4.25 Cognition Constraint
The semantics of every descriptive term is determined by its linguistic context consisting of universally quantified statements believed to be true.
Conversely given the conventionalized meaning for a descriptive term, certain beliefs determining the meaning of the term are reinforced by habitual linguistic fluency with the result that the meaning’s conventionality constrains change in those defining beliefs.
The conventionalized meanings for descriptive terms thus produce the cognition constraint, which inhibits construction of new theories, and is manifested as lack of imagination, creativity or ingenuity.
In his Course in General Linguistics (1916) Ferdinand de Saussure, the founder of semiology, maintained that spoken language is an institution, and that of all social institutions it is the least amenable to initiative. He called one of the several sources of resistance to linguistic change the “collective inertia toward innovation”.
In his Concept of the Positron (1963) Hanson similarly identified this impediment to discovery and called it the “conceptual constraint”. He reports that physicists’ erroneous identification of the concept of the particle with the concept of its charge was an impediment to recognizing the positron. The electron was identified with a negative charge and the much more massive proton was identified with a positive charge, so that the positron as a particle with the mass of an electron and a positive charge was not recognized without difficulty and delay.
In his Introduction to Metascience (1976) Hickey referred to what he called the “cognition constraint”. The cognition constraint inhibits construction of new theories, and is manifested as lack of imagination, creativity or ingenuity. Semantical rules are not just rules. They are also strong linguistic habits with subconscious roots that enable prereflective competence and fluency in both thought and speech, and that make meaning a synthetic psychological experience. Given a conventionalized belief or firm conviction expressible as a universally quantified affirmative statement, the predicate in that affirmation contributes meaning part(s) to the meaning complex of the statement’s subject term. Not only does the conventionalized status of meanings make development of new theories difficult, but also any new theory construction requires greater or lesser semantical dissolution and restructuring.
The cognition-constraint thesis is opposed to the neutral-language thesis that language is merely a passive instrument for expressing thought. Language is not merely passive but rather has a formative influence on thought. The formative influence of language as the “shaper of meaning” has been recognized as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and specifically by Benjamin Lee Whorf’s principle of linguistic relativity set forth in his “Science and Linguistics” (1940) reprinted in Language, Thought and Reality. But contrary to Whorf it is not just the grammatical system that determines semantics, but what Quine called the “web of belief”, the shared belief system as found in a dictionary.
Accordingly the more revolutionary the revision of beliefs, the more constraining are both the semantical structure and psychological conditioning on the creativity of the scientist who would develop a new theory, because revolutionary theory development requires relatively more extensive semantical dissolution and restructuring. However, use of computerized discovery systems circumvents the cognition constraint, because the machines have no linguistic-psychological habits. Their mindless electronic execution of mechanized procedures is one of their virtues.
Readers wishing to know more about the linguistic theory of Whorf are referred to BOOK VI below.
4.26 Communication Constraint
The communication constraint is the impediment to understanding a theory that is new relative to those currently conventional.
In his Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800 Herbert Butterfield wrote that of all forms of mental activity the most difficult to induce even in the minds of the young, who may be presumed not to have lost their flexibility, is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another.
The communication constraint has the same origins as the cognition constraint. It is the semantical impediment to understanding a new theory relative to those currently accepted and thus currently conventional. This impediment is both cognitive and psychological. The scientist must cognitively learn the new theory well enough to restructure the composite meaning complexes associated with the descriptive terms common both to the old theory that he knows and to the new theory to which he has just been exposed. And this involves overcoming existing psychological habit that enables linguistic fluency, which reinforces existing beliefs.
This learning process suggests the conversion experience described by Kuhn in revolutionary transitional episodes, because the new theory must firstly be accepted as true however provisionally for its semantics to be understood, since only statements believed to be true can operate as semantical rules that convey understanding. If testing demonstrates the new theory’s superior empirical adequacy, then the new theory’s pragmatic acceptance should eventually make it the established conventional wisdom.
But if the differences between the old and new theories are very great, some members of the affected scientific profession may not accomplish the required learning adjustment. People usually prefer to live in an orderly world, but innovation creates disorder. In reaction the slow learners and nonlearners become a rearguard that clings to the received conventional wisdom, which is being challenged by the new theory at the frontier of research, where there is much conflict that produces confusion due to semantic dissolution and consequent restructuring of the web of belief.
In his “Changes of Thought Pattern in the Progress of Science” in his Across the Frontiers Heisenberg wrote that there have always arisen strong resistances to every change in the pattern of thought. When new groups of phenomena compel changes in the pattern of thought, even the most eminent of physicists find immense difficulties, because a demand for change in thought pattern may create the perception that the ground is to be pulled from under one’s feet. A researcher who has achieved great success in his science with a pattern of thinking he has accepted from his young days, cannot be ready to change this pattern simply on the basis of a few novel experiments. Heisenberg states that once one has observed the desperation with which clever and conciliatory men of science react to the demand for a change in the pattern of thought, one can only be amazed that such revolutions in science have actually been possible at all.
Since the conventional view has had time to be developed into a more elaborate system of ideas, those unable to cope with the semantic dissolution produced by the newly emergent ideas take refuge in the psychological comfort of coherence provided by the more elaborate conventional wisdom, which assumes the nature of an ideology if not a theology. In the meanwhile the developers of the new ideas together with the more opportunistic and typically younger advocates of the new theory, who have been motivated to master the new theory’s language in order to exploit its perceived career promise, assume the avant-garde rôle and become a vanguard.
1970 Nobel-laureate economist Paul Samuelson wrote in his Keynes General Theory: Reports of Three Decades (1964) that Keynes’ theory had caught most economists under the age of thirty-five with the unexpected virulence of a disease first attacking and then decimating an isolated tribe of South Sea islanders, while older economists were immune.
Note that contrary to Kuhn and especially to Feyerabend the transition does not involve a complete semantic discontinuity much less any semantic incommensurability. And it is unnecessary to learn the new theory as though it were a completely foreign language. For the terms common to the new and old theories, the component parts contributed by the new theory replace those from the old theory, while the parts contributed by the test-design statements remain unaffected. Thus the test-design language component parts shared by both theories enable characterization of the subject of both theories independently