that all depends on how you understand foucault's use of the term experience...
> -----Original Message-----
> From: d@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 12:55:46 -0500
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] RE : experience-experiment.
>
> On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 11:22:53AM -0800, Kevin Turner wrote:
>> Hi Fran??ois
>>
>> Having re-read all the paragraphs in which the word ???experiment???
>> appears, I have selected the following sentences in which the
>> term ???experiment??? should possibly have been translated as
>> ???experience.???
>>
>> From the ???Preface:???
>>
>> ???The breadth of the experiment [experience] seems to be identified
>> with the domain of the careful gaze?????? (BC: xiii).
>
> This one--unlike the others, in my eyes--can be read either way.
>
>> From ???The Lessons of the Hospital:???
>>
>> ???Once one defined a practical experiment [experience] carried out
>> on the patient himself, one insisted on the need to relate particular
>> knowledge to an encyclopaedic whole??? (BC: 71).
>
> How does one carry out an experience on someone else? What is a
> "practical" experience, and how can defining one create a need to relate
> particulars to general medical knowledge?
>
>> ???The doctrine of the hospital was an ambiguous one: theoretically
>> free, and, because of the non-contractual character of the relation
>> between doctor and patient, open to the indifference of experiment
>> [experience]???(BC: 83-4).
>
> How can experience be called indifferent? Does this sentence not say
> the following?
>
> "Because the doctor did not need the patient's agreement, he could
> experiment on the patient (with indifference to his experience!)
> rather than constrain himself to treatment. This fell within the
> mission of the hospital because it advanced medical knowledge."
>
>> From ???Seeing and Knowing:???
>>
>> ???The opposition between clinic and experiment [experience]
>> overlays exactly the difference between the language we hear, and
>> consequently recognise, and the question we pose, or, rather,
>> impose: ???The observer???reads nature, he who experiments
>> [experiences] questions?????? (BC: 108).
>
> Experimenting is questioning, for sure. But experiencing?
>
> Can we say this?
>
> "The difference between experiment and observation is that in the
> former, one controls conditions, one attempts to isolate phenomena by
> interfering, one acts in specific ways on one's object and observes
> the consequences of action; in the latter one is passive. To ask
> a question is to affect what is said; merely to listen is not. It
> is observation which is experience, and experiment which is action;
> observation/experience listens/knows(connaitre); experiment/action
> questions/knows(savoir)."
>
> (Often the notion of experiment affecting its object is expressed with a
> not-quite-accurate reference to Heisenberg.)
>
> The strange word in that sentence seems to me not 'experiment' but
> 'clinic.' Looking it up:
>
> 3. (Med.) a medical facility, often connected with a school
> or hospital, which treats primarily outpatients.
>
> 4. (Med.) A school, or a session of a school or class, in which
> medicine or surgery is taught by the examination and treatment of
> patients in the presence of the pupils.
>
> Oh... Within the clinic(4), the medical students just watch passively.
>
>> And from ???Open Up a Few Corpses:???
>>
>> ??????progress in observation, a wish to develop and extend experiment
>> [experience]?????? (BC: 136).
>
> Novel experiments (and the publication of their results) are the means
> by which scientific observation progresses. But experience?
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: d@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Sent: Sun, 6 Jan 2008 12:55:46 -0500
> To: foucault-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Foucault-L] RE : experience-experiment.
>
> On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 11:22:53AM -0800, Kevin Turner wrote:
>> Hi Fran??ois
>>
>> Having re-read all the paragraphs in which the word ???experiment???
>> appears, I have selected the following sentences in which the
>> term ???experiment??? should possibly have been translated as
>> ???experience.???
>>
>> From the ???Preface:???
>>
>> ???The breadth of the experiment [experience] seems to be identified
>> with the domain of the careful gaze?????? (BC: xiii).
>
> This one--unlike the others, in my eyes--can be read either way.
>
>> From ???The Lessons of the Hospital:???
>>
>> ???Once one defined a practical experiment [experience] carried out
>> on the patient himself, one insisted on the need to relate particular
>> knowledge to an encyclopaedic whole??? (BC: 71).
>
> How does one carry out an experience on someone else? What is a
> "practical" experience, and how can defining one create a need to relate
> particulars to general medical knowledge?
>
>> ???The doctrine of the hospital was an ambiguous one: theoretically
>> free, and, because of the non-contractual character of the relation
>> between doctor and patient, open to the indifference of experiment
>> [experience]???(BC: 83-4).
>
> How can experience be called indifferent? Does this sentence not say
> the following?
>
> "Because the doctor did not need the patient's agreement, he could
> experiment on the patient (with indifference to his experience!)
> rather than constrain himself to treatment. This fell within the
> mission of the hospital because it advanced medical knowledge."
>
>> From ???Seeing and Knowing:???
>>
>> ???The opposition between clinic and experiment [experience]
>> overlays exactly the difference between the language we hear, and
>> consequently recognise, and the question we pose, or, rather,
>> impose: ???The observer???reads nature, he who experiments
>> [experiences] questions?????? (BC: 108).
>
> Experimenting is questioning, for sure. But experiencing?
>
> Can we say this?
>
> "The difference between experiment and observation is that in the
> former, one controls conditions, one attempts to isolate phenomena by
> interfering, one acts in specific ways on one's object and observes
> the consequences of action; in the latter one is passive. To ask
> a question is to affect what is said; merely to listen is not. It
> is observation which is experience, and experiment which is action;
> observation/experience listens/knows(connaitre); experiment/action
> questions/knows(savoir)."
>
> (Often the notion of experiment affecting its object is expressed with a
> not-quite-accurate reference to Heisenberg.)
>
> The strange word in that sentence seems to me not 'experiment' but
> 'clinic.' Looking it up:
>
> 3. (Med.) a medical facility, often connected with a school
> or hospital, which treats primarily outpatients.
>
> 4. (Med.) A school, or a session of a school or class, in which
> medicine or surgery is taught by the examination and treatment of
> patients in the presence of the pupils.
>
> Oh... Within the clinic(4), the medical students just watch passively.
>
>> And from ???Open Up a Few Corpses:???
>>
>> ??????progress in observation, a wish to develop and extend experiment
>> [experience]?????? (BC: 136).
>
> Novel experiments (and the publication of their results) are the means
> by which scientific observation progresses. But experience?
> _______________________________________________
> Foucault-L mailing list
____________________________________________________________
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