What is a categorical closure?

Gustavo Bueno 1978

Fundación Gustavo Bueno

   

What is a categorical closure?

Gustavo Bueno interviewed by Jos� Manuel Vaquero,
Oviedo, April the 29th, 1978.
Translated by Alejandro Ru�z Falqu�s
© 2013 FGB · Oviedo
 

Jos� Manuel Vaquero conducted this interview on the occasion of a series of

conferences offered by Gustavo Bueno at the Fundaci�n Juan March on the so-called
«human sciences». It was the presentation of a collection of works published as
Estatuto Gnoseol�gico de las Ciencias Humanas, which the Fundaci�n Gustavo Bueno
made available in digital format in 2011. El Pa�s published the interview in a very
incomplete way which left out most references to Bueno's theory of science and
focused on more ephemeral questions, such as the changes perceived in the
Communist Party at the time. We offer it here in its entirety, following the 2011
version published in El Catoblepas. It serves as a good introduction to Sciences as
Categorical Closures.

1. What is a categorical closure?

By «categorical closure» I designate the process through which the different sciences achieve
their status as such, that is to say, how they get constituted. The establishment of a category
occurs through each science demarcating its own circle and thus enclosing a field which is
different not only from other non-scientific formations (literary, artistic, theological…), but
also from other sciences. By virtue of its categorical closure, geometry distinguishes itself
from theology or from music as much as it does from thermodynamics.

The theory of categorical closure implies that sciences are not mere knowledge or the
reflection of a previously structured reality ready to be known or registered (as descriptionism
or empiricism would have it). It also implies that sciences are not just formal constructions (of
theories or models) meant to be tested experimentally to demonstrate that they are able to,
at least, «save the phenomena» and therefore are not falsified (as formalism or Popperian
theoreticism argue). Likewise, the theory of categorical closure denies that sciences have a
determined object (biology, life; physics, matter…) or that they have none (as if they were
applied to a mass or amorphous continuum, tailored by formal models). Sciences have fields
or domains, i.e., multiplicities of terms classified into different groups. According to this,
biology is not «about» life, but about macromolecules, cells, organs; and geometry is not
«the science of space», but the science of figures, double reasons, sine and cosine…; finally,
history does not deal with the past, but with documents and relics. The unity of a science
does not originate in its pre-established object, but in the process through which the terms of
a material field, composed through precise operations, group together in closed chains, thus
establishing material relations that can achieve the status of a synthetic identity (truths, see
below). These chains are «closed» in the mathematical sense that the terms resulting from an
operational composition within the field can be in turn re-composed with other terms or
«factors» of the same field, in a circular way.

Scientific truth would be located, according to the closure theory (and this is one of its most
characteristic points), in the sphere of identity. This does not amount to reducing the sciences
to the moment of identical connection between parts of their respective fields: their net is
much vaster and the life of a science internally includes even errors. But the knots through
which this net holds fast are the scientific truths, understood not as a correspondence (or
isomorphism) between abstract models and the material world, but as a relation of synthetic
identity between the very material terms, operationally constructed through different courses
or paths. For instance, the truth, if there is any, within Bohr�s atomic theory, is not to be
found in the adequacy of a planetary model «reflecting» the reality of the atom, neither in the
ability of the model (or theory) to «save the phenomena» (from a pragmatic standpoint) but
in the identity between the materials themselves (resulting, each one of them, from very
different and complex courses: spectroscopic analyses, study of the black-body radiation,
etc): for instance in the identity between terms such as (m² 2π² Z² e4 / ch²) and R (the
Rydberg constant).

The categorical closure thus emerges as a criterion of scientific status which allows us to

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What is a categorical closure? Gustavo Bueno 1978

discriminate those constructions which, not being closed, do not contain in themselves the
guarantee of their own truth. The theory of categorical closure is therefore a critical
instrument to distinguish, within the whole set of cultural formations, scientific constructions
from those which are only pseudo-scientific, even though they might intend to be sciences.

2. Is the constitution of sciences by means of categorical closures intimately related to a new

conception of philosophy or a new approach to philosophy?

The philosophical conception at the base of the theory of categorical closure is a materialist
philosophy, insofar as it implies a conception of scientific truth that relies on the very material
connections between the terms of the scientific domains or categories. It is an anti-sceptical
conception, which propounds, as a medicine against the hyper-criticism leading to scepticism,
scientific truths as evidences or certainties. It does so while stressing that these truths are
not given (from above or from below), but achieved as a result of slow operational and
historical processes.

At the same time, the theory of categorical closure, by virtue of its own nature, wants to
establish the limitations of scientific truths themselves, insofar as they are secluded within
their own categorical circles. The philosophy which stands at the basis of the theory of
categorical closure is not «scientism» (it does consider sciences as the only source of reason).
The materialist philosophy which stands at the basis of the theory of categorical closure finds
in effectively developed sciences the main argument to nourish our confidence in human�s
rational ability. But this ability is dialectic, multiple, and its diverse realisations and
constructions are not always commensurable between themselves. There are many different
sciences (and not even every single science is something unitary) and the relations between
them do not constitute a new domain whereupon a «science of sciences» could be
established. Each different science belongs to, and constitutes, an ontological category.
Moreover, their practical significance is different as well and the many connections that exist
between different sciences are of a dialectic and often conflicting nature.

Therefore, I understand that there is a need for philosophical reasoning, even when
considering the sciences: the theory of categorical closure itself is not presented as a «science
of sciences» but as a philosophical doctrine, largely built in opposition to alternative ones.
Scientific reason, as it is developed through the diverse sciences, adopts the form of
categorical closures, but this does not imply that whatever remains outside these categorical
closures, outside the sciences, should be considered irrational. When we say that philosophy
is not a science we do not mean that it is irrational, arbitrary or mystic. Rather, in the name
of rigour, we say it as a criticism to those who do not distinguish between philosophy and
science, and thereby ignore the structure of sciences and the dialectic relations between
them.

But when a society abandons the discipline of philosophical rationalism, even if it keeps
cultivating categorical sciences, its place can only be filled by mythic or confusing thought,
often produced by scientists talking outside of their own secluded category. Or not be filled at
all. In any event, it does not make mush sense to oppose as a dilemma an allegedly
«scientific approach» to things to a philosophical approach. This is because the expression
«scientific approach» is mendacious, it suggests a unity that does not exist: the sciences are
multiple and heterogenic in method and content, and a reputed scientist in one domain might
be a pure ideologue when discussing other domains or reality as a whole (including hereby
the meaning and place of his own science within the broader world).

3. Can we still consider philosophy as «the mother of all sciences»? What validity does this expression
have today? Where do sciences arise from?

The theory of categorical closure denies the conception of philosophy as the mother of all
sciences. This metaphysical conception completely distorts the historical reality. It is linked
with the classical image of the [Cartesian] «tree of knowledge». The theory of categorical
closure presupposes that categorical sciences do not stem from philosophy, but from
(categorical) technologies, at the same time that they cause the development of new
technologies («the scientific and technical Revolution»). Geometry stems from the agricultural
measurement techniques or from brickwork; the chemical sciences stem from metallurgic
technologies or from guilds of dyers/dry cleaners; linguistics stems from practices of scribes
and translators.

Thus, it would be closer to reality to say that sciences are the «mothers» of philosophy – but
neither would it be absolutely exact. Philosophy stems from other sources, mainly from the
great Neolithic myths, which respond, in turn, to the cultural and social needs which arose in
a particular stage of human development. What happened was / The fact is that the
constitution of sciences – and the development of reason implied in such a constitution –
deeply determined philosophy, and spurred it on a particular direction. Thus, it might be said
that the philosophy of our (Hellenic) tradition, unlike philosophies from other traditions

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What is a categorical closure? Gustavo Bueno 1978

(Indian, Chinese), is to a large extent shaped by geometry, as long as it is a «Geometry of

Ideas» (of Ideas that cross over categories and that find their way through them, often being
the result of incommensurabilities within and between closed fields). The fact that the
«earliest philosophers» (Thales, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato…) were also great
geometricians does not mean that geometry stems from philosophy, but rather the other way
around. Actually, strictly speaking, I would say that none of them stems from the other.
Philosophy and the sciences have different sources, but these are sources bound to merge
(sometimes with turbulence) and in merging they are mutually modified.

4. Has your approach to human sciences something to do with the Neokantian division between
sciences and arts/letters?

Human science is the name recently given to what was formerly called «humanities» or
«arts». Arts were not considered a science, but something else. As a consequence of the
industrial and scientific revolution, sciences (natural and formal) experimented a tremendous
growth by which they became basic activities for our modes of production (in Greece,
geometry was rather, so to speak, superstructural). This process established a chasm
between the scientific culture and the literary («humanistic») culture, the two cultures that C.
P. Snow discusses in his famous lecture. Snow was shocked, and not without reason, at the
«monopolistic» tendency to consider as cultured men (or «intellectuals») only novelists,
poets, journalists – a definition «which does not include Rutherford, neither Eddington, nor
Dirac, nor Adrian». «Human sciences» (Snow himself somehow acknowledges it in his
«second approach») in a way constitute a bridge between both margins of the abyss –
between the two cultures.

But, despite this optimism, the human sciences cannot just spontaneously accumulate next to
the natural sciences, as if they were two homogeneous parts of a homogeneous whole. The
expression «human sciences» is used in an extortionate and mimetic way: we now refer as
scientific to a literary research which has little to do with sciences in the classic sense. And,
what is worse, we speak of sciences («psychoanalytic sciences», «political sciences») when
talking about theories which are often either pure mythology or pure empiricism or, at best,
just accumulated wisdom. And I say this while acknowledging that wisdom is as important as
science itself. The theory of categorical closure is to a great extent intended to clarify many
points regarding the «status» of the so-called «human sciences».

5. Are there still sophists out there?

Yes, of course; sometimes unfortunately and sometimes fortunately. Because there are
sophists like Dionisiodorus and there are sophists like Protagoras. The worst of our Spanish
sophists, even those who belong in the lineage of Dionisiodorus, reach only to the level of
translators of Dionisiodorus.

6. How do you evaluate the transformation of the PCE (Partido Comunista de Espa�a, Spanish
Communist Party) from Marxist-Leninist to Marxist revolutionary?

It is too early to deliver an opinion; this won�t be possible until one can evaluate the
effective course that PCE takes after its IX Congress. To my mind, no one knows exactly
where do the new modifications lead to not even those who have propitiated them, nor those
who have complied with them, because the reality of the PCE exceeds the consciousness that
some of its militants or dissidents have about it. Given that and given the complexity of the
process, I reserve my own opinion until I see how the meaning of these modifications is
configured in the forthcoming month.

What I do dare to say is that the theoretical and philosophical level of the new formulations is
underdeveloped in respect to what reality demands: some particular popes of the Marxist
theory, generally Madrilenian, are directly responsible for this situation of underdevelopment,
which might become really a really serious hindrance to the PCE�s political future and, with
it, for the whole country. The PCE is by nature and history inseparable from this theoretical
necessity, which other political parties might not need so vitally – and since they do not need
it, neither they have it nor do they miss it.

7. Why do you think that, being yourself the utmost defender of academic philosophy, your
philosophy arouses more and more interest in the worldly sphere, where your influence is higher?

Because the «Academia» is not a castle in the air which stands above or below the world:
rather, it is a part of our world, an organ within our culture and, therefore, its own activity
cannot but have an effect in its environment, as well as reciprocally.

8. Why have you been so stubborn in remaining a «provincial» philosopher when it is well known that
you have received offers to move to Madrid?

Among other reasons, because the concept of «provinces» is a bureaucratic concept

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configured from Madrid. That is, from a city (Madrid) that, seeing what surrounds it as
«provinces» happens to place itself in the most superficial layer of the political and cultural
consciousness of our days. One of the ways of gaining depth might be to get rid of this
superficial «figure of consciousness» and to penetrate a «province», especially if this province
is Asturias. Madrid is a very complex place and of course you can find everything there; but
the semi-cultivated snobbery generated by the control of the national media is characteristic
of Madrid, and only on in exceptional cases can someone who lives there and devotes himself
to «intellectual efforts» be free from it.

9. What is, in your opinion, the reason for the success of the so-called «new philosophers»?

Essentially, that they have tackled important and interesting problems at the proper moment.
I disagree with their positions – but also with the positions of those who try to explain their
success as a «manoeuvre from the right», from the CIA, or similar things. If the mechanisms
of capitalism and right-wing politics have intervened formally it is precisely because they have
foreseen that the environment was ready for it. The new philosophers have aroused again the
questions of traditional philosophy. They have violently attacked Plato, but by doing so they
have in turn proved that Plato needs to be attacked, i.e., that he is still present as an
inexcusable reference if we are to understand what is going on in our world.

Gustavo Bueno Mart�nez

Oviedo, 29 April 1978

• Literatura y materialismo filosófico 16-20 julio 2018

• Controversia entre el tomismo y el molinism

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