Postface (1982)

Abstract

Is not the possible attraction exerted by a system of thought without empirical content one of the principal dangers to which knowledge of an object is exposed, an object which certainly appears in the sensible world, but which such a uncertain border apparently still separates from the imaginary? We may assume so, if we consider the importance of the almost totally playful, abstract constructions that have been constantly produced in the field of the sciences of man, and the little reality found in so many theories. If, on the other hand, however, one becomes aware of the enormous mass of ‘data’ almost mechanically recorded by contemporary societies concerning the collective and individual behavior of men, one can ask oneself with good reason whether the relative sterility of this accumulation does not stem from an incapacity of these sciences to constitute concepts that really give a handle to formal thought. The understanding of nature entered the era of continuous progress and discovered the status that became henceforth its own, only after having determined, in each of its fields, the constitutive categories of its objects, frameworks in which the results of observations and experiments could then be gauged and formal entities could serve as themes for a combinatorics, for a calculus. The moment of formal thought in science is decisive. This derives above all from the condition essential to all strictly scientific knowledge which is to take place in and by means of a system of symbols. As Aristotle stressed, a science is, by nature, transmissible; short of thoughtlessly stretching the meaning of the word ‘science’, this trait must be considered as defmitive and as opposing other forms of knowledge incommunicable, or communicable only in terms of imitation and practice.

This Postface has been especially written for the English Translation.