Jim Devine wrote:
>
> > > What is the whole? How could we possibly test/verify/falsify Hegel's
> > > assertion [that the truth -- or the true -- is the whole]? ....
>
> I liked Carrol's answer, but I have my own. Hegel's assertion is more a way
> of testing/verifying/falsifying theories than it is an assertion of truth.
>
I also like Jim's answer. In fact, I think one could rewrite my
'answers' as exemplifications of this perspective. I would add further
that Ian's question "What is the whole?" is not exactly germane. The
researcher has to select the whole which initially interests her, and a
critique of that whole would not be in a denial that it _is_ a whole but
in making a contrasting abstraction. The results would differ but not
necessarily contradict (in a logical sense) each other. To some extent I
think the recent debate over the origins of capitalism might have been
more useful had all parties agreed that different abstractions (wholes)
were being used, and the problem was not to "prove" one or another
"wrong" but to find ways of relating them. Different vantage points give
different but not mutually incompatible pictures.
Carrol
