I thought the discussion in class about whether or not human culture can ever come up with anything new under the sun was really cool.
The problem was, as best I can formulate it, this: if we implicitly accept that the universe and everything in it follows the determinist paradigm (that is to say, every event has a cause, which has a further cause and so on), it would follow that the only thoughts we can have are those that are caused by prior causes. This would mean that someone who wanted to have an entirely original thought (one never thought of before) would have to have it caused by cause(s) that no one had ever experienced before. The problem with this is that we all live in the same universe, and we all understand this universe subjectively, by virtue of the schemata given us by our elders and contemporaries. Thus we would all be affected by the same causes and in turn produce the same results. To escape this cycle of repetition, it would seem that one would have to keep out of human affairs entirely. But of course someone raised by wolves, as we might say, isn't going to have the first concept of how to communicate any novel ideas they do have to the rest of us. So human culture would seem to be stuck in a causal loop in which nothing novel could ever truly be generated; everything would be permutations of the same original material.
Not everyone sees a problem with this picture; but for those of us that do (I myself included), we are challenged to come up with a mechanism for the creation of novelty in human culture. The questions we can ask ourselves include, but are not limited to:
1. Where do novel causes come from?
2. How do we experience these causes?
3. How do we communicate their effect(s) to others?
4. How much of human thinking can be characterized as "novel" in the sense that no one has thought in that way before?
Tangential problems might include:
1. Is novelty necessary for human culture?
2. What is the purpose of novelty?
3. How do we explain our desire for novelty if it is not necessary and/or possible?
4. Do human beings themselves have any say in where and when they come up with novelty, or is it just something that happens to certain of us?
5. Can we ever actually think the same as anybody else? Might not everything we think be novel in some way? If so, does that realization devalue novelty?
Undoubtedly this is only a small sample of questions we might raise on this topic. But this was the gist of my big argument with professors on this topic that I had back when I was a freshman, and it proved really helpful to think along these lines. I have my own theories about each of these questions, but I won't even begin to pretend that they are at all convincing, so I won't espouse them here. I am interested, however, in hearing what other people have to say.
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I feel as though I can see it both ways. I'd like to think we have novel ideas, but one problem is that we're limited in how we can think about those ideas. To articulate them to others, they might sound like what others have said before us.
That brings me to my next point, which is that we (not the people who come up with the ideas, but the general public/society as a whole) want credibility established. We can say what we think, but then, who are we? We need other sources to back us up. That's why I think everything is seen to be connected.
The way I came to this conclusion (and to reiterate) is that I was taught that the connections Foucault was talking about is like a cloth or a weaving: all the threads intersect and are tied together, but can make an overall statement. I might've misunderstood when it was being explained, but I took it as what I said above, where we can have novel ideas that are tied into other people's ideas.
Interesting. Going off of this thread model/metaphor you've given me, could I then say that although I'll never get a new thread (all my threads must come from prior sources), I could, if I got lucky, weave my threads together to present a novel overall picture?
Plato was a student of Socrates, but he developed arguments above his mentor's.
Jesus was a rabbi, but his ideas on grace gave the Jewish faith a new direction - Christianity (actually it was Peter's interpretation of Jesus's sermons which spawned Christianity, but right now we'll forgo church history).
Frank Zappa was an avid lover of doo-wop and classical music, but his own personal views of the world, along with his prowess as a musician and composer, led him into seemingly uncharted territories in his own work.
I believe - for an "off-the-top-of-my-head" example - that that these are examples of Adam's "thread weaving". These are influences that are subjected to individuals' own perspectives. There exists a "new thread" each time a new weave is achieved.
Hm?
All the example you mentioned are precisely what I was thinking of So therefore, in one sense, there's never anything truly new and unique, but from another point of view, there can be.
It was mentioned in class that having nothing new is a pessimistic view, but I don't know if that can necessarily be stated; with the way I'm thinking of it, it can be as pessimistic or optimistic as you want.
I agree.
@ Adam: Yes, but when you say there's a new thread, the idea is that there isn't actually. The only new thing is the overall picture created by all the old threads. In other words, its not the stuff that makes up the system that matters, its the way that stuff is ordered that matters. English is one excellent example -with only 26 unchanging letters, hundreds of thousands of words are created. "read" is a completely different word than "dear" solely on the basis of its organization.
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