Saturday, August 18, 2018

Two different keyboards

"The error of antiquity was to believe that the functioning of thought and the conceptual lexicon proper to the philosophy of nature extended to the sciences of nature.  The error of certain modern scientists [(savants)], insofar as they are in search of a philosophy, is to believe that the kind of thinking and conceptual vocabulary proper to the sciences of nature can serve to build a philosophy of nature."

     Or theology of nature, I'm thinking, as with the case of, just possibly, "information theory" (Dan Hardy's use of this notwithstanding).  Jacques Maritain, The peasant of the Garonne:  an old layman questions himself about the present time, trans. Michael Cuddihy and Elizabeth Hughes (New York:  Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1968 [1966]), 140-141.  =Le paysan de la Garonne:  un vieux laïc s'interroge à propos du temps présent (Paris:  Desclée de Brouwer, 1966), 208:
L'erreur de l'antiquité a été de croire que le fonctionnement de la pensée et le lexique conceptuel propres à la philosophie de la nature s'étendaient aux sciences de la nature.  L'erreur de quelques savants modernes, pour autant qu'ils sont en quête d'une philosophie, est de croire que le fonctionnement de la pensée et le lexique conceptuel propres aux sciences de la nature peuvent servir à construire une philosophie de la nature.
     I was wondering if "savants" wouldn't be better translated as "scholars" or "intellectuals" or "the erudite", given that the opening error was an error of antiquity in general and that the more explicit "sciences" is available right here in the immediate context.  But then I saw it opposed to "philosophes" below.
     That admitted, note that there are no "typewriters" ("machines à écrire", even "clavier de machine à écrire"; cf. "machine equipped with the scientific keyboard", below, which is simply "clavier scientifique" preceded by "jouer") in the original, and that while one "writes" ("écrire") with a typewriter, one "plays" ("jouer") a piano (keyboard).  The only consideration going for this translation, it seems to me, is the fact that keyboards might (or might not!) be thought to vary less from keyboard instrument to keyboard instrument than from typewriter to typewriter:
In the team which will work at such a renewal [of the philosophy of nature], each man must be able to use (with relative ease) two typewriters, one equipped with a certain keyboard, the other with a quite different keyboard—one that his discipline has made familiar to him, and the other which, as a man of good will, he will have to learn how to use rather late in the day.  The philosophers should know how to use, at least as amateurs, the machine equipped with the scientific keyboard, and the scientists the one equipped with the philosophic keyboard   [(chacun devra être capable de jouer . . . sur deux claviers différents, l'un que son métier lui a rendu familier, l'autre dont, en homme de bonne volunté, il aura dû apprendre le maniement sur le tard; les philosophes devront savoir jouer, au moins en amateurs, du clavier scientifique; les savants, du clavier philosophique)].  May the angels of true knowledge be there to help them! [(141 =208)]
     Cf., on the two keyboards, p. 273 of the English.

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