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To: cornelis

Oh. I didn't mean that Hayek favored a modern view, but that he probably shared the somewhat diminished view of analogy assumed by just about everyone this side of the middle ages, even by those sympathetic to the earlier worldviews. I grew up with analogy as rhetorical theory and poetic method, and never thought of it in real philosophical terms until much later, even after having read fairly extensively in earlier literatures and having had a pretty good exposure to ancient thought in school and college.


251 posted on 11/01/2006 4:58:39 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: Cicero; betty boop; Alamo-Girl; metmom; Dimensio
Some more thoughts on analogy. (Others please add yours if you wish!)

Broadly speaking, analogies are made when our faculty of conceptualization holds two things in some kind of relation. This was the ancient Greek analogia that described proportionality in mathematics and music.

More specifically, analogies are representative relations that can be used to illustrate a correspondence not entirely one to one. The representative identity must exclude univocation.

Modern biology makes use of this kind of mental activity, both in the general and specific sense. When you speak of a diminished view of analogy, it certainly can't be a diminished view of our most characteristic manner of mental activity. Actually, all human conceptualization is analogical, holding in relation our concepts with the objects of our attention.

The diminished view comes into play when certain kinds of relations are preferred. Hayek notes that the natural sciences has developed a diminished view of the relations of sense.

This is ironic because there is much to be gained politically in the propagation of popular perceptions of science. Such perceptions, will often take advantage of the relations of sense (e.g. Coyoteman's pictorial postings and the biology textbooks' sina qua non illustrations).

The problem in scientific thinking (or any other kind of thinking) is when practicioners are no longer epistemologically aware and abuse the analogical for an identity. The concept is not merely illustrative, it is the thing itself. It loses what betty boop posted earlier from Bohr, "that natural science is not nature itself but a part of the relation between man and nature."

This identity is a prejudice that denies the relations of things other than what is termed scientific.

Anybody can prefer a particular order of relations; so there is prejudice in religious dogma. But there is a far more potent pscyhological feature: some discussions are chiefly motivated by the perceived social and sexual relations that are formed. The relation of knowledge relation to truth in such environments becomes superfluous and is easily overwhelmed by these other prior interests.

293 posted on 11/04/2006 12:16:35 PM PST by cornelis
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