Peter Emmerson

 5. Some Implications of Elias’ model.

 5.1 From ‘relative detachment’ to ‘relative uncertainty’

 The past, certainly in Europe, was an enchanted place, full of demons, angels, pixies and the like. If Weber is right, people were dominated by superstition and their emotional desires; tradition held sway. He went on to say that since the Renaissance these less realistic ways of thinking and acting have been in decline, as more and more people in Europe saw the need to act with self-control, using foresight to make plans. In more recent times we have seen the spread of this style of operation throughout the world, even though some areas are extremely resistant. From Elias’ point of view this is not a good or bad thing, this was not inevitable, this is not part of some underlying governing law that brings progress, this is not guaranteed to continue in the future, it is just what has happened so far. Most importantly for this essay he alerts us to the problem of the way the ideas of the past can obscure our view of the present and future.

Concepts such as objectivity lead us into ways of analysis that confuse scientific problems rather than elucidate them. In developing the concept of ‘relative detachment’, Elias offers us a different direction that is more scientific because it is more reality congruent. Interdependently, it is more sociological. In so doing I would to suggest, he warns of the dangers of excessive idealism and the damage it can do to scientific enterprise. The use of language is critical to this end if we are to be as reality congruent as possible and avoid overextending ourselves by using metaphysical nouns such as objectivity without due caution. As mentioned earlier, Elias argues that if we are to achieve sufficient reality congruence to do science, we need to use process words; verbs such as ‘civilizing’ which is more in tune with the ever changing social environment. At the same time he alerts us to the harm done to scientific analysis by using nouns such as ‘civilization’, which tend to fix things in perpetuity rather than facilitate the exploration of a forever changing reality.

The inclusion of the adjective ‘relative’ (not to be confused with the noun ‘relativism’) is very important because it has a restraining influence on idealistic nouns such as detachment: to be detached is very similar to being objective in that both are expressive of a fixed state of isolation. Detachment is transformed by attaching Relative. Relative detachment is something more sensitive to real social experience because it demands a more subtle, tentative approach that respects the variability implicit in what people do and think, making it more difficult to jump to unrealistic, idealistic conclusions. By attaching ‘relative’ to ‘uncertainty’ I believe we achieve a similar outcome, providing a concept that is more realistic, and which has the increased likelihood of encouraging a more thoroughly scientific way of analysing human life by redirecting our efforts away from all too easy and attractive idealistic intellectual habits, typified by dichotomous noun-traps such as uncertainty and certainty.

  4.2.4 Weber

Idealism probably emerged as part of supernatural interpretations of experience but has one of its most potent modern influences through the notion of rationality. The argument is that logical analysis is our most trusted arbiter that guides us to the truth of things, or at least in the Cartesian/Popperian sense, sensitizes us to doubt. This approach was challenged by Max Weber who produced good evidence to suggest that there was not a single, definitive rationality, but, rationalities, contingent upon the goal to be achieved. Nonetheless, Weber, like Durkheim, was very much of the Kantian school, believing that we make sense of our factual experience using rational, ‘ideal’ models. On this basis he put together the notion of ‘ideal-types’ as the means by which we could measure social data in order to carry out a comparative analysis: how do we know the length of anything? – we use a standard measure graduated in an agreed unit such as inches. In sociology we need a similar standard by which to measure difference.

Perhaps the most famous example of an ideal-type is his model of bureaucracy which he used to understand real bureaucratic functioning by bringing to light the contrast between his sociological ideal model and real bureaucracies such as the civil service. Rationality in this sense is a method for the calculation of real historical contingencies rather than the means by which we elucidate the immanence of God’s laws or the absolute truth. What is rational for Weber depends on the level of emotion employed in the solution to a problem, or, whether we simply repeat the tried and tested methods of experience. Being rational is making a calculation of the means to an end, whether it is pleasing or not, whether it offends convention or not. Rationality is not a multi-purpose method of guaranteeing the absolute truth, it is a method of assessing the procedure most effective in achieving a goal, that is low on emotion and suspicious of the old way of doing things. Rational practice will therefore vary with the circumstances to which it is applied.

Weber argued that the rise in popularity of the rational style of analysis was evident during the Renaissance and has been growing ever since, not only with the emergence of institutionalised science, but also, capitalism. The latter, Weber argued, was the result of the activities of an ambitious group of people who saw the advantages to the profitability of their businesses of adopting the Protestant religious stance and a concomitant code of ethics which espoused the ascetic lifestyle of hard work and self denial: the Quakers are a well known example synonymous with famous modern companies such as Barclays, Cadbury (sadly no more) and Boots. What Weber does here is to highlight the way in ambitious business-oriented figurations used ideals as an element in their strategy for domination. When a position of dominance is achieved such that they become established, those same ideals are used to justify their actions and right to continue in control. Under capitalism you too can become wealthy if you work hard and are prudent with your earnings in accordance with God’s word, do as I say and do, or take the consequences!

However, by drawing our attention to the significance of ideals, either as a method of doing social science, or as a strategic method in the battle for social influence, Weber offers further evidence of a damaging connection with the Kantian approach by illustrating the correspondence between ideals and ordinary human day to day activity. Whilst this was a tactic in his disagreement with Marx over the origins of capitalism and the significance of religious ideals in social change, as far as I’m concerned it undermines the force of his own argument by privileging ideals. This is the really sticky part of his model. He sees the need to explore rationality as a historico-social process but then tempers this insight by including a version of Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ – the ideal-type, to steady the ship on what he fears is its drift into relativist waters. Nevertheless, by making the connection between social experience and changes in rationality he pioneers another important step towards a relatively uncertain view.

Weber’s model provides support for two conclusions relevant to my argument: he offers insight into how ideals play their part as ideological tools in the dog fight for survival; he also explains how moral thinking is an integral part of rational practice. In this sense he adds weight to the arguments of Comte, Marx and Durkheim. The problem is that in using ideals he damaged his science.

 4.2.3 Durkheim

The increased awareness of relative uncertainty evidenced in Marx’s analysis was given further impetus by Emile Durkheim’s more sociological account of the damage done to social cohesion by the industrial exploitation of the division of labour, so lauded by Adam Smith. Like Marx, Durkheim recognised the significance of work experiences in the formation of human togetherness or social solidarity. Such work experiences bring about codes of thinking and behaviour which extend beyond the labour process into wider social life. Industrial capitalism was successful at producing large numbers of cheap goods by breaking down work into simple, specialised tasks suitable for machines gathered together in factories and towns, serviced by people. Work that was too difficult for mechanization was again simplified as much as possible to remove its skill so that it could be done quickly by people with little or no training who were cheap and easy to replace.

These changes that took place during the Industrial Revolution had been so significant and so rapid, that they had, according to Durkheim, caused a rupture in the social landscape, leaving the pre-industrial, rural moral codes trailing behind in their wake and for a growing number of people, obsolete. In Durkheim’s view, a new set of moral codes suitable for urban, industrial society would take time to evolve, perhaps always lagging behind due to the relentless and ceaseless pace of change endemic to market capitalism. The moral ferment caused by these forces left people in permanent states of uncertainty about how to behave and think in the new industrial, urban world, where intense deregulation demanded much more flexibility.

The discomfort experienced by people was recognised by Durkheim who ingeniously modified the theometaphysical concept of anarchy, translating it into a social scientific term that related such change to measurable social events – ‘anomie’. Anomie is the result of social dislocation and the loss of common sense knowledge on what to do for the best, leaving people perpetually unsure, confused and even suicidal. Even though Marx used alienation to explain similar things, his analysis was more idealistic: alienation will be ended by the demise of capitalism and a return to a state of true nature. In contrast, Durkheim portrayed anomie as a socio-pathological condition requiring coping strategies until rules emerge to regulate the new system such as professional ethics.

In developing the concept of anomie, Durkheim moved sociology away from the traditional truth-finders by reducing some of the idealism in our understanding. Anomie is a more reality-oriented, more scientific concept, that increases the distance of sociological understanding from theometaphysics by focussing on specific social experiences and their connection to moral understanding. Interrelatedly, and more importantly for my analysis, Durkheim points directly to the issue of moral uncertainty and its causes. The arrival of capitalism and the need to drive down costs by exploiting the division of labour through greater levels of specialisation of job function has the effect, he believed, of distancing people from one another because there is less commonality of experience. Most cultures have family names that speak of job function that spanned generations of people: in the UK we have people called Baker, Taylor, Smith, Cooper whose names speak of ancestral jobs. In capitalism the rate of change of employment function is comparatively so high that relatively new occupations become redundant within four generations; an instance being the bank clerk. Durkheim argued that this process of diversification and permanent deregulation has led to increased individualism causing tensions and social problems such as rising levels of crime and, most notably, suicide. By introducing the concept of anomie, Durkheim prioritized social experience over that of idealism and at the same time brought attention to our need to explore the uncertainty of modern experience driven by capitalist’ thirst for innovation. In this model, morals are social rules that form the very fabric of human social experience because they bond people together by imposing obligation on one another. Morals are therefore subject to social change, the are not absolutes given on tablets of stone from on high. The social scientific style of analysis is suggestive of ‘relative uncertainty’.

Traditionally the analysis of morals has been the home ground of idealism and its experts the theometaphysicists, no doubt because of the importance of values for social order: see Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan. This approach argues that the source of our moral thinking is on the one hand religious and on the other metaphysical: the Ten Commandments are a very influential example of the former; Aristotle’s search for the good life exemplifies the latter. Durkheim challenged this approach, by exploring the formation of morals in relation to their social function as the glue that holds us together. From this point of view morals are emotional and symbolic representations of human bonding, so pivotal to human identity and survival that they are translated into sacred texts and rituals. Morals, for Durkheim, are the shared values that structure our social existence by providing a consensus on how to think and behave.

Even though Durkheim does go some way to demolishing the idealistic theometaphysical monolith upon which rights and wrongs are written, he is not fully immune to idealistic fancy. In developing Comte’s message, he builds idealistic patterns of analysis into his model by employing the approach of Immanuel Kant. Kant attempted an unsuccessful repair of the fissure that emerged in metaphysics with the disagreement between the rationalists such as Descartes and the empiricists such as Locke and Hume. On the one hand the Cartesians were convinced that the truthfulness of mathematics allowed them access to a method of finding absolute truths such as the existence of God, without any reference to the uncertain world of sensory experience. On the other hand there were people like Locke who argued that the mind cannot think mathematically until it synthesizes ideas from sensory experience. In trying to bridge the gap Kant, as far as I can see, simply reformulated it producing what Michel Foucault later called the ’empirico-transendental double’. Even though Kant argued that our powers of reason were useless unless they were made to address factual problems, he could not integrate pure reason with sensory experience. Thus, the Kantian perspective is just another version of the dichotomous, fractured world according to Homo clausus, who looks out on a universe fashioned by his mental apparatus, rather than a full amalgamation of mind and sensory experience. Thus, Hume’s worrying conclusion that the absolute truth could not be explained by collecting empirical evidence, remains unassailable. Consequently, Kant’s re-evaluation still gives pride of place to ideals (noumena) because they can be fully understood by the human mind rather than just experienced as mere appearance (phenomena): Homo clausus is fully reinstated.

From this point of view, the laws of nature are statements of a general kind which are the results of the pure reason; they are ideals. Our day to day experience is structured according to their governance. For Kant a moral problem is resolved by comparison with the general proposition or ‘categorical imperative’: it is wrong for you to disobey the law because if everyone did there would be chaos: pure Hobbes. Durkheim translated this position into sociological language. For Durkheim there has to be a general moral stance for consensus to exist otherwise anomie will result and potentially, social breakdown. Even though Durkheim points to the social nature of morals he cannot distance himself sufficiently from idealism to offer an explanation which can fully embrace relative moral uncertainty, a properly social scientific conclusion.

 Homo clausus: Marx and Nietzsche.

 I think it’s fair to say that the isolated, closed state of mind associated with Homo clausus develops in relation to a need or preference for thinking in terms of ideals, i.e. theometaphysically. Homo clausus is consequently an ancient cognitive identity linked to religious, philosophical and mathematical perceptual strategies. Homo clausus withdraws from the world of events to an ideal mental place where absolute truth/relativism abounds, a place of safety built on and around the great rock of certainty. Homo clausus is a perfectionist, a theologian, a philosopher, a mathematician, a rationalist, an idealist. Homo clausus can enable and justify the total detachment of difficult emotions and habits. Homo clausus finds solace in a world where ideals can be translated into reality, but also finds this politically useful. Homo clausus can isolate him/herself; Homo clausus can be free. Homo clausus is egocentric, looking out on the universe and judging all that surrounds. Homo clausus is privileged and influential so can afford to set aside survival needs and be divorced from reality. Homo clausus is deceived and a deceiver, a believer in the possibility absolute truth/relativism and a proselytizer of such beliefs for the benefit of self and those in authority who find such wares useful. Homo clausus is a theometaphysicist who pretends to be a scientist, as with Newton, Darwin, Marx and Einstein. Homo clausus is an ideologist!

The Cartesian ‘I’ is perhaps the most influential version of the thoughts of Homo clausus. Descartes constructed a world as an extension of the human mind that dispatched all doubts to the margins putting the human self, the ‘I’, in a position of privilege, certain in the knowledge that the truth techniques of verbal logic and mathematics which testified to God’s divine presence, allowed us access to perfection in order to facilitate the solution of human problems. The developments in maths that Descartes was involved in, offered new hope for Homo clausus, as his other incarnations founded on religion and philosophy, came under attack from natural philosophy (science): the new maths justifies Homo clausus in turning a deaf ear to the increasing volume of noise as scientists in particular, grappled with the relative uncertainty that goes with investigation of the facts.

The Cartesian view still electrifies so much of western thinking, promoting theometaphysical styles of analysis in a modern guise, too often directly influencing the practice of real world activity by elite scientists such as Hawking & Mlodinow. Homo clausus also has another more direct influence by posting health warnings about the malaise which stalks our rational western practices and that threatens the sensible world of absolute truth in the beguiling form of ‘relativism’. Relativism, not to be confused with ‘relativity’, is the devil which constantly menaces the ordered world, preying on the slightest weakness in the explanatory power of the apostles of absolute truth and their allies. The relativistic world is one of chaos and absolute uncertainty, where no method of arbitration exists to sort out disputes of any kind, where the established lose control. Philosophers argue that if we deny the existence of absolute truth the outcome is its dichotomous opposite, no truth at all, relativism – an intellectual state of anarchy leading to the break down of order, that Thomas Hobbes warned us about.

As far as I am concerned, relativism is another example of idealist thinking, as is incidentally, the concept of anarchy. Both are ideological; they are concepts used by the truth-finders and their influential patrons to frighten outsider figurations into accepting their arguments, a bit like those politicians who say that if we in Britain abandon the first past the post system for choosing MPs at general elections, in favour of a more democratic process of proportional representation, we will encounter something patently and incontrovertibly bad; an unstable, weak government. What they really mean is that we should keep a system that guarantees little threat to the position of those who already hold social influence: if the established hand over some of that influence to the voting people of Britain, they give away some of their hold on government to those who might not give it back. There is an ideology connected with democracy in Britain that fosters voter disengagement from politics to help established figurations utilize their control. The established political figurations pretend to govern for the people, whereas in fact they govern for themselves, as if Britain and the people in it were their own property: they are would-be absolutists. Britain is relatively democratic to the extent that the people, who are in fact subjects not citizens, are constantly ignored because they can be. It is probably the case that most people in Britain would like to see the reinstitution of the death penalty for heinous crimes. It is tempting to conclude that the reason for the lack of change in the law is that the small highly influential minority who know better, disagree: the established political figurations backed by their truth-finders. The corollary to this is that the aristocratic mentality, ably assisted by Homo clausi, is still alive and well in British elite figurations, providing the justification for ignoring the would-be citizenry in order to retain overall dominance. A referendum on capital punishment would mean loss of control, whichever is the outcome. If you believe responsibility for order is a matter of science rather than ideal, then all those who profit from ideals will lose influence: the established will have to justify their position to the outsiders by another means, that takes account of the relative uncertainty of everything as opposed to absolute uncertainty! A more democratic process requires an opening of the mind of Homo clausus to the fact that relative uncertainty is the actual nature of experience, rather than the choice between certainty or uncertainty, truth or relativism. It will not be easy to alter such an ancient state of being.

However, we can continue the process of development in criticism of the Homo clausus mentality by promoting the de-mystification of idealistic concepts such as ‘proletariat’ or ‘Übermensch’. If you take Nietzsche’s philosophical superman who exercises his will no matter what the cost, you have a life-form that is so distant from reality and social influence it can act alone: this not a person it is a theometaphysical android constructed by Homo clausus. Similarly, Marx’s version of ‘natural man’ who is only truly at home in the collective, is so strongly caught up with others that it cannot think or act in a relatively autonomous manner; another of Homo clausus’ theometaphysical constructions. If we distance ourselves from the mind set developed by the theometaphysicians, we can do better science and accept we are never independent of social influence, and never wholly dependent on it either – only Homo clausus can be independent or dependent: in fact we are in a relationship of relative dependency/independency. Similarly, certainty per se does not really exist, but we can be relatively certain. Equally uncertainty does not exist, but we can be relatively uncertain. As far as I can see, science offers knowledge at various levels of relative uncertainty, whereas Homo clausus can construct the certain/uncertain, idealist world of theometaphysics. Even though I believe Marx’ and Nietzsche’s models are too compromized by their idealism, they are major steps forward in the debate about what we know – that relative certainty and relative uncertainty abound.

 4.2.2.1 Beyond Marx to Nietzsche and further still.

Marx believed that he was enlightening us to the clash between the truth of science and the insidious fallacies of ideology. He alerted us to the fact that much of what we believe to be true is in fact merely opinion, the opinions of influential figurations of people who can manipulate the processes by which knowledge is produced so as to give it the appearance of truths: the practices of the theometaphysicians being a case in point. The statements of the experts in what is correct are then used by the established to maintain and if possible, extend their dominance. This is a very similar conclusion to that arrived at by Nietzsche a little later, the difference being that for Nietzsche there is no absolute truth to be had at all. Where Marx idealized the human collective, Nietzsche idealized the human individual. However, what both point to is the relative uncertainty of what we know.

Marx presents a picture of oversocialized people and neglects to give proper consideration to the impact of personal reflection on human activity by overemphasising the significance of structural forces such as class. On the surface this seems quite a useful strategy because it appears to open up the opportunity to analyse social experience in terms of tangible things that can be measured scientifically such as practices. However, it could be construed as an empiricist reaction to the problem of interpretation and has parallels with Foucault’s response to the problem meaning in 2.3.3 above, i.e. when confronting a theoretical conundrum let’s move the analysis to something measurable that can be relied upon. I would argued that we can see a similar strategy adopted in psychology with the development of behaviourism by the pragmatists Watson and Skinner who wanted to put their psychological feet on more solid ground and get away from mind games of introspection. Both Foucault and the behaviourists opted for hard evidence, whether as archaeological objects in the case of the former, or in the case of the latter, the carefully measured learning behaviour of reinforced rats in Skinner’s boxes. I think Marx is an earlier example who in focussing on work (economic) activity, manages to circumvent the problem of consciousness and how to measure it. Because human thinking is so difficult to quantify and understand it is put aside as if social and psychological modes of analysis can be viable without taking into consideration the processes of reflection. This is surely a serious error when so much of our behaviour is learned. How can a model that pretends to offer insight into human behaviour ignore the importance of thinking? – such models chuck out the baby with the bathwater producing a social world populated by androids.

By contrast, Nietzsche overindividualizes people understating the influence of social processes in human functioning, by giving precedence to the power of interpretation practised by the oversimple notion of human will. This model is the dialectical counterpart to Marx’ socially determined android; a totally self-motivated, subjective, sociopathic robot, that pursues the possibilities of ultimate individualism in constant danger of being corrupted by the degenerate temptation to conform to the will of others by behaving in line with social convention. Nonetheless, from my point of view, the respective structural/individual emphases are not in themselves the real difficulty with the theories of Marx or Nietzsche. It seems to me that the fundamental flaw in their work is related to an overindulgence in theometaphysical thinking that produces models too rich in idealism, with an overemphasis on the need to satisfy conditions for absolute truth or relativism. In operating in this fashion, Marx and Nietzsche assembled two theometaphysical monsters, thereby perpetuating a human idealistic stereotype described by Norbert Elias as ‘Homo clausus’ (closed man).

 4.2.2 Marx

Comte’s breakthrough was given further impetus by Karl Marx and his followers. Marx is another who has been vilified and for similar reasons as Comte and Nietzsche. However, the reaction to Marx has been less one-sided as 20^th century world politics exemplifies. Marx believed himself to be a scientist of history like Comte. Whether this was successful is very much open to question, particularly since the 1930s when writers such as Orwell unmasked the tyrannical style of communism that evolved under the umbrella of Marxism in the USSR and elsewhere. The proliferation of Marxist oriented beliefs continued until the 1960s since when the attempts to explore the possibility of a communist state have gradually dissipated. What is remarkable is the rate of collapse in socialist-oriented states: if anyone in 1964 had predicted the break-up of the USSR by the 1990s they would have been treated with contempt. Whilst there are many reasons for such changes, I feel a major contributor to the difficulties of the theory and its political applications is that Marx was guilty, like Comte, of using too little science in his analysis of human history, which left room for sufficient idealism to invalidate his model.

Like that of Comte, Marx’s theory leads us to question idealism without fully realising the potential of his message. Both wanted to historicize knowledge but both left undisturbed deeply entrenched idealistic modes of analysis that patterned and, as far as I am concerned, distorted their understanding of social experience: for Comte it was the laws of nature; for Marx it was primarily the Hegelian dialectic. Both are expressions of a law-like universe that has at its core a belief in absolute truth.

Marx’s incorporation of the reworked Hegelian dialectic allowed him to grossly over-simplify historical processes. Hegel made an important step away from pure theometaphysics by confronting the problem of history, rather than ignoring it, in arguing that historical change was a universal feature of human life, driven by conflict over differences in belief: confrontation and violence results from profound differences in opinion held by people. Marx accepted this dialectical theory of history without fully testing its practical viability. This is poor science. Yes, he remodelled the dialectic to a focus on a scientific problem, the issue of human differential access to wealth. Yes, this historicizes Hegel’s model even further by giving priority to the work done by people rather than the ideas they have; but he didn’t go far enough in detaching himself sufficiently from the idealistic character of the model to gain enough reality congruence to do science; instead, he produced a more material theometaphysics. As mentioned earlier, the irony is that in his argument that market capitalism is mere ideology, Marx’ great humanitarian effort is as guilty of ideological slight of hand as his adversary Adam Smith, on whom he rounded for among other things his unquestioning acceptance of the ideal of private property. As far as I can see, both theories are energized by ideals that limit their usefulness as scientific models for testing, and thus their ability of solve practical human problems.

By developing a model where the rules of the social game are governed by idealistic dialectical forces, Marx was able to justify the existence of the two great classes of capitalism, the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and the proletariat (working class), as the manifest expressions of the nature of oppression, and, as the practical means by which emancipation could be achieved. By characterising capitalist society as essentially comprised of two massive, identifiable, social structures that ghosted their way through history until it was time for them to play out their revolutionary destinies in the dialectics of history, Marx had in fact enhanced the influence of idealism in his model and concomitantly, lowered its reality congruence. The idea that any structure, whether physical or social is fixed is a myth. Science tells us that structures are in a permanent process of change. They can appear stable but they are in fact just disposed to very slow, almost imperceptible, rates of change: for the most part rocks that comprise structures such as mountains change very slowly and in relation to a human lifetime may not appear to change at all. Darwin showed that natural selection may well take thousands of generations for small mutations to occur in life forms. The psychologist James Gibson pointed out, that distant things move relatively slowly in comparison to those much closer: if we extrapolate this idea further, the heavens do not move at all. From a scientific point of view, social processes vary significantly in terms of their rate of change.

I want to argue that capitalism is a process where figurations, not classes, coalesce and dissipate, never to reform in quite the same way again. Marx’s classes only gave the impression of clearly identifiable structures because he was viewing them from too great a distance, the distance that idealism can provide, total detachment or objectivity. If I am right, the prophecy that the revolution would occur at some historical moment when capitalism was pregnant with class-consciousness was always doomed to failure, not because of alienation and false-consciousness as the Marxists would have us believe, but because the model is overidealistic. Such an unrealistic model characterized by the struggle between two social-structural monoliths, does not correlate with the fluidity of human social experience and was therefore unviable as an attempt to scientifically analyse human groups; it was more about faith than hard evidence.

However, one aspect of Marx’s model that does offer useful insight into the workings of human figurations is his reworking of the concept of ideology. For Marx it was not only fear of unemployment and starvation that demanded compliance from the working class; their exploitation took place at another less tangible but highly influential level. Just living in a capitalist system meant being conditioned to accept capitalist values, which were transmitted through various mediums such as the family, religion, education, news media, the justice system. Thus, the members of capitalist society, whether bourgeois or proletarian, were thoroughly bonded to its belief system, which immunised them from alternative, less oppressive, more natural social models. The notion of ‘natural’ is another important ideal that patterned Marx’ theory, a belief that in a state of nature man is benevolent à la Rousseau, rather than competitive and greedy, as per the alternative version proffered by Hobbes.

The problem for Marxism is how to break down the conditioned conservatism of the alienated proletariat to enable them to throw off the chains of capitalist oppression and achieve a state of nature? Deideologization was a key feature of his strategy. All capitalists are corrupt because they are ideologists who spread positive propaganda about the unnatural, unjust system they govern with a set of values and cultural practices that are based in self-interest and profit as opposed to the good of all. In this process values are stated as if they are absolute truths; thus we get statements by capitalists that people have a right to private property or that competition is beneficial to everyone. What Marx’ model of ideology does is warn us about the potential that established figurations have for managing what we know. By drawing our attention to the way in which social institutions can be used to define the truth he opens up the possibility for challenging those truths as ideology and brings further to our attention the debate on the socio-historical nature of knowledge as something relatively uncertain, albeit through an idealistically flawed model.

4.2 Sociology and the historicizing of knowledge.

4.2.1 Comte

The successful development of natural philosophy and the new mathematics was preyed upon by philosophers and renamed the Enlightenment, such that the methods of natural philosophy could be applied more widely to the problems of human experience itself: hence the evolution of life and social sciences such as biology, economics and sociology. One outstanding analyst of this sequence of events was Auguste Comte, who, in the first half of the 19^th century, put together a radical series of ideas that seriously undermined the idealist model, by arguing that human knowledge is a function of ordinary social experience. In so doing he pointed to the significance of language as something social; not only do we learn our language from others, we change our thinking by listening to their criticisms. From this point of view knowledge is historical. Rightly or wrongly, Comte believed that what comes to be seen as knowledge develops in relation to the problems that people face during their lives. This certainly explains the sociogenesis (things that develop in relation to social experience) of technology. However, it also explains the sociogenesis of idealism! According to Comte knowledge has developed through three stages beginning with supernatural explanations that involved magic. This was augmented by the metaphysical which incorporated more secular methods into the mix, such as logical argument, numbers and geometry. More recently, such types of knowledge have been augmented still further by the attempt to engage more fully with the factual world; a third stage in the development of knowledge that Comte called the ‘positive’ or what we now call science. Thus today, the supernatural, metaphysical (usually referred to as philosophical) and scientific co-exist as methods of solving human problems.

Comte’s law of three stages in the development of human knowledge has been heavily contested, to the extent that his ideas in general have been stigmatized in order to restrict the spread of his ideas: see Elias, What is Sociology? It is arguable, I would suggest, that this was not so much a reaction to the inexactitude of Comte’s statements, but was more about the implications of accepting his general point; that theologians and philosophers are just two figurations of people, now in competition with positivists (scientists), whose inexorable attachment to idealism had been seriously rumbled, as something contingent upon social experience. The implication of accepting Comte’s findings on the historicality of knowledge is that because social experience is volatile, then so is the knowledge that accrues with it: not a position to be countenanced by anyone who needs the promise of a definitive answer, even the more ‘reasonable’ Socratean position that is advocated by Popper. Comte’s move beyond theometaphysics helps increase the likelihood of relative uncertainty becoming seen as the real nature of experience, with ideals such as truths being demoted to the level of any other product of thinking. Traditionally philosophers have characterized as ‘phenomena’ the things that we see and hear, sense data, as some corrupted, lesser form of knowledge. The acceptance of a perspective of relative uncertainty recasts the truths so zealously guarded by theometaphysicians as just phenomena too, much simplifying our knowledge compendium. Such a view sees the brain as the processor of information more akin to Hobbes, Locke and Hume than Descartes or Kant. Absolute truths and reasonings are social constructions, pieces of mummified, theometaphysical clutter; cognitive idols that distract our perception away from what is construed as the terrifying and anomic possibility that relative uncertainty is everywhere: Emile Durkheim developed the term anomie to describe the disorienting experience of high rates of social change when collectivist social rules have to be jettisoned in the rush to a more individualistic survival pattern.

It is fair to say that Comte was not of this relatively uncertain view; he believed in the over-idealistic notion of a law-like universe. But his arguments contribute to the opening up of a route that leads to the analysis of relative uncertainty. As with Nietzsche later in the 19^th century, the attempt to stigmatize Comte was a good example of institutional bullying, which can occur to people who in developing new ideas and immigrating to new ground are deemed to threaten the large majority left behind: their small numbers make them easy pickings for the established. Sociological philosophers such as Comte and Nietzsche, as members of outsider figurations had little influence and limited potential to fight back: the madman tag therefore stuck and and did its work. Their real crime was to produce radical, threatening arguments, which questioned the very foundation of our belief in ideals such as the absolute truth. Such a finding has serious implications for personal security and the authority and status of those who purvey the truths, as well as subverting the position of other influential figurations, which rely on these truth-finders to justify their dominance.

 4 Science and the gradual emergence of ‘relative uncertainty’.

4.1 Recap.

Having explored aspects of the general development of idealism and its relationship to authority and control, I now want to investigate science more specifically. I have tried to explain how the ideal notion of uncertainty has emerged as both an experience and an aspect of formal European discourse, in relation to the changes in the balance of social influence that saw the slow rise to dominance of the business-oriented figurations with an interest in a close examination of the possibilities of fully exploiting the natural world, one feature of which was the growth of science. Correlatedly, the old truth-finders, the theologians and philosophers, were of limited use and so their influence declined in favour of their idealist cousins the mathematicians. This change in the knowledge mix made the likelihood of an analysis connected to the idealist problem of endemic ‘uncertainty’ (as opposed to the realist ‘relative uncertainty’) more probable and with it the perception that people were constantly under threat from de-stabilizing forces such as relativism and anarchy. Even though I would contest the possibility of being a relativist or anarchist, as both are statements of ideal states of being emanating from the mouths and pens of theometaphysicians for those with a need for absolute control who have a lot to lose, the future during periods of intense social change can quite easily appear totally unpredictable, i.e. relativistic and anarchic. By helping open up the scientific enterprise, I believe the business-oriented figurations inadvertently made it easier to envisage an anti-idealistic perspective of ‘relative uncertainty’ beyond ‘uncertainty’, even though on first appearances the latter is all consuming.

Such an outcome is I believe an important aspect of the legacy of later science as greater levels of realism develop undermining the early utopianism that spoke of God’s laws of nature. However, there is still a long way to go as Hawking & Mlodinow point out – truth-finders are still in search for the Grand Design. Nonetheless, the latter title is a sign that influential scientists have less idealistic goals are in mind, as Design replaces Law. Relative uncertainty really does threaten idealism because it relegates the tools of the traditional truth-finders (faith, verbal and numerical logic) from ends in themselves to the means by which we investigate our problems. This is not relativism it is realism where processes have probabilities, not once and for all outcomes presided over by the all too human agents of Gods, the theometaphysicians. I believe that this important insight has come about because sociologists from Comte to Elias have developed models that explore the social variables in the formation of knowledge opening the way to a more realistic set of perceptions such that our experience is relatively uncertain, rather than the idealistic uncertain.

The intellectual love affair with the truth which spawned the concept of objectivity can be formally traced back to ancient Greek theometaphysicians such as Plato and Aristotle, who have dominated western intellectual life ever since: see Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy; Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy and Twilight of the Idols. Relatedly, the issues they and their contemporaries debated have been subjected to constant revision, whether from a theological standpoint by writers such as Augustine and Aquinas, or, more secular notables such as Descartes and Locke in the 17^th century, Hume and Kant in the 18^th century, and Karl Popper in the 20^th. This long programme of acceptance and rebuttal, is dominated by the research of ideals in the attempt to establish the absolute truth; a desperate hunt for the certainty and stability concomitant with peace of mind, bodily safety and maintenance of social influence. The development of formal science in the 17^th century, connected with the formation of institutions such as the Royal Society, constituted a shadowy revival of the anti-idealist challenge that had always accompanied the doctrines of absolute truth. The practitioners of this new style of philosophy, natural philosophy, such as Newton, seemed on the surface largely unaware of the radical nature of their enterprise, thoroughly schooled as they were in theometaphysical truth-finding frames of reference, especially the new mathematics.

On one level it is surprising, considering the level of scepticism associated with any investigation of the natural world, that massive science as we know it ever got off the ground, surpassing anything ever achieved by the likes of Archimedes. Clearly science prospered in spite of significant resistance from many theometaphysicians to the extent that it eventually challenged the dominance of the theologians in particular. Nevertheless, as referenced above, the old school of theometaphysics remains alive and well, still foraging for the ideal in order to drive out personal and social insecurity, as well as bolstering the needs of the established figurations by providing the authority needed to manage the process of order. The belief in the sovereignty of mathematics is directly commensurate with the deistic model of a universe governed by God’s laws. Even though scientists are less certain of themselves nowadays, their commitment to mathematics is one good reason for the survival of idealism, God and all. Certainly since Hume’s discomforting conclusion that factual knowledge is a matter of probabilities, the capacity for idealism in scientists has been tempered by a more secular, relative view that speaks of theory rather than law: compare Einstein to Newton. Thus, formal science is evidence that certain people were willing to think the unthinkable; that there is relative uncertainty, even in a mathematical universe.

 3.3.1 The Idealist Triumvirate: truth-finders of theology and philosophy continue to influence events through their partnership with the new kids on the block – the pure mathematicians.

Even though they take more of a back seat these days, let’s not forget the importance of religious beliefs in the contemporary discussion of ideals. Since the heady days, before the Reformation, of the European Roman Catholic orthodoxy, Christian ideals have been gradually wedded to the more secular rational analysis of Descartes who used the divine hand of God to explain the perfection that can be found in pure verbal logic and mathematics. This reassessment of religious thinking was also a response to the new scientific impulse that favoured a full on engagement with sensory experience, something not really fitting with the Church’s Platonic/Aristotelian preferences. Descartes re-examined the feasibility of trusting sensory information and rejected it, returning as philosophers do, to the safety of his mind. Mathematics is the key to unlocking the truth of it, he concluded, whether it be to understand God or the world.

The crisis of confidence confronting the long established orthodoxy of Roman Catholicism, that boiled over into the Reformation, was at least theoretically assuaged. Even though a schism had occurred in western Christianity the turmoil was to some extent stabilized by Descartes and others such as Isaac Newton and Leibniz, who were instrumental in the transformation of mathematics into the truth-finding technique par excellence, that would allow the full extension of idealistic forms of analysis beyond the mind so well understood by philosophers, into God’s virtually uncharted factual universe. The capacity of the new mathematics to establish absolute truth in the venture to discover the Laws of God’s universe was miraculous in itself, but it has the added advantage of being far less vulnerable to rhetorical corruption than verbal media such as the Bible. Mathematicians have very quickly become the prime arbiters of the truth of things, providing rational assurance of the veracity of the revolutionary scientific enterprise that lives and works in what the theometaphysicians generally shunned, the uncertain world of sensory reality: the work of Karl Popper exemplifies this position. The voices of western religious truth-finders however, especially since the 19^th century, have not been so discernible.

This reinvigoration of the power of ideal reason vindicated our axiomatic faith in its efficacy and ensured that its influence continues to flow through our culture, largely untrammelled by suspicion or dispute. One significant exception was Nietzsche, who confronted the truth mongers as one of their own, a philosopher, in arriving at the almost intolerable conclusion that the absolute truth is nothing more than an intellectual construction for use in the relentless battle between people for control. For Nietzsche everything boils down to individual human wills; therefore, all is personal and a matter of belief on account of the fact that we can never escape our prejudices, even by using rational techniques such as logic or mathematics. After millennia spent pursuing the Holy Grail of the absolute truth of things, it is not surprising to find the majority of philosophers strongly opposed to such a view. I would proffer two reasons for this: 1) philosophers would have to question their values in the search for ideals; 2) they would also have to face that which ideals were designed to avoid, the fact that life and death, bereft of ideals, are shot through with uncertainty and insecurity; a prospect that for many is too hard to bear. In other words, by rejecting the sanctified position of rationality as the arbiter of doubt, we admit the possibility of ‘relative uncertainty’ with all its implications for our fear structure and sanity; and if Thomas Hobbes is right, our personal safety too.

With the development of the exploration of factual experience, albeit chaperoned by its ideal partner, pure mathematics, theometaphysicians became more vulnerable to challenges from figurations espousing more realistic models which spoke of relative uncertainty. However, the underlying belief in the virtues of ideal styles of rational analysis in western cultures has been extremely resistant to criticism, continuing as it does to have an overwhelming influence on our thinking, discussions and practices. The relative status of the theometaphysicians has changed in Europe such that the once dominant priests have seen a gradual decline in their social influence, as have more recently the philosophers. However, this has been more than compensated for by the rise in authority of their cousins the pure mathematicians, such that idealistic styles of thinking still have an immense impact on contemporary thinking. The theometaphysicians continue to dominate, as the people who are trained to put aside their emotions and prejudices in order to supply what we know and trust, the truths that allow us to control our fear and retain our positions of dominance.

  3.3 Resistance to the notion of ‘relative uncertainty’: idealistic cultural habits that foster a belief in dichotomies such as objectivity-subjectivity .

Sociologists as pure and applied scientists have now spent approximately 200 years at their trade. What is clear from all this enterprise is that nothing is certain/uncertain. This finding has led many to reject the right of sociology to be called a science; others have abandoned the scientific programme and returned, if not to theology, then to philosophy. Still others have moved into number crunching, regardless of the efficacy of the knowledge they produce, supplying data for various agencies. The comparative low status of sociologists and applied scientists generally, may well, as noted earlier, be reflected in these outcomes, because few people with influence want uncertain conclusions, they do not produce either personal or social control. However, one group of social scientists, the economists, have taken refuge in mathematics and have reaped the benefits and sit at the high table. Nevertheless, their status is fragile as real events plunder their over-idealised models: see Nassim Taleb’s Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan; although not immune to idealism himself as his worship of Popper suggests. In other words some degree of ‘relative uncertainty’ is I believe a fact, that has been gradually dawning on more and more people and inexorably spreading its influence on formal thinking since the 17^th century: if there really were any truths would the law rely on juries to convict people of serious crimes rather than eminent justices or princes; would politicians and others in established positions not demur to the demand for a democratic system?

This contradiction in our formally stated belief patterns that admits to both the idealism of certainty/uncertainty and the more realistic relative uncertainty, is one of the most interesting features of human experience, an aspect of which is the use and acceptance of idealistic concepts such as ‘objectivity’, or ‘subjectivity’ for that matter. Objectivity is used in relation to scientific practice to differentiate it from other non-objective (subjective) practices which are open to dispute and thus lacking in truth. Yet in reality the outcome of such so-called objective practice, scientific knowledge, can only produce wisdom that is inexact, with varying levels of probability, as the continuing debate in theoretical physics about the limitations of the models associated with Einstein and Heisenberg evidences. Objectivity as a feature of scientific practice is a philosophical intrusion derived from the idealistic assumption that the rules of logic or mathematics, which exclude the damaging effect of human judgement that is the cause of error, can be applied directly to reality. Thus, in this sense, objectivity as a concept derives from the philosophical study of science, not from its practice: it is a philological cousin of absolute truth and accordingly, gives status to those whose activities are deemed objective and the conclusions at which they arrive. Scientific figurations are attached to objectivity because it at least gives the impression that they are correct, cleansed from infection by human values and therefore error: they can offer control. This is a smokescreen! Objectivity is for many within scientific figurations a wish statement of self-delusion. However, it is also an ideological tool used by scientists to obtain authority and wider social influence. Ideals are useful as statements of intent, to impress those who are under-informed, or soothe those unable to face the facts that it is a relatively uncertain world.

Beliefs in ideals such as objectivity are related to the assumption that human beings can think or act morally as a separate, ring-fenced experience, with its own specific rules and subject matter. According to this view, problems of right and wrong can be analysed independently of personal values and politics: when scientists like Professor Wolpert are involved in professional science, they are not dealing with considerations of social influence or personal values. Such a perspective would seem misplaced. Recent neuropsychology, using brain scanning technology, has found strong evidence that the brain should be understood in terms of its interconnectedness, rather than areas of discrete activity: see Steven Pinker, a well known exponent of the computational model of psychology, and a covert idealist. Our experiences and beliefs have one thing in common; their existence is related to our socio-psycho-biological experience. Thus, I think it is reasonable to question the repeated statements of people who argue that moral issues are separate from scientific issues, which are in turn separate from political concerns. It is my argument that moral, political and scientific thinking and activities are inextricably bound together and that in believing they are not, leads to errors of judgement. Consequently, we should see the statements of all three brands of truth mongers, theologians, philosophers, mathematicians and by implication, scientists, as at best relatively certain and worthy of dispute. This would be progress.

The prominence of idealistic concepts such as objectivity offer further confirmation of the continued capacity of philosophers to define intellectual debate, contrary to the view of Hawking and Mlodinow, who in their recent book The Grand Design, state in over-confident manner that philosophy is ‘dead’. Certainly within western orientated cultures, philosophers still enjoy considerable status and influence: philosophers are constantly present as intellectual experts on serious BBC Radio 4 programmes such as The Moral Maze, In Our Time and Start the Week. Their position of authority is all the more remarkable when one considers their patent lack of success in answering the questions they have set themselves in over 2000 years of practice, with the notable exception of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose masterful denunciation of philosophical practice as verbal legerdemain, was revenged for quite some time by a thorough stigmatization of his ideas: the same tactic that was used against Comte. In using the concept of ‘objective’, Hawking & Mlodinow contradict themselves.

Philosophers suggest that objectivity is one half of a dialectic or dichotomy, which has as its counterpart, the concept of subjectivity. From this perspective, objectivity is in one respect a state of mind, achieved when we are being rational, when we put aside our prejudices in order to explore the possibilities of a logical or mathematical analysis so as to obtain the absolute truth of things. By contrast, subjectivity is a state of mind where our preferences flood through, a cerebral experience patterned by emotions that produces potentially dangerous relativist (not relative remember) truths, truths that are anarchic, forever disputable because they are the product of personal conviction. A good example concerns the truth of religious belief, which is largely a matter of trust or faith transmitted from generation to generation. The existence of the human soul has never, as far as I can see, been shown to exist as a palpable entity; neither is there any hard evidence that it survives death. Yet, guilty people in their multitudes have been dispatched to eternity in the belief that death is but a gateway to another existence where the process of judgement and punishment can, if necessary, be finished off. Part of the reason that human beings feel confident to carry out such sentences, in the face of little or no factual evidence in support their beliefs, is their capacity to hold personal truths based on nothing more than conviction, that is, subjective truths that are contestable and yet resistant to the facts.

At least part of the reason for the persistence of rational method and the concomitant belief in the importance of objectivity, is to act as a defence against our dangerous potential to think and act in this totally subjective fashion; what Durkheim might have described as this anomic, relatively unfettered by social rules. Yet it is clear from the evidence provided in the previous paragraph and the continued popularity of religious belief, that the campaign to resist the influence of subjective truths by countering it with an appeal to objectivity and its senior partner rationality, in which science nowadays takes a leading role, has enjoyed only limited success. Could this be related to a problem with rationality itself? Could it be that rationality is nothing more than a method for analysing a problem that is in fact contingent upon personal experience? Rational method is not a once for all system of analysis that allows you to arrive at a correct solution because it is objective and circumvents the influence of human values (subjectivism). Thus, there is not just one rationality but any number of rationalities to choose from, dependent on the context, that is, a function of what you are intending to achieve and the means available to achieve it, as pointed out by Max Weber. This contrasts starkly with the general understanding of rationality as a neutral method of calculating the correct answer, uncontaminated by human value. Rationality is contingent upon social perspective. It is therefore not surprising, as Weber showed, to find a belief in God to be rational, because it is highly dependent on social experience: if all around need the security of faith to live life happily, faith is a rational response to the problem of fear. The problem with rationality is that it has been theometaphysicalized from a method of solving everyday human difficulties with varying degrees of success depending on the circumstances, into a general problem solving tool (mathematics being the primary modern example) for the exploration of the truth of things. This, I would argue, is useful because it is crucial in the battle to control uncertainty: high levels of certainty lessen feelings of personal insecurity and increases the capacity of established figurations to defend their dominance.