LOV and LTV by Devine, James 05 February 2002 19:08 UTC Charles writes: > Can we get into a little more what a heuristic is ? Seems to be a sort of ok device for guiding scientific enquire, but sort of not a fulfledged ...what ? Theoretical concept ? What is the term for other types of ideas ( that are more than heuristic ) that are used in scientific or economic theories ? "Heuristic devices" seem to be tools used in a scientific or knowledge process, but not the ultimate theoretical concepts. <
you've got it. A heuristic is a device for guiding thought or inquiry. One example is the dialectical way of thinking, which does not give answers as much as tell you what questions to ask: how does the whole affect the parts? how do the parts affect the whole? how does the dynamic interaction between these work? (cf. Lewontin & Levins, THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST, last chapter.) JDevine ^^^^^^ CB: Yes, Stephen Jay Gould the biologist terms dialecticts a heuristic also. Myself, I would not give dialectics a lesser status than full theoretical concepts. I was edified by THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST , well, sort of as a heuristic in coming to an understanding of dialectics as more than a heuristic , as Marx , Engels and Lenin use dialectics. I agree that dialectics brings our attention to the relationship between the part and the whole ( although I don't read Lewontin and Levin to quite give such an symetrical version of the relationship. The give priority to the whole over the parts, emergence, etc.). but also all the aspects that Engels summarized in his notes for the book that others compiles as THE DIALECTICS OF NATURE. I guess THE DIALECTICAL BIOLOGIST is dedicated to Engels, "who didn't always get it right, but got it right when it counted". I agree. The critical thing about dialectics is that it is an effort to understand the logic of change. Formal logic help! s with snapshots, statics. We need both. Part of the reason dialectics gets fuzzy is the same reason sometimes a camera picture of something in motion is fuzzy. The motion of something _is__ the thing, the substance of it. So, dialectics is the goal, the full concept. The snap shots of formal logical analysis are more the heuristic. Anyway, I would give both "value" in Marx's theory and "dialectics" in theories of theories higher status than "heuristic" as that is comonly understood. "Value" and "dialectics" are vital , critical for scientific understanding,not heuristic.
