foundationshowever, if we put that up as an absolute criterion, what about driftwood as sculpture?
(and the answer is that you have to invent stopgap solutions like ‘picking up a stick
at the shoreline and taking it to the exhibition, is also a creative act’ – which may of
course also be true, but is not exactly what was originally intended by the formulation
‘products of human creativity’). or we could use the example that it is normally
completely all right to make a distinction between science and religion by claiming that
science is based on observation, religion on speculation – but we should not forget what
i will here let the austrian- english philosopher Karl popper (1902–1994) formulate
(and sir Karl was absolutely not an anarchist in matters of science and philosophy):
‘the modern theories of physics, especially einstein’s theory... were highly speculative
and abstract, and very far removed from what might be called their “observational
basis”’ (popper 1963: 255).
Family resemblanceThe fact that we cannot squeeze cultural and many other phenomena into standard
descriptive definitions, has been forcefully pointed out by another austrian- english
philosopher, ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), in §§ 65–78 of his Philosophical
Investigations (Wittgenstein 1953). his examples are things as supposedly exact
as numbers (cardinal numbers, rational numbers, etc.) or as loosely conceived as
what Wittgenstein calls ‘language games’ (various ways of using language in various
situations), but his main example of a concept that cannot be pinned down in a
descriptive definition, is ‘game’ (in his original german as Spiel, which is somewhat
broader than ‘game’, also covering ‘play’ – and here i quote most of his §66):
Consider for example the proceedings that we call “games”. i mean board-
games, card- games, ball- games, olympic games, and so on. What is common
to them all? – don’t say: ‘There must be something common, or they would
not be called ‘games’’ – but look and see whether there is anything common
to all. – For if you look at them you will not see something that is common
to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To
repeat: don’t think, but look! – look for example at board- games, with their
multifarious relationships. now pass to card- games; here you find many
correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out,
and others appear. When we pass next to ball- games, much that is common
is retained, but much is lost. – are they all ‘amusing’? Compare chess with
noughts and crosses. or is there always winning and losing, or competition
between players? Think of patience. in ball- games there is winning and
losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this
feature has disappeared. look at the parts played by skill and luck; and at
the difference between skill in chess and skill in tennis. Think now of games
like ring- a- ring- a- roses; here is the element of amusement, but how many
other characteristic features have disappeared? and we can go through the
many, many other groups of games in the same way; can see how similarities
crop up and disappear.
(Wittgenstein 1953: §66)