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Pyrrhonism in Anthropological and Historical Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Thomas K. Park
Thomas K. Park*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Extract

Scepticism has fairly consistently had a bad press from those in a position of authority. The usual reasons for its disrepute are not themselves particularly reputable. They generally include at least the following claims: scepticism is a negative philosophy and hence incapable of making positive contributions to humanity, science, or religion; sceptics are nihilists who wreak havoc on social structure, science, and religion; and, though scepticism can on occasion be beneficial, the idea that we do not know anything is preposterous. These attitudes are widespread in the general populace but less common in the scientific community, where various ideas such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or Einstein's theory of relativity have made scepticism more acceptable. Although the usual reasons listed above might be remotely accurate representations of dogmatic scepticism, they completely misrepresent Pyrrhonic scepticism, that form of scepticism which has had most influence on Western civilization.

The position taken here is that Pyrrhonic scepticism need not be considered primarily a philosophical position. Historically, it was set forth as a philosophical position but only because philosophy once encompassed all of humanity's attempts to arrive at knowledge. Today, when science has primary claim to including under its roof most of our attempts to wrest knowledge from the world, Pyrrhonic scepticism is more approp-priately viewed as a scientific position having general implications for scientific research.

It is ironic that negative attitudes towards scepticism continue, since the dramatic historical failures of social structure, ethical beliefs, and human progress have been due to dogmatic pretensions of one sort or another, not to scepticism. This is not by chance. Scepticism is, after all, difficult to use as the justification for authority, obedience, or power.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 12 , 1985 , pp. 225 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1985

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References

NOTES

1. The three best works on Pyrrhonic scepticism are: Popkin, Richard H., The History of Seeptieiem from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, 1979)Google Scholar; Popkin, Richard H., The High Road to Pyrrhonism, ed. Watson, Richard A. and Force, James E. (San Diego, 1980)Google Scholar; and Naess, Arne, Scepticism (Oslo, 1968).Google Scholar

2. Naess, Scepticism, provides a thorough discussion of the philosophical ramifications of Pyrrhonic scepticism. I will instead be concerned with the sceptic as researcher in the hard and soft sciences. This has several implications: a) the balanced role of conjecture and refutation in science takes the place of search for balanced arguments for and against philosophies, b) research is often a joint enterprise extending over many years, and c) therefore, a Pyrrhonic sceptic is likely to maintain tentative hypotheses unchanged until evidence accumulates that the hypothesis is not entirely adequate and needs to be reformulated. The essence of the Pyrrhonist position in scientific research is that the hypotheses remain tentative and that the search for refutation and better conjectures continues.

3. This is the designation traditionally used by Pyrrhonic sceptics.

4. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1968).Google Scholar

5. Popkin, , History, xv.Google Scholar

6. See Naess, , Scepticism, 5Google Scholar, for an account of the Pyrrhonic suspension of judgment (ataraxia). Naess's work is exclusively concerned with Pyrrhonic scepticism as a philosphical position and this detracts somewhat from his account. As it moves into linguistic philosophy and the philosophy of science, modern philosophy is becoming more empirical and there is increasingly less justification for separating philosophy from the scientific endeavor.

7. Some well known Pyrrhonic sceptics have not distinguished between strong and weak arguments. Perhaps the best known is Pierre Bayle (1647-1706). Popkin provides an excellent account of Pyrrhonic scepticism in Bayle, Montaigne, Descartes and Spinoza's positions (see note 1). Pierre Bayle's magnum opus is the Dictionnaire historique et critique (Amsterdam, 1740).Google Scholar Throughout this enormous work Bayle tends to throw in any argument he feels like using, whether it is strong or weak. I consider Bayle an indiscriminate Pyrrhonist and do not feel he represents the best of the Pyrrhonic tradition. Although I emphasize a more positive and common-sensical Pyrrhonic scepticism, I am aware that common sense is not an absolutely essential characteristic of a Pyrrhonic sceptic.

8. See note 1 for my choice of the best works on Pyrrhonism. I have also been strongly influenced by reading the works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Søren Kirkegaard.

9. I am personally acquainted only with Empiricus, Sextus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, trans. Bury, R.G. (2 vols.: Cambridge, Mass., 1933–1949).Google ScholarPopkin, , History, 322Google Scholar, gives a complete bibliography.

10. Tarski's, theory of truth (“The Semantic Conception of Truth,” Philosophy and Phenomenologiaal Research, 4 [1943/1944], 341ff.)Google Scholar and his Logic, Semantics, Metamathematias [Oxford, 1956]Google Scholar and his “proof” that every universal language is paradoxical suggests both that there is justification for talking about objective truth and that any system which claims to demonstrate the objective truth indubitably and irrefutably will itself be contradictory. See also a summary in Popper, Karl R., Objective Knowledge (Oxford, 1974), 45ff.Google Scholar Heisenberg interpreted his indeterminacy formulae as suggesting that observation itself imposed limits on the possible precision of measurement. There are, however, legitimate questions whether Heisenberg's interpretation of the formulae is correct (see, for example, Popper, , Objective Knowledge, 301–04Google Scholar). Einstein's theory of relativity indicates that measurements even of such basics as space and time are at best contingent measurements. The statistical emphasis of modern quantum physics also fits exceedingly poorly with claims to absolute certainty.

11. Aesthetic appreciation of a picture or an equation is not a deductive conclusion. It is better described as a cultural and personal opinion and so has an altogether different status than a claim to certain objective truth.

12. Popkin, , History, xvi.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., Chapter 1 (“The Intellectual Crisis of the Reformation”), esp. 15.

14. Calvin's position was that reason brought one to rely exclusively on the Bible and absolute faith in one's (Calvinist) interpretation of the Bible sufficed thereafter. Faith played an important role in confirming reason, but reason and God's illumination had to provide the substance.

15. Newsweek (11 26, 1984), 117.Google ScholarPubMed

16. The Pyrrhonic position gives one a basis from which to criticize dogmatic claims without opening the way to relativism. Uncertainty need not be used to justify accepting every dogmatic statement; instead every dogmatic statement can be viewed as equally unjustified. The popular tendency to take the former approach has a sociological explanation.

17. de Montaigne, Michel, “Apologie de Raymond Sebond” in Les Essais de Michel de Montaigne, ed. Pierre Villey (Paris, 1922).Google Scholar

18. Popkin, History, chapter 3.

19. See ibid., 6, for Luther's opinion of Erasmus' mild Pyrrhonic scepticism.

20. Ibid., chapter 7.

21. Ibid., 143. Gassendi's mitigated scepticism has the advantage of not being preoccupied with the uncertainty of knowledge. If we have access to appearances, progress in our understanding of appearances is possible even if this progress never justifies certainty.

22. Ibid., 138-40.

23. Kant's explanation of the laws of science in his Critique of Pure Reason, as laws whose truth is almost definitionally linked to the clarity of the concepts and categories used to discover them seems no more than a metaphysical sleight of hand today. His postulate that the only moral life is the life of duty motivated solely by good will has withstood the test of time a little better, but is unlikely to seem an indubitable truth all the same. See Kant, Immanual, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (New York, 1960).Google Scholar

24. The best synthesis of Hegel's work I am acquainted with is Taylor, Charles, Hegel (Cambridge, 1975).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See in particular pages 53ff.

25. Hegel, , La phénoménologie de l'esprit, trans. Hyppolite, Jean (2 vols.: Paris, 1966), 2: 171, 175.Google Scholar

26. The issue is a complex one in Marxist thought. If one reference only could be cited I would refer the reader to Lukacs, Georg, History and Class Consciousness (London, 1971).Google Scholar

27. Some recent Marxist work has ventured beyond this assertion, notably Godelier's, Maurice work, beginning with Horizons (Paris, 1973).Google Scholar See also Crummey, Donald and Stewart, C.C., Modes of Production in Africa (Beverly Hills, 1981), esp. chapter 4Google Scholar by Bogumil Jewsiewicki, “Lineage Mode of Production: Social Inequalities in Equatorial Central Africa.”

28. This was pointed out by Avineri, Shlomo in The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1968), 182–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. I refer to Marx's general intimations that revolution is in principle immanent and his indications in The Communist Manifesto that, after the correct sort of revolution, everything would be idyllic.

30. Malantschuk, Gregor, Kierkegaard's Thought (Princeton, 1974)Google Scholar is probably the best introduction to Kierkegaard. My reading of Kierkegaard is that his justification for using synonyms was to avoid any possibility of being accused of formulating a dogmatic system. Wittgenstein's, Ludwig mature work is Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1968).Google Scholar

31. Popper gives his best account of this basis in his Objective Knowledge (Oxford, 1972).Google ScholarPubMed

32. Popper, , Conjectures and Refutations (New York, 1965).Google Scholar Those interested in the debates over Popper's ideas should read Feyerabend, Paul, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge (London, 1982)Google Scholar, who is very critical.

33. Popper is at his most dogmatic in The Poverty of Historiaism and The Open Society and its Enemies.

34. See The Open Society and its Enemies for Popper's confrontation with Marxism. I have my understanding of supergravity theory second-hand from Taubes, Gary, “Einstein's Dream,” Discover (12 1983), 44–53.Google Scholar

35. Naess, Arne, Hvilken Verden er den Virkelige (Oslo, 1969), 195–98.Google Scholar My translation.

36. Feyerabend, Against Method.

47. Ibid., 66.

38. Ibid., 35, 43-44.

39. Ibid., 38.

40. Ibid., 47.

41. Ibid., 166.

42. Ibid., 47.

43. Ibid., 43.

44. The Human Relations Area Files are prepared at Yale as paper slips or microfiche.

45. I.e., quantum theory.

46. Pryor, Frederic L., The Origins of the Economy (New York, 1977), 426.Google Scholar

47. For criticism of this approach see, for example, Schwartz, Jesse, The Subtle Anatomy of Capitalism (Santa Monica, 1977).Google Scholar

48. The distinction is between theoretical differences and differences in the empirical reality to which theory is applied.

49. Godelier, Horizons is an early example of this trend.

50. Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Modern World-System (New York, 1974), 349–51.Google Scholar For Braudel's analysis see note 54.

51. Wallerstein, , World-System, 8.Google ScholarPubMed

52. Ibid., 67.

53. Ibid., 351.

54. Ibid., 301-07. Braudel, Fernand, Civilisation matérielle, Economie et Capitalisme au XVe-CVIIIe siècle (3 vols.: Paris, 1979), 2: 235–36.Google Scholar

55. Kula, Witold, An Economie Theory of the Feudal System (London, 1976).Google Scholar

56. Braudel, , Civilisation, 2: 235–36.Google Scholar

57. Park, Thomas K., “Administration and the Economy” (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1983).Google Scholar