• Lonergan's Insight
3/17/2007: Inverse Insight
The seminar participants discussed the role of symbolism in questions,
clues, insights, and definitions for approximately 1 hour prior to
beginning the discussion on Inverse Insight.
Click here for a PDF of this outline.
-
Positive object
that is presented by sense or represented by imagination.
- Irrational
Numbers: “Magnitude” or “Number”
- non-countable
multitudes: “Multitude”
- newton’s
First Law of Motion: “a body continues to move at a uniform
rate in a straight line”
- basic postulate
of Special Relativity: Data as referred to initial axes of
co-ordinates (K), and as referred to other axes (K’) moving
with a constant velocity relative to K.
- This positive
object is expected to be “intelligible” and to require
an explanation.
- One expects to be
able to reach all numbers via mathematical operations: through
addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, powers, roots.
- One expects a
countable multitude between zero and one.
- One expects that
a changing motion requires explanation.
- One expects, for
example, that something moving simply up and down and something
moving in the form of a parabolic motion would have different
explanations in all cases.
- This expected
intelligibility is discovered to be wrong. Hence it is not a wrong
intelligibility (or a wrong explanation defined in the postulates of
explanatory definitions or in implicit definitions) so much as
something wrong in the question.
- A variety of
numbers cannot be reach rationally and one should not expect to do
so.
- The majority of
the “numbers” between zero and one cannot be explained.
- "Uniform motion”
needs no explanation.
- Different
references frames alone do not change the intelligibility of a
motion.
- How are inverse
insights “defined”?
- "It affirms
empirical elements only to deny an expected intelligibility”
- "Intelligibility”
is the “content of a direct insight”.
- Not just
“negative”concepts: eg. “not red”,
“position without magnitude”, “non-occurence”—these
refer to denials of empirical components in our knowledge, not to
denials of intelligibilities (which involve possibilities and
necessities, unifications and relations)
- Lonergan will add
some more later
- Expectation of an
intelligibility that the random divergence of actual frequencies
from ideal can be explained.
- Expectation that
all can be explained by a single, systematic viewpoint.
- Evil
- Inverse insights
occur within “the context of far larger developments of human
thought”
- The “discovery”
of inertia allows the redirection of inquiry to accelerations.
- The discovery of
irrational numbers and non-countable multitudes allows for
intelligence to redirect itself to that which is rational and
countable, to that which is intelligible.
- The discovery of
inertial transformation equations leads to a greater ability to
eliminate the unintelligible from motions and to focus in on what
is truly intelligible.
- Sometimes,
because of the “success” of these further discoveries,
the inverse insights that were so difficult to obtain at first, yet
have become relatively easy for later generations, one can almost
overlook the difficulty and importance of such insights. Hence,
one might need to appeal to history to reveal the significance of
these types of insights in some fields. However, all of us usually
need to go through some of these insights, unless the experiences
are setup very early in life to shift the anticipations of
intelligibility. Pedagogically, one could do this (eg. Montessori
and how she setup the “sensorial” materials for 3-6
year olds).
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