Hypothesis and community

Gough, Tim (2008) Hypothesis and community. In: ETH History and Theory of Architecture Workshop: Experiments; 19 - 21 Oct 2008, Oldenburg/Holstein, Germany. (Unpublished)

Abstract

If we accept that the method of experimental natural science operates within the milieu of hypothetical cause and effect categorical judgement, then the question may be asked whether wissenschaftlich thought (ie �scientific� thought more broadly defined than is usual in the English use of this word) exists only within this milieu. This paper will approach this question via the table of categories in Kant�s first critique (B106) where, in the third part �Of Relation�, he makes a distinction between relations �Of Causality and Dependence (cause and effect)� and those �Of Community (reciprocity between agent and patient) [der Gemeinschaft � Wechselwirkung zwischen dem Handelnden und Leidenden]�. In Kant�s transcendental method, each category is related back to functions of judgement, likewise outlined in a table (B95) (a table which Kant says he will �place before the eyes� - vor Augen stellen). The category of cause and effect is related to hypothetical judgement; the category of community is related to disjunctive judgement. The link between the category of community and disjunctive judgement is complex, Kant says, and he goes on to give a succinct and useful analysis of them: Now in a whole which is made up of things�. one thing is not subordinated, as effect, to another, as cause if its existence, but, simultaneously and reciprocally, is co-ordinated with it, as cause of the determination of the other�. This is quite a different kind of connection from that which is found in the mere relation [blossen Verhaeltnis ] of cause and effect� for in the latter relation the consequence does not in its turn reciprocally determine the ground The paper will: � compare this Kantian classical duality between �cause and effect� and �community� with Deleuze�s championing of the stoic logic of cause and effect which (as he says in the second series of Logic of Sense) brings about �an entirely new cleavage of the causal relation� posit that architectural experimentation is destined to occur within the milieu of reciprocity rather

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