On the subject of what is real, I have another question: “Is it raining?”
The following is a quote (quite a long one) from Don DeLillo of an account of a father driving his 14 year old son, Heinrich to school, in Kenneth J Gergen’s (1999) An invitation to Social Construction, London: Sage Publications Ltd. A brilliant book by the way.
Heinrich begins the conversation:
‘Its going to rain tonight’.
‘It’s raining now’ I said.
‘The radio said tonight’
‘Look at the windshield,’ I said. 'Is that rain or isn’t it?
‘I’m only telling you what they said’’
‘Just because it’s on the radio doesn’t mean we have to suspend belief in the evidence of our senses’
‘Our senses? Our senses are wrong a lot more often than they’re right. This has been proved in the laboratory. Don’t you know about all those theorems that say nothing is what it seems? There’s no past, present or future outside our own mind … Even sound can trick the mind. Just because you don’t hear a sound doesn’t mean it’s not out there. Dogs can hear it. Other animals. And I’m sure there are sounds even dogs can’t hear …’
‘Is it raining’ I said ‘or isn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t want to have to say’
‘What if someone held a gun to your head?’
'Who, you?
'Someone. A man in a trenchcoat and smoky glasses. He holds a gun to your head and he says, ‘is it raining or isn’t it? All you have to do is tell the truth and I’ll put my gun and take the next flight out of here’
‘What truth does he want? Does he want the truth of someone traveling at almost the speed of light in another galaxy? Does he want the truth of someone in orbit around a neutron star? …’
'‘He’s holding the gun to your head. He want your truth’
‘What good is my truth: My truth means nothing. What if this guy with the gun comes from a planet in a whole different solar system? What we call rain he calls soap. What we call apples he calls rain. So what am I supposed to tell him?’
‘His name is Frank J. Smalley and he comes from St Louis’
‘He wants to know if it’s raining now, at this very minute?’
‘Here and now. That’s right’
‘Is there such a thing as now? ‘Now’ comes and goes as soon as you say it. How can I say it’s raining now if your so-called ‘now’ becomes ‘then’ as soon as I say it?’
‘… Just give me an answer, okay, Heinrich?’
‘The best I could do is make a guess’
‘Either it’s raining or it isn’t’ I said.
‘Exactly. That’s my whole point. You’d be guessing. Six of one, half a dozen of the other’
‘But you see it’s raining’
‘You see the sun moving across the sky. But is the sun moving across the sky or is the earth turning? … What is rain anyway?’
‘It’s the stuff that falls from the sky and gets you what is called wet’
‘I’m not wet. Are you wet?’
‘All right’ I said. ‘Very good’.
‘No, seriously, are you wet?’
‘First-rate’ I told him. ‘A victory for uncertainty, randomness and chaos. Science’s finest hour?’
So, it would seem Polanyi and Gergen agree that objectivism and subjectivism don’t have to be so poles apart - maybe we can meet and at least converse.
Billy