Slide 8: Epistemological Caveat

But, before we begin, let’s acknowledge that our starting assumptions limit our view on the phenomenon in question.  As the physicist Albert Einstein famously insisted:

It is the theory which decides what we can observe.

 And as linguist Kenneth Pike (1982: 3) put it:

The theory is part of the observer; a different theory makes a different observer; a different observer sees different things, or sees the same things as structured differently …

 So this paper is an exploration of some ideas that follow from specific starting assumptions, using a particular theoretical tool as lens.

But, as we go, keep in mind Pike’s notion that ‘the theory is part of the observer’.  We will be offering a precise model of the sense in which this is so.

OK, so this play is divided into three acts…