Re: [Foucault-L] RE : experience-experiment.

You can't be serious!

On Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 02:12:49PM -0800, Kevin Turner wrote:
> 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?

Folow-ups
  • Re: [Foucault-L] RE : experience-experiment.
    • From: Kevin Turner
  • Re: [Foucault-L] RE : experience-experiment.
    • From: Kevin Turner
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    Re: [Foucault-L] RE : experience-experiment., Kevin Turner
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