September 28, 2009
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Buy ativan c.o.d., [I'm posting this anew, but it is in part a response to questions from Tobias and Anthony on the previous post.]
No sooner did I abandon this topic than I picked up Arendt's The Human Condition, wherein there is, in chapter 6, an all too brief reflection on novelty (of precisely that form of philosophy of modernity that Tobias articulates as the main domain of this activity). The chapter announces that the three great events that define the character of the modern world are America (its discovery), the Reformation (and counter-reformation) and the telescope of Galileo. At this point Arendt says:
"The names we connect with them, Galileo Galilei and Martin Luther and the great seafarers, explorers and adventurers in the age of discovery, order ativan online, still belong to the premodern world. Moreover, the strange pathos of novelty, the almost violent insistence of nearly all the great authors, Ordering ativan without prescription, scientists and philosophers since the seventeenth century that they saw things never seen before, thought thoughts never thought before, can be found in none of them, not even in Galileo."
There follows a footnote on novelty, the emergence of the term scienza nuova, a reference to Alexandre Koyre and a bit on the work of Karl Jaspers (from whom Arendt borrows the term "pathos of novelty"), buy cheap ativan, specifically Japers' essay on Descartes. Her basic point seems to be that these great events that characterize modernity are not continuous with the past, but nor is it possible to say that they occurred because Luther or Galileo or the seafarers were seeking something new. Rather they were ensconced in their own conceptual scheme (to foreshadow the likes of Kuhn and Davidson) in which novelty was not so important, but out of which emerged a new scheme with novelty as its key value, buy ativan c.o.d.. Nothing new about this, Acheter ativan bon marché, as we say.
Now, on the one hand, this is undoubtedly reassuring, to see novelty explicitly marked out as a value which radically increased in stature with the rise of modernity, modern philosophy and science, online ativan, and around which we all turn with a faithfulness that we rarely question. On the other hand, it is a version of things that re-introduces an epochal break (a form of novelty about which we have been taught to be suspicious around here), and which Tobias very nicely articulated in his comment. Ativan without a prescription, Surely novelty is not itself new, and from here we can have a rich, but ultimately fruitless discussion about modernity and the philosophy of history. Buy ativan c.o.d., So at this point I would echo Anthony's comment on the previous post that there is reason to be careful about the referent of novelty--no novelty as such, but always the novelty of some thing. Novelty always modifies a claim. However, this requires more clarification, αγοράζουν φτηνά ativan, so let me propose this distinction:
1) the question of novelty as a claim about something: is it new or not. Can one define a set of parameters (a mode of veridiction, even) that allow novelty to be claimed convincingly in some cases and not others. Does this claim vary with the kinds of objects in play: art, Buy ativan, scientific 'discoveries', corporate product design, fashion, political causes, etc.
2) the question of novelty as one value among others, and often the most important one: it is more important to be new than certain, true, effective, flourishy, just, human etc, buy ativan c.o.d.. Or to refine this, Missouri MO Mo. , all other values are subordinated to novelty: it may be more effective, more just, more certain than something else, but we should value it because this makes it new. Buy ativan without prescription, It strikes me that classical conservatism is the only stance that actively resists this version of novelty (i.e. "Just because something is new, doesn't mean it is better." See for example, "The Relentless Cult of Novelty" by Solzhenitsyn).
and related to this,
2a) the question of novelty as marker of priority, Mississippi MS Miss. , and a kind of bureacratic mechanism for managing the distribution of credit, resources and accolades or in the case of fraud, accusations. Buy ativan c.o.d., Novelty-as-firstness.
It strikes me that we anthropologists of the contemporary can safely hold hands, Goedkope ativan apotheek, sing "If I Had a Hammer" and reject (1), in favor of emergence, or non-epochal thinking, or of difference and motion. I think there is a path out of that kind of obsessive concern with the new (and I do think assemblage-apparatus-problematization a useful starting place for that).
However, ativan discount, I think it is extremely difficult to reject (2) or (2a). We can be cynical about them; we can see them as a problem of "some kind of rhetoric of authority as well as entrepreneurship" (Paul's comment); we can probably tie it to the economic and financial imperatives that drive knowledge production today; we can tie (2a) to the "university-ification" of culture (not the corporatization of the university), or perhaps to the "responsibilization" of individuals who must now all represent themselves as entrepreneurs, scientists, Billig kaufen ativan, each with something new to offer. In any case, I would argue that (2) and (2a) are forms of novelty-as-experience which are central to self-fashioning in the contemporary, buy ativan c.o.d.. When there are perfectly recognizable reasons to do something--something that will enhance flourishing or justice or even certainty--and yet it is impossible to do so unless it can also be made new, preferably cutting edge, then this form of novelty (or whatever it is) is at work.
An interesting outcome of this distinction is that (2) and (2a) becomes a problem for (1). As novelty-as-value and the need for widespread priority-ranking comes to dominate the scale of values, halvalla ativan apteekki, when they become the primary route to advancement, funding, access to power especially in knowledge-production, but beyond it is well, Billig ativan apotek, then this means people begin to propose, and to accept, ever more claims and things as novel in the sense of (1).
Think, for instance, of the proliferation of journals in academia, Illinois IL Ill. . Buy ativan c.o.d., Combine a publish-or-perish imperative with a novelty-as-key-value, and the system will burst if people cannot find outlets which both allow them to publish and stamp it with a seal of approval ("Now with more novelty!"), and so the number of journals is growing at an exponential rate today. Obviously, a great deal that is published today (that vast sea of ignorance) is not new in absolute terms, but only new to some community of scholars that read that journal (Or in the worst case, only new in order to promote careers). Delaware DE Del. , Differentiation of knowledge production between a high-culture of novelty and a low-culture of novelty (or perhaps a Royal and a Minor domain of novelty) thus seems possible, so long as the two don't mingle. No longer does it seem so easy to denounce "pseudo-science" "bad science" or "alternative science" simply because there is an exponentially growing sea of grey areas between the royal science and the many minor sciences all around it.
So the claim that everything must be new is true only in the sense of (2) and (2a), not (1). It is clear, I think that everything cannot be new in the sense of (1), for whatever value of new, buy ativan c.o.d.. Novelty presumes ranking and priority, comprare ativan. But that doesn't stop everyone from claiming novelty, regardless of the absolute truth of the matter. It is a bit of a Monadology: everything is new to some person or group, from some perspective, φτηνές φαρμακείο ativan, each living in different logoi, or within various, partially overlapping modernities. Obviously the differentiating, de-massifying power of the internet is crucial to this dynamic. Buy ativan c.o.d., At the same time that a thousand journals flourish, the top 10 most-read and most cited journals begin to matter more than ever before.
Anthony asked: is it not possible to be attentive to changes in degree and changes in kind, buy ativan online legally. To which I would say with respect to (1), it is absolutely possible. This is afterall, bread and butter to scientists who read only Kuhn: puzzle solving is new in degree, Order ativan no prescription, paradigms are new in kind. However, with respect to (2) or (2a), I think it much harder. Every infinitesimal change in degree is accorded the status of novelty, because that is so much more important than other values, buy ativan c.o.d.. Or at least, one can increase funding, price of ativan, prestige, attention only be claiming that a change is new, to which all other values are subordinated. It is new because it is better, Ordering ativan, it is new because it is greener, it is new because it is more responsible, etc. What would a change in kind look like in terms of (2) or (2a).
Consider what Jaspers says of novelty:
In the days when philosophy was metaphysics, a thinker lived in an enduring whole, Washington WA Wash. . Content with the philosophia perrenis Buy ativan c.o.d., in which he believed, he did not distinguish between the old and the new in his thoughts, for all of them were rooted in the whole. He judged ideas not by their novelty but by their authenticity. (Essay on Descartes, p. 132)
The characteristic feature of modern science therefore (and Jaspers excludes philosophy from this search for novelty, Descartes' New Method notwithstanding) is the image of rungs in an endless ladder. But what I think we see today is the endless proliferation of ladders, many of which cannot identify the ground they stand on, much less what they climb towards. Novelty, and the progress that is its justification, looks more like book-keeping from this perspective.
One last thing, Tobias' example of plasticity of the brain and its neurons is a lively one. In that same last section of the Human Condition, Arendt goes on at length (in unashamedly epochal terms) about the way Descartes' philosophy moved the Archimedean point from a place outside ourselves, even outside the earth, to the inside of our heads: "What men now have in common is not the world but the structure of their minds, and this they cannot have in common strictly speaking (283)" Neuroscience would be the apotheosis of this movement, and plasticity the introduction of doubt into the very claim that we have in minds in common.... all we have now are computers in common, and just barely that.
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September 3, 2009
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Order cheap ativan online, This is a not-completely-thought-through attempt to provoke continued conversation here. I'm in the middle of trying to finish a manuscript on Nanotechnology and Responsibility based on the work i've pursued amongst this group over the last few years. Among the concepts that has emerged for me that I cannot get rid of, buy ativan without prescription, but cannot think without is novelty--including all its variations such as innovation, Order ativan from canada, creativity, the new and the fashionable. My attempt at reasoning through why this is important in my case is the following tagline/aphorism: "Making things new, West Virginia WV W.Va. , making things safe, Nevada NV Nev. , making a career." Unraveled, the phrase is intended to capture the way that my subjects transformed the problem of environmental and biological properties of nanomaterials (e.g. their "safety") into a kind of problem which other scientists and engineers experienced as novel, Rhode Island RI R.I. . Novel enough to merit the kinds of accolades and approbation that supposedly drive scientists--it was an attempt not just to solve a problem, but to "make" their careers (at all levels, the grad students excitement about partcipation, the interdisciplinary invention of a new thing, and the classic senior scientists struggling for power and recognition for what they did), order cheap ativan online.
But I am no longer sure what I mean by novelty. Wyoming WY Wyo. , At one level, this is not just about conventional novelty in science, which is often treated as an unproblematic feature of scientific research--rather, where to buy ativan, it is about the effort necessary to make something unrecognizable into something novel. Colorado CO Colo. , It's not just one set of scientists that needs to see something as new, but an intersection or union of multiple sets. Safety was seen by most chemists, Montana MT Mont. , physicists, Cheapest ativan prices, engineers in nano as something downstream, an uninteresting test after the real action is over. Order cheap ativan online, The story I tell is about making safety into something "novel" enough to transcend that image.
At another level, Koop korting ativan, however, Ordering ativan pills, novelty is so pervasive and so important today that nearly everything counts as something new. I've started to wonder whether it would be possible to find anyone in science who was in fact not interested in making something new, and if such a creature could ever survive, ativan prescription. This rise to prominence of novelty as the supervalue of values renders it unstable, Purchase ativan, both as a feature of working science, and as a concept for understanding what is happening. Is novelty being decoupled from power, ativan sale. Is it proliferating into a bureaucratic value like cleanliness or accuracy, order cheap ativan online.
Finally, Buy ativan online, there is a philosophical angle to this concern. Concerning the cultural significance of nanotechnology (those conceptual interconnection of problems of Weberian fame), the question of novelty is in the background all the time, acquistare online ativan. Weber's Tolstoyish question “how shall we live” is rendered problematic today because the way we live is changing, For ativan online, and quickly by most accounts, with the knowledge and things we create. Old answers don't apply, billiga ativan apotek, new double binds arise, Cheapest ativan in the world, paradoxes and dangers and uncertainties which, even in the best of cases, seem unanswerable in classic philosophical terms, buy ativan from canada. Order cheap ativan online, The twist is the contemporary concern (obsession even) with novelty: both within science and engineering and outside of it, novelty has become the single most important cultural feature of knowledge production in our world. More important than lastingness, Ativan pedido en línea, more important than certainty, more important than utility even, the race for novelty absolutely structures and determines the lives of scientists and engineers, buy ativan cheap, as well as those who observe them (journalists, Vermont VT Vt. , funders, regulators, anthropologists and philosophers), cheap ativan online without prescription. If novelty has become so important, then it gives a twist to that classic philosophical question: how should we live now. And now. And.... now, order cheap ativan online. Like that annoying mobile phone salesperson who says “Can you hear me now?” the question can be asked over and over again. How should we answer this question when things seem to be changing so fast and so constantly. According to what temporality should the problem of novelty be rendered conceptually solid.
So two questions: 1) what is the conceptual locus of this problem. Order cheap ativan online, Are there other concepts (and/or texts) which form the horizon of the problem. 2) Is novelty as I've described it above, a problem that relates science and politics (or rationality and governmentality) in ways that need to be explored. Does novelty play as central a role in the security of vital systems or in the formation of police power as it does in the generation of scientific and engineering objects.
Update:: Okay maybe three, since I forgot to include the equally problematic concept of "emergence" and "emergent forms" which I do not think helps matters all that much. It shifts the problem away from the de novo creation of things to their recombination. This is useful as a first step, but I also think there is as much "emergence" out there (and as valued) as there is novelty.
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