Against ‘Pure Theory’

Dear students:

The discussion yesterday and now, today, reading your reflections have moved me to add “pure theory” to my list of words I exclude from my active vocabulary.

The spine of theory is explanation.

Explanandum = the thing to be explained.

(link, on these matters)

Now, think spiral:

TheoryJ is a complex involving an explanandumJ and an explanationJ.

We may narrow explanandumJ to some subset, constituting explanandumJ+1. We then adapt TheoryJ to explanandumJ+1, making adjustments, yielding explanantionJ+1.

The complex of explanandumJ+1 and explanationJ+1 is then TheoryJ+1.

So we have TheoryJ and TheoryJ+1 — each with its own explanandum.

So what would be “pure theory”?

Is TheoryJ “pure theory”, while TheoryJ+1 is “applied theory”? What is it that makes TheoryJ “pure”?

TheoryJ may itself be a narrowing of some TheoryJ-1. In that case, is it then TheoryJ-1 that is “pure theory”?

It would seem that “pure theory” would have to be a theory that is not a narrowing of any wider theory.

But what is that theory? What is Theory0?

Is it “Man acts”? If that is Theory0, I should like to know what exactly is explanandum0 (that’s the first of my three frank questions). Also, 2nd: Why should we care? And 3rd: What merit in your explanation? What is the alternative explanation to which “Man acts” is superior?

And, if “Man acts” is Theory0 and is pure theory, is everything that is a narrowing of that, literally any sentence that narrows “man” and “acts,” then “applied theory”? At what point does narrowing pass from “pure” to “applied”?

I suggest excluding the pure-applied theory distinction from your active vocabulary.

Rather than thinking that there is a an upper-most or lower-most level, embrace the idea of a spiral, with an ellipsis before the first loop you see and after the last…

/Prof. Klein