Theory
diagrams from the Undulation Theory of Light (source unknown)
• Table showing some theoretical constructions of 'theory' (and its cognates) in (largely) binary thought
| 'theory' and its cognates | type of relation | source of construction | ||
| theory | practice | oppositional | popular thought ('theory') | |
| theory | praxis | dialectical | Marxism | |
| theoria | aesthesis | poesis | 1 of 3 triangulated terms | Greek thought / Ruskin (a) |
| Pure Reason | Practical Reason | Kant (b) | ||
| theory as writing | art as practice | oppositional | some art school pedagogies (c); |
|
| theory as art | Conceptual Art | |||
| theory as hypothesis | practice as test | natural sciences |
(a) In the foreword to Paul de Man’s The Resistance to Theory, Wlad Godzich notes that:
‘Etymologically, the term [theory] comes from the Greek verb theorin, to look at, to contemplate, to survey. And in Greek, it does not enter into an opposition with praxis - an opposition constructed in Idealist philosophy and eventually used to combat the latter - but rather with aesthesis, something that Ruskin recalls in his Modern Painters:
The impressions of beauty... are neither sensual nor intellectual but moral, and for the faculty receiving them... no term can be more accurate... than that employed by the Greeks, “theoretic” which I pray permission to use and to call the operation of the faculty itself “Theoria.” [...] The mere animal consciousness of the pleasantness I call Aesthesis, but the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception of it I call Theoria.'
(Wlad Godzich, introduction to Paul de Man The Resistance to Theory (University of Minnesota Press; 1986) p. xiv)
The visuality of theorin (however metaphoric) as a sublimation of 'aesthesis' is an interesting turn in the 'theory-practice' configuration, as artists often receive it.
(b) For Kant, 'judgement' - as the topic of 'the 3rd Critique' that focuses on aesthetic judgement - mediates between Pure Reason and Practical Reason.
(c) Note, however, Terry Atkinson's claim: ‘No matter how much theory is disguised or repressed, there is no practice without theory. The theory that practice has nothing to do with theory is a theory, a disingenuous and naive one, but none the less a theory.’ Terry Atkinson ‘The Phantoms of the Studio’ The Oxford Art Journal (January 1990)
PhD thesis:
The artist as a multifarious agent: an artist's theory of the origin of meaning
journal papers, book articles, edited books, editorial roles, and conference papers