Sacha Ferrari – Sacha Ferrari

Upside-town

Last week, I read an article about something that nobody cares about. It has been proven that a painting of Mondrian (New York City I) has been attached the wrong way to the wall of the gallery for 77 years. One of the curators discovered this grotesque error by comparing it to its back-then photography. In fact, the real painting should be hung upside-down. This anecdote raises profound aesthetic issues. I listed three of them.

First, of course, one can wonder how this artwork could have been displayed for so long while nobody noticed the mistake. By no means would such a mistake have been possible with a figurative painting. However, modern art is another story. It profoundly redefined the figurative feature of painting, rethinking the very gesture of painting, not only about its technique but also about the shape and space it conveys. With the paradigm of modern art in mind, maybe some eminent critics jubilated around New York City I claiming its impeccable lines divide the white canvas soundly and structurally. Maybe experts of Mondrian considered this parting without being critical about it and assumed it was in perfect continuity with former works of Mondrian. And maybe many educated visitors took an inspiring posture when admiring the painting and the genius of its creator. Facing this irony, we are entitled to wonder whether modern art (and, potentially, contemporary art) does care that much about the plastic quality of works, or whether modern art is just a matter of mundanity and pedantry without artistic meaning. It reminds me of a contemporary art exhibition exhibiting a pineapple on a table. This pineapple was actually brought and laid there on purpose by a malicious visitor. No other visitors noticed the hoax for several days. They were even taking pictures of the fruit. This little story demonstrates that visitors are prone to accepting any artefact as art insofar it is presented as such (i.e., in a museum). Ironically enough, the performativity of museum display is precisely the trait that differentiates modern art from contemporary art. Due to this mistake, Modrian is more contemporary than ever.

This last consideration echoes the second point I want to address. Although curators committed a funny mistake, they are all but stupid. The current curator of the exhibition explains the rationale behind this long mistake. Her predecessors chose the display the work in this direction in order to match with the sense of Mondrian’s signature drawn behind the canvas. They chose to guide their aesthetic intuition with the artist’s signature. Signature comes first, meaning and aesthetic experience come after. Since the Renaissance and the emergence of subjectivity, painters have been signing their works. This signature is not just a means of recognition but also an artistic gesture per se. Signing makes art exist. Signing is performative. Signing attests that the object you are seeing is considered a piece of art deserving aesthetic attention. Some artists saw in this fetishization around the status of artist something unbearable. With a pinch of irony, Marcel Duchamp displayed a urinal signed by his name. It was the beginning of ready-made and the birth of contemporary art. New York City I is a victim of both the old fetishization of signature.

However, the juicier part is still to come. New York City I will remain displayed upside-down forever because, due to conservation issues, turning the painting over to its correct side would damage the thin rubber strips it is made of. The initial error of the curator is made to stay. This error might even be considered as an artistic gesture like the self-destruction of Banksy’s painting after an auction at Christies’. New York City I is like the misprint stamp in the philatelist’s collection. Defects make it rare. Rarity makes it beautiful. Beauty makes it valuable. Maybe the painting gained value on the art market after this (un)fortunate discovery. In any case, the painting will raise special attention from the public, critics, and collectors. This mistake creates some mysticism around the painting. The reality is not as it seems. We are giving you a biased version of it. It is somehow exciting to know that something has to be interpreted differently when we are staring at it. The bold strip lines at the bottom, representing for more 70 years the noisy and jammed streets of NYC, metamorphosed themselves one week ago into the cloudy and capricious sky of the city. What better example of the plurivocity of modern art (or its inanity, according to your sensibility)?

To sum up, this anecdote is actually an epiphenomenon encompassing interesting concepts of art theory: status of the signature, performativity and prejudices of display settings, aesthetic standards of modern art, docility of the viewer, and self-sufficiency of modern art. Mistakes can sometimes force us to redefine more carefully what constitutes the aesthetic gist of modern art.

Latour in His Sarcophagus

Last week, the death of one of the most famous and controversial philosophers made the headlines. Bruno Latour passed away at the age of 75. His intellectual legacy consists of countless papers, dozens of books, and hundreds of talks. Latour is one of these French philosophers – such as Derrida, late Deleuze, Lyotard, and Sartre — who are studied everywhere in the world but in France. The reason is perhaps that these authors are labeled under the name of postmoderns, which fits into the academic landscape in the US but not in more conservative France. In any case, Latour created lovers and haters. He is the hero of climate activists (with his late Gaïa project) and the dumbest of scientists (with his Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts). His enemies accuse him of being a social constructivist of science, reducing scientific facts to the ersatz of social interactions within the scientific community. He would be a defender of the antirealist motto: “Science is a social construction.” A salient proof of his thesis is said to be found in his text Jusqu’où faut-il mener l’histoire des découvertes scientifiques ? [Until where does one have to lead the history of scientific discoveries?] published in 1998 in the French magazine La Recherche. After the publication of this text, he was accused (and still is) of defending that it is impossible that Ramses II died due to tuberculosis three millennia ago because this bacterium was only discovered 1882 by Koch. I am not the biggest fan of postmodernism, but I must admit that the critique directed toward Latour’s text is unjust. This text is mostly misunderstood by many. I will try to shed light on it.

Latour indeed starts his text with this very provocative statement (i.e.,it is impossible that Ramses II died because of tuberculosis because this bacterium was discovered after his death). However, he admits that the radicality of this utterance is only an illusion. In the rest of his text, he will try to explain and nuance it. I think many scientists stayed stuck to this early thesis. Latour wants simply to say that scientific facts are not what scientific dis-cover (remove cover). There is nothing covered or hidden waiting for someone to shed light on. Scientists produce, build, and craft. It does not mean in any way that the bacteria are an artifact or a social construction. Latour does believe that Ramses II is dead because of tuberculosis. He just stresses the fact that when we refer to past scientific facts (the contagion of Ramses by tuberculosis stems), we do not just designate this event as a point in the timeline located at 1000 BC. Each point of the timeline loads a ton of historical sedimentation within it. With a very obscure analogy, Latour says that time has to be understood in a two-dimensional space. The horizontal dimension of time is the classical timeline as we learned at school. The vertical dimension is at stake here. This extra dimension pertains to all the sedimentations that came a posteriori to describe this event more comprehensively. More concretely, the death of Ramses II has not only to be understood as an event that occurred in 1000 BC (horizontal dimension), but also with all posterior events or discoveries connected to this event (vertical dimension): the discovery of the virus in 1882 by Koch, the transportation of the mummy from Cairo to Paris in 1976 and the X-ray analysis demonstrating the presence of Koch bacteria. In that respect, saying simply that “Ramses II died because of tuberculosis in 1000 BC” is, according to Latour, an anachronism. We should instead say, “Ramses II died because of tuberculosis in 1000 BC, given the sedimentation from this time to the present.” Latour implicitly stresses the central role of the actors in scientific discoveries. Scientific discovery is not just a brute rational fact conceived in abstracto, but the result of a (temporal) interaction between actors: the mummy, the scientists of 1976, the trip from Cairo to Paris, Koch… It is only under some specific configuration that a scientific discovery can emerge.

Latour is not a fool and anticipates some critiques. He states clearly that his position is not a form of idealism consisting of arbitrarily constructing the past from our present. There is no retroactive causality. From his perspective, the discoveries that took place in 1888 and 1976 changed forever the sedimentation related to the death of Ramses II in 1000 BC. This is not reversible. Time endlessly increases in the horizontal and vertical dimensions with no way back.

His article is quite short and sometimes confusing. I think that is the reason why many saw in Latour a strong constructivist and relativist toward science. His position is in fact a position that many scientists could endorse: our scientific knowledge concerning past events cannot be conceived in abstracto but always in regard of our position in time and the facts that contribute to our accumulated knowledge about this event. Had Ramses II not been transported to Paris in 1976, the sedimentary knowledge associated with his death in 1000 BC would have remained at the same level as in 1000 BC. Once we acquire further knowledge, the point in history inflates and gains (vertical) density. This mass is won forever. There is no retroactive causality. This is in fact, a quite trivial thesis that many scientists could endorse. One cannot speak abstractly about an event: there is an indeterminacy or ambiguity, and we need another (vertical) coordinate to speak about it in a sound way. This vertical coordinate is simply the amount of knowledge gained until today. That is a far softer thesis.

Maybe I managed to nuance the antirealist accusation against Bruno Latour. To quote another disputed French philosopher, Michel Onfray: “The reputation of an individual is nothing but the sum of misunderstandings on their account.”

Rationalité(s) ou l’art de ne jamais avoir raison

N’avez-vous jamais perdu votre temps à démontrer à un ami l’inanité de son traitement homéopathique sans parvenir à avoir le dernier mot ? Ne vous êtes-vous jamais pris le bec avec un autre ami au sujet de l’existence d’un dieu quelconque ? Votre adversaire et vous savez que vos positions sont irréconciliables et que ce débat est déjà perdu d’avance. Et pourtant, force est de constater que vous persistez tous deux dans votre affrontement comme si la vérité allait éclater au grand jour. Ce qu’elle ne fait que trop peu souvent. Mais peu importe. The show must go.

Le débat contradictoire, comme activité essentielle de notre vie sociale, est-il une cause vaine sans réelle résolution ? Deux réponses sont possibles. Selon le point de vue rationaliste, il existerait un ensemble de critères rationnels permettant de trancher entre les deux parties. Ces critères se doivent d’être universellement acceptables par tout être doté de bon sens et d’un minimum de raison. L’autre point de vue est celui du relativiste pour lequel aucune des deux parties ne peut avoir le dernier mot puisqu’elles usent, toutes deux, de leur propre rationalité, de leurs propres mécanismes de preuve. La première position sous-tend une univocité descriptive du réel, alors que la seconde met en lumière la plurivocité des interprétations, parfois contradictoires, de ce réel. Même si la posture relativiste prêtera à sourire du côté du scientifique, je vais tenter de montrer que la position rationaliste, du moins dans sa version radicale, n’est pas tenable.

Imaginez que lors de vos vacances sur la plage, vous rencontrez un diseur de bonne aventure, une sorte de devin ermite prétendant lire l’avenir dans le motif laissé par les feuilles de thé au fond d’une tasse. En bon scientifique, cette méthodologie vous laisse songeur et vous demandez au devin de vous démontrer la validité de sa théorie. Ce dernier, pour une poignée d’euros dûment marchandée, s’exécute, énonce à voix haute votre question « La méthode des feuilles de thé est-elle fiable pour connaitre l’avenir ? », scrute le marc de thé et affirme y lire la réponse « Oui ». Bien entendu, vous serez hilare car vous vous attendiez à ce que, pour être recevable, la démonstration prenne appui sur des raisons extérieures à l’univers de sa tasse de thé (et, par conséquent, moins sujettes à caution). Pour définitivement clouer le bec à ce charlatan, vous allez tenter de montrer la supériorité de votre système de connaissance : la méthode scientifique. Vous vous lancerez donc dans une exposition des bonnes raisons de croire ce que dit la science. Mais sur quels principes s’appuient ces raisons ? Le principe de réfutabilité (si j’affirme que toutes les grenouilles sont vertes et que j’observe une grenouille rouge, alors mon affirmation est invalidée), principe d’induction (si j’observe un grand nombre de grenouilles vertes, je peux induire que toutes les grenouilles sont vertes), principe de reproductibilité (si je prétends que toutes les grenouilles sont vertes, alors je dois les observer comme vertes tous les jours de l’année)… Tous ces principes semblent naturels et de bon aloi, mais sont-ils réellement fondés ? Pour qu’ils le soient, il faudrait qu’ils soient acceptés comme valables par le divin et vous (ou qu’ils prennent appui sur d’autres principes considérés comme tels). Le problème, ici, est que justement notre ermite refuse les principes scientifiques de preuve car il use d’un autre système (celui de feuilles de thé). Pour lui démontrer le caractère bien-fondé de la méthode scientifique, nous ne pouvons donc pas utiliser les principes scientifiques énoncés précédemment. Pire : notre démonstration, quand bien même elle serait pertinente, prendrait appui sur ces mêmes principes admis sans démonstration ! Pour le dire autrement, les prémisses présupposent déjà la véracité de la proposition à démontrer. Nous sommes en réalité tombés dans le même piège que le devin : à vouloir justifier notre système auprès d’autrui, nous ne faisons que lui exposer des principes uniquement valables si nous considérons notre système préalablement valide. Nous sommes donc tombés dans une circularité, à l’image du serpent qui se mord la queue. Le scientifique est un divin qui s’ignore, évoluant à l’aveugle dans son monde circulaire rationnellement clos.

La guerre est sans issue. Les armes de l’un ne perceront jamais la carapace de l’autre. Tout débat est condamné à une cacophonie de raisons, dialoguant inlassablement, mais jamais à l’unisson. Nous parlons la même langue, mais pas le même langage. Et pourtant. Nous ne cessons d’échanger, et il arrive que l’on se comprenne, que l’on fasse siens, l’espace d’un instant, les principes rationnels de son interlocuteur pour mieux comprendre ce qu’il cherche à nous dire. La possibilité même de cette gymnastique ne vient que dévoiler l’existence d’une certaine structure rationnelle commune à toutes les rationalités, une sorte de raison universelle capable d’appréhender et d’apprécier toutes les autres raisons. La position rationaliste du débat contradictoire, telle qu’exposée dans l’introduction, n’est donc pas tenable au vu de la pléthore de rationalités irréconciliables. Cependant la position inverse, celle relativiste, n’est guère plus convaincante au vu de l’existence d’un dénominateur rationnel commun à toutes ces rationalités, comme nous l’avons montré.

Vous ne bénéficierez jamais de la jouissance passagère d’avoir eu le dernier mot. Toutefois, en guise de lot de consolation, et au prix raisonnable de quelques gymnastiques intellectuelles permises par une rationalité commune, vous pourrez momentanément siéger au sein de la rationalité d’autrui pour en apprécier l’architecture.

Pour aller plus loin :

Paul Boghossian, La peur du savoir. Sur le relativisme et le constructivisme de la connaissance. Trad. de l’anglais par Ophelia Deroy, Marseille, Éd. Agone, coll. Banc d’essai, 2009, 193 p.

« Dire le monde », Francis Wolff, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c68lfu6q57A

The flat-earther and the scientist

Yesterday, I came across a very interesting video presenting a debate between a scientist and a flat-earther (i.e., someone who believes the Earth is flat). These two guys were in their respective cliché to their higher extent: on the one hand, a 50-year-old bearded scientist, wearing a faded unpaired suit that her wife imposed on him in order to be presentable on TV; on the other hand, a hyperactive young man wearing sneakers, a cap and a Nike t-shirt. The clash would have seemed unavoidable. However, these two challengers turned out to have more in common than expected at first glance. More precisely, they both share the same principles for guiding their search for truth, but deduce different conclusions from these.

An interesting moment in the debate occurs when the scientist explains to his opponent one of the very fundamental principles ruling science: Ockham’s Razor. According to this principle, if two theories demonstrate the same explanatory power for a given set of facts, the scientist tends to choose the one with fewer assumptions, the most economical and the most reasonable. The flat-earther wisely asks: what is the most reasonable between, on the one hand, a stationary and flat earth, and, on the other hand, a moving and spherical sphere? For sure, a stationary and flat earth requires the least amount of assumption: we daily experience no curvature at all when looking at the horizon from a tower, and we don’t feel seasick due to the rotation of the Earth. Ockham’s Razor seems to give advantage to a flat Earth theory. Flat-earther won this round.

However, the scientist would argue that we don’t have to trust our senses every time: we feel no motion because the motion of the Earth along its axis is not strong enough to be perceived by the human body (but very sensitive experiments can detect it). So “perceptions are sometimes misleading in the scientific inquiry”, would conclude the scientist. With the same kind of argument, the flat-earther can reply that the perceived curvature of the Earth we experience in a plane by staring at the horizon is simply explained by the curvature of the cockpit’s glass. Thus, he agrees with the scientist’s claim that our senses are foolish. But this scepticism about perceptions leads to opposite conclusions. In the same vein, it is pretty outlandish that NASA sent humans in a box of metal 380 000 kms away from Earth. The passengers experienced extreme temperatures, landed on an unknown piece of rock, walked freely on it and came back to Earth safely in the same box of metal, even if, only 60 years before, the first planes were unable to fly more than a few meters without crashing deadly on the ground. For sure, the hypothesis of an astronaut filmed in a swimming pool of a Hollywood studio is more plausible and requires fewer assumptions. Furthermore, during the Cold War epoch, so much was at stake for the US that it was very tempting for them to simulate a successful landing in a cinema studio instead of taking the risk of a possible unexpected rocket explosion in the air. The flat-earther seems to have won this round again.

For the scientist, this advocacy could seem stupid: of course NASA’s outstanding achievement can be explained by the tremendous amount of money spent on R&D during the Cold War, and the round shape of the Earth has been confirmed by a lot of experiments… However, the problem is still there: the scientist and the flat-earther use exactly the same epistemic principle for seeking the truth: Ockham’s Razor. They both demonstrate a strong commitment to following this principle, but deduce deeply different conclusions from it. This point is even more obvious when they both pretend to adopt scientific scepticism: observing the world, stating a theory, making predictions, ruling out this theory if the predictions contradict observations, trying to find a more adequate theory, etc. I do think that both of them are sincere and apply this rule correctly. The very difference rest in the fact that the classical scientists have been applying this principle for many centuries, and statements that appear to follow this principle from the point of view of the flat-earther have been ruled out for ages by the scientists. Perhaps the flat-earther missed the train, and the scientist’s one is twenty centuries ahead. I am not here pretending that the flat-earther lives in the Middle Ages and believes in fairies and dragons. I just state that he is indeed a scientist – he adopts the Ockham razor principle, and he is not dogmatic, thanks to his skeptical posture – but he does not take into account the 2000 years of scientific heritage. He does everything by himself, relying on the application of fundamental scientific principles to his daily life.

Our flat-earther is like a DIY scientist, a self-made scientist, a liberalised scientist, a uberized scientist. Flat-earther is the enfant terrible of the scientific method, the illegitimate son of rational autonomy of thought, the best student of Mr Ockham’s class, the mandarin of the fundamental scientific principles. This nomad scientist assaults the scientists’ strongest building in their inner foundations, forcing these scientists to argue both for and against their fundamental principles. And it is a good thing for two reasons. First, he insatiably wakes up the old queen Science from her lazy dominant position, from where she thinks that so obvious things such as planetary motion and evolution theory are carved in stone forever. Then, Science is forced to urge her servants to renovate her kingdom’s foundation at every assault of the heretics. Second, the debate we depicted points out that science doesn’t rely on static and eternal epistemic principles but merely on temporal procedures inspired by these principles. Such procedures highly depend on the grounding historical context and modify their shape according to the state-of-art of that moment. These epistemic strategies are like chameleons fed by an inherited historical background of facts and theories. What is scientifically true is not a matter of rational reasoning but a matter of arrangement of previously collected data in such a way that it produces a coherent theory. Science has always argued a method, but how many books did she wrote about? Has anyone found a book titled “The art of doing science” or “Key principles to be a good scientist” in a library? The reason is, surprisingly enough, that science doesn’t have any systematic method per se. However, this lack of systematic methodology is not an Achilles heel but guarantees the robustness of the scientific inquiry. Good science can adapt its strategy in real time to solve more efficiently the problems it faces. This plastic method is indebted of ages of past scientific investigations. In contrast, the flat-earthers’ method starts from scratch again and again.

This paper draws the conclusion that the classical scientific inquiry cannot be characterized only by its use of a certain static set of epistemic principles (for instance, Ockham’s Razor), otherwise she should definitely agree with the flat earth theory. Instead, scientific inquiry uses a weaker version of these principles, fed by a background of past events, theories, and observations which has been conducted ages ago. There is no such thing as an absolute scientific method. There is no method but a plastic one, always in movement and redefinition.