The Rules Reclaiming Your Freedom, Your Manhood, and Your Sanity Brant von Goble

Маркетологи уничтожили цивилизацию. Но есть надежда. Не надо лгать. надо уметь различать ложь... В общем, правила свободной жизни в Учении Гобла. Книга о том, как стать свободным.

This is a book of hope—hope of the realistic sort.
The world of our fathers’ has passed into darkness. You cannot uncook the burger. Community has collapsed. Long-term and stable employment is but a distant memory for those old enough to remember it. For the rest of us, it is myth. The family, at least as historically defined, fares not much better. This is fine. Life is what it is. Death, the same. Let the dead bury the dead.
There is hope.
We may well be dominated by abusive, intrusive, overbearing, and soul-crushing bureaucracies, ideologues, and corporate interests, yet they cannot know all. They cannot see all. Their powers are limited. Their powers are less than they would have us believe.
The marketers, the Marxists, the utopianists, and the feminists won—they won half the war. They annihilated one civilization so that they could build another on the ashen ruins. They have built things. They have built a great many of them, and some of that which they have built looks quite impressive.
But all they have constructed stands on an assumption—that you may react, that you may fight, but that you will eventually comply.
They never thought you would adapt. They never considered the possibility that you could. For this, they have no plan. Here is the problem with deluded dreamers and their fantastical castles:
In their wild imaginings, no one but the dreamer has agency. No matter how psychedelic the view behind their eyelids, one fact
remains—dreamers think that only they have souls. Everyone else is but an automaton or a piece to be moved around a board.
In the long run, the strongest—the best suited to a given environment or task—lose out to the most adaptable. Remember that when you hear some fool brag of momentary success. You can adapt. You can prosper, but it will not be easy. So long as the world is not engulfed in flames, all is not lost. So long as you keep breathing, you probably need not despair.
Your adversaries and oppressors are well-funded, well-trained, and well-equipped—good for them, bad for you! They are also rigid, singularly unacclimated to hardship, and lacking in creativity —bad for them, good for you! They can excel when they make all the rules, so long as they can change the rules whenever doing so suits them.
But you have rules of your own. You have the Rules.
So how do you win?
First, stop deceiving yourself and stop believing the lies of others. The standards and expectations to which you are told to hold yourself are as contradictory as they are insane. Efforts to shame and manipulate you into compliance can be identified as such, dissected, and rendered harmless.
Second, learn to distinguish between that which you have been told you want and that which you really want. After that, setting priorities for yourself is easy.
Third, starve the beast. Work every day to take more from and give less to the people and systems that would destroy you.
Fourth, take the path of liberation. It has been opened for you, ironically enough, by those who wish you to remain in bondage.
You have been given an entire corridor filled with exits. Know -- where they are and how to open them, always. With few exceptions, men surrender their freedom before it is taken from them. Do not be one of those men.
Life has been hard for the vast majority of people (men and women) in every country, in every culture, and in every era. Aside from the inherent brutality of nature, much of what made life hard for men was the effort they needed to expend to support and aid others. The technologists, inventors, and scientists did much to free humanity from labor and drudgery. The ideologues did also, but quite without intent or understanding. That the efforts of the former have improved our lives is obvious, that the efforts of the latter did is less so.
Marriage, family, religious traditions, employer/employee loyalty, established social obligations and connections—soon nuclear shadows and history books will be the last extant testaments to their existences. Even the books will mold and decay in time.
Here is the thing about winning half a war: The supposedly triumphant also lost half of it. If he (or it) really won at all is debatable. That matter is not settled.
So now you stand with eyes clear and open. Your enemies may see you, but they cannot see what you have become—a free man, capable of thinking for himself. Their ignorance is your advantage.
Do not waste this opportunity to enjoy your short and precious existence. Follow the Rules. Apply them to all that you do. Beware of tyrants. You owe this to yourself. To others, you owe respect for their rights. And unless you have chosen to obligate yourself to another, you owe no one else anything at all.
You are free. This is your life. Fight for it. Win.

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/245087.html

Исследование философии Лавкрафта: по мнению автора, это великий писатель. Автор считает, что философы, указывающие на наличие в мире разных уровней, сторон, аспектов, проводят тем самым границы и создают разрывы. А философы, указывающие на единство мира, отрицающие уровни и аспекты - действуют против разрывов. Так что материализм с редукционизмом с т.зр. автора - объединяющая философия, а Кант с миром вещей в себе и многие другие авторы - разъединители. И Лавкрафт для автора - один из великих философов-разъединителей, указывающих на сложность мира.

Интересно, как сквозь эту мысль (очередная классификация всего, не слишком важная) просматривается удивительная окраска культуры. Несомненно, По, Лавкрафт и Говард показывают оригинальную сторону американской культуры, совершенно не похожую на континентальные культуры Старого Света. Об этом написано немного - поскольку, если чего не взять мерой, то, как считается, и вовсе не взять - но вот в таких книжечках проглядывает.

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/244866.html

Уитт. Как музыка стала свободной

История главного музыкального формата и приключения вокруг проблемы копирования: пиратство и судебные преследования, юридизация проблемы и технические особенности. Неповторимая музыка становится копией, владение ею - собственностью

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/244569.html

Уитт. Как музыка стала свободной

История главного музыкального формата и приключения вокруг проблемы копирования: пиратство и судебные преследования, юридизация проблемы и технические особенности. Неповторимая музыка становится копией, владение ею - собственностью

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/244569.html

Уитт. Как музыка стала свободной

История главного музыкального формата и приключения вокруг проблемы копирования: пиратство и судебные преследования, юридизация проблемы и технические особенности. Неповторимая музыка становится копией, владение ею - собственностью

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/244569.html

Мазилов. Методология психологической науки

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/244417.html

Авторы смело рассказывают неолиберальный миф - речь идет о том, чтобы всем дали денег, решительно всем, а еще - чтобы убрали все препоны на пути свободного изменения человека - хоть чипы, хоть еще как себя изменять. Книга излагает не программу действий, она дает образ мечты - как следует мечтать в рамках данного мировоззрения. Интересно, найдут ли нужным сделать какие-нибудь оговорки, заговорят ли не только о раздаче денег, но и о производстве, скажут ли о инакомыслящих, которые не хотят свободно в себя запихивать то и это, скажут ли, что для свободы надо воспитывать, или оставят свободу пустой - в общем, что скажут. Результат прочтения: ничего не сказали. Об этом всем мыслей нет, только - дайте нам свободу, побольше денег и сразу. И пусть всякой техники будет побольше. Что же, текст занятный и откровенный.

Срничек и Уильямс, 2019

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/244167.html

Авторы смело рассказывают неолиберальный миф - речь идет о том, чтобы всем дали денег, решительно всем, а еще - чтобы убрали все препоны на пути свободного изменения человека - хоть чипы, хоть еще как себя изменять. Книга излагает не программу действий, она дает образ мечты - как следует мечтать в рамках данного мировоззрения. Интересно, найдут ли нужным сделать какие-нибудь оговорки, заговорят ли не только о раздаче денег, но и о производстве, скажут ли о инакомыслящих, которые не хотят свободно в себя запихивать то и это, скажут ли, что для свободы надо воспитывать, или оставят свободу пустой - в общем, что скажут. Результат прочтения: ничего не сказали. Об этом всем мыслей нет, только - дайте нам свободу, побольше денег и сразу. И пусть всякой техники будет побольше. Что же, текст занятный и откровенный.

Срничек и Уильямс, 2019

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/244167.html

Авторы смело рассказывают неолиберальный миф - речь идет о том, чтобы всем дали денег, решительно всем, а еще - чтобы убрали все препоны на пути свободного изменения человека - хоть чипы, хоть еще как себя изменять. Книга излагает не программу действий, она дает образ мечты - как следует мечтать в рамках данного мировоззрения. Интересно, найдут ли нужным сделать какие-нибудь оговорки, заговорят ли не только о раздаче денег, но и о производстве, скажут ли о инакомыслящих, которые не хотят свободно в себя запихивать то и это, скажут ли, что для свободы надо воспитывать, или оставят свободу пустой - в общем, что скажут. Результат прочтения: ничего не сказали. Об этом всем мыслей нет, только - дайте нам свободу, побольше денег и сразу. И пусть всякой техники будет побольше. Что же, текст занятный и откровенный.

Срничек и Уильямс, 2019

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/244167.html

Поляринов. Почти два килограмма слов

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/243947.html

Пэабо. Неандерталец. В поисках исчезнувших геномов.

ищут ответ на вопрос "что значит быть человеком?". Но - с точки зрения генетики. Описано открытие генома неандертальца и денисовца. Генетические отличия и то, что унаследовали современные люди от них. Неандертальцы и денисовцы не вымерли - живут в современных людях. И - описания функционирования современной науки. Как она живет. Гранты и конкуренция, энтузиазм и идеи. Великолепная сцена: новому профессору зоологии предлагают читать курс про насекомых. Тот в ответ изумляется: у вас же институт зоологии? Почему же вы занимаетесь насекомыми, а не животными? А потом - видно, как статья за статьей идут в Сайнс и Нэйчур: вот модная область, где нормальная работа - на эти журналы. В общем, бытовое описание гребня волны.

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/243515.html

Несколько цитат

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/243228.html

Райх. Кто мы и как сюда попали

Полногеномные исследования - новая археология, палеоантропология и пр. Чуть не 30000 полных геномов исследовано, совсем новые данные - и во многом эти, современные, меньше десяти лет как ... - данные, - опровергают прежние модели (Кавалли-Сфорца и пр.). Теперь-то мы знаем, как расселялись народы. В общем, очередная революция в геномике, полногеномные исследования на человеке. Заселение Европы с востока и прочие радости

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/243189.html

Голдберг. Креативный мозг

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/242876.html

Лотман. Очерки по истории русской культуры XVIII в.

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/242485.html

В. Тен. Человек безумный

Автор излагает психологию и становление человека в антропогенезе с оригинальной точки зрения, поругивая мейнстрим - Выготского и современных эволюционистов, называя их бихевиористами. Понятно, что бихевиоризм уже помер, так что это обозначает их как запоздавших последователей уже мертвого взгляда. Современные взгляды на социальное возникновение интеллекта тоже ругает.

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/242262.html

В. Тен. Человек безумный

Автор излагает психологию и становление человека в антропогенезе с оригинальной точки зрения, поругивая мейнстрим - Выготского и современных эволюционистов, называя их бихевиористами. Понятно, что бихевиоризм уже помер, так что это обозначает их как запоздавших последователей уже мертвого взгляда. Современные взгляды на социальное возникновение интеллекта тоже ругает.

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/242262.html

Мечты Гамильтона
Ричард Докинз пишет о желании своего друга (и учителя) после его смерти лежать на дне леса в джунглях Амазонки, чтобы тело послужило пищей для личинок жуков. «Позже, в их детях, которых заботливо вырастили рогатые родители из шариков размером с кулак, вылепленных из моей плоти, я сбегу. Ни червяка мне, ни мухи грязной:
переустроенный и многочисленный, я наконец вырвусь из земли, как пчелы из гнезда. Я перенесусь, жук за жуком, я перелечу в бразильские джунгли под звездами».

Again, I mentioned earlier how nineteenth and twentieth century materialism re-captures some of the sense of wonder and depth in contemplating the whole of nature which we could find in the ancient world in the writings of Lucretius. The wonder is not only at the stupendous whole, but at the way in which we emerge, in one way fragile and insignif i cant, and yet capable of grasping this whole. Pascal’s theme of the human being as a thinking reed can be played as well in an atheist and materialist register. One can even say that a kind of piety arises here, in which we recognize that for all our detachment in objectivating thought, we ultimately belong to this whole, and return to it. In the moving obituary for his colleague and mentor, William Hamilton, Richard Dawkins writes of his friend’s wish at his death “to be laid out on the forest floor in the Amazon jungle and interred by burying beetles as food for their larvae”:
“Later, in their children, reared with care by horned parents out of fist-sized balls moulded from my flesh, I will escape. No worm for me, or sordid fly:
rearranged and multiple, I will at last buzz from the soil like bees out of a nest—indeed, buzz louder than bees, almost like a swarm of motor bikes. I shall be borne, beetle by flying beetle, out into the Brazilian wilderness beneath the stars.” One might say, that so articulated, this sense of wonder, and piety of belonging, is not just compatible with a naturalist, immanentist perspective, it supposes it; it is an intrinsic part of such a perspective.

A Secular Age
Сharles Taylor

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/242014.html

О том, как читают чужой текст при наличии очевидности и уверенности

ОЛЕГ ПРОСКУРИН. Литературные скандалы пушкинской эпохи. (Материалы и исследования по истории русской культуры. Вып. 6). - М.: ОГИ, 2000. - 368 с.


Несомненный литературно-эстетический субстрат обнаруживается даже в тех сферах, где, казалось бы, первенствующая роль принадлежит отчетливо внелитературным факторам, — в частности, в таком специфическом явлении русской культурной жизни, как донос. Доносы первой трети XIX века нередко строятся на отчетливом «фиктивном» субстрате, имеют свою поэтику и порой срастаются с «настоящими», каноническими для эпохи литературными жанрами — публицистическими, беллетристическими и поэтическими. Даже донесения Фаддея Булгарина в III Отделение, выполняющие отчетливые прагматические функции, питаются романической парадигматикой, широко используют романические коллизии, строят образы врагов отечества по моделям романных персонажей. Между тем на основании булгаринских доносов создавались годовые отчеты III Отделения, предлагавшие параметры для внешней и внутренней государственной политики... Таким образом, через беллетризованный донос происходило проникновение литературного модуса в политическую сферу, «олитературивание» самого политического сознания. Николай I, достаточно равнодушно от-носившийся к русской литературе, поневоле сообразовывался в своей деятельности с булгаринскими фиктивными моделями.
Донос, таким образом, оказывался не столько прискорбным свидетельством подчинения литературы политике патерналистского общества, сколько фактором влияния литературы на политику.
Соответствующие вопросы затронуты в книге по необходимости бегло, но можно надеяться, что сама их постановка стимулирует дальнейшее изучение проблемы.
Итак, суммируем: литературный быт, каким он предстает в этой книге, — не столько форма воздействия социума на литературу и даже не столько вспомогательный фактор литературной эволюции, сколько канал, через который сама литература воздействует на соседние (а опосредованно — и на более отдаленные) «ряды» или «социальные практики»: культуру, политику, формы социальной жизни. Изучение литературного быта, следовательно, намечает перспективы не для демистификации литературы, не для редукции ее до пункта пересечения противоборствующих социальных сил, а для изучения путей «текстуализации» культуры — явления, осмысление которого является насущной задачей современных гуманитарных дисциплин.

Со времени первых «метаисторических» работ Хайдена Уайта сделалось аксиомой положение, согласно которому «история» — это конструирование событий по образу и подобию тех или иных повествовательных форм". Для кого-то подобный вывод мог бы послужить аргументом против занятий историей, в том числе и историей литературы (поскольку это не путь к истине, а только блуждание в лабиринте нарративов). Я, напротив, вижу в Уайте союзника: он уместно напомнил о границах исследовательской мысли — о том, в частности, что они обусловлены культурной, в первую очередь литературной традицией. Это — лишний аргумент в пользу мысли о глубокой текстуализиро-ванности всей культуры.
' См.: White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nine-teenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973;
White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

Авторитетный пушкинист Н. В. Измайлов, анализируя литературный фон пушкинского «Медного всадника», заметил в связи с популярнейшим, сохранившимся в десятках списков «апокалипсическим» стихотворением «Подводный город»:
«Н. П. Анциферов называет его автором М. А. Дмитриева, не давая объяснений этой атрибуции, впрочем очень мало вероятной...». «Маловероятной» была признана атрибуция стихотворения, вошедшего в прижизненное издание Дмитриева, подготовленное самим автором! Предубежденность оказалась настолько сильна, что высокопрофессиональный и обыч-но очень осторожный исследователь не стал утруждать себя проверкой: ведь a priori понятно, что столь отчетливо оппозиционного стихотворения, как «Подводный город», «верный и последовательный сторонник правительственной реакции» написать не мог...
Порою предвзятость оборачивалась последствиями еще более курьезными. В своем «Взгляде на старую и новую сло-весность в России» (1823) издатель «Полярной звезды» А. А. Бестужев дал такую характеристику поэтического творчества молодого Дмитриева: «Полуразвернувшиеся розы стихотворений Михайла Дмитриева обещают в нем образованного поэта, с душою огненною»1. Позднейший комментатор, твердо помнивший репутацию Дмитриева, попросту не мог допустить, чтобы писатель-декабрист столь высоко оценил «последовательного реакционера». Поэтому в статье Бестужева он прочел духовными очами совсем иные строки:
«...Михайла Дмитриева... с душою ограниченною... (такі — О. П.)» — и прокомментировал их подобающим образом:
«Бестужевым дано удивительно точное определение последующих (! — О. П.) позиций М. А. Дмитриева (1796-1866), уже в 1820-х гг. выступившего как рьяный блюститель классицизма. Выступал он против романтических поэм и романа „Евгений Онегин" Пушкина, „Горя от ума" Грибоедова, был постоянным противником Н. Полевого, Белинского».
Дмитриев и впрямь был активным участником литератур-ных боев 1820-1840-х годов. И литературных врагов у него, действительно, было много. Но к одиозной репутации Дмитриева его нападки на Полевого, Грибоедова и Пушкина имеют все же лишь косвенное отношение. Проблема не в них, а в имени, которое замкнуло список упомянутых комментатором Дмитриевских «жертв»: принято считать, что своим доносительным стихотворением «Безыменному критику» Дмитриев создал для выдающегося критика чуть ли не смертельную угрозу.
Попытаемся понять, что же произошло в действительности.

https://ivanov-p.livejournal.com/241699.html

Парой реплик ранее я сказал, что у Картрайт - с вариациями, конечно - Кант. Там была реплика - мол, читал Картрайт и у нее на Канта ссылок нет, так что не ясно, как она с кантианством. Открыл следующую книжку Картрайт - там прямое высказывание, так что все ясно.
И еще - ее мнение о полемике Гете с Ньютоном по поводу цвета. Тоже хороший маркер взглядов.




-- A number of years ago I wrote How The Laws of Physics Lie. That book was generally perceived to be an attack on realism. Nowadays I think that I was deluded about the enemy: it is not realism but fundamentalism that we need to combat.
My advocacy of realism - local realism about a variety of different kinds of knowledge in a variety of different domains across a range of highly differentiated situations - is Kantian in structure. Kant frequently used a puzzling argument form to establish quite abstruse philosophical positions (O): We have X - perceptual knowledge, freedom of the will, whatever. But without O (the transcendental unity of the apperception, or the kingdom of ends) X would be impossible, or inconceivable. Hence . The objectivity of local knowledge is my O; X is the possibility of planning, prediction, manipulation, control and policy setting. Unless our claims about the expected consequences of our actions are reliable, our plans are for nought.
Hence knowledge is possible.

What we have done in modern science, as I see it, is to break the connec-tion between what the explanatory nature is - what it is, in and of itself -and what it does. An atom in an excited state, when agitated, emits photons and produces light. It is, I say, in the nature of an excited atom to produce light. Here the explanatory feature - an atom's being in the excited state - is a structural feature of the atom, which is defined and experimentally identified independently of the particular nature that is attributed to it. It is in the nature of the excited atom to emit light, but that is not what it is to be an atom in an excited state. For modern science what something really is - how it is defined and identified - and what it is in its nature to do are separate things.
So even a perfect and complete modern theory would never have the com-plete deductive structure that the Aristotelians envisaged. Still, I maintain, the use of Aristotelian-style natures is central to the modern explanatory pro-gramme. We, like Aristotle, are looking for 'a cause and principle of change and stasis in the thing in which it primarily subsists', and we, too, assume that this principle will be 'in this thing of itself and not per accidens.

The analytic method is closely associated with what we often call Galilean idealisation. Together idealisation and the inference to natures form a familiar two-tiered process that lies at the heart of modern scientific inquiry. First we try to find out by a combination of experimentation, calculation and inference how the feature under study behaves, or would behave, in a particular, highly specific situation. By controlling for or calculating away the gravitational effects, we try to find out how two charged bodies 'would interact if their masses were zero'. But this is just a stage; in itself this information is uninteresting. The ultimate aim is to find out how the charged bodies interact not when their masses are zero, nor under any other specific set of circumstances, but rather how they interact qua charged. That is the second stage of inquiry:
we infer the nature of the charge interaction from how charges behave in these specially selected 'ideal' circumstances.
The key here is the concept ideal On the one hand we use this term to mark the fact that the circumstances in question are not real or, at least, that they seldom obtain naturally but require a great deal of contrivance even to approximate. On the other, the 'ideal' circumstances are the 'right' ones -right for inferring what the nature of the behaviour is, in itself. Focusing on the first aspect alone downplays our problems. We tend to think that the chief difficulties come from the small departures from the ideal that will always be involved in any real experiment: however small we choose the masses in tests of Coulomb's law, we never totally eliminate the gravitational interac-tion between them; in Galilean experiments on inertia, the plane is never perfectly smooth nor the air resistance equal to zero; we may send our experi-ments deep into space, but the effect of the large massive bodies in the universe can never be entirely eliminated; and we can perform them at cryogenic temperatures, but the conditions will never, in fact, reach the ideal.

The problem I am concerned with is not whether we can get the system into ideal circumstances but rather, what makes certain circumstances ideal and others not. What is it that dictates which other effects are to be minimised, set equal to zero, or calculated away? This is the question, I maintain, that cannot be answered given the conventional empiricist account of scientific knowledge. If we consider any particular experiment, it may seem that the equipment we move about, the circumstances we contrive, and the properties we calculate away are ones that can be described without mentioning natures. But in each case, what makes that arrangement of equip-ment in those particular circumstances 'ideal' is the fact that these are the circumstances where the feature under study operates, as Galileo taught, with-out hindrance or impediment, so that its nature is revealed in its behaviour.
Until we are prepared to talk in this way about natures and their operations, to fix some circumstances as felicitous for a nature to express itself and others as impediments, we will have no way of determining which principle is tested by which experiment. It is this argument that I develop in the next section.

An historical illustration: Goethe and Newton So far I have couched the discussion in terms of making inductions from paltry samples, and that is because induction is the method that Humeans should favour for confirming laws. I think, though, that the process is far better understood as one of deduction. We accept laws on apparently slim experimental bases exactly when we can take for granted such strong back-ground assumptions that (given these assumptions) the data plus the descrip-tion of the experimental set-up deductively imply the law to be established.
Probably the most prominent advocate of a deductive method in reasoning from experiment to law is Isaac Newton. It will be helpful to look briefly at Newton's use of the 'crucial experiment' in his theory of light and colours, and more particularly at Goethe's criticisms of it.
Newton's experimentum crucis is described in his first letter in 1671 to the Royal Society18 in which he introduces his theory that white light consists of diverse rays of different refrangibility (that is, they are bent by different amounts when the light passes through a prism) and that colour is a property of the ray which depends on its refrangibility. The work reported in the letter is often taken as a model of scientific reasoning. Thomas Kuhn, for instance, claims that 'Newton's experimental documentation of his theory is a classic in its simplicity.'19 According to Kuhn, the opposition view might eventually have accounted for some of the data that appeared to refute it, 'but how could they have evaded the implications of the experimentum crucisl An innovator in the sciences has never stood on surer ground.'20 It is important to keep in mind that Newton believed that his claims were proven by his experiments. In his letter he maintains, 'The Theory, which I propounded, was evinced by me, not inferring 'tis thus because not otherwise, that is, not by deducing it from a confutation of contrary suppositions but by deriving it from experiments concluding positively and directly.' Or, 'If the Experiments, which I urge, be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid then by proving the theory they must render all objections invalid.' One last remark to illustrate the steadfastness of Newton's views on the role of the experimentum crucis in proving this claim appears in Newton's letter of 1676,21 four years after his initial report to the Royal Society. This letter concerned the difficulties Anthony Lucas had reported in trying to duplicate Newton's experiments and also some of Lucas' own results that contradicted Newton's claims. Newton replies, 'Yet it will conduce to his more speedy and full satisfaction if he a little change the method he has propounded, and instead of a multitude of things try only the Experimentum Crucis. For it is not number of experiments, but weight to be regarded; and where one will do, what need many?' Goethe's point of view is entirely opposite to Newton's: 'As worthwhile as each individual experiment may be, it receives its real value only when united or combined with other experiments ... I would venture to say that we cannot prove anything by one experiment or even several experiments together.'22 For Goethe, all phenomena are connected together, and it is essen-tial to follow through from each experiment to another that 'lies next to it or derives directly from it'. According to Goethe, 'To follow every single experiment through its variations is the real task of the scientific researcher.' This is illustrated in his own work in optics where he produces long series of 'contiguous' experiments, each of which is suggested by the one before it. The point is not to find some single set of circumstances that are special but rather to lay out all the variations in the phenomena as the circumstances change in a systematic way. Then one must come to see all the interrelated experiments together and understand them as a whole, 'a single piece of experimental evidence explored in its manifold variations'.
Goethe is sharp in his criticisms of Newton. Two different kinds of criti-cism are most relevant here. The first is that Newton's theory fails to account for all the phenomena it should and that is no surprise since Newton failed to look at the phenomena under a sufficient range of variation of circum-stance. Second, Newton's inferences from the experiments he did make were not valid; the experimentum crucis is a case in point. The chief fault which Goethe finds with Newton's inferences is one that could not arise in Goethe's method. Newton selects a single revealing experiment to theorise from; since he does not see how the phenomena change through Goethe's long sequences of experiments, he does not recognise how variation in circumstance affects the outcome: '[Newton's] chief error consisted in too quickly and hastily -- setting aside and denying those questions that chiefly relate to whether external conditions cooperate in the appearance of colour, without looking more exactly into the proximate circumstances/23 The crucial experiment involves refracting a beam of light through a prism, which elongates the initial narrow beam and 'breaks' it into a coloured band, violet at the top, red at the bottom. Then differently coloured portions of the elongated beam are refracted through the second prism. Consider figure 4.2, which is taken from Dennis L. Sepper's study, Goethe contra Newton. In all cases the colour is preserved, but at one end of the elongated beam the second refracted beam is elongated more than it is at the other. In each case there is no difference in the way in which the light falls on the prism for the second refraction. Newton immediately concludes, 'And so the true cause of the length of the image was detected to be no other than that light consists of rays differently refrangible.'24 We should think about this inference in the context of my earlier cursory description of the modern version of the deductive method, called 'bootstrap-ping' by Clark Glymour,25 who has been its champion in recent debates. In the bootstrapping account, we infer from an experimental outcome to a sci-entific law, as Newton does, but only against a backdrop of rather strong assumptions. Some of these assumptions will be factual ones about the spec-ific arrangements made - for example, that the angle of the prism was 63°;
some will be more general claims about how the experimental apparatus works - the theory of condensation in a cloud chamber, for instance; some will be more general claims still - for example, all motions are produced by forces; and some will be metaphysical, such as the 'same cause, same effect' principle mentioned above. The same is true of Newton's inference. It may be a perfectly valid inference, but there are repressed premises. It is the repressed premises that Goethe does not like. On Goethe's view of nature, they are not only badly supported by the evidence; they are false. Colours, like all else in Goethe's world,26 are a consequence of the action of opposites, in this case light and darkness:
We see on the one side light, the bright; on the other darkness, the dark; we bring
what is turbid between the two [such as a prism or a semitransparent sheet of paper], and out of these opposites, with the help of this mediation, there develop, likewise in an opposition, colors.27 Newton's argument requires, by contrast, the assumption that the tendency to produce colours is entirely in the nature of the light, and that is why this dispute is of relevance to my point here. As Sepper says, for Newton 'the cause is to be sought only in the light itself.
Let us turn to Newton's reasoning. The argument is plausible, so long as one is not looking for deductive certainty. From Newton's point of view (though not from that of Goethe, who imagines a far richer set of possibilities), the two hypotheses to be decided between are: (a) something that happens involving white light in the prism produces coloured light; or (b) coloured light is already entering the prism in the first place. We can see the force of the argument by thinking in terms of inputs and outputs. Look at what happens to, say, the violet light in the second prism (figure 4.3) and compare this with the production of violet light in the first prism (figure 4.4).
In both cases the outputs are the same. The simplest account seems to be that the prism functions in the same way in both cases: it just transports the coloured light through, bending it in accord with its fixed degree of refrangib-ility.
Consider an analogous case. You observe a large, low building. Coloured cars drive through. Cars of different colours have different fixed turning radii.
You observe for each colour that there is a fixed and colour-dependent angle between the trajectory on which the car enters the building and the trajectory on which it exits; moreover, this is just the angle to be expected if the cars were driven through the building with steering wheels locked to the far left.
Besides cars, other vehicles enter the building, covered; and each time a covered vehicle enters, a coloured car exits shortly afterward. It exists at just that angle that would be appropriate had the original incoming vehicle been a car of the same colour driven through with its steering wheel locked. Two hypotheses are offered about what goes on inside the building. Both hypo-theses treat the incoming coloured cars in the same way: on entering the building their steering wheels get locked and then they are driven through.
The two hypotheses differ, however, about the covered vehicles. The first hypothesis assumes that these, too, are coloured cars. Inside the building they get unwrapped, and then they are treated just like all the other coloured cars.
The second hypothesis is more ambitious. It envisages that the low building contains an entire car factory. The covered vehicles contain raw material, and inside the building there are not only people who lock steering wheels, but a whole crew of Fiat workers and machinery turning raw materials into cars.
Obviously, the first hypothesis is simpler, but it has more in its favour than that. For so far, the second hypothesis has not explained why the manufac-tured cars exit at the angle they do, relative to their incoming raw materials;
and there seems to be no immediate natural account to give on the second story. True, the cars are manufactured with fixed turning radii, but why should they leave the factory at just the same angle relative to the cart that carries in their raw materials as a drive-through does relative to its line of entry? After all, the manufactured car has come to exist only somewhere within the factory, and even if its steering wheel is locked, it seems a peculiar coincidence should that result in just the right exit point to yield the required angle vis-a-vis the raw materials. In this case, barring other information, the first, Newtonian, hypothesis seems the superior. The caveat, 'barring other information', is central, of course, to Goethe's attack. For, as I have already remarked, Goethe was appalled at the small amount of information that Newton collected, and he argued that Newton's claim was in no way adequate to cover the totality of the phenomena. What looks to be the best hypothesis in a single case can certainly look very different when a whole array of different cases have to be considered.
The principal point to notice, for my purpose, is that the argument is not at all deductive. It can only become so if we already presuppose that we are looking for some fixed feature in light itself that will account for what comes out of the prism - something, as I would say, in the nature of light. Any assumption like this is deeply contrary to Goethe's point of view. The first few paragraphs of Newton's letter, before the introduction of the crucial experiment, give some grounds for such an assumption on his part; Goethe makes fun of them:
It is a fact that under those circumstances that Newton exactly specifies, the image of the sun is five times as long as it is wide, and that this elongated image appears entirely in colors. Every observer can repeatedly witness this phenomenon without any great effort.
Newton himself tells us how he wants to work in order to convince himself that no external cause can bring this elongation and coloration of the image. This treatment of his will, as already was mentioned above, be subjected to criticism for we can raise many questions and investigate with exactness, whether he went to work properly and to what extent his proof is in every sense complete. If one analyses his reasons, they have the following form: When the ray is refracted the image is longer than it should be according to the laws of refraction.
Now I have tried everything and thereby convinced myself that no external cause is responsible for this elongation.
Therefore it is an inner cause, and this we find in the divisibility of light. For since it takes up a larger space than before, it must divided, thrown asunder; and since we see the sundered light in colours, the different parts of it must be coloured.
How much there is to object to immediately in this rationale!28 The contrast that I want to highlight is between Newton's postulation of an inner cause in light versus Goethe's long and many-faceted row of experi-ments. Goethe often remarks that he and Newton both claim to be concerned with colours', Newton after all labels his account in the 1671 letter his 'new theory of light and colours'. But, in actuality, Goethe points out, Newton's work is almost entirely about the behaviour of rays - that is, about the inner nature of light. Goethe's experiments often involve light, but it is not light that he studies. The experiments describe entire interacting complexes, such as evening light entering a room through a hole in a white blind on which a candle throws light ('snow seen through the opening will then appear blue, because the paper is tinged with warm yellow by the candlelight'29), or sun-light shining into a diving bell (in this case 'everything is seen in a red light ... while the shadows appear green'30), or a particularly exemplary case for the existence of coloured shadows, a pencil placed on a sheet of white paper between a short, lighted candle and a window so that the twilight from the window illuminates the pencil's shadow from the candle ('the shadow will appear of the most beautiful blue'31). Even when described from the point of view of Goethe's final account of colour formation, in the prism experiments Goethe is not looking at light but rather at light (or darkness)-in-interaction-with-a-turbid-medium.
Newton focuses on his one special experiment and maintains that the account of the phenomena in that experiment will pinpoint an explanation that is generalisable. The feature that explains the phenomena in that situation will explain phenomena in other situations; hence he looks to a feature that is part of the inner constitution of light itself. To place it in the inner constitu-tion is to cast it not as an observable property characteristic of light but rather as a power that reveals itself, if at all, in appropriately structured circum-stances. To describe it as part of light's constitution is to ascribe a kind of permanence to the association: light retains this power across a wide variation in circumstance - indeed, probably so long as it remains light. That is, I maintain, to treat it as an Aristotelian-style nature. This is why Newton, unlike Goethe, can downplay the experimental context. The context is there to elicit the nature of light; it is not an essential ingredient in the ultimate structure of the phenomenon.

Who has dispensed with natures?
My argument in this chapter hinges on a not surprising connection between methodology and ontology. If you want to find out how a scientific discipline pictures the world, you can study its laws, its theories, its models, and its claims - you can listen to what it says about the world. But you can also consider not just what is said but what is done. How we choose to look at the world is just as sure a clue to what we think the world is like as what we say about it. Modern experimental physics looks at the world under precisely controlled or highly contrived circumstance; and in the best of cases, one look is enough. That, I claim, is just how one looks for natures and not how one looks for information about what things do.
Goethe criticises Newton for this same kind of procedure that we use now-adays, and the dispute between them illustrates my point. Newton's conclu-sions in his letter of 1671, as well as throughout his later work in optics, are about the inner constitution of light. I claim that this study of the inner consti-tution is a study of an Aristotelian-style nature and that Newton's use of experiment is suited to just that kind of enterprise, where the experimentum crucis is an especially striking case. The coloured rays, with their different degrees of refrangibility, cannot be immediately seen in white light. But through the experiment with the two prisms, the underlying nature expresses itself in a clearly visible behaviour: the colours are there to be seen, and the purely dispositional property, degree-of-refrangibility, is manifested in the actual angle through which the light is bent. The experiment is brilliantly constructed: the connection between the natures and the behaviour that is supposed to reveal them is so tight that Newton takes it to be deductive.
Goethe derides Newton for surveying so little evidence, and his worries are not merely questions of experimental design: perhaps Newton miscalcu-lated, or mistakenly assumed that the second prism was identical in structure with the first, or Newton takes as simple what is not ... Goethe's disagree-ment with Newton is not a matter of mere epistemological uncertainty. It is rather a reflection of deep ontological differences. For Goethe, all phenomena are the consequence of interaction between polar opposites. There is nothing in light to be isolated, no inner nature to be revealed. No experiment can show with a single result what it is in the nature of light to do. The empiricists of the scientific revolution wanted to oust Aristotle entirely from the new learning. I have argued that they did no such thing. Goethe, by contrast, did dispense with natures; there are none in his world picture. But there are, I maintain, in ours.

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