Every generalization is induced within a specific context of knowledge, and to claim that it is true is to claim that it applies within that context. The available context of knowledge determines the referents of the concepts that are related in a generalization, i.e., it determines the meaning of the generalization. So, in order to know what we mean, we must be able to identify the context. But what exactly does it mean to “identify the context”?
Rationalists will claim that “identifying the context” means specifying the boundaries of the generalization’s domain, i.e., specifying exactly where and how the generalization breaks down. Only then, they argue, do we really know the context within which the generalization is true. So, according to this view, we cannot identify the context for Kepler’s laws until we know Newton’s laws, and we cannot identify the context for Newton’s laws until we know Einstein’s laws, and so on. The implication is that omniscience is the standard of knowledge; we cannot know anything until we know everything. This view is a widespread error that Ayn Rand rejected.
So how do we properly identify the context? In essence, we do it by specifying the evidence that led to the generalization. Kepler, for example, cited evidence that the sun exerts a force on the planets, and evidence that the resulting orbits obey his laws. He recognized that the observational data are always limited in both precision and range. If Kepler was asked: “Will your laws predict the angular positions of planets to an accuracy of one arc-second?” His proper response would be: “I don’t know; no such data exist. But I have correctly identified causal laws that explain and integrate the available data, which are accurate within about two arc-minutes.”
This answer won’t satisfy those who demand omniscience, but it will satisfy those who demand objectivity.
Mr. Harriman,
Would you say that as scientific knowledge advances, we learn more about what our earlier knowledge context was? I think so. That does not entail that we have to know future wider contexts of knowledge (wider connection of facts) to know what we know now and know what we know now of its factual connections.
We know more about the context of Kepler’s knowledge in his area-law because we know the wider factual setting of that law in our Newtonian comprehension of angular momentum (and of other aspects of curvilinear motion). That we know more about his knowledge context in essential respects than he knew that context does not entail that he knew nothing of his context. Do you disagree?
Mr. Boydstun,
It sounds like you are trying to find a middle ground between my view and the rationalist view. But your middle ground makes no sense to me.
What does it mean to say that Newton “knows more” about Kepler’s context of knowledge than Kepler knew? If it’s Kepler’s context of knowledge, then he knows it. Newton achieved a different perspective on Kepler’s laws because he knew a great deal more physics than Kepler.
David Harriman