Curtis Gale Weeks

The First Theorem of Curtis and The Second Theorem of Curtis

Intro

I happen to have a little extra time tonight.  So I thought I would put down in writing some parts of a blog post I have been considering for the last few weeks.

I don’t have much time.  So these will be a rough sketch.

The rough sketch can be considered a rough sketch of me as well as a rough sketch of general theorems:  So much of what I do—or do not do—and think; how I proceed to interaction with others or decide to end or forestall interaction with others, and my manner of interaction with others; indeed, such a large part of my life in all its current conditions, can be traced to the following two theorems.

 

The First Theorem of Curtis:  The desire for knowledge is a desire for control.

 This idea may seem utterly obvious…eventually.  I had a hint of it in my late teens when I stumbled upon Ralph W. Emerson’s essays and found this line in The Method of Nature:

The one condition coupled with the gift of truth is its use.

However, at the time I read it differently than I now choose to read it—and in fact neither my initial reading nor my current reading were Emerson’s meaning, although I came close originally.

For Emerson, ever the romantic idealist, a truth which isn’t used isn’t the truth or might as well not be; moreover, he said as much in the sentence following the above:  “That man shall be learned who reduceth his learning to practice.”  Any other so-called learning was as useless as untruth or outright ignorance.

When I was young, I had a tendency to read the line a little off-kilter.  For me, the statement meant that a wrong action, or error, or any action motivated by bias would be a sign that the man who is acting had no possession of the full truth.  Emerson thought that nature, God, or some pantheistic agency spoke the truth always to men from all directions—the “gift of truth” was a gift given by all things to man—but that men who did not listen to this voice did not accept that gift and could not act upon it.  They would have no claim to truth, having turned the gift away.  I thought the statement meant that a person could determine a man’s claim to truth by his actions.  So I was off-kilter from Emerson’s meaning, or from the use he intended for the sentence, but not by much.

Now however, in my early forties,  I choose to read the sentence differently.  Emerson’s “condition” was a condition ascribed to Nature which Nature placed upon man; call it a part of the gift-giving contract:  You must put the truth to use, or you will not receive the gift.  (He saw this as a type of flow.  Truth reception automatically becomes action as it is put into use.  A failure to act would be a sign that the gift of truth was refused by the man.)  I would ascribe the condition to humankind which we place on Nature.  Our condition is, we will only accept the truth if it has some use.

Indeed, I choose this reading of the line in support of The First Theorem of Curtis.  We solicit Nature for her gifts because we want to put them to use.  More specifically, we solicit truth, or knowledge—we desire learning—because we desire to achieve some kind of control.

This becomes most apparent in the physical sciences.  We wish to learn how to build strong structures in order to control our access to the other side of a river (a bridge) or else to control our comfort (homes) or productivity (factories).  We wish to learn how certain diseases occur in order to have control over our health, our bodies, and so forth by finding cures or at the very least treatments—possibly, preventative measures.    Indeed, we wish to have control over our own well-being, and a part of achieving that control is learning what is, indeed, our being:  How does the body work?  Insofar as the physical sciences are concerned, we desire knowledge of the environment in order to have control over our environment. (This includes learning how to use the remote control.)

But our being is more than our bodies alone, at least as we experience our own being.  We also want to have control over our mental health, our emotional health, our pleasures, and so forth.  If these conditions are subject to the existence and influence of others, then we wish to have some control over our interactions with them—indeed, usually over them.

Consider:  The effects others produce in and upon our physical environment may produce in us a desire for knowledge of those effects and thus of those people (who are capable of producing such effects) in order to control our own physical environment.  There is always a “getting to know you” phase of any new acquaintance; but, why?  This phase may be brief—say, a business meeting between members of two different but interdependent industries—or it may be long as in the case of romantic courtship, but the reason is always the same.  We desire knowledge that we can apply in order to control outcomes, because we want to control our environment.

When we perform for others, we do so hoping to learn more about them from their reactions; next meeting, we can adjust our performance accordingly in order to produce the same reactions or to produce new reactions—for further learning as well as to achieve specific effects.  (A crude but succinct synopsis of performativity. Their reactions may well be performances used for the same reasons.)  Essential to this process of attempting to control our environment is our ability to learn the parameters of that environment, and often this includes active stimulation of that environment.  We must have some control in order to stimulate, or alter, that environment.

The fundamental nature of the desire for knowledge—that it is a desire for control—also becomes apparent rather quickly to most people even if they have never formulated a theorem similar to The First Theorem of Curtis.  In other words, there is a reason that gossip exists.  “Knowledge is power.”—have you heard that before?  Additionally, purveyors of knowledge have a ready market, providing that the knowledge they are attempting to sell gives at a minimum the illusion of increased control for the buyers.  One may peruse The Oxford Companion to Philosophy and justifiably ask, Why were these people trying to change the world in this way, or that way?—their theories are so different, often in conflict (and sometimes hostile to one another), yet each and every philosopher was not only convinced of his theory but usually spent decades advocating it.  One cannot discount the desire these philosophers had for control, themselves, which spurred them on toward ever greater learning; but a whole body of literature could be built on debates over what type of control each desired.  Learning in solitude is one thing; publishing that learning—or teaching it—is quite another.  If that tome is too weighty, just peruse any bookstore’s selection of self-help books or texts on religious texts.  Sometimes knowledge is desired not for controlling specifically what it addresses, but for use in increasing control over the actions of those who desire that knowledge.

The First Theorem of Curtis does not specify whether the knowledge learned must be true or factual; nor, that control must in some way actually be achieved via the acquisition of said knowledge; but only that the desire for knowledge is a desire for control.

 

The Second Theorem of Curtis: Influence is a kind of control, but it is not absolute control.

In light of the First Theorem, this second probably explains why there is doubt in the world.

 

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Pyrrhonian Pedagogy

The term may be absurd when applied as a term for describing a method for teaching others.  It seems wholly to refer to a method whereby one teaches oneself—if one can imagine an education regimen out of lockstep with commonplace ideas about knowledge, understanding, and learning.

From the outside, Pyrrhonian Pedagogy if applied as a description of a method for teaching others would resemble the proverbial marching of the lemmings over a cliff.  The funny image would not be seen in the tragedy of so many students falling to their bloody deaths but in the facts that, one, the teacher alone would be seen to stop at the top of the cliff and, two, were he asked about the students, the teacher would be wondering what they were doing, and why.  He had walked to the cliff in pursuit of his own pursuit, not to lead others there—in fact, to his recollection, he had never in his life accepted pupils—and he had hardly been aware of them until he stopped at the cliff top and saw them falling so relentless to the rocks below.

If one could resurrect the dead, any random pupil smashed on the rocks below would give as answer for their actions the following:  This is what we thought he meant.

Upon imagining the possibility of resurrection, and thereby imagining the answer given by the random student, the Pyrrhonian might shake his head, turn, and begin to retrace his steps in order see if he can discover why such a misunderstanding occurred.  He might begin to wonder if he had, after all, accidentally accepted pupils at some point in the past.  Unfortunately, no student will be left alive to follow him back to the start; he will find no student left standing somewhere on the path back, of whom he might ask the important questions; and in any case, no student will have actually provided that spectral answer to the imagined question.  (Had not he, the Pyrrhonian will ask himself, merely imagined that answer?)

Presently, the Pyrrhonian will follow a hyperlink to related material, forgetting for an unspecified duration all that had occurred at the top of the cliff.   If he is lucky, he will out-pace those in pursuit—he does not see them—who have in mind his incarceration and punishment for so many tragical conclusions.