notes on science and truth

8/13/2019 Notes on Science and Truth

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Notes on Science and Truth:25/12/2011

I

As a preparatory exercise for our final text, we would like to return to our previousnotes and try to find the material - quotes, questions, ideas - which could guide us inthe proper formulation and solution of the following question:

Q: Where would we position political economy within the field of causes and negationsarticulated by Lacan?

We articulate this question against the background of the table developed in a previousnote (Note I: 18/12/2011):

AristotelianCause

FreudianNegation

Knowledge Responsibility

Magic efficient cause verdrngung Dissimulation Shaman aspart of nature

Religion final cause verneinung Distrust God

Science formal cause verwerfung Transmission cogito ergo

sum

Psychoanalysis material cause verleugnung Unconscious wo es war sollich werden

It is also important to highlight the reasons which give this investigation its pertinence:

a) Lacans references to Marxism in Science and Truthseem of a different order thanthose to other fields of knowledge: (i) there are clearly Althusserian concerns in thevery motivation for the text (questions surrounding the dualities of praxis/theory andideology/science); (ii) Lacan makes some of his most consistent references to Marxismthroughout his argumentation, but does not use the psychoanalytical framework in

order to develop a structuralist approach to Marxism (like he does with Science,

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Religion, Magic and Psychoanalysis itself), but rather to propose an addition to it (thetheory of the object a (LACAN, 2006: 743)); (iii) Marxism is said to announce theseparation between truth and knowledge in the terms distinguished in psychoanalysis(The separation of powers is at least announced in Marxism, the truth as cause beingdistinguished from knowledge put into operation. (ibid: 738))

b) The question of the status of economy is paramount to the proper understanding ofthe relations between Badiou and Zizek: the first dismisses economy as irrelevant tothe reformulation of the Communist idea, while the second makes a direct plea for thereturn to Marxs critique of political economy. In this divide, several crucial questionscan be formulated: (i) what is the status of the death drive? Is it the mortifying force ofthe situation or the insisting irruption of an ontological impasse? (ii) Is the Badiouianconcept of an inconsistent multiplicity infinite in the sense discussed by Lacan aproposof jouissance? (iii) Why are certain fields - not only economy, but also biology - nottaken up by Badiou as possible truth procedures? In the terms of Science and Truth:what sort of negation (verdrngung, verwerfung, etc) renders a field of knowledgeimpermeable to truth according to Badious system?

c) The study of what psychoanalysis can tell us about the field of economy leads to twodifferent realms: (i) Insofar as economy is primarily a matter of the organization of theinside - oiko (house) + nemein (to manage) - the psychoanalytical category ofextimacy- the place of the object a - could better explain the relations between libidinaland financial economy, as well as turn the reformulation of the question of realabstraction (the non-thought form of thought, according to Sohn-Rethel) into a centralissue for a Lacanian Marxism today. (ii) The study of political economy can help us tobetter distinguish between the critique of political economy as such and the critique ofthe conceptual economy of any field of knowledge.

To approach the question of political economy from the standpoint of what Lacandevelops in Science and Truth means to deal with it according to the problematics oftruth as cause - simply put, with the question of how the division between enunciationand enunciated is displaced and negated in the field of economy.

In science, the proper formulation of knowledge relies upon the foreclosure of thequestion of enunciation: there is science to the precise extent that one can remove anysubjective taint to what is observed, conceptualized and transmitted.

In religion, the place of truth as cause is not done away with, but is displaced to God,who answers for the empty place of utterance and determinations: there is religioninsofar as the cause of my determinations can be assigned to an external agent, withwhom I will only coincide at infinity.

In magic, the schism between the place of utterance and the subject of the signifyingdeterminations is not infinitely postponed (as it is in religion), nor dismissed (as inscience), but constantly substituted: there is magic insofar as the origin of an effect canbe repressed and substituted for the one which is produced by the signification itself -for example, a sickness calls out (through the shaman) and is answered by the roaringof the thunder, which signifies the sick body at the register of the signifier.

In psychoanalysis, there seems to be a double determination: this is both the fielddefined by the disavowal of truth as cause - there is analytical knowledge even thoughthere is an impossibility to know the truth - and by the recognition of the material causeof signification as such - there is analytical knowledge becausethere is an impossibility.

The most clear line of study is that of the comparison between economy and magic -specially alchemy, following the investigations of Hans Christoph Binswanger - but the

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well-known associations made by Freud between obsessive neurosis and money alsopush us towards the investigation of the relations between economy and religion. Onthe other hand, economys self-pronounced status of science also requires that wecompare the role of foreclusion in scientific knowledge to its function in economy,where it might play a different role than it is professed to do. Finally, we must also

investigate the relation between the Freudian notion of libidinal economy and theMarxist one, which - as it was already noted by many authors - seems to be constitutedin a similar way.

To conclude, any study which sets off from the above-mentioned table must also dealwith the following, fundamental question:

Q: In which way are the Aristotelian causes related to the Freudian negations? Is it astructural homology which presents itself in one way on the dimension of the signifierand in another on the matter of enjoyment, or can we propose different combinationsbetween (formal, material, efficient and final) causes and negations (denegation,repression, foreclusion, disavowal)?

II

In Science and Truth, Lacan makes the claim that science is founded on foreclosure.Which is one of three fundamental forms of negation in psychoanalysis the othersbeing disavowal and repression. The term as a particular concept is introduced byLacan, though he claims it to be a faithful development of Frued's verwerfung, which heassociates with psychosis. Lacan too links foreclosure to the origin of the psychoticphenomenon, we can quickly say that it 'consists in a primordial expulsion of afundamental signifier from the subject's symbolic universe' (LAPLANCHE &PONATLIS, 1974: 166).

In this text from 1965 Lacan claims a structural similarity between science andpsychosis; he states:

I will broach the topic with the strange remark that our science's prodigiousfecundity must be examined in relation to the fact, sustaining science, that sciencedoes-not-want-to-know-anything about the truth as cause.

You may recognize therein my formulation of Verwerfung of 'foreclosure' ... (LACAN, 2006: 742)

Lacan then remarks on the structural proximity between science and psychosis, or

paranoia more precisely. Here, then, we will note some remarks by Lacan on science,as a preliminary note on the relation between foreclosure and science.

In continuation with the above quote, Lacan writes:

... which forms a closed series here with Verdrngung, repression, andVerneinung, negation, whose function in magic and religion I have indicated inpassing.

What I have said of the relationship between Verwerfungand psychosis, epeciallyas Verwerfung of the Name-of-the-Father, is apparently at odds here with thisattempt at structural situation.

If one remarks, however, that a successful paranoia might just as well seem toconstitute the closure of science assuming psychoanalysis were called upon to

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represent this function and if, moreover, one acknowledges that psychoanalysisis essentially what brings the Name-of-the-Father back into scientific examination,one comes upon the same apparent deadlock; but one has the feeling that thisvery deadlock spurs on progress, and that one can see the chiasmus that seemedto create an obstacle therein coming undone (ibid: 742-743)

We note that the central terms involved are: foreclosure, Name-of-the-Father, science,truth and thereby also knowledge, and finally psychosis, particularly in the form ofparanoia.

In considering what the discourse of science is, or more generally, what are thecharacteristics of a discourse insofar as it is constituted by the form of negation Lacanterms foreclosure, we face a number of potential questions:

What happens to the place of the subject? Is there a place for the subject? Lacan israther clear that modern science does not recognize its subject, i.e., the subject ofscience. (ibid: 742)

What sort of subject is there in science, considering Lacan claim that he 'we onceagain come upon the subject of the signifier'? (ibid: 743)

What do we make of demand in a structure constituted by foreclosure? Is demandthere complete? Is there thus a supposition of a complete and consistent Other? Is thearticulation of signifiers complete without gap?

What do we make of the subjects constitutive split is science not characterized by anobfuscation of or reduction of the enunciation to the enunciated? And what then oftruth?

Where, or better, what is speech in the realm constituted by foreclosure? What then

speaks? Does the truth speak?

If the foreclosed returns from without, what does this imply for science or a discourseconstituted on such grounds?

What do we make of Lacan statement that science has no memory? And what of thedistinction he asserts between history's unfolding and the 'rhythm of development'?(ibid: 738, 743)

Science and the truth-as-cause? Does the Thing still speak when there is foreclosure?

A further related question imposes itself here: what is the relation between subjectivity

and the social link? Is it a mirroring thesis? What posits? Is it an overlap? Anincomplete superimposition?

III

Koyres principle thesis is that modern science, inaugurated in the period betweenGalileo and Descartes, announces the divorce of the world of value and the world offacts (KOYR, 1968: 5). The universe is independent of and irreconcilable with valuesof order, balance or harmony - and this is precisely what permits it to be scientificallythinkable. The mathematization of nature is ultimately a new way of problematizing it,without having recourse to a knowledge which guarantees a solution. These notes will

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From concepts, through problems, and finally to its object this is the triadthrough which Lacan developed a structure that accounts for the state of splittingor Spaltung where the psychoanalyst detects it in his praxis. (Notes I: 11/12/2011)

Could we not map this statement onto Nicholas - concepts are actual, problems are

potential, and the object is the connecting movement? If we apply our previousconsiderations, then the problem could be said to both precede and succeed theconcept - in a temporality definitive of the object a. It is a temporality which Freudintroduced, in the statement, Wo es war, soll ich werden. From the actual es, to thepotential ich, there is a will have been which announces their division.

Lacan calls this the inner eight of the Moebius band, the mark of the divided subject.And it is in his considerations on the different ways this subject forms a knot that herelates science, magic, religion, and psychoanalysis. What is common to each is thatthe subject appears as vanishing - each in a unique gesture of self effacement. For theshaman, it is the hewing of his corporeal form which makes use of the metaphoricfunction of the signifier. Lacan links this to verdrngung - the enigma of which is the

truth as efficient cause.One could say that the Thing that answers our prayers does not simply appearautonomously, but is the result of a work that must occur. Magical knowledge does notneed a reference to its own consistency, since it is dissimulating itself assuch (LACAN, 2006: 740). We know that a signifier doesnt represent itself, itrepresents the subject to another signifier - roughly put, in metonymy, the first rule isactivated, and in the latter, the metaphor of the subject. These considerations requirefurther development, but indicate that the truth as efficient cause is already at work inthe logic of the signifier.

Bibliography

ARISTOTLE (2009) Metaphysics (available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html)EURYDICE (2011) Notes on Science and Truth, 11/12/2011_______________ Notes on Science and Truth, 18/12/2011

KOYR, Alexandre (1968) From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. New York:Harvard PressLACAN, Jacques (2006) crits. New York: W.W.Norton & CompanyLAPLANCHE, Jean & PONTALIS, Jean-Bertrand (1974) The Language ofPsychoanalysis. London: Hogarth PressMILNER, Jean-Claude (2007) Les Noms Indistincts. Paris: Verdier

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http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.htmlhttp://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.htmlhttp://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.htmlhttp://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.htmlhttp://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.html

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