, by the procreative act; - opposed to epigenesis.

The term evolution as used in this sense seems to have been in currency, around that time, as

a synonym for the so-called preformation doctrine, preformatism or preformation theory. This

relation can only be induced by researching either the hypernymtheory of generation and/or the

antonymepigenesis. The term preformatism in a biological context is today at best of historical

interest:

Preformation Doctrine: outdated idea, predating microscopic studies, that or-

ganisms exist in a small, preformed state in the germ, and growth (in the absence of development or differentiation) consists of the unfolding of a pre-existing form some- times called a homunculus. Associated with Italian physiologist Marcello Malpighi (1628–94) and others, replaced historically by blending inheritance and later by Mendelian inheritance. There were two forms of preformation: ovism and animal- culism. Aka preformation theory,preformationism.

Mai, Owl, and Kersting, 2005, preformation doctrine

As we can see, the antiquated sense of evolution pertains to one of the precursor theories that

entered into one of the component elements of themodern synthesis(acontingency phenomenon

somewhere betweenretronymy andtopicality), but is unrelated to the synchronic understanding

ofevolution.

The concept ofpreformatism, displaced from biology, did however not disappear, but resurfaced

in philosophy as a metaphysical notion. In this field, it apparently retains some sort of concept status until today:

Epigenesis and Preformation aretwo persistent ways of describing and seeking to explain the development of individual organic form. Does every individual start from

material that is unformed, and the form emerges only gradually, over time? Or does the individual start in some already preformed, or predelineated, or predetermined way? The questions are part metaphysical: what is it that exists – form or also the unformed that becomes the formed? And they are partly epistemological: how do we know – through observation or inference? The debate has persisted since ancient times, and today plays out as genetic determinists appeal to the already “formed” through genetic inheritance, while others insist on the efficacy of environ- mental plasticity. Nature or nurture,epigenesisorpreformation, genetic determinism

or developmental free will, or is some version of a middle ground possible? These are the terms of this perennial discussion [...] The end of the 20th century brought

discoveries that have challenged the most the prevailing geneticism, and have also begun to replace the extreme forms of eitherpreformationism orepigenesist with the

sorts of interactionist models that were only offered as outlying alternatives in earlier decades. [...] The nowadays of the 21st century may take us back to some of the un-

derstanding and insights of the early 20th, a time when a balance of epigenesis and preformation seemed likely, a time for a bit of predeterminism and a bit of cellular

free will.

As a closing remark, the fate of the antonymepigenesis may well be used to highlight another

facet of the concept ofcontingency, namely the idea of “systemic alternatives” with reference to scheme theory and radical constructivism. Beaugrande’s own study of Piaget’s “genetic epis-

temology” (Beaugrande, 1994, § 10, my emphasis) mentions the use of the term epigenetic to

describe something like the self-modification ofschemes in interaction:

Piaget’s term ‘epigenetic’ suggested that the advanced design of the human organ-

ism in its mature state is to be accounted for as a series of internal differentiations, complications, elaborations, and so on, from its elementary stages in early life. Orig- inally, ‘epigenetic’ is ageological term for ‘changes in the mineral character of a rock owing to outside influences’, whereas ‘ontogenetic’ would be the more usual term

for the development of organisms [...] Piaget’s terms were influenced by Conrad

Waddington’s (1957, 1975) geological metaphor of the ‘epigenetic landscape’ [.]

Though this interpretation is based on the theory of a metaphoric import from geology, the biological termepigenesis, – which is contemporary topreformatism– might be seen as a perfectly

viable alternative explanation for how this process of development can be understood (i.e. in

analogy to the “theory that new structures and organs develop from an undifferentiated cell mass”, Mai, Owl, and Kersting, 2005, epigenesis).

However, apparently due to the interpreter following the path of yet another possible alter- native, the term epigenesis has disappeared from Glasersfeld’s interpretation of genetic episto-

mology. Glasersfeld (1995) seems to have reverted to the more conventional termontogenesis or ontogeny: “Here, as in so many other passages of Piaget’s writings, it is crucial to remember that

he is concerned with genetic epistemology, i.e., with the ontogeny of knowledge, and not with ontology or the metaphysics of being. (p. 61) [...] Phylogeny proceeds by pruning; ontogeny provides opportunities for learning (p. 156)”.

All things considered, the above investigation seems to support Kuhn’s observation that dis- carded scientific ideas seem to return to philosophy for re-incubation:

When, in the development of a natural science, an individual or group first pro- duces a synthesis able to attract most of the next generation’s practitioners, the older schools gradually disappear. In part their disappearance is caused by their members’ conversion to the new paradigm. But there are always some men who cling to one or another of the older views, and they are simply read out of the profession, which thereafter ignores their work. [...] Those unwilling or unable to accommodate their

work to it must proceed in isolation or attach themselves to some other group. His- torically, they have often simply stayed in the departments of philosophy from which so many of the special sciences have been spawned.

Kuhn, 1970, 18/19, my emphasis

We can characterize this phenomenon as regression, or the reverting of terms and topics – of

which certain terms become characteristic – from science to philosophy. This can be seen as the

reverse of the historical process of dissociation earlier characterized and theinverse of the ideal type of naturalistic scientificity (3.3.1).

This case has however only characterized regression in terms of a theory and its associated

terms. It would appear that in the course ofregression, “new” philosophical terminology is coined

in the sense that thesemantic field in question was not earlier considered to belong to thetopic

of philosophy. In terms of subject delimitation, we might also investigate an example where this fate has befallen an entire discipline, on the grounds ofcontingencies other than empirical

progress, which was here seen in terms in terms of instrumentation invalidating pre-empirical assumptions.