[This manuscript still needs some editing, especially copy reading and editing of changes which occur because of reformatting that is necessary when a manuscript moves from one word processor to another and from p.c. to the internet. The footnotes, for example, didn't make the trip, I just dont know where in the hell they are. Bear with me, I will try to get that done as soon as I can. In the mean time, I don't think the substance of the piece is effected, but in the unlikely instance that you would like to site it in a formal paper you should probably check with me first. FINALLY, since page numbers have no meaning in this medium but there still may be a need to refer to some point in a document, I have numbered the paragraphs in square brackets.]
 
 

INTRODUCTION

[1] Stephen C. Pepper is an American philosopher (1891-1972) whose principle works are in epistemology ("studies of evidence") and aesthetics. In the period of his most productive work (1935-1967) professional philosophy and most natural and social science disciplines were preoccupied with logical positivism. The logical positivists emphasized direct observation and the canons of formal reason and tended to discredit any propositions which could not be referred to these sources of evidence. Consequently, they were suspicious of all but the most limited and focused hypotheses, considering general systems of thought or world theories beyond the pale of any available body of evidence. Pepper insisted world theories were not only still relevant but inevitably so as long as human beings attempted to understand experience in ways which were responsible to evidence. He said there were plausible reasons to believe that we cannot only formulate general theories and principles of evidence regarding the operation of the natural order but the social, moral, and aesthetic domain as well. Pepper’s work is not exactly unknown in the United States, but I believe it deserves more attention than it has received, especially from sociology and the social sciences. In part, what follows is a kind of primer which introduces Pepper’s work in hopes that it will motivate others to seriously consider his central ideas.

[2] The central work in Pepper’s project is World Hypotheses (WH), in which he identifies four major world theories in Western thought and formulates the root metaphor method. He also discovered a fifth world hypothesis to which he devoted most of his later effort in epistemology, aesthetics, and values theory. World Hypotheses is not a history of Western ideas, the specific notions of philosophers, scientist, religious and moral thinkers are hardly mentioned , and the names of such figures are mainly cited to provide reference points or exemplars of the main system. Rather, Pepper identifies the way in which knowledge is formulated and developed by the progressive refinements of a basic metaphor. A world hypothesis is the consequence of a long history of cognitive refinement of a particularly fecund metaphor or analogy. Pepper explores these metaphors, their assumptions, the rules of evidence, basic categories, and logic they derive from the metaphor in use, and contradictions, limitations, and problems with which each must contend. He is particularly interested in how the strengths of one system are borrowed by another in order to shore up a central weakness -- an apparently inevitable stratagem but one which usually make things worse.

[3] This "primer" will begin by discussing the first four world hypotheses as the foundation for a somewhat more extended review of the fifth world view—selectivism. This not only reflects the development and relative weight of Pepper’s work but serves my own objectives beyond this introduction, namely to use the selectivist perspective in subsequent attempts to apply Pepper’s work to sociological issues and questions. In this treatment I will use mainly examples (as opposed to extended and detailed analyses) to illustrate the major characteristics of the world hypotheses and relations among the hypotheses. In World Hypotheses, examples are taken mainly from the history of the physical sciences. In other extensive works Pepper uses the root metaphor method to explore art and art criticism. It is important to show the extension of the world hypotheses through all areas of human inquiry and knowledge. Consequently, I will draw specimens from the natural and physical sciences (mainly those cited by Pepper), art, sociology and anthropology. In this primer, the use of sociological examples is intentionally limited since the later more extended use of the world theories will be in the consideration of sociological questions. I will especially emphasize Pepper’s work in art criticism since evidence and critical evaluation of art works and aesthetic ideas often are very close and reminiscent of the same process and problems involved in the understanding of social and cultural life. Finally, since this is a primer it is largely a summary of Stephen Pepper’s ideas.

[4] In order to avoid excessive and annoying phrases of attribution, "Pepper says", "Pepper argues", etc., I will assume the reader understands the ideas presented are those of Pepper as I understand them unless it is otherwise indicated.

[5] Pepper begins his discussion of world hypotheses by considering what he calls "utter skeptics" and the "dogmatists." The skeptics represent various efforts to avoid the uncertainties of theory but in the process commit themselves to even more dubious, if usually unrecognized, generalizations about knowledge and the objects of inquiry. Dogmatists represent the effort to ground knowledge in certainty by reference to authority, self-evident principles, or indubitable facts. Pepper’s views on these matters are best discussed in the context of his own beliefs about the problems and advantages of the various world hypotheses, but it is useful to mention these concerns at the outset because it helps identify his basic attitudes about evidence and knowledge.

"If ...there is no certain evidence... where shall knowledge begin? The pathos of the question betrays the assumption behind it. For why should knowledge begin with certainties? Why should it not dawn like day out of a half-light of semiknowledge and gradually grow to clarity and illumination?" (WH, p. 39)

[6] It is at the point we try to specify or describe in detail the nature of common sense that we are likely to find it wanting and are carried out of this taken for granted material. We seek other facts or ideas to help explain its failure or the inconvenient and limited domain of its application. The very act of describing the content of common sense is part of the process of its refinement. Ironically, at the moment we carefully describe and reflect on common sense, it ceases to be common sense but is transformed into criticized or refined information. Common sense is secure when it is not an object of cognitive responsibility. "Cognitive responsibility" is the application of clearly defined rules of evidence to a set of facts. The characteristics of common sense and its refinement identify the core of knowledge acquisition: "This tension between common sense and expert knowledge, between cognitive security without responsibility and cognitive responsibility without full security, is the interior dynamics of the knowledge situation." (WH, p. 44)

[6] The vagueness and contradictions of common sense drive thought toward "definiteness, consistency and reason," the forms of thought we associate with science and philosophy. But these more refined ideas are often discovered to "thin out into arbitrary definitions, pointer readings, and tentative hypotheses." Out of the very virtues of cognitive responsibility emerges a new insecurity. The effort to allay this insecurity is usually made by a return to common sense. But this return to common sense may be in bad faith. When using common sense to fill out and give significance to refined cognitions, the former notions are often presumed to be self-evident or indubitable aspects of human consciousness, thereby encouraging dogmatism. Nevertheless,

"... critical knowledge hangs over a vacuum unless it acknowledges openly the actual, though strange, source of its significance and security in the uncriticized material of common sense." (WH, p. 45)

[7] There are two types of corroboration in refined knowledge: multiplicative and structural. The products of multiplicative corroboration are called data; the products of structural corroboration, danda. Data involves the repetition of the same fact. I conclude the chair at the second-hand store is sound after sitting and rising from it several times. Danda or structural corroboration, involves my examination of the chair, the wood, the construction. Are the joints still sound  and is the glue holding? Many different facts are gathered and related in such a way as to confirm a single fact, the chair is (is not) sound.

[8] Generally, multiplicative corroboration is associated with observation and structural corroboration with hypothesis. However, the more refined the structural hypothesis the more observation it contains and the more refined the data the greater its dependence on structural considerations. Pepper is intent on showing here that the refinement of data toward precise observations, measurements, or "pointer readings" is dependent upon danda. At the time he wrote World Hypotheses, in the early 1940’s, Pepper was addressing what he considered to be major mistakes of the increasingly influential logical positivists. He does not merely argue that data is necessarily interpreted by danda but shows the way in which data and danda interact in the process of their mutual refinement.

[9] Pepper illustrates the mutual dependence of data and danda by an illustration from physics where arguably the most refined observations are made. He borrows an illustration from V.F. Lenzen’s The Nature of Physical Theory (N.Y.: Wiley, 1931, pp. 133-135) which he says is an unfortunately ignored classic dealing with these epistemological questions. First, a common sense qualitative observation is made: the steel rod in my left hand feels cool while the wood rod in my right hand feels relatively warm, from which it is surmised the temperature of the steel rod is lower than the wood rod. This observation may be open to doubt, however, if we are aware of another fact, namely that tactile experience of temperature is influenced by the nature of the material which is touched. Knowing this, we may employ yet another fact. We are aware that two bodies in contact will eventually have the same temperature by the transmission of heat from the warmer to the cooler body. Wood and steel are brought together and after a time the wood still feels warmer than the steel, but we conclude, thanks to the second law of thermodynamics, they are the same temperature. This more accurate or refined observation is obviously an instance of structural corroboration which depends upon the systematic consideration of other data.

[10] The future refinement of data depends upon a similar developmental process. The highly unambiguous "pointer reading" which even the scientifically uninitiated can achieve illustrates this process. For example, the measurement of temperature with a thermometer is based on the knowledge that, generally, the volume of a body increases the warmer it gets. Thus, a liquid constrained by a glass tube will when heated expand and fill more of the tube’s space. These facts constitute the instrument which even the most naive person can use to observe and measure the temperature—a highly refined or structurally corroborated fact. A measurement which may be further refined by considering more facts such as humidity and atmospheric pressure. The measurement of humidity and atmospheric pressure are themselves based on structurally corroborated facts. There is no priority here of data over danda, their mutual refinement is entirely inter-dependent, they are "twin-born." There is a similar and equally important inter-action between data and danda on the one hand and common sense on the other. When confronted with the limitations of common sense, when it does not work or actually make sense, we turn to considerations which may refine both data and danda. Conversely, the sometimes thin, ungrounded and contradictory observations of refined data and danda motivate a reconsideration of common sense or qualitative experience.

[11] Whether considering the more prosaic problem of a chair’s construction or the meteorologist’s careful recording of an exact temperature, the precision of these observations is increased by the conceptual organization of data which is brought to bear on a particular observation. Increasing the precision of our observations, increases the scope of the conceptual framework, the hypothesis, which is cognitively applied. A wider range of facts, a greater scope of experience, is employed in the more precise observation. In turn, the more precise observation may provide new information which permits the expansion of the scope of the hypothesis. The more precise observation may, in fact, reveal new information which requires that the scope of the hypothesis be expanded in order to account for this new datum. In this way, the desire for precision increases scope, scope increases precision which may permit or require additional scope.

[12] This process may end in some limited hypothesis about an area of life of interest to the observer and quite adequate to the person’s needs or curiosity. However, the process may continue over time driving the framework to increased areas of precision and wider and wider scope. It is in this way that world hypotheses or metaphysical systems are historically generated—moving from common sense (dubitanda) through rough data and rough danda to refined data and danda. Put in this rather bald and summary fashion, Pepper’s argument appears to assert an inevitable "unfolding" of human reason. Nothing could be further from Pepper’s intention as I think will be clear as this account develops. However, put in this simple way it makes clear the important and continuing connection between common sense or qualitative experience and theoretical or more refined cognition. It also challenges the assumption that greater scope necessarily implies less precision by showing how inter-dependent scope and precision actually are. Obviously, a theory should not make claims for its applicability beyond what is warranted by the data. Danda can also be very usefully applied in very limited ways to limited facts. This important distinction should not be confused with the more intimate and crucial relationship between precision and scope which is the source of the world hypotheses.

[13] Relatively successful world hypotheses are grounded in a particularly felicitous common sense analogy or metaphor. Pepper identifies four relatively adequate world hypotheses with four root metaphors. What is meant by "relatively adequate" will become clear as we proceed. The major assumptions of the root metaphor method are described by Pepper in four maxims and their relevant corollaries. I list them here and then discuss each in more detail:

I. A world hypothesis is determined by its root metaphor. II. Each world hypothesis is autonomous. i) It is illegitimate to disparage the factual interpretation of one world hypothesis in terms of the categories of another—if both hypotheses are equally adequate. ii) It is illegitimate to assume that the claims of a given world hypothesis are established by the exhibition of the shortcomings of other world hypotheses. iii) It is illegitimate to subject the results of structural refinement (world hypotheses) to the cognitive standards (or limitations) of multiplicative refinement. iv) It is illegitimate to subject the results of structural refinement to the assumptions of common sense. v) It is convenient to employ common sense concepts as bases for comparison for parallel fields of evidence among world theories. III. Eclecticism is confusing. IV. Concepts which have lost contact with their root metaphor are empty abstractions.

[13a] I. A world hypothesis is determined by its root metaphor. A wide range of theories that are different in many particulars are nevertheless quite similar in their basic logic and sense of evidence because they are grounded in the same root metaphor. For example, Thales and Anaximenes (sixth century, b.c., Ionians), Empedocles (sixth century, b.c., Greek-Sicilian), Telesio (sixteenth century, Italian), and Herbert Spencer (nineteenth century, British) all share a root metaphor, the assumption there exists a basic material out of which all of the facts of the universe can be generated. This results in a relatively inadequate world hypothesis lacking scope. Spencer goes beyond the Greeks in that he accumulates many more factual details under the control of his theory but does not succeed in refining or further developing its basic categories beyond his pre-Socratic predecessors. The more adequate world hypotheses have extensive ly refined the categories generated by the root metaphor and have excellent scope. In fact, general confidence in the scope of their theories have led practitioners within the adequate world hypotheses to turn more to problems of internal consistency.

[13b] II. Each world hypothesis is autonomous. If the relatively adequate world hypotheses all interpret the facts with about the same degree of competence, then clearly there is no basis for choosing one over the other. If this is true, then it also makes little sense to disparage the factual interpretation of one world hypothesis from the point of view of the other (i). There is a strong temptation to do this since part of the facts which a world hypothesis must explain is other world hypotheses, "... a world theory that cannot reasonably interpret the errors of other world theories is automatically inadequate. By that much it lacks the requisite scope." (WH, p. 100). The four world hypotheses which Pepper discusses have little difficulty in explaining the other’s errors. The ability to explain the errors of another world hypothesis while not recognizing the other’s relative adequacy, is one of the sources of dogmatism. World theories have different strengths and weaknesses which increase this temptation and is also the source of eclectic efforts which result in categorical and logical confusion. We will consider in greater detail this important point a bit later.

[14] It is also an error to assume that one world hypotheses is strengthened and established by showing the weaknesses of other world theories (ii). Pepper calls this the "fallacy of clearing the ground." It is an exercise that is common in polemical writing where it is apparently assumed that the discrediting of other ideas somehow strengthen one’s own. This type of discussion can be very useful to the clarification of ideas, but "We need all world hypotheses, so far as they are adequate, for mutual comparison and correction of interpretive bias." (WH, p. 101). A world theory must prove its merits within its own terms.

[15] In a rather extensive critique of positivism Pepper makes the case for another principle of the root metaphor method, namely that "data cannot legislate over danda." Data need not be taken at face value nor is data the only evidence which may be utilized within a world hypothesis (iii). I will not summarize Pepper’s complete argument here but simply refer to one aspect of it already mentioned, the observation that a simple "pointer read ing" has standing behind it a complex structure of corroboration (danda). Similarly, as important as common sense (dubitanda) is in the development of knowledge it also cannot be taken at face value (iv). While data and danda develop out of common sense the latter must finally be accounted for within the categories of a world hypothesis.

[16] Common sense, however, is an especially fruitful point at which to enter a comparison of the various world hypotheses (v). Pepper illustrates this with a detailed comparison of how John Dewey and H.H. Price interpret the experience "red tomato." (WH, pp. 26-33) The sociologist is especially familiar with this type of exercise. For example, a rather sizable proportion of social problems texts in the United States are devoted to how common social experiences (poverty, racial discrimination, criminal acts, etc.) are variously interpreted by both relatively refined danda and common sense. Implicitly this an effort to identify the elements of different world hypotheses or levels of refinement within a common world theory, but the frustrations encountered in teaching this material may often be the result of an insufficient appreciation of just exactly what is going on. Certainly any sociologist recognizes that different world views or cultural frameworks may be involved in a classroom discussion. Nevertheless, she may become exasperated when the student persists, for example, in seeing "the lazy" where the instructor sees "the deserving poor." Usually the instructor assumes that the student’s interpretive categories are at the level of dubitanda and the problem is one of progressive refinement. However, the different interpretations may involve both problems of refinement of a world hypothesis or different world hypotheses. The adequacy of the students interpretation of a particular set of facts is not her agreement with the instructor, but with the cognitive adequacy of the student’s crude data and danda. Usually the instructor believes her basic responsibility is to help the student refine her own basic categories consistent with experience and the data. A consequence of this exercise may be a change in interpretation of behavior that once was thought to be "laziness." The student may come to agree with the instructor because she is persuaded by the teacher’s categories or for altogether different conceptual reasons. She may also continue to disagree but now with more refined and discursively expressible justifications. The development of a student’s cognitive ability from common sense to refined data and danda is usually taken as an indication of the teacher’s success even when it does not result in an agreement about specific facts.

[17] This excursus would make it appear that Pepper is advocating a fairly garden variety twentieth century relativism, but that is not the case. The same dubitandum which is refined and becomes the instructor’s danda refers to the same fact in the now refined categories (danda) of the student. In some specific instances it may be incorrect to say these are equivalent facts but within world hypotheses of unlimited scope "... the totality of inter pretations in any two world hypotheses must be literally equivalent since they both take in all the facts there are." (WH, pp. 103-104) This statement has a rather strange resonance as if made by a latter day Hegel who assumed somehow there was more than one god or world spirit. However, I believe it is not much more than an assertion of the epistemological principle of identity—that a quality or attribute may be retained from one context to another. A principle which follows from any fruit ful act of comparison among world theories. Full justification for this assertion does not appear in Pepper’s early work, though I believe it is of central importance to his philosophy and the justification of which counts among the important contributions he has to make to social theory. Fortunately in his later work, within the categories of selectivism, this idea is further re fined and clarified. A full discussion of those issues will be considered in that context.

[18] In any case, Pepper is convinced that the effective study of any world hypothesis begins with common sense.

Let the subject be perception, physical body, personal freedom, the law of gravitation, legal right, aesthetic beauty, myself, identity, space, yellow, saltiness, anger, air, action, truth—whatever your will, the essay ... will most profitably begin with common-sense meanings of these terms and then proceed to refinements of interpretation which can be compared with one another on the basis of their mutual points of origin (WH, 104)

[20] Returning to the problem of eclecticism, Pepper distinguishes between deliberate (static) and accidental (dynamic) eclecticism. The distinction is important because nearly all substantive philosophies are eclectic to some degree. Deliberate eclecticism refers to the self-conscious effort to combine the best of the world theories. Pepper mentions Whitehead’s effort in Process and Reality as a good instance of this tactic. But as much as he admired Whitehead, he felt the results were sterile and confusing. He identified his own effort to develop selectivism with Whitehead’s system, but did not proceed eclectically but from the foundation of a different root metaphor.

[21] In the history of philosophy it is the accidental (dynamic) eclectic which plays the more important role. "The dynamic eclectic tries to divest himself of his eclectic encumbrances, and the drama of his struggle often produces great literature as well as great philosophy." (WH, p. 107) Charles Pierce and William James formulated the rudiments of a pragmatic or contextualist world hypothesis but never succeeded in disentangling themselves from formist assumptions. "As pragmatists their cognitive achievements were probably inferior to those of Dewey and Mead, though as creative thinkers they were probably superior." (WH, p.107)

[22] The dynamic eclectic is not likely to be a systemizer but is pursuing a problem or attempting to explain a particular set of facts. Her root metaphor may be confused but she may still throw off the dead-weight of a traditional and fruitless metaphor or otherwise illuminate an important problem. The static eclectic deliberately combines elements from various root metaphors but gains little other than providing some insight into the root metaphor method. A self-conscious attempt to combine all of the world hypotheses is pointless because each relatively adequate world hypothesis is already comprehensive. "The reason that there are several root metaphor theories is precisely that they are all fully comprehensive and their categories refuse to merge and their danda refuse to harmonize." (WH, p.108) To attempt to extract the best from each theory and synthesize them is also fruitless. What is "best" will vary with each theory and is derived from the categories of its root metaphor.

[23] IV. Concepts which have lost contact with their root metaphor are empty abstractions. At some point it is common for a world theory to take its categories for granted, assuming some ultimate or indubitable status. The plausibility of the term or category is no longer referred to evidence, but is hypostatized. Terms are not only highly refined and thin but have lost touch with the experience which called the categories or their cruder progenitors up in the first place. While there is a tendency to hypostatize the categories of a weak hypothesis, it is nevertheless important not to confuse a weak hypothesis with hypostasis. The former is due to the basic inadequacy of its root metaphor, the latter is a product of refinement and has lost contact with its root metaphor whether weak or strong.

[24] It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that the inadequacy of a world theory is not basically determined by some external criteria. Theories identify their own inadequacies. On consideration of its own logic and "refined canons of cognition" a world theory identifies problems of precision and scope. Lack of precision refers to the circumstance in which the same facts may be interpreted in several different ways. Lack of scope refers to the circumstance in which facts are considered outside of the categories of the hypothesis and are simply inexplicable (e.g. unreal, illusory). Pepper assumes that any cognitive effort is necessarily motivated by the effort to increase precision and scope. We have already discussed the strong relationship between precision and scope in which one is never increased without the other, nor without raising new questions about the other.

[26] An overview of the four basically adequate world hypotheses. The four world hypotheses and the relevant root metaphors are:
 

Exemplars of formism are Plato, Aristotle, the scholastics, neoscholastics, neorealists, modern Cambridge realists. Mechanism, also called "naturalism", "materialism", and sometimes "realism", is associated with Democritus, Lucretious, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume. Contextualism, also commonly called "pragmatism" is associated with Pierce, James, Bergson, Dewey, Mead. Exemplars of Organicism are Schelling, Hegel, Green, Bradley, Royce. Pepper merely mentions these examples to give a sense of how he is using the terms attached to the world hypotheses. He points out that many of these theorists are, in fact, eclectic and some develop the categories of the root metaphor only partially.

[27] More importantly, Pepper describes basic attributes of the world theories which identify their strengths and weaknesses and the manner in which they encourage eclecticism. He diagrams these characteristics as follows:

[28] As we can see, mechanism and formism are analytic while contextualism and organicism are synthetic. Analytic theories will have synthetic moments and synthetic hypotheses will necessarily employ analysis, but the basic facts of analytic theories are elements and synthetic properties are derived. Synthetic theories begin with facts which are complexes, contexts, or wholes, and elements are derived from them. World hypotheses also tend to cluster around dispersiveness and integration. Dispersiveness refers to a theoretical inclination to take facts one by one, explain them as best it can and move on to the next fact. Facts are rather loosely scattered about and one does not determine another in any great degree. The cosmos is not highly systematic, chance and unpredictability are inherent to this view even if a particular thinker does not choose to emphasize the tendency. Formism and contextualism are dispersive world hypotheses and as a consequence tend to be weakly determinate and weak in precision. Mechanism and organicism on the other hand are integrative, assuming facts are strongly related to one another, with a view of the cosmos which is highly determinant and without much toleration for ideas of chance. Experience which resists integration into its categories tend to be dismissed as illusory or potentially explainable in a determinant way at some point in the future when the veil of ignorance is raised. Integrative theories are weak in scope.

[29] The tendency for theories to combine is related to these fundamental attributes. The two analytic world hypotheses, formism and mechanism are strongly attracted to one another. Formism, weak in precision, would apparently have much to gain from the strength of mechanism in this area. The scope of formism, on the other hand, promises to expand areas of relevance among the mechanist categories. Pepper indicates that Bertrand Russell represents an outstanding effort to combine these world theories but concludes that the eclectic result has been confusing and relatively barren. Russell in his later writing also questioned the scope (and precision) of deductive inference and turned, in part, to common sense. He argued that the limitations of deductive reason require clarification of the actual process by which we move from the crude facts of common sense to science. He identified five types of "non-demonstrative inference" which were important to the development of knowledge but were not demonstrable by formal mathematical or logical methods.

[30] There is also a strong tendency for mechanism and contextualism to combine.

The two theories are in many ways complementary. Mechanism gives a basis and substance to contextualistic analyses, and contextualism gives a life and reality to mechanistic syntheses. Each is threatened with inadequacy just where the other seems to be strong. (WH, p. 147)

[31] Contextualism and organicism come very close to being the same world hypothesis. Pepper argues that the historical event is actually a better root metaphor for organicism than is the organism, but uses the latter not only because of historical precedent but to help maintain the distinction between the two world theories.

Pragmatism has often been called an absolute idealism with out an absolute...a little more emphasis on integration..., as Dewey in his Art As Experience, produces a contextualist organistic eclecticism; as likewise a little less emphasis on final integration in organicism, as is characteristic of Royce. (WH, p. 147)

[32] All four of these world hypotheses are relatively adequate. Specific theories within these frameworks have refined their categories and explained with some degree of precision a wide range of phenomena. Nevertheless, there tends to be a movement away from formism, the weaker analytic theory, and organicism, the weaker synthetic theory, toward mechanism and contextualism as if to suggest that "...cognitive adequacy lay somewhere between mechanism and contextualism." I believe it is reasonable to say that when Pepper, in his later work, developed selectivism as a world hypothesis it was with this idea in mind. Selectivism is not an eclectic theory but one which, on the basis of a different root metaphor, exploits the strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of mechanism and contextualism. A tactic, interestingly enough, which also might be associated with organicism. Rather than attempting to force the combination of antinomic terms which, in fact, cannot be combined, find a third term within which both can be meaningfully contained.

[33] Before turning to a summary and analysis of the specific world hypotheses, two general remarks. First, it is possible to consider Pepper’s work as basically a typology of metaphysical systems in which the peculiar characteristics of each type are noted and attention called to strengths and weaknesses. A summary of Pepper’s work in this spirit would be quite useful if it did no more than call attention to a philosopher which has probably not received the attention he deserves. However, Pepper’s work is exemplary in its emphasis on process and change. This is manifested in two ways: 1) the movement from root metaphor to world hypothesis, from dubitanda to data and danda, and 2) the tendency toward eclecticism, which is a major source of confusion in world theories, but also an impetus toward the evolution of one world hypothesis into another. These are internal dynamics, a molar process inherent to the "knowledge situation."

[34] Second, Pepper uses the term metaphor in a way that is a bit idiosyncratic. The "machine" for mechanism and "organism" for organicism is traditional and clear enough, but "similarity" and "historical event" for formism and contextualism would not ordinarily be considered metaphors. It is perhaps significant that the integrative theories have a clear metaphorical grounding while the dispersive theories do not. The nature of that significance is not readily apparent. However, Pepper’s intentions are clear and these peculiarities present no fundamental problems. Having duly noted them, I will turn now to the world hypotheses.

[35] In World Hypotheses Pepper develops the formal categories of the various theories and explores them primarily by considering examples from the natural sciences. However, Pepper’s principal work is in art and aesthetics where he also applies the world hypotheses. There is no question that the use of the theories from one subject area to another is commensurate but I believe the discussion of art adds another dimension to the analysis and clarifies the ideas. Consequently, I will discuss separately within each section the application of a world hypothesis to the arts. These ideas were first developed in two works: The Basis of Criticism In the Arts (1946) and Aesthetic Quality: A Contextualist theory of Beauty (1937). He added a great deal of interpretive detail in a slightly later textbook written for a course taught in art appreciation at the University of California, Principles of Art Appreciation (1949). A more or less final position is presented in The Work of Art (1955).

FORMISM

[36] The root metaphor of formism is similarity. Two instances of common sense experience give rise to two different variations of the world hypothesis. The ordinary perception that two or more things are similar, blades of grass, leaves, spoons, etc. are the foundation of immanent formism. The common sense experience that things are made or develop to a pattern, shoes to a preconceived notion of shoes or acorn to oak tree, is the source of transcendent formism. Immanent formism "... consists in simply describing this experience of two exactly similar objects minutely, and accepting literally the results of the description." (WH, p. 152) If we examine two identical pieces of yellow paper we note that the yellow is the same on each sheet. If the sheets position on the table is changed while we are looking away we cannot tell which was the previous sheet on the left and the one which was on the right. There is the manipulation of one quality, yellow, but two particular sheets of paper. If we accept this experience at face value we discover that objects of perception may have two aspects: quality and particularity. These are absolutely distinct aspects of our experience even if we never actually perceive one without the other. If we deny this distinction we are caught in confusion and contradiction. If we say there are two qualities then we contradict our intuition that one sheet of paper cannot be distinguished from the other. We have no way of accounting for the fact that when the papers were rearranged out of sight that we cannot now indicate which was previously which. If we say there is only one object we contradict our intuition that there are two objects on the table, one to the left, one to the right. In order to avoid contradiction while accepting our experience of the two yellow sheets of paper on the table we must admit the duality of aspects inherent to the intuition.

[37] This is a very radical duality. There may be thousands of particulars with one quality and there may be thousands of qualities which characterize a single particular. Particulars, as such, make no demands on qualities and qualities, as such, make no demands on particulars. That is, particulars may have any quality whatsoever and qualities may characterize any particular. Particulars may also become attached to one another in various ways. For example, two yellow sheets of paper were side by side on the table. Another two sheets of paper may also be side by side. The two pairs are similar in their side by sideness. A relation of this sort obviously requires two particulars, one sheet of paper cannot be side by side, thus particulars may have qualities and relationships. Pepper calls these two aspects taken together characters.

[38] Therefore, the basic categories of immanent formism are: 1) characters (qualities and relations), 2) particulars, and 3) participation. The latter provides the tie between characters and particulars. "It is the particularization of a character, or the characterization of a particular." In the sentence, "The ball is yellow", the verb "is" indicates the participation of the character yellow in the particular ball and the participation of the particular ball in the character yellow. It is important that participation not be confused with relation. This would reduce participation to a sub-category of character leaving us with characters and particulars but with no way to get them together to form an object.

[39] Certainly it appears that the above paragraph is concerned with some sort of relationship, but formism is required to make a distinction between an "ordinary" relationship (character) and a categorical relationship (participation). Pepper adopts the term "tie" to refer to these categorical relationships. Thus participation is a tie, a concept which is required if particulars can be joined to characters. For example, particulars get their characteristics from qualities (yellow, red, sharp, soft, etc.) or relations (above, on the left, within, etc.) -- save one, difference. A particular is necessarily different from, other than, another particular if the category is to have any intuitive sense. Difference or otherness refers to an attribute of particulars which is a tie, a categorical attribute. To expand on this just a bit, a particular object can be described with a list of adjectives: spherical, small, red, white, etc.—"a small red and white ball." That ball can be distinguished from another blue ball, but it can also be distinguished from another small red and white ball. When we say the two balls are the same we mean they have the same qualities, not that they are the same ball. Indeed, the sentence, "These two balls before us on the table are the same ball" makes no intuitive sense at all. Reference to sameness and difference are necessary if the categories of particular, quality, and relationship are to be used in any sensible way. To say two things are the same implies differences in at least two ways. The two things are not the same particular (otherwise they would not be two things," and to say they are the same (as to qualitative attribute like color, shape, hardness, etc.) is to imply there must be things that are different (different color, shape, degree of hardness or softness). A piece of paper participates in the relationship of side by sideness along with a second piece of paper. The two pieces of paper participate in the relationship, they do not participate in one another. The statement, "the first piece of paper participates in the second piece of paper" makes little sense and in no way conveys the character of side by sideness. Two other pieces of paper do not participate in the relationship they are not side by side, they participate in the relationship of not being side by side. A character of an object can often be changed, the attribute of being the same or different cannot be changed or made exception to, it is one of the properties of the categories of cognition which make cognition possible.

[40] We obviously feel it makes sense to say, "I painted the red ball a new color, it is now yellow." We assume that it is the same ball in the sense that it is the same particular but its qualities have been changed form red to yellow. In this case the yellow ball is not other than the red ball, it is the same ball, with a color other than red, i.e. yellow. However, we did not change its attribute of being other than another particular, another yellow ball or the sofa in the living room. The categorical distinctions of formism, particulars and characters, require ties such as same and other, side by side, etc. if we are to make the operative language of cognition make sense—these two objects are both red, but that one is green. At the level of common sense and even in many instances of cognitive refinement, these categories do not present a problem.

[41] While formism requires the notion of tie it is a suspicious idea. It appears to refer to relations which are not relations, a contradiction which suggest a fundamental flaw in the categories of formism. An important consequence of this flaw is a tendency to confuse a categorical distinction (tie) with a class.

[42] The participation of characters in particulars creates a cognitively powerful notion, the concept of class. "A class is a collection of particulars which participate in one or more characters." (WH, p. 159) A major source of confusion within formism is a confounding of the categories of the system with class. It is sometimes argued that there is a class of all particulars which has the character of particularity. But this is not possible since particulars, as such, "...possess no character by definition—or rather by analysis of the intuition of similarity." (WH, p. 161) The notion that there is a class of all particulars is a confusion of relations (characters) with ties.

[43] Pepper concludes his discussion of class with the following important paragraph which I quote in full:

We notice... that a class is itself neither a character, nor a particular, nor a participation, nor a separate category. It is simply the actual working of the three categories in the world. We simply observe that a character or a group of characters normally participate in a number of different particulars. We give a name to that observed fact and call it ‘class.’ Class is simply a name for a specific operation of the three immanent categories, an operation completely analyzable into the functioning of those categories. A class is, accordingly, a thoroughly real thing, but what is real is the functioning of the categories. (WH, p. 162, emphasis added)

[45] We turn now to transcendent formism. Here common sense observations which ground the categories are such things as an artisan who crafts an object according to a plan, the shoemaker making shoes, or a natural process which expresses some apparent internal plan, acorns growing into oak trees (not into birch trees). In the case of the shoemaker, the plan represents a norm toward which she works. Because of limitations of skill, knowledge, materials, etc. the norm is rarely realized, it transcends even the most finely crafted object. The same holds for the natural process, the norm of the oak tree always transcends the actual oak. Here the cognition of similarity is not of one object with respect to another, but of an object in relation to its normative conception. "The categories of transcendent formism are: 1) norms, 2) matter for the exemplification of the norms, 3) and a principle of exemplification which materializes the norms." (WH, p. 163)

[46] The only important difference between immanent and transcendent formism lies in the normative category. Certain problems are likely to arise when an effort is made to integrate the categories of the two formisms. Clearly, a norm is made up of characters (qualities and/or relations). The norm of an oak tree may be the botanist’s description of it. This suggests that a norm may actually be a class, but they are actually quite different. A class is not a form, not a character, but the instantiation of the interaction among the categories of immanent formism. A norm on the other hand is a character or complex of characters. Furthermore, a class implies the full appearance of the relevant character in the particulars, a class of blue things are either blue or they are not. The characters of the norm, on the other hand, are never fully present but merely approximate the norm. "But a norm is a center of rather vague extensity, claiming as exemplifications objects which closely approximate it and making lesser and lesser claims toward the periphery and scarcely claiming at all so-called sports or freaks." (WH, p. 164) When the biologist indicates an organism is a particularly good specimen of a class she implicitly appeals to a norm since she also implies by this expression that there are also poor specimens. Even if the boundary characteristics of a species are understood in terms of an average and some specified range of deviation, the average is not a class, but a norm. The nature of a distinction between two groups is often debated as to whether the boundary is nominal, real or typological in some Platonic sense, or statistical. Leaving aside the nominal assertion for the moment, both the typological and statistical arguments employ a norm. This is not to imply that the difference is unimportant but simply indicate how norms creep into the effort to classify and how classes may be confounded with characters.

[47] Of course, efforts are made to amalgamate the categories of immanent and transcendent formism. This can be accomplished if characters and norms can be brought together in some coherent way. This task requires two additional terms: existence and subsistence. Existence refers for the most part to the categories of immanent formism, namely bare particulars and particularized characters. It is unlikely that bare particulars (i.e. particulars without characters) are ever manifested in experience but it is a necessary category in order to keep the terms of formism clear and reasonably distinct. The other category of existence, basically particularized characters, represent the actual concrete objects or relations we perceive. The domain of actual experience is the field of concrete existence.

[48] At the same time it is apparent that a norm may participate in characters, e.g. shoes and oak trees will have, color, texture, shape, etc. In this sense the norm is a kind of particular but not a basic particular because it is not fully particularized. (That is, the actual shoes have never fully matched the normative idea of the shoes.) At this level of subsistence second degree norms may participate in second degree characters and similarly characters may participate in characters. In the latter case, a square is a character which "...participate four times in a straight line of a given length, four times in right angularity, and once in a spatial spread of surface."

It cannot be ‘reduced’ to four lines, four angles, and a surface, unless we wish to affirm that a square is just a name, and that the things never resemble each other because they are square, but only because they participate in lines, angles, numbers, and surfaces. Since, however, the basic root metaphor is the intuition of similarity, and we do seem to intuit the similarity of squares as square, it seems wiser to accept the intuition at its face value and admit complex characters which are secondary particulars participating at a second degree in other characters. (WH, pp. 169-170)

[50] In any case, the categories of immanent and transcendent formism are merged in the following way: "(1) forms consisting of characters and norms which may have second-degree participations with one another, (2) basic particulars, and (3) first-degree participations or exemplifications." (WH, p. 170)

[51] Within this framework the world of everyday experience or concrete existence is determined by subsistent forms. A causal explanation of the descent of a ball dropped from a tower to the ground involves a basic particular (the ball) which has a certain character, in this case mass. This character (mass) participates in a law or norm which, in turn, participates in time and space characters. Of course we experience the descending ball in concrete existence as an object descending through a spatial dimension over a period of time, but the mass of the ball participates in the law in which the characters time and space also participate.

Causality is the determination of the characters of certain basic particulars by a law which is set in motion by the characters of other basic particulars which participate in that law. A law, in other words, is a bridge from one set of basic particulars to another set, determining the characters of one set by those of the other. (WH, pp. 176-177)

[53] Formism tends to identify discreet forms and laws which may be used to explain concrete events. However, an event may reflect the conflict of two or more laws acting on the character of a concrete object. For example, the parabolic path of ballistic missile is mainly the consequence of the action on its mass (character) by the laws of gravity and inertia. From the formist perspective the laws distort one another. The acorn normally grows into the stately oak but may because of poor soil or inadequate water be stunted and unrealized. This is understood not as a lack of something so much as it is the operation of other laws which distort the law of normal development in the oak.

[54] At this point the social implications of formism become particularly interesting. The association of platonic or formist categories with racism and other forms of psuedo-speciation has often been commented on. The notion that the distinction between two groups is a qualitative one, between we and the "wholly other", which can be compromised or made "impure" but not otherwise bridged. I will discuss these specific issues in some detail below but their brief consideration now will help illustrate the operation of formist categories. Racial distinctions in the modern world have been made in several ways all of which remain within the framework of formism. The most obvious expressions have been those in which racial descriptions were assumed to refer to characters or qualitative distinctions—as tradition ally in the American South and South Africa. A concern for separation and the maintenance of purity is a major preoccupation of these societies. The more Aristotelian variations of formism is characteristic of Latin America. The idea of racial mixture leading to the "whitening" of the population (thereby "solving" the problem of racism) was itself a notion based upon the qualitative difference between blacks and whites, where whites were biologically superior and would naturally dominate the recipe, but in the spirit of the golden mean would arrive at a state of social and racial harmony.

[55] But we also see here an example of the confusion of forms and classes. Frank Tannenbaum in his influential study of slavery and racism in the Americas (Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas, Vintage Books, N.Y., 1946) indicates the Catholic Church’s idea that both slave and free possessed souls, were equal before God, and were thereby in the same qualitative category had a certain mitigating effect on the peculiarly institution. It tended to make the distinction between slave and free person a class distinction rather than a qualitative one. The social attributes associated with the slave could be identified as the consequence of the interaction of a complex of qualities and relationships (characters) rather than a categorical distinction. It becomes possible to think of the classification, black person, as one made up of a series of qualitative attributes, skin color, social status, relative political and economic power, differential behavior, etc. It further becomes plausible to consider the probability that even if the quality of skin color remained, but the relative position of economic power changed that behavior may also change. Much of the historical debate about slavery and racism has actually remained within a framework which is at least loosely formist. Is skin color a) a particular which manifests distinct underlying characters, b) skin color is a particular in the sense of a) but interacts with other characters in some necessary compromise of perfection, or c) skin color is a quality which can be added to other qualities to formulate a system of classification. This last instance tends to lead out of the categories of formism to mechanism and even contextualism but is still conceivable as a formist construction. It is not easy to make the distinction between b) and c). Contextualism, for example, would not credit a) and b) at all and would take c) to refer to a set of attribute which are meaningless in them selves (e.g. skin color) but in interaction with one another emerge into a sensible phenomenon. Formism could not accept this formulation even at c) so is raises the question as to the difference between b) and c). As un-formist as it sounds, apparently it is a matter of degree. That is, in c) qualitative at tributes while having their own integrity are small, narrow, unable in themselves to account for much of what we are trying to explain. On the other hand, b) identifies "large" qualitative attributes that we can see as salient in themselves and recognize the way in which it is compromised by other qualities even while we recognize their mutual participation as either tragic or the heroic struggle toward some golden mean.

[56] Generally, formism tends to be expressed in social and ethical terms by an effort to remove one set of laws from the distorting influence of others, thereby creating the conditions of relative human perfection. Monks or other religious mystics remove them selves from the "laws" of everyday life in order to discover and cultivate the "laws" of spiritual existence. Or, as urged by Aristotle, efforts must be made to balance the laws of human nature, neither unbridled appetite nor the extremes of abstinence, but a golden mean. Neither the chaos of mob rule nor the tyranny of the single despot but the state which expresses and encourages personal virtue grounded by the rule of reason. While the prudent use of formist categories in the analysis of the ordinary world leads to uncertainty and limited, ad hoc hypotheses, it is a world view which encourages utopian or perfectionist explanations in social thought and often concomitant social or moral aspirations. "All such social studies presuppose formistic categories. For no other world hypothesis supports the reality of norms as laws determining (even though not always without interference) the concrete course of existence." (WH, pp. 179-180)

[57] Formism is a correspondence theory. "Truth consists in a similar ity or correspondence between two or more things one of which is said to be true of the others." (WH, p. 180) A portrait painting may be said to be a true likeness of a person, a narrative to describe an historical situation, a map to indicate the geographical relationship between New York City and Chicago, a mathematical formula expresses the relationships which describe a geometrical figure. Obviously the description is not the same as or in one to one correspondence with the object of reference, a description is not literally a reproduction of the object. If it were, it would make description not only inconvenient and often impossible, but would not illuminate the referent in any very useful or interesting way. If truth is the degree of similarity between a description and its referent, what are the relevant points of correspondence? The true description does not express the accidental or contingent elements of the referent but only its form.

[58] Descriptions may identify empirical uniformities or natural laws. The identification of empirical uniformities is of great interest and may even have considerable predictive power but the full truth entails the description of the laws which make this pattern necessary and thereby explain the things or events under observation. The descriptive symbols may be manipulated according to specific rules and found to bear a certain necessary logical relationship to one another. The resulting formulation may be found to cover like a template, some observations in nature. It is this moment above all which has convinced the formist that the manipulated symbols and nature are mediated by a subsistent reality—the forms.

[59] Evidence within formism is the cognition of similarity, between the description and the referent. The fundamental question is whether the thing or event does or does not belong to the class under consideration. It is classification, the general as a set of characters which participate in a particular which is the source of explanation. The nature of the class is wholly contained within its characters and, as such, it is isolated and distinct from other classes. Movement or change is understood as the internally driven process of "self" realization, the movement toward the norm or essence of the form. Actual experience is explained by reference to the mutual participation of different forms in the same particulars in which forms mutually distort one another.

[60] In most examples of this world hypothesis, actual experience is also explained by reference to mechanical, transitory, or accidental particulars which do not themselves participate in forms but which interact with and thereby distort particulars which do. The recognition of these events probably represent a concession to the complex and uncertain nature of "real life." The accidental or transitory has been characterized in various ways as the evidence of human ignorance which will, in the future, be remedied; the element of chance in an otherwise determinant world; witness to the limitation of human reason, or the unreliability of empirical experience. In any case, these mechanical or accidental phenomena point to the problem of scope within formism. The moral and theological expression of formism illustrate this issue within the problem of theodicy. Is evil the consequence of the accidental and mortal character of human nature, ignorance of form, or the expression of malevolent form in contention with the normative properties of truth, beauty, and the good?

[60] Pepper argues that the scope of formism is relatively adequate though it is important to remember that scope and precision are interrelated. It is the dispersive nature of formism which makes it imprecise since the discreet nature of each form resists the adequate development of structural corroboration. If the description of the interaction of particulars lends itself to increasingly precise explanations through structural corroboration, thought is encouraged to de-emphasize discreet forms and move toward more mechanistic explanation.

[61] We need to recognize a general point about formism which also applies to the other world views, the world hypotheses as de scribed by Pepper represent a refinement of already refined bodies of thought. However, Pepper helps to clarify not only refined thought but rough data and danda as well. Put differently, formism represents the development of the root metaphor, similarity, but the recognition of similarity, and the operations of classification are necessary at all levels of thought and within whatever world hypothesis. The clarification gained by the consideration of formism abstracted from most substantive complications allows a better understanding of the problems and advantages of classification wherever one meets with the need to identify similarity in order to comprehend the things and events of the world. This is true whether we have under consideration the most sophisticated world view or one which is naive and provincial, whether "similarity" is primary as in formism, or secondary and derived as in the other hypotheses.

[62] Formist Criticism in the Arts.  Since similarity is the root metaphor of formism we obviously have the basis for one of the great principles in art criticism, mimesis. Yet the pursuit of "a likeness" in art has rarely, if ever, suggested that the art object should reproduce in exhaustive detail its subject matter. Formist art is uninterested in particulars. A virtual axiom of instruction in drawing and painting is that it is more important to learn what is left out of a life drawing, portrait, or landscape than it is to determine what is to be marked down. As a kind of generalization about the value of generalization this statement probably serves all of the critical perspectives. It supports the drive for vividness that motivates the contextualist. Integration, preferred by the organicist, is enhanced by the elimination of confusing and apparently unintegratable de tails. Pleasure is enhanced for the mechanist when the warts of pain and extraneous detail are excised from the work of art. Nevertheless, the principle of mimesis has generally tended to support a formist aesthetic where imitation involves the reproduction of the essence or normative aspect of reality.

[63] Pepper finds no outstanding modern exemplar of this approach in the sense of a critical work which makes formist assumptions while working out in detail a coherent aesthetic. Formism, in some version or other, was the operative world hypothesis during the great period of Renaissance art. Michelangelo represents the height of this world view in both its promise and its serious ambiguities. He never wrote a treatise on the theory of art though he apparently intended to do so. David Summers indicates that Michelangelo did say a great deal about art as a participant "… in the contemporary discussion of the arts and to an important degree defined his activity in terms of this discussion." (Michelangelo and the Language of Art, Princeton U. Press, 1981, p. 3) Summers reconstructs the language of this discussion among Michelangelo and his contemporaries. Apparently classical and near contemporary authors and works of art also figured prominently in these dialogues. The result is a plausible characterization of Michelangelo’s approach to art as it grew out of the cultural and intellectual milieu of the early sixteenth century Italian Renaissance. The theory which informed and was developed by this discussion is usually called Neoplatonism. However, as Summers indicates, it is not Neoplatonism in the sense of systematic and critical study of the philosopher’s work, but rather a Plato, and the various interpreters of Plato, whose ideas had been thoroughly incorporated into the assumptions, language, and values of the time. Indeed, Aristotle and the scholastic tradition while much criticized, appear to be as salient as Plato. These influences are, along with others, thoroughly conflated. However, an assumption which appears to be generally shared is that there are norms which are real, which can be discovered and are equivalent to scientific, moral, and aesthetic truth and beauty.

[64] Among the clearest expressions of the formist world view was the artist’s concern with proportion and perspective. The notion that from the study of nature, ideal relationships could be derived and expressed as mathematical propositions. Using "the face" as a measure of unity, various efforts were made to define the ideal proportions of the human body. An often considered problem was one rather ambiguously posed by the first century BC Roman architect/engineer Vitruvius: "...man’s body is a model of proportion because with arms or legs extended it fits into those `perfect’ geometrical forms, the square and the circle." (Kenneth Clark, The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form, Doubleday Anchor Books, N.Y., 1956, p. 36) This "Vitruvian man" is the source of Leonardo da Vinci’s well known drawing in which two super-imposed male nudes are in turn, superimposed on a square and a circle. Leonardo honors the conventional understanding of the puzzle when he places the figure’s navel at the center of the circle but deviates when he drops the square in relation to the circle, thereby displacing the navel from its ideal position. This ingenious revision is perhaps understandable when we consider Cesariano’s solution which placed the navel at the center of both the square and the circle. As Kenneth Clark remarks, the resulting proportions are perhaps more appropriate to a gorilla than a human being. (Clark, Ibid., p. 38)
 

Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man	Cesare Cesariano's Vitruvian Man

[65] The identification of formal properties in nature is probably best associated with the Italian Renaissance preoccupation with perspective. Durer who did the most extensive and systematic work in this area, learned the basic principles in Italy where, in turn, his treatises on the subject were well known. It is in this context that we can see the confrontation of a world hypothesis with the social scene, the peculiar problems of the artist, and individual genius. Michelangelo found Durer "very weak", because "Albrecht treats only of the measure and kinds of bodies..., to which a certain rule cannot be given, forming the figures stiff as stakes; and what matters more, he says not one word concerning human acts and gestures..." (quoted in Summers, op. cit., p. 380) The mechanical application of formal rules to human proportions and especially rendering the body in perspective (foreshortening) was simply not possible. Furthermore, the rules were static, providing no guidance when considering movement and gestures. A major goal of Michelangelo’s extensive anatomical studies was to better understand the organization of joints and muscles in order to capture the reality of movement and tension.

[66] Nevertheless, the inability to reduce vital dimensions of reality to mathematical or formal expression did not persuade Michelangelo that he should abandon the world hypothesis within which he thought and worked. Rather the discovery of ideal form in nature must turn to other more qualitative methods. The idea of concetto is Michelangelo’s best known notion which addresses this problem. In most respects concetto resembles the classical formist idea that the shoemaker conceives of a normative pair of shoes toward which she works. The artist’s concetti, however extensive their foundation in close observation and study of nature, is finally a qualitative formulation of the object to be rendered in word, paint, or stone. This was not merely an idea imposed on raw material but a cognition of form in nature which was realized by the artist. Michelangelo’s selection of stone for a sculpture on some occasions involved the selection of a piece which was not only suitable material for his concetto but even suggested the felicitous form. His supposedly "unfinished" pieces, e.g. "St. Matthew" and "Captives" at the Florentine Academy, suggest that the concetto is emerging from the marble block. Similarly the "sculptured" shape of human and animal figures, their tension and energy in struggle or motion, the dramatic impact of foreshortening, could not be captured in formal rules or laws but depended upon the "judgment of the eye" (giudizio dell’occhio). This judgment, in turn, springs from the genius and grace (grazia) of the artist. The formal and clarifying constraint of mathematical and deductive reasoning are not abandoned but transcended with these qualitative methods. Evidence becomes less clear cut and more problematic, what evidence there is, is in the sensual cognition of the work. These qualitative methods did not abandon the notion of normative form but did come to depend upon an essential quality of the artist which itself could not be confirmed by formal and unambiguous methods -- creativity, genius, grace. Training, experience, and reflection could prepare this soil but could neither assure or explain its productivity. A kind of circularity enters the explanation of art—the great work of art is a sign of genius, genius is the sign of a great work of art. Unsatisfactory as a formal evidential procedure, we may nevertheless develop a certain confidence that a work of art has unusual significance because it expresses some universal or normative reality.

[67] The observation of the existence of norms in reality is the great contribution of formism and "...has a pervasive though often hidden bearing on every aspect of human life including the aesthetic." (BCA, p.103) In the modern world the artist may be no less concerned with the imitation of the essence of an object, person, or situation, with the elimination of extraneous and distracting particulars, as her classical or renaissance counterpart. However, the ground of this normative discovery will be conceived in a different fashion. The artist attempts a reproduction of human nature but as species being rather than an objective yet immaterial form. Or, aesthetic value will be defined in terms of the art object itself. The physical materials and the skills of the craftsman imply limits as well as possibilities and the artist’s project is to realize these material potentialities. "This phase of formism comes very close to organicism. Every object has potentiality of perfection arising from its suitability to the end it will serve, the capacities of its materials, and the technical skill of the craftsman to shape the materials and make the most of them." (BCA, p. 106) An extension of this perspective is genre criticism where an effort is made to identify the attributes of a genre or style and judge a particular work in degrees of approximation to that standard. Similar in method is a third standard of modern aesthetic value, the conformity of a particular work of art to the standards intrinsic to a particular culture. "A work of art has aesthetic value in proportion as it gives expression to its age." This view, congenial to cultural and historical relativism, is probably the dominant view of contemporary art historians.

[68] The central idea and insight of formism with respect to aesthetic value can be captured in the definition, "... perceptions satisfying in themselves to the normal man." (BCA, p. 67) Though culture plays an important role in the definition of the normal man, Pepper has in mind normative attributes which are species specific and therefore "...legislate over any cultural trait." This definition covers most of the historical versions of formist aesthetics, taking into consideration the cultural standard while leaving room for criticism of that standard. Nor does this definition entail the uncritical acceptance of direct and naive perceptions whether satisfying or not. Techniques for the elimination of perceptual and cogitative distortions have been fundamental to the formist perspective. The development of formal reasoning and formal techniques of observation have obviously had this end in view. The errors and distortions in human cognition identified by psychoanalysis implicitly make assumptions about how this "cure" will uncover normal and undistorted standards of perception. Generally, training and wide experience will lead to funded perceptions which are closer to the norm and therefore more satisfying.

[69] Perhaps the principal difference between classical and modern formism (other than the former is explicit while the latter is largely implicit, one assumes a non-empirical reality the other usually does not) is that the classical approach hopes to identify a formal technique which leads directly to undistorted perception. The modern view proceeds more by means of negation and reduction (e.g. E. Husserl) toward the undistorted experience. James Joyce has Stephen Hero say "Claritas is quidditas." Joyce in specific novels and from one novel to the next, attempts by the elimination of irrelevant details to uncover the essential identity or quidditas of a character. The resulting epiphany reveals the character itself independent of any contribution made by an observer. A character is broken down into its separate parts but only a few of the elements are recombined to make-up its identity. "Although it is free of irrelevancies, the quidditas represented by the recombination is not the quidditas of a generality but an individual; its function is to identity rather than to abstract." (Irene Henry Chayes, "Joyce’s Epiphanies," in C.G. Anderson, ed., James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Viking Press, N.Y., 1968 [1946], p. 366) In this respect Joyce moves toward organicism but the persistence and primacy of identity considered across contexts keeps his aesthetic values within the framework of formism.

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