"Ce qui limite le vrai, ce n'est pas le faux, c'est l'insignifiant", René Thom, Prédire n'est pas expliquer, Flammarion, Paris, 1993.
''Truth is not limited by falsity, but by insignificance'', affirms Thom. How we, as scientists, are to interpret this aphorism in our scientific investigations?
In this "chart of sense", Thom proposes a classification of sciences and other human activities based on the opposition between truth and falsehood, and significance and insignificance. It is interesting to observe how one of Thom's main goals was to develop a mathematical theory of the analogy, which he places high on the ordinate of the significance, but on the side of false.
That an analogy is false, I hope is clear to everybody; yet its level of significance can be very high. We have to realize that, as scientists, we do not cease to use, mainly unconsciously, the analogy as a valuable tool to progress in our investigations. We need to lift up our spirits from the netherlands of the ambiguity, and climb the mountains up to the peak of the absurd, to be able to go down again through the river of science, back to the sea of the insignificance.
I realize, however, that this is a romantic view of science, as hard to understand today as it was when Thom was still alive: Techne' and her adepts do not take prisoners!
In this "chart of sense", Thom proposes a classification of sciences and other human activities based on the opposition between truth and falsehood, and significance and insignificance. It is interesting to observe how one of Thom's main goals was to develop a mathematical theory of the analogy, which he places high on the ordinate of the significance, but on the side of false.
That an analogy is false, I hope is clear to everybody; yet its level of significance can be very high. We have to realize that, as scientists, we do not cease to use, mainly unconsciously, the analogy as a valuable tool to progress in our investigations. We need to lift up our spirits from the netherlands of the ambiguity, and climb the mountains up to the peak of the absurd, to be able to go down again through the river of science, back to the sea of the insignificance.
I realize, however, that this is a romantic view of science, as hard to understand today as it was when Thom was still alive: Techne' and her adepts do not take prisoners!
1 comment:
Technè is a fickle lover She may leave her adepts inside the semantic cages they have built for themselves.
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