Notes on Science and Truth: 25/12/2011

I As a preparatory exercise for our final text, we would like to return to our previous notes and try to find the material - quotes, questions, ideas - which could guide us in the proper formulation and solution of the following question: Q: Where would we position political economy within the field of causes and negations articulated by Lacan? We articulate this question against the background of the table developed in a previous note (Note I: 18/12/2011):
Aristotelian Cause Magic Religion Science efcient cause nal cause formal cause Freudian Negation verdrngung verneinung verwerfung verleugnung Knowledge Dissimulation Distrust Transmission Unconscious Responsibilit y Shaman as part of nature God cogito ergo sum wo es war soll ich werden

Psychoanalysis material cause

It is also important to highlight the reasons which give this investigation its pertinence: a) Lacans references to Marxism in Science and Truth seem of a different order than those to other fields of knowledge: (i) there are clearly Althusserian concerns in the very motivation for the text (questions surrounding the dualities of praxis/theory and ideology/science); (ii) Lacan makes some of his most consistent references to Marxism throughout his argumentation, but does not use the psychoanalytical framework in order to develop a structuralist approach to Marxism (like he does with Science,

Religion, Magic and Psychoanalysis itself), but rather to propose an addition to it (the theory of the object a (LACAN, 2006: 743)); (iii) Marxism is said to announce the separation between truth and knowledge in the terms distinguished in psychoanalysis (The separation of powers is at least announced in Marxism, the truth as cause being distinguished from knowledge put into operation. (ibid: 738)) b) The question of the status of economy is paramount to the proper understanding of the relations between Badiou and Zizek: the first dismisses economy as irrelevant to the reformulation of the Communist idea, while the second makes a direct plea for the return to Marxs critique of political economy. In this divide, several crucial questions can be formulated: (i) what is the status of the death drive? Is it the mortifying force of the situation or the insisting irruption of an ontological impasse? (ii) Is the Badiouian concept of an inconsistent multiplicity infinite in the sense discussed by Lacan apropos of jouissance? (iii) Why are certain fields - not only economy, but also biology - not taken up by Badiou as possible truth procedures? In the terms of Science and Truth: what sort of negation (verdrngung, verwerfung, etc) renders a field of knowledge impermeable to truth according to Badious system? c) The study of what psychoanalysis can tell us about the field of economy leads to two different realms: (i) Insofar as economy is primarily a matter of the organization of the inside - oiko (house) + nemein (to manage) - the psychoanalytical category of extimacy - the place of the object a - could better explain the relations between libidinal and financial economy, as well as turn the reformulation of the question of real abstraction (the non-thought form of thought, according to Sohn-Rethel) into a central issue for a Lacanian Marxism today. (ii) The study of political economy can help us to better distinguish between the critique of political economy as such and the critique of the conceptual economy of any field of knowledge. To approach the question of political economy from the standpoint of what Lacan develops in Science and Truth means to deal with it according to the problematics of truth as cause - simply put, with the question of how the division between enunciation and enunciated is displaced and negated in the field of economy. In science, the proper formulation of knowledge relies upon the foreclosure of the question of enunciation: there is science to the precise extent that one can remove any subjective taint to what is observed, conceptualized and transmitted. In religion, the place of truth as cause is not done away with, but is displaced to God, who answers for the empty place of utterance and determinations: there is religion insofar as the cause of my determinations can be assigned to an external agent, with whom I will only coincide at infinity. In magic, the schism between the place of utterance and the subject of the signifying determinations is not infinitely postponed (as it is in religion), nor dismissed (as in science), but constantly substituted: there is magic insofar as the origin of an effect can be repressed and substituted for the one which is produced by the signification itself for example, a sickness calls out (through the shaman) and is answered by the roaring of the thunder, which signifies the sick body at the register of the signifier. In psychoanalysis, there seems to be a double determination: this is both the field defined by the disavowal of truth as cause - there is analytical knowledge even though there is an impossibility to know the truth - and by the recognition of the material cause of signification as such - there is analytical knowledge because there is an impossibility. The most clear line of study is that of the comparison between economy and magic specially alchemy, following the investigations of Hans Christoph Binswanger - but the

well-known associations made by Freud between obsessive neurosis and money also push us towards the investigation of the relations between economy and religion. On the other hand, economys self-pronounced status of science also requires that we compare the role of foreclusion in scientific knowledge to its function in economy, where it might play a different role than it is professed to do. Finally, we must also investigate the relation between the Freudian notion of libidinal economy and the Marxist one, which - as it was already noted by many authors - seems to be constituted in a similar way. To conclude, any study which sets off from the above-mentioned table must also deal with the following, fundamental question: Q: In which way are the Aristotelian causes related to the Freudian negations? Is it a structural homology which presents itself in one way on the dimension of the signifier and in another on the matter of enjoyment, or can we propose different combinations between (formal, material, efficient and final) causes and negations (denegation, repression, foreclusion, disavowal)? II In Science and Truth, Lacan makes the claim that science is founded on foreclosure. Which is one of three fundamental forms of negation in psychoanalysis the others being disavowal and repression. The term as a particular concept is introduced by Lacan, though he claims it to be a faithful development of Frued's verwerfung, which he associates with psychosis. Lacan too links foreclosure to the origin of the psychotic phenomenon, we can quickly say that it 'consists in a primordial expulsion of a fundamental signifier from the subject's symbolic universe' (LAPLANCHE & PONATLIS, 1974: 166). In this text from 1965 Lacan claims a structural similarity between science and psychosis; he states:
I will broach the topic with the strange remark that our science's prodigious fecundity must be examined in relation to the fact, sustaining science, that science does-not-want-to-know-anything about the truth as cause. You may recognize therein my formulation of Verwerfung of 'foreclosure' ... (LACAN, 2006: 742)

Lacan then remarks on the structural proximity between science and psychosis, or paranoia more precisely. Here, then, we will note some remarks by Lacan on science, as a preliminary note on the relation between foreclosure and science. In continuation with the above quote, Lacan writes:
... which forms a closed series here with Verdrngung, repression, and Verneinung, negation, whose function in magic and religion I have indicated in passing. What I have said of the relationship between Verwerfung and psychosis, epecially as Verwerfung of the Name-of-the-Father, is apparently at odds here with this attempt at structural situation. If one remarks, however, that a successful paranoia might just as well seem to constitute the closure of science assuming psychoanalysis were called upon to

represent this function and if, moreover, one acknowledges that psychoanalysis is essentially what brings the Name-of-the-Father back into scientific examination, one comes upon the same apparent deadlock; but one has the feeling that this very deadlock spurs on progress, and that one can see the chiasmus that seemed to create an obstacle therein coming undone (ibid: 742-743)

We note that the central terms involved are: foreclosure, Name-of-the-Father, science, truth and thereby also knowledge, and finally psychosis, particularly in the form of paranoia. In considering what the discourse of science is, or more generally, what are the characteristics of a discourse insofar as it is constituted by the form of negation Lacan terms foreclosure, we face a number of potential questions: What happens to the place of the subject? Is there a place for the subject? Lacan is rather clear that modern science does not recognize its subject, i.e., the subject of science. (ibid: 742) What sort of subject is there in science, considering Lacan claim that he 'we once again come upon the subject of the signifier'? (ibid: 743) What do we make of demand in a structure constituted by foreclosure? Is demand there complete? Is there thus a supposition of a complete and consistent Other? Is the articulation of signifiers complete without gap? What do we make of the subjects constitutive split is science not characterized by an obfuscation of or reduction of the enunciation to the enunciated? And what then of truth? Where, or better, what is speech in the realm constituted by foreclosure? What then speaks? Does the truth speak? If the foreclosed returns from without, what does this imply for science or a discourse constituted on such grounds? What do we make of Lacan statement that science has no memory? And what of the distinction he asserts between history's unfolding and the 'rhythm of development'? (ibid: 738, 743) Science and the truth-as-cause? Does the Thing still speak when there is foreclosure? A further related question imposes itself here: what is the relation between subjectivity and the social link? Is it a mirroring thesis? What posits? Is it an overlap? An incomplete superimposition?

III Koyres principle thesis is that modern science, inaugurated in the period between Galileo and Descartes, announces the divorce of the world of value and the world of facts (KOYR, 1968: 5). The universe is independent of and irreconcilable with values of order, balance or harmony - and this is precisely what permits it to be scientifically thinkable. The mathematization of nature is ultimately a new way of problematizing it, without having recourse to a knowledge which guarantees a solution. These notes will

cover the span of the first chapter of his text, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, comparing them to our previous considerations on Science and Truth. Fifteenth century Nicholas of Cusa was the first to state that the universe had no precise limits (Koyre is quick to note that Nicholas reserves the term infinite to God, and instead refers to nature as indeterminate). He wrote an essay called Of Learned Ignorance [De Doctora Ignorantia] , in which he prescribes conjectural knowledge in lieu of a total knowledge of the universe (ibid: 8). By conjectural, he means something very specific regarding infinity. An example, cited by Koyre, is that of motion and rest, an opposition which is dependent on a limit - if an object were to travel at an infinite speed in a circular path, it would be both in its place and in motion. As Nicholas of Cusa states:
It has indeed, been established by learned ignorance that the universe is triune; and that there is nothing that is not a unity of potentiality, actuality, and connecting motion; that no one of these can subsist absolutely without the other; and that all these are in all [things] in different degrees, so different that in the universe no two [things] can be completely equal to each other in everything. (ibid: 11)

This triune structure provides the basis upon which the difference of all things can be asserted. This difference is not simply actual difference, nor is it potential (perceived) difference, but the very way the potential meets with the actual, in the connecting motion. It is an extremely consequential move:
But we cannot discover motion unless it be by comparison with something fixed, that is [by referring it to] the poles or the centers and assuming them in our measurements of the motions [as being at rest]; it follows therefrom that we are always using conjectures, and err in the results [of our measurements]. And [if] we are surprised when we do not find the stars in the places where they should be according to the ancients, [it is] because we believe [wrongly] that they were right in their conceptions concerning the centers and poles as well as in their measurements. (ibid: 13) Without a fixed (i.e. motionless) point of reference, motion is unthinkable - yet one cannot locate any such point in space. It is not only that we do not know of such a point, but that, as the cardinal puts it, nowhere is there a true circle such that a truer one would not be possible, nor is anything ever at one time [exactly] as another, neither does it move in a precisely equal [manner], nor does it describe an equally perfect circle, though we are not aware of it. (ibid: 14)

For every form, there is a more perfect version of that form, a n+1. Only in the infinite is this one-more finally reconciled, but this is both an inference and the very basis of our understanding of that form. At issue then is the status of the absolute, which is not simply something external to thought, but is both a consequence and a cause of it. One could compare this to the pivotal moment of the cogito in Descartes meditations, in which what must be inferred - that a perfect being must exist, since an imperfect mind would not be able to conceive of perfection otherwise, and that this perfect being would not be deceptive - is both the cause and the logical step to be made. In Nicholas terms, thought cannot grasp the actual without the potential, nor without the connecting movement which renders this very distinction indeterminate, since the potential also logically precedes the actual. Eurydices first note on this text also expresses, in a different way, the triune:

From concepts, through problems, and finally to its object this is the triad through which Lacan developed a structure that accounts for the state of splitting or Spaltung where the psychoanalyst detects it in his praxis. (Notes I: 11/12/2011)

Could we not map this statement onto Nicholas - concepts are actual, problems are potential, and the object is the connecting movement? If we apply our previous considerations, then the problem could be said to both precede and succeed the concept - in a temporality definitive of the object a. It is a temporality which Freud introduced, in the statement, Wo es war, soll ich werden. From the actual es, to the potential ich, there is a will have been which announces their division. Lacan calls this the inner eight of the Moebius band, the mark of the divided subject. And it is in his considerations on the different ways this subject forms a knot that he relates science, magic, religion, and psychoanalysis. What is common to each is that the subject appears as vanishing - each in a unique gesture of self effacement. For the shaman, it is the hewing of his corporeal form which makes use of the metaphoric function of the signifier. Lacan links this to verdrngung - the enigma of which is the truth as efficient cause. One could say that the Thing that answers our prayers does not simply appear autonomously, but is the result of a work that must occur. Magical knowledge does not need a reference to its own consistency, since it is dissimulating itself as such (LACAN, 2006: 740). We know that a signifier doesnt represent itself, it represents the subject to another signifier - roughly put, in metonymy, the first rule is activated, and in the latter, the metaphor of the subject. These considerations require further development, but indicate that the truth as efficient cause is already at work in the logic of the signifier.

Bibliography ARISTOTLE (2009) Metaphysics (available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/ metaphysics.html ) EURYDICE (2011) Notes on Science and Truth, 11/12/2011 _______________ Notes on Science and Truth, 18/12/2011 KOYR, Alexandre (1968) From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. New York: Harvard Press LACAN, Jacques (2006) crits. New York: W.W.Norton & Company LAPLANCHE, Jean & PONTALIS, Jean-Bertrand (1974) The Language of Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth Press MILNER, Jean-Claude (2007) Les Noms Indistincts. Paris: Verdier