what does it mean for "an idea to be completed"?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

provocative claims:

i. in science it means it is moved beyond by being proved wrong
ii. in art it means it is moved beyond by being established as the unspoken "condition of possibility"* for an artform/genre/field/discipline to persist in stand-alone quasi-perpetuity

*in quotes bcz frank distrusts this phrase (and bcz i only have a very hand-wavey idea what i mean by it)

Comments

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

Latour (AGAIN) says a fact is established when it moves into being used in a "positive mode". "Because X is true..." subsumes X as fact. which is when pursuing the possibilities of X not being true becomes too onerous, or logistically (not logically) a pain in the arse (he doesn't use that expression).

an old fact proved wrong is dissolved or dismantled, not completed, surely.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

ok let's put it this way:

an idea (call it A) is "completed" when A and not-A are split from one another socially, and continue their careers in different (and possibly incommensurable) zones of enquiry

in science, being proved wrong means that A is cast out into the zone (or rather, the incoherent cluster of zones) that is non-science, while not-A is built into the fabric of science (as latour argues)*

in art, the split (by contrast) not into art and non-art, but -- as noted above -- into rival artforms/genres/fields/disciplines, which define themselves against one another

(obviously what i'm doing here is trying to define the idea of completion so as to make a distinction bewtween how ART treat ideas and how SCIENCE treats ideas)

*so what is being completed is not so much the "idea" as the arc of the story in which A and not-A still circle one (within a given terrain) another vying for love