230
PARTISAN REVIEW
for knowledge outside of which the knowledge has no general warrant.
Even the most ahistorical kinds of knowledge, the principles of logic,
mathematics, and science, have a social basis, one obscured by thinkers
who have abstracted that knowledge from its rightful setting and used
it for purposes of their own. Thus Martin Heidegger claims in a well–
known illustration, "Before Newton's laws were discovered, they were
not 'true'....Through Newton the laws became true"
(Being and
Time).
We only think the laws preceded Newton's conception because,
Heidegger explains, that is how entities "show themselves ."
But even though Newton's laws arose at a particular historical
moment, in one man's mind, why assume that the laws are inextricable
from that moment? There is abundant evidence for believing that the
truth of Newton's laws is independent of Newton's mind, language,
class, education, etc. The simple fact that persons of different languages
and cultures implement those laws effectively implies their transhistori–
cal and cross-cultural capacity. Engineers and physicists confirm the
laws daily without any knowledge of Newton's circumstances. Three
hundred years of experimentation and theory have altered Newton's
laws only by restricting their physical purview.
In
short, Newton's laws
have been justified in vastly different times and places . Yes, scientists
and engineers have de-historicized Newtonian knowledge, pared it
down to a few set principles (nobody actually reads the
Principia) .
But
though abstract and expedient, the laws of Newtonian physics still have
a truth-value, and that value is related not to Newton's world, but to
how well the laws predict outcomes, how reliably they stand up to test–
ing, how useful they are in physical domains .
To think otherwise is to deny the distinction between the contents of
knowledge and the context of their emergence. This is an old logical
mistake, namely, the genetic fallacy : the confusion of a theory'S discov–
ery with its justification. Social constructionists overlook this distinction
between discovery (the circumstances of a theory'S origin) and justifica–
tion (the establishment of its truth). To them, the idea of separating
truth from origin depletes thought of its historical reality, and ultimately
smacks of formalist methods and mandarin motives. Constructionists
grant that the discovery/justification point may be logically correct, but
in slighting historical context, it can lead to a kind of neglect, whereby
the abstract consideration of theories like Newton's laws allows us to
forget, say, the race, class, and gender privileges that freed Newton to
excogitate upon falling bodies. Epistemologists counter by saying that
historical inquiry is one thing, truth-determination is another, but for
scholars raised on Foucault and Rorty, the division is never so neat and
