On Method

कबीरा कुआँ एक है,
पानी भरे अनेक
भांडे ही में भेद है,
पानी सब में एक
-Kabir

O Kabir, there is but one well
And many who draw
Difference is the vessel
Water stays the same.
(my poor translation)

Hermann Hesse, like Kabir, is one of those writers who can convey deep ideas with incredibly lucid writing. The Glass Bead Game is an exploration of many ideas. I was piqued by one on method.

Father Jacobus, the great historian of the Benedictine Order, is talking to Joseph Knetch, the young prodigy. Father Jacobus is bemoaning the condition of historiographical scholarship and says this:

Every science is, among other things, a method of ordering, simplifying, making the indigestible digestible for the mind. We think we have recognized a few laws in history and try to apply them to our investigations of historical truth. Suppose an anatomist is dissecting a body. He does not confront wholly surprising discoveries. Rather, he finds beneath the epidermis a congeries of organs, muscles, tendons, and bones which generally conform to a pattern he has brought to his work. But if the anatomist sees nothing but his pattern, and ignores the unique, individual reality of his object, then he is a Castalian, a Glass Bead Game player; he is using mathematics on the least appropriate object. I have no quarrel with the student of history who brings to his work a touchingly childish, innocent faith in the power of our minds and our methods to order reality; but first and foremost he must respect the incomprehensible truth, reality, and uniqueness of events. Studying history, my friend, is no joke and no irresponsible game. To study history one must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.

Only Hesse could write with this clarity, a concept so rich and deep. Let me try to understand it.

Inquiry

Every science is, among other things, a method of ordering, simplifying, making the indigestible digestible for the mind.

About a decade ago, I suffered from “rationalism” of the highest order. I do not think highly of my intellect of that age. I was too easily swayed by the appeal of empirical science and my deep apprehension with everything popular played a part, perhaps more so. In the middle of all quackery and illogical idiocy that I felt surrounded by, I resorted to the other extreme. Even as I write this, I feel a danger of being clubbed with some sort of anti-science league. Nothing could be further form the truth. I am not articulate enough to explain my position. So let me quote Friedrich Hayek, the preeminent economist of the 20th century.

In his book, the “Counter Revolution of Science”, he says:

In the course of its slow development in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the study of economic and social phenomena was guided in the choice of its methods in the main by the nature of the problems it had to face. It gradually developed a technique appropriate to these problems without much reflection on the character of the methods or on their relation to that of other disciplines of knowledge….The term “science” had not yet assumed the special narrow meaning it has today, nor was there any distinction made which singled out the physical or natural sciences and attributed to them a special dignity. Those who devoted themselves to those fields indeed readily chose the designation of philosophy when they were concerned with the more general aspects of their problems…

During the first half of the nineteenth century a new attitude made its appearance. The term science came more and more to be confined to the physical and biological disciplines which at the same time began to claim for themselves a special rigorousness and certainty which distinguished them from all others. Their success was such that they soon came to exercise an extraordinary fascination on those working in other fields, who rapidly began to imitate their teaching and vocabulary. Thus the tyranny commenced which the methods and technique of the Sciences in the narrow sense of the term have ever since exercised over the other subjects…

And, although in the hundred and twenty years or so, during which this ambition to imitate Science in its methods rather than its spirit has now dominated social studies, it has contributed scarcely anything to our understanding of social phenomena…

I shared similar thoughts in Porosity of Boundaries

To think that modern science is not riddled with fallacies of inductive logic would simply show that one does not understand the very foundations on which it rests. The analytical tools and objectivity, the foundations of modern science, itself rest on historical paradigms and strategies of inquiry that are effective only within a specific milieu.

Coming back to Father Jacobus, what I understand from his thoughts, on a meta level, is that we must attempt to understand the underlying methods of any field of inquiry, whether it be history or science or any other.

Individuality

We think we have recognized a few laws in history and try to apply them to our investigations of historical truth. Suppose an anatomist is dissecting a body. He does not confront wholly surprising discoveries. Rather, he finds beneath the epidermis a congeries of organs, muscles, tendons, and bones which generally conform to a pattern he has brought to his work. But if the anatomist sees nothing but his pattern, and ignores the unique, individual reality of his object, then he is a Castalian, a Glass Bead Game player; he is using mathematics on the least appropriate object.

This has been my experience with the reductive approach of “scientific” method applied to quintessentially “human” problems. The quantophrenia, the data driven approach to human well-being, the averaging out of human qualities. The methods of one system or category cannot, and must not, be applied wholesale to other categories.

Tragic beauty

I have no quarrel with the student of history who brings to his work a touchingly childish, innocent faith in the power of our minds and our methods to order reality; but first and foremost he must respect the incomprehensible truth, reality, and uniqueness of events. Studying history, my friend, is no joke and no irresponsible game. To study history one must know in advance that one is attempting something fundamentally impossible, yet necessary and highly important. To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.

And I get back to the sublime writing of Hesse. “The incomprehensible truth, reality, uniqueness of events” is equally true of individuals. In trying to understand an entity as complex as a person (or even a system), I must be humble enough to accept, at the outset, that I am trying something fundamentally impossible. And this is the tragic and beautiful fact of my life.