Practical Knowledge
The radical difference between the two kinds of knowledge is that the object of speculative knowledge is the necessary, while the object of practical knowledge is the contingent and variable. It follows from this, says Smiglecki, that no practical knowledge is truly and properly a science, because science, as Aristotle had taught, is knowledge of the necessary. It would seem to further follow that any attempt to make politics a science on the model of metaphysics or mathematics was foredoomed to failure. The significance of this for Burke’s thought is obvious. (Canavan, 1960, 207)
As one of my professors never tired of putting it, it’s one thing to know how to clone a human being. It is quite another to know whether we should clone Hitler or Churchill.
Thing is, you can clone either all you want, you won’t get them. For no one is the product of nature alone, but of nurture as well. You raise a clone of Hitler in an American middle class home, you’re far more apt to get a sensitive artist than a mass murderer. You want a mass murderer, you have to raise the kid to be a mass murderer.
Comment by Alan Kellogg — 2/7/2009 @ 10:17 pm
Churchill fought in the Boer War where concentration camps were first appeared. The British put the Boers in them.
Comment by nk — 2/8/2009 @ 1:37 pm