[betty boop]

A useful theory, as Ortega puts it, must "mate happily with reality" to become knowledge.

Ortega puts the problem very well indeed.

I'm not entirely sure what you intend by the word "fix" in (b). But it does seem clear to me that the observer can be seen "disturbing" and thus modifying that which he observes. Consider the case of a cultural anthropologist, for instance, who travels to a tribe of primitive people for the purpose of studying it. His very presence as a complete "outsider" of obviously different culture than their own disturbs the behavior of the people he's come to study. Or what of the claim by a literary analyst, that such-and-such book will have wide appeal among a variety of different readers, for each will find in it perspectives congenial to his own outlook.

More to cover but I must stop now: Dinner is served! And I'm hungry!!! I hope to be back later.

Thanks so much for writing, cornelis!

[cornelis]

I'm not entirely sure what you intend by the word "fix" in (b).

I meant no more than the citation (in your words) afterward explains.

Here's a tidbit from Gilson in Being and Some Philosophers.

The world of Aristotle is there whole, in so far as reality is substance. It is the world of science, eternal, self-subsistent and such that no problem concerning existence needs nor can be asked about it. It is one and the same thing for a man in it to be "man," to be "one" and "to be." But while keeping whole the world of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas realizes that such a world cannot possibly be "metaphysical." Quite the reverse, it is the straight "physical" world of natural science, in which "natures" necessarily entail their own existence . . . physics is that very order of substantial reality in which existence is taken for granted. As soon as existence no longer is taken for granted, metaphysics beings. In other words, Thomas Aquinas is here moving the whole body of metaphysics to an entirely new ground. In the philosophy of Aristotle, physics was in charge of dealing with all "natures," that is, with those beings that have in themselves the principle of their own change and of their own operations . . .

But tell me, how could you be talking metaphysics when it concerned the the natural world?