To be productive, rather than just commenting on commenting, this time I\u2019ll be looking at the work of Gabriel Tarde, best known for being effectively erased from the history books by \u00c9mile Durkheim or, rather, by those who loyally followed Durkheim. There\u2019s that something about disciples or acolytes, those who follow some great leader. They are usually way worse, way more dogmatic than the person they follow. You end up with a some sort of school where everyone has to be like the great leader or, well, like what the disciples think the great leader was like and thought. We could say the same about structuralism (linguistics), psychoanalysis (psychology), historical materialism (philosophy), analytical philosophy, to name a few, because people who subscribe to them have ended up setting them as schools of thought that set the rules of the game according to which everyone else is supposed to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, what is Tarde known for, if anything (because, well, he isn\u2019t that well known)? In short, his game was microsociology <\/em>and he was up to something as bastardous as quantifying <\/em>the social<\/em>! Both probably sound batshit crazy on their own, but even more so when included in the same sentence. That\u2019s because you\u2019ve been told that sociology deals with the society, that is to say groups <\/em>of people, not individuals<\/em>, and that the natural sciences are the quantitative sciences and social sciences are the qualitative sciences, the former being often called the hard sciences and the latter often being called the soft sciences. Well, as crazy as it may sound but Tarde was certainly a pioneer in this regard and clearly at odds with those reductive characterizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I only got to know Tarde\u2019s work through reading \u2018A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia\u2019 by Gilles Deleuze and F\u00e9lix Guattari. He does also get mentioned by Deleuze in, for example, \u2018Difference and Repetition\u2019, where it is only fitting to include him, considering the book title. Bruno Latour also has a wonderful book chapter titled \u2018Tarde\u2019s idea of quantification\u2019. I\u2019ll cover it in parts, as well as Tarde\u2019s \u2018The Laws of Imitation\u2019 because nothing beats reading the originals. There will be bits from other publications as well, but these will the ones covered most in this essay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Latour (147) opens up his book chapter, explaining the issue that we deal with, even today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn the twentieth century, the schism between those who dealt with numbers and those who dealt with qualities was never been bridged. This is a fair statement given that so many scholars have resigned themselves to being partitioned into those who follow the model of the \u2018natural\u2019 sciences, and those who prefer the model of the \u2018interpretive\u2019 or \u2018hermeneutic\u2019 disciplines.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, as I just pointed out, these images of what natural sciences and social sciences are like are something that we\u2019ve grown up with, largely thanks to the academics involved on both sides. Latour (147) further clarifies this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAll too often, fields have been divided between number crunching, devoid (its enemies claim) of any subtlety; and rich, thick, local descriptions, devoid (its enemies say) of any way to generalize from these observations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The first part is exactly what I have to deal with when it becomes apparent that I deal with numbers. The enemies or, rather, detractors (because I don\u2019t see others as enemies, really) can\u2019t comprehend how looking at numbers can have any nuance. It\u2019s like they assume that what I do, namely pointing out certain patterns<\/em>, has to do with me just counting how many times something occurs and then I tell you that this is the case. That\u2019s just way too reductive. There\u2019s far more nuance when it comes to going through sets of data. Of course it depends how the data was formed, what type of stuff was taken into account and how it is arranged because that all affects how it can be assessed. Simply put, if you do something simple like look at a large set of data, one variable at a time, it\u2019s fair to say that it\u2019s going lack nuance because all you get is the frequency of something. But if you can look at data and examine it with multiple variables, to see if we can find some correspondence <\/em>(typically done through contingency tables, aka cross tabulation or crosstab), that\u2019s where things start to get interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, what\u2019s so special about Tarde then? Well, as stated by Latour (147-148), he was never under any illusion that what is to be considered quantitative <\/em>in social sciences has to be like it is natural sciences. As crazy as it may seem, Tarde (1-2) considers social sciences to be a better fit for quantification than natural sciences because there is no necessity in social sciences to explain something in terms of mechanistic causality, reducible to a matter of force, energy or the like. Latour (148) summarizes that for Tarde the upside of assessing the social <\/em>is that what is assessed is always close, whereas the natural sciences deal with something that isn\u2019t, because there\u2019s always this distance, a yawning gap between the \u201coverall structure and underlying components\u201d in natural sciences, caused by a lack of information about, well, this and that, anything really, as it\u2019s a guessing game as to whether you can ever be sure that you now have it all under control, that you are aware of all the pieces of the puzzle. Tarde (4-5) argues that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe astronomer states that certain nebulae, certain celestial bodies of a given mass and volume and at a given distance, exist, or have existed. The chemist makes the same statement about certain chemical substances, the physicist about certain kinds of ethereal vibrations, which he calls light, electricity, and magnetism; the naturalist states that there are certain principal organic types, to begin with, plants and animals; the physiographer states that there are certain mountain chains, which he calls the Alps, the Andes, et cetera<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Summarizing these specific cases pertaining to specific sciences, he (4) states that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd, in all cases, the first data are simply affirmed; they are extraordinary and accidental facts, the premises and sources from which proceeds all that which is subsequently explain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, as Deleuze and Guattari might explain this, the natural scientists always assume that they start from beginning when, in fact, we are always in the middle of things. In other words, despite the arbitrariness involved in this, certain cases, what Tarde (5) calls capital facts, are held as the starting points. Tarde (5) challenges this approach:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn teaching us about these capital facts from which the rest are deduced, are these investigators doing the work, strictly speaking, of scientists?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n To which he (5) answers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are not; they are merely affirming certain facts, and they in no way differ from the historian who chronicles the expedition of Alexander or the discovery of printing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He (5) actually goes as far as to say that the historian actually has an edge over the scientist. For him (5), the issue is not that everything revolves around cause <\/em>and effect<\/em>, that one thing leads to another, but rather the reliance on resemblance<\/em>, what we might as well call identity<\/em>, what something is<\/em>, or, rather, what something appears to be<\/em>, as subsequently classified, measured and enumerated as such. He (5) wants to challenge this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[L]et us imagine a world where there is neither resemblance nor repetition, a strange, but, if need be, an intelligible hypothesis; a world where everything is novel and unforeseen, where the creative imagination, unchecked by memory, has full play, where the motions of the stars are sporadic, where the agitation of the ether unrhythmical, and where successive generations are without the common traits of an hereditary type. And yet every apparition in such a phantasmagoria might be produced and determined by another, and might, in its turn, become the cause of others. In such world causes and effects might still exist; but would any kind of a science be possible?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n To which he (5) answers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt would not be, because, to reiterate, neither resemblances nor repetitions would be found there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now, if this seems somewhat familiar to you, it might be because you\u2019ve read \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, \u2018Difference and Repetition\u2019 or \u2018The Logic of Sense\u2019, also by Deleuze. This is likely because Deleuze (and Guattari) are influenced by Tarde. It\u2019s also because all these guys, Deleuze, Guattari and Tarde, are influenced by the Stoics, at least to a certain degree. There is just something very similar about them, especially with regard to this passage written by Tarde (6):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[T]he mind does not fully understand nor clearly recognise the relation of cause and effect, except in as much as the effect resembles or repeats the cause, as, for example, when a sound wave produces another sound wave, or a cell, another cell. There is nothing mysterious, one may say, than such reproductions. I admit this; but when we have once accepted this mystery, there is nothing clearer than the resulting series.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In other words, it us, we, who come to understand the world as a series of causes <\/em>and effects<\/em>, causes and effects, one after another, based on how we approach the world through resemblance<\/em>. Now, Deleuze (4) has this to say about the Stoics in \u2018The Logic of Sense\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are no causes and<\/em> effects among bodies. Rather, all bodies are causes \u2013 causes in relation to each other and for each other.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, in other words, there are just bodies <\/em>(in the broadest sense of the word, like a human body or a body of water etc.) that are the causes<\/em>, in relation to one another and for one another, as summarized by Deleuze (4).<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you think of it, like a Stoic might, it certainly makes no sense to understand the world as this <\/em>(cause<\/em>) leading to that<\/em> (effect<\/em>), as a matter <\/em>of cause and<\/em> effect (to emphasize the and<\/em> aspect, as done by Deleuze). Why? Well, because all bodies <\/em>are in the present, here and now, and all they do is to (co)exist in space, in relation to one another, in some arrangement, in some assemblage<\/em>. If they are co-present, at all times, one thing cannot happen before anything else because nothing can happen in isolation from everything else. So, what we have instead are causes and causes, and more causes, that come to appear as effects, once we investigate something. Sure, we can speak of it as a matter of causes and<\/em> effects, but that\u2019s just something that we come up in retrospect, once we isolate something from everything else for the sake of clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To use a sports example, because why not, when one player crashes into another player, it\u2019s strictly speaking erroneous to claim that one player is at fault, that the player was reckless and thus caused the collision. Why? Ah, you see, it\u2019s because if we say that only one player is at fault, we treat the rest of the world as if it was static or, a least, somehow existed in separation from the player that is deemed to the one causing the infraction. The problem here is that all the players move simultaneously, in relation to one another, so it\u2019s not as simple as saying this one player caused the collision. It is certainly real, no doubt about it, but it\u2019s not an effect as bodies <\/em>always deal with mere change in the states of affairs<\/em>, how the bodies are arranged and mixed in relation to one another. We can, of course, think of it as an effect, but then we are discussing altogether something different, something that we come attribute <\/em>to the bodies, as explained by Deleuze (4-5). So, yes, in a way there are effects, but not in the way we typically come think of them as having to do with bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right, where was I? Okay, so, Tarde (6) makes note of how we can speak of resemblance <\/em>in terms of a quantity<\/em>. The things that share resemblance are repeated<\/em>. This is known as growth, like in the case of multiplying cells of a body. The other way to look at this would be in terms of groups and series. Here Tarde (6) notes that all sciences are alike in this regard, even the social sciences (like it or not):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn all of this I fail to see anything which would differentiate the subject of social science.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In short, to get somewhere with this, as expressed by Tarde\u2019s (1):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn social subjects we are exceptionally privileged in having veritable causes, positive and specific acts, at first hand; this condition is wholly lacking in every other subject of investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, as summarized by Latour (148), what is social <\/em>is always close, here and now, readily observable. Now, that may appear like a bold claim, that it\u2019s just that easy, but we\u2019ll get to it, eventually (in this essay or some future essay). For now, you may find yourself having a laugh at this, as if we could only focus on all things social and that\u2019s it. Well, no. Tarde (1) doesn\u2019t claim that we can just ignore everything that isn\u2019t social just because we focus on the social:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[A]re human acts \u2026 the sole factors of history? Surely this is too simple!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He (1-2) continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd so we bind ourselves to contrive other causes on the type of those useful fictions which are elsewhere imposed upon us, and we congratulate ourselves upon being able at times to give an entirely impersonal colour to human phenomena by reason of our lofty, but truly speaking, obscure, point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, no, let\u2019s not go down that path. It just results in idealism<\/em>, one type or another. It\u2019s not just about the social<\/em>, just like it isn\u2019t all just about what isn\u2019t social. He (2) continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet us likewise ward off the vapid individualism which consists in explaining social changes as the caprices of certain great men.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He makes this point to warn not to understand all things social <\/em>as having been caused <\/em>by a handful of notable people, heroes of their time, also known as great men (this is only accurate to retain, because of the sexist bent of the times, because at the time it would have been unthinkable to refer to great individuals, to great people, because, you know, women weren\u2019t considered as great, let alone people worth considering).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that we are on \u2018-isms\u2019, he (7) further comments on nominalism <\/em>and realism<\/em>, noting that the former it is marked by individual characteristics or idiosyncrasies <\/em>that are the only significant realities and the latter is marked by its sole focus on resemblances <\/em>between individuals and how they are produced. In other words, the former focuses on the unique aspects of each individual, as differentiated from others, whereas the latter focuses on the similar aspects of each individual, as judged in relation to others. He (7) further notes that (what we might contemporarily call) individualism <\/em>is a type of nominalism and socialism <\/em>is a type of realism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, in summary, thus far, Tarde is against claiming that people do this and\/or that because it is human nature<\/em> to do so. That said, he isn\u2019t saying that there aren\u2019t certain factors that are out of our control, that pertain to the way we are or come to be. That\u2019d be like claiming that everyone is exactly the same<\/em>, from the start to the finish. There\u2019s no need to be silly about this. Human biology, inasmuch as we understand it, does play a role. Then again, explaining something that we do as solely a matter of biology, that is in our nature<\/em>, or so to speak, is just nonsense as well. Also, when it comes to the society<\/em>, Tarde is against claiming that people do this and\/or that because it is part of their culture <\/em>to do so, in the sense that here culture acts as just another word for nature, as this omnipotent, God-like third party that explains why people what they do. Now, just because Tarde rejects such broad explanations doesn\u2019t mean that he thinks that society is shaped a select few individuals, that people do this and\/or that because a few greats made things the way they are. I\u2019d like to add this, to point out, that this applies to everyone, as he (2) sort of goes on to imply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tarde\u2019s (2) way of explaining what\u2019s going on may appear contradictory because the social <\/em>isn\u2019t explained by the people, by the individuals, but by the relations <\/em>of the individuals, by what lies in between<\/em> them. So, for Tarde (2), instead of great men, or, more contemporarily, great individuals (to not be sexist), or just individuals, great or not (to not be elitist), we should be focusing on ideas<\/em>, what he prefers to call \u201cinventions or discoveries.\u201d To be clear, he (2) doesn\u2019t like using the individual as the starting point because it is often hard to pinpoint when and where something came to be:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[L]et us explain these changes [in societies] through the more or less fortuitous [apparition], as to time and place, of certain great ideas, or rather, of a considerable number of both major and minor ideas, of ideas which are generally anonymous and usually obscure birth; which are simple or abstruse; which are seldom illustrious, but which are always novel.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s worth noting here that I replaced the word appearance <\/em>with apparition <\/em>because there is a risk that people focus on the appearance, as in the looks of something (to be ocularcentrist, once more), what something is<\/em>, supposedly, rather than what\u2019s at stake, how something comes to appear<\/em> to us, if it does, inasmuch as it does, at a certain time, in a certain place. The French original uses the word apparition, so emphasizing this point is worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve explained this distinction in the past, in painstaking detail, so I won\u2019t go more into it. It\u2019s actually as simple as just explained here. Appearance <\/em>can certainly be understood as an instance of appearing, as in, something like: \u201cHis sudden appearance was not welcome because no one had invited him to the party.\u201d The problem with appearance is rather that it tends to be understood as pertaining to likeness<\/em>, for example the looks of something or someone, like: \u201cI couldn\u2019t care less about my appearance as its irrelevant to the task at hand.\u201d The problematic part is that people often come to think of appearance as how something really is<\/em>, which, well, isn\u2019t at all that clear when we start to actually investigate the issue, as I did in the previous essay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s also another issue. Even when we use appearance <\/em>like I did in the former (made up) example (above), we focus on the instance of someone appearing, someone who we know as already having existence, in that case a person crashing a party, whereas with apparition <\/em>we focus on the very instance of appearing, how <\/em>and why <\/em>does this and\/or that appear to me, the way it does, inasmuch as it does. We are talking about the conditions of appearing<\/em>. So, to use the same example, we are not focusing on someone uninvited showing up, but on the terms of that person actually existing to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have to be like detectives when it comes to apparition<\/em>. Of course, taking into account the very fact that someone appears to us, the way that person does, at any given time, in this instance at a party, uninvited, is going to be super complex. It\u2019s going to be so complex that much of it is going to be pretty obscure to us, to the point that we can\u2019t even say this and\/or that appears to us because it fulfills this and\/or that condition of its apparition<\/em>. So, as Deleuze and Guattari (192-194) put it in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019, it\u2019s not as simple as addressing \u201cwhat happened\u201d because when we deal with apparition there is no necessity<\/em>, only contingency<\/em>, and therefore the appropriate question is \u201c[w]hatever could have happened for things to have come to this?<\/em>\u201d Moreover, it\u2019s worth further specifying that it\u2019s not even that we can\u2019t know something that happened in the past for sure, as we are addressing that past always in the present, but rather that, to really emphasize this point, to hammer this home, there is no necessity, nothing as simple as this must <\/em>lead to that, but rather that it may <\/em>lead to that, but it also may not, which leaves us in doubt, in indeterminacy, as they (193) point out. Of course, as Tarde (2) points out, in many cases we can\u2019t even know because of the obscurity involved. Yeah, sure, we can say it\u2019s because we lost record of the first instance of this and\/or that, but, well, in many cases no one really kept any records of this and\/or that, hence the obscurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be honest, it\u2019s not even that important to be able to point out who came up with what as it doesn\u2019t really change things. For example, it is contested whether Valentin Volo\u0161inov wrote \u2018Marxism and the Philosophy of Language\u2019 as some say it was Mikhail Bakhtin. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it was Pavel Medvedev. Maybe it was more than just one person who wrote it. Then again, maybe it wasn\u2019t. What matters is that it was indeed written. What\u2019s novel and what you get out of it is what matters, for me anyway. The author<\/em>, who we think wrote the book, is a figment of our imagination anyway, so what\u2019s the fuss all about? It\u2019s crazy how people obsess over such, about who\u2019s idea was this and\/or that, when who they are talking about is their figment of imagination. Sure, you can retain that figment of imagination, that\u2019s fine, but I reckon the problem is that it tends to get asserted as being an actual person, not a conceptual person, not a figment of imagination. Now, of course, the obsession over who did what has to do with what Deleuze and Guattari call the passional self<\/em> in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019. So, what matters to people who fuss over such is that they <\/em>want to get the credit, that they <\/em>should be heralded for some past accomplishments that they <\/em>probably didn\u2019t accomplish all by themselves. It\u2019s just me<\/em>, me<\/em>, me<\/em>, followed by more me<\/em>, me<\/em>, me<\/em>, and don\u2019t you dare to forget about me<\/em>! Petty squabbling. I like how Deleuze and Guattari (3) address this issue at the very beginning of \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus<\/em> together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. \u2026 Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n And (3):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The point here is that not only were there two writers, Deleuze and Guattari, or so we\u2019ve come to assume to be the case, because they decided to put their names on the book, but also that even on their own each of them is always many. To be clear, they say this because it is very hard to separate what is your own, or so to speak, and differentiate it from what isn\u2019t your own. We may like to say that it was \u2018I\u2019 who came up with this and\/or that, yet, oddly enough, even if that is the case, you only came up with whatever it is that is supposedly novel or actually novel because you were influenced and inspired by others, if not actually aided by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s also worth adding that the person who wrote something is not the same person in each instance. That said, we are in this habit of thinking that, say, someone like Deleuze is this specific person who held certain views and we can discover them by reading his works. The problem with this line of thinking is that it would appear that the person who wrote the books wrote them at the same time, as if frozen in time, unaffected by anything, any influence, any life experience. This is, of course, impossible and that\u2019s why I like to point out that it is actually just a figment of one\u2019s imagination. Then there\u2019s also the problem with the reader<\/em>, who isn\u2019t always the same person, as the actual reader is not stuck in time nor place either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Right, back to Tarde (2) who elaborates what he means by inventions <\/em>or discoveries<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[A]ny kind of an innovation or improvement, however slight, which is made in any previous innovation throughout the range of social phenomena \u2013 language, religion, politics, law, industry, or art.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The point here is that invention <\/em>or discovery <\/em>should not be understood in a limited sense as having to do with an invention or an innovation, as technology. It can certainly be about technology and often it is about it, but that\u2019s too limited for Tarde. So, yeah, any idea or social phenomena will count equally well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Returning to the earlier point on how obscure the origins tend to be, for Tarde (2) part of their obscurity has to do with the way it takes a while for something to catch on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt the moment when this novel thing, big or little as it may be, is conceived of, or determined by, an individual, nothing appears to change in the social body, \u2013 just as nothing changes in the physical appearance of an organism which a harmful or beneficent microbe has just invaded, \u2013 and the gradual changes caused by the introduction of the new element seem to follow, without visible break, upon the anterior social changes into whose current they have glided.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He (2) further comments on this, noting that the way inventions <\/em>come to be is thus, in part, illusory because it gives us this sense of \u201cfundamental continuity in historic metamorphoses.\u201d In other words, because changes tend to be ever so subtle, we come to think of them as a continuum or \u201ca chain of ideas\u201d, one leading to another, as he (2) points out. Now, this does not mean that ideas, that is to say inventions <\/em>or discoveries<\/em>, are not connected. They are. However, as he (2) points out, they are all distinct and discontinuous, yet connected. It\u2019s just that the connection isn\u2019t a given. Instead, as he (2) clarifies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[T]hey are connected by the much more numerous acts of imitation which are modelled upon them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Here we get to the title of his book which has to do with imitation. So, in summary thus far, we inventions <\/em>and imitations<\/em>. People come up with this or that novel thing and then that gets imitated. That\u2019s the gist of this. Therefore, for Tarde (3):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSocially, everything is either invention or imitation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now, as pointed out already, it makes no difference in terms of what we are dealing with, whether its social<\/em>, vital <\/em>(biological\/genetic) or physical<\/em>, as he (7) goes on to state. You simply have an invention <\/em>of some kind, something novel, that appears at some point in time, somewhere, which will then be repeated by others, imitated <\/em>by them. That\u2019s the gist of this, as he (7-8) points out. All the sciences, including the social sciences are very alike in this regard. That said, he (8) notes that people tend to be struck by the orderliness of the natural sciences whereas the social sciences seem more like a hot mess:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[W]e should not be surprise if the [social sciences] seem chaotic when we view them through the medium of the historian, or even through that of the sociologist, whereas the [natural sciences] impress us, as they are presented by physicist, chemist, or physiologist, as very well ordered worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n But, as they say, appearances may be deceptive. In his (8) words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese latter scientists show us the subject of their science only on the side of its characteristic resemblances and repetition[.]\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Which, I would add, is not a problem in itself. What is left out is the problem, as elaborated by him (8):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[T]hey prudently conceal its corresponding heterogeneities and transformations[.]\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In contrary, in the social sciences, the social scientists, in this case the historians and the sociologists do the exact opposite, as already mentioned in this essay in reference to Latour (147). In Tarde\u2019s (8) words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe historian and sociologist, on the contrary, veil the regular and monotonous face of social facts, \u2013 that part in which they are alike and repeat themselves, \u2013 and show us only their accidental and interesting, their infinitely novel and diversified, aspect.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n He (9) provides an example pertaining to history. For him (9), historians are always too busy to explain to their audience how it is that, for example, Gallo-Romans, became the way the did, by going through \u201cevery word, rite, edict, profession, custom, craft, law, or military man\u0153uvre\u201d introduced by the Romans in conquered Gaul and how those ideas spread in the area, swaying the people, making these newly introduced ideas eventually more popular than the old ways, customs and ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Okay, he (9) is well aware of how painstakingly dull a process that would be, to go through it all, to discuss intricacies of Latin, Roman poetry, law, religion, art, craftmanship, varieties of Roman architecture, including but not limited to varieties pertaining to temples, basilicas, theaters, hippodromes, aqueducts and atriumed villas, and teaching of military man\u0153uvres to local soldiers. This would then followed by an assessment of Roman Christianity, its rites and how it spread to Gaul, as he (9) goes on to add. That said, as I like to think, being lazy is a very poor excuse (not that people say that they are lazy, why would they, even if they are?). In his (9) words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd yet it is only at this price that we can get at an exact estimate of the great amount of regularity which obtains in even the most fluctuating societies.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n The point here really is that in social sciences there is this habit or practice <\/em>of focusing on the \u201caccidental and interesting\u201d (8), \u201cnovel and diversified\u201d (9), which I reckon is just fine, inasmuch as it is clearly indicated that all the regularities <\/em>have been glossed over in the process (i.e. that you just didn\u2019t bother with the other stuff). I would say that this picture is pretty accurate even contemporarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, it is worth adding that the way academics works, not only are social scientists generally expected to focus on \u201crich, thick, local descriptions\u201d and natural scientists on \u201cnumber crunching\u201d, as Latour (147) summarizes the issue, but they are incentivized to work in these ways. Conversely, straying from the path, doing anything beside what you are expected is effectively disincentivized. In short, we could say that you are disciplined <\/em>to act in a certain way because you will be punished <\/em>for acting in any other way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, my work is arguably quantitative<\/em>, albeit you could say that in certain ways it is also qualitative<\/em>. Anyway, what it is or isn\u2019t is beside the point. What matters is how it comes across to others, to one\u2019s supposed peers who are to judge the work. In my experience, it is very hard to be appreciated for what you do if you don\u2019t follow in the footsteps of established names in your field, whose work more or less define what you should be doing and, conversely, what you shouldn’t be doing. Now, appreciation is not what you should be worried about, really. I mean surely you are not trying to sell something! Or are you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is exactly where it gets interesting. When we take a closer look at the academic practices <\/em>themselves, we can see a pattern<\/em>, a regularity<\/em>. It\u2019s highly ironic, really, considering how in social sciences you are expected to go for the \u201caccidental and interesting\u201d (8), \u201cnovel and diversified\u201d (9), yet this practice, doing just that, and not something else, is, in itself, marked by conformity to similarity and regularity. In terms of incentives, there are none for those who wish to try something different. Why? Well, because, if you don\u2019t do what you are expected to do, you will find yourself in the margin, that is to say not funded and your work not accepted, which, in turn, reinforce one another as it is harder to get funded if you haven\u2019t published and it\u2019s harder to get published if you lack funding as then you likely spend your days doing something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s of course also the productivity angle. Oddly enough, being lazy, that is to say not going through a ton of data, and focusing on something small, typically in the name of the \u201cnovel and diversified\u201d (9), is incentivized whereas thinking big is not incentivized. When the only measures of success are how many manuscripts you\u2019ve managed to get published and in which publications, it only makes sense to get things done with the least effort involved. Again, it\u2019s highly ironic that it\u2019s about quantity <\/em>over quality<\/em>, considering how we then get quantity out of qualitative studies. Conversely, it only makes sense not to spend hours and hours on something, to get to the bottom of things, if you will (albeit not in search of the final or original cause sense of it), if it is treated equal to something where none of that effort was involved. Now, of course, this has to do with the way the system works, how it revolves around this type of measurebation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, Tarde (9-10) comments on how this works in practice. So, instead of putting in the hours, studying various social phenomena, in all of their tedious everydayness, it\u2019s just way easier to attempt to make sense of it all, either by resorting to the great men theory, that, say, Julius Caesar played a key role in the Romanization of the Gauls, or that certain preachers Christianized the Gauls, or rationalizing how well Christianity and Romanism meshed together, when it isn\u2019t all that clear what Christianity or Romanism even are, considering how they were formed on the basis of various ideas originating in different parts of the Roman Empire. Here it\u2019s worth going back a bit, to his (7) point about nominalism <\/em>and realism<\/em>, how we like to attribute something to dissimilarity <\/em>(the individual<\/em>) or, alternatively, to similarity <\/em>(the group<\/em>). We could also call this the subjective <\/em>and the objective <\/em>explanations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tarde (12) is well aware of how the social world appears just incoherent, having all these currents that just flow somewhere, at times intersecting. However, he (12) won\u2019t fall back on attempting to explain how we make sense of it, on a daily basis, as a matter of subjective experience<\/em> or as guided by objective laws<\/em>. It\u2019s at this stage that he (12) indicates why he thinks that, in spite of one’s flaws (what just discussed), the historian is more advanced than the natural scientist:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is but recently that the naturalist has had any glimpses that were at all clear of biological evolution, whereas the historian was long ago ware of the continuity of history. As for chemists and physicists, we may pass them by. They dare not even yet forecast the time when they will be able to trace out, in their turn, the genealogy of simple substances, or when a work on their origin of atoms \u2026 will be published.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now, of course, you have to make note of how this example is from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, right at the when experiments were conducted on atoms. To be clear, this book originally came out in 1890, which is some seven years before J. J. Thomson discovered the electron, a subatomic particle, and nearly two decades before Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden discovered the atomic nucleus. Anyway, this is still relevant as the point here is to push things. What is considered the elementary particle is at the heart of the issue. We can always ask if there is something more elementary than what is posed as the elementary particle. In short, the issue here is the continuity and the indeterminacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if it isn\u2019t subjective<\/em>, as natural scientists like to label the work of social scientists, or objective<\/em>, as the social scientists like to ridicule the natural scientists for believing in such a thing, then what is the deal? What is Tarde after? He is after something completely different and I think Latour (148) explains this well:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cParadoxically, those in sociology who try to ape the natural sciences have mistaken the latter\u2019s constitutive lack of information for their principal virtue. Yet what is really scientific is to have enough information so as to not have to fall back upon the makeshift approximation of a structural law, distinct from what its individual components do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now, you might object to this and point out that natural sciences involve plenty of data. Sure. Granted. Then again, as Latour (149) points out, the data they work on is nowhere near the data you get out of human acts. The problem is that all of this pitting one against the other, natural vs. social sciences, hard vs. soft sciences, objective <\/em>vs. subjective<\/em>, individual vs. structural (feel free to come up with more of these), is completely missing the point. Tarde isn\u2019t advocating for either because, well, to be frank, the whole debate is just idiotic to him. Latour (149) aptly summarizes what we have:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[I]f we stick to the individual, the local, the situated, you will detect only qualities, while if we move towards the structural and towards the distant, we will begin to gather quantities.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, again, for the umpteenth time, social sciences are supposed be about qualities <\/em>whereas natural sciences are supposed to be about quantities<\/em>. Now, Tarde is having none of this. As explained by Latour (149), he is actually flipping everything on its head:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor Tarde the situation is almost exactly the opposite: the more we get into the intimacy of the individual, the more discrete quantities we\u2019ll find[.]\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Now, this doesn\u2019t explain why that is, so Latour (149) elaborates why that is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[I]f we move away from the individual towards the aggregate we might begin to lose quantities, more and more, along the way because we lack the instruments to collect enough of their quantitative evaluations.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n So, because social sciences deal with human acts<\/em>, that is to say social phenomena<\/em>, they always occur to close to the individual. You don\u2019t need sophisticated tools for the analysis. Observation works just fine. Okay, sure, you may benefit from tools and they probably will make your life easier doing just that, but the point is that you get a lot out of social phenomena even without special instruments. This is not the case when we move from the social phenomena to the natural phenomena<\/em>. In natural sciences you can only do so much without a laboratory, whereas in social sciences some paper and a pen might not even be necessary, even though they are certainly handy. I mean you could do what I do without a computer, even on paper, perhaps even without it, but it sure would be cumbersome. Anyway, this is the earlier point about distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Latour (150) emphasizes that it is of utmost importance not to confuse Tarde\u2019s understanding of quantification of the<\/em> social <\/em>with how quantification <\/em>works in natural sciences. Quantifying the social involves crunching numbers, yes, but it is not done in order to uncover some structural law<\/em>, how things really are<\/em>, how the society really is<\/em>, or the like. By looking a large number of instances we are dealing with aggregates. That said, again, the point is not to assume that we are dealing with a some superorganic <\/em>or transcendent <\/em>(otherworldly) entity once those instances are aggregated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Latour (150) exemplifies this issue in reference to Tarde\u2019s (25) earlier book, \u2018Social Laws: An Outline of Sociology\u2019, noting that when we speak of \u2018they\u2019 we are in the habit of forgetting that \u2018they\u2019 always consists of a number of actual individuals<\/em>. As explained by Tarde (25):<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI \u2026 maintain that this \u2026 relation [is] not \u2026 a connection binding one individual to a confused mass of men, but merely a relation between two individuals, one of whom, the child, is in process of being introduced into the social life, while the other, an adult, long since socialized, serves as the child\u2019s personal model. As we advance in life, it is true, we are often governed by collective and impersonal models, which are usually not consciously chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In short, the relation<\/em>, how we become who we\u2019ve become is always in relation to<\/em> actual people, who\u2019ve become who\u2019ve they\u2019ve become always in relation to actual people, not some transcendent <\/em>(otherworldly) or superorganic <\/em>entity. He (25) continues:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut before we speak, think, or act as \u2018they\u2019 speak, think, or act in our world, we begin by speaking, thinking, and acting as \u2018he\u2019 or \u2018she\u2019 does. And this he or she is always one of our own near acquaintances. Beneath the indefinite they, how-ever carefully we search, we never find anything but a certain number of he\u2019s and she\u2019s which, as they have increased in number, have become mingled together and confused.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In other words, it\u2019s not that it\u2019s wrong to attribute who we are, who we\u2019ve become, to others. That\u2019s exactly the point he is making here. It\u2019s rather that these others, \u2018they\u2019, are always actual people. This reiterates the earlier point about realism<\/em>, how we should not think of groups <\/em>as these given entities. Instead we should think of groups as our own products, as subsequent abstractions of what we gather as bearing similarity <\/em>to one another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, by reading Tarde (25), we may be fooled to think that he is advocating for the individual<\/em>. I mean it appears that he does not believe in the group <\/em>and if he doesn\u2019t believe in that, then that ought to mean that he must give primacy to the individual. However, that\u2019s not the case. When he argues against the group, \u2018they\u2019, he is arguing against society <\/em>as this transcendent <\/em>(otherworldly) or superorganic <\/em>entity that explains why people behave the way they do. For Tarde (25-26) what\u2019s important is not the group of individuals, nor the individual, but the relation <\/em>between individuals. As Tarde can be a bit verbose at about this at times, Latour (151) offers a good summary to this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c[W]e should find ways to gather the individual \u2018he\u2019 and \u2018she\u2019 without losing out on the specific ways in which they are able to mingle, in a standard, in a code, in a bundle of customs, in a scientific discipline, in a technology \u2013 but never in some overarching society. The challenge is to try to obtain their aggregation without either shifting our attention at any point to a whole, or changing modes of inquiry.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n If this, how this is explained as not being about the subjective<\/em>, nor about the objective<\/em>, seems familiar to you, it\u2019s probably because you can find some others who think this way, even if the nomenclature differs somewhat. For example, Volo\u0161inov\u2019s understanding of collective experience<\/em> is arguably very similar to this because he is against giving primacy to the individual <\/em>as an autonomous <\/em>actor but also against treating the individuals as mere drones to some otherworldly entity that makes people act the way they do. It\u2019s always actual people that we deal with, from who we learn things. It\u2019s always actual people who\u2019ve come to influence us in certain ways. I reckon that it\u2019s not a mere fortuitous accident that Deleuze and Guattari discuss both Tarde and Volo\u0161inov in \u2018A Thousand Plateaus\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now that I got that covered, it\u2019s time to return to Tarde\u2019s central concepts: invention <\/em>and imitation<\/em>. He (xiii) notes that he is using the word imitation differently from its everyday usage, that is to say in a broader sense than it is typically used, so it may cause some confusion, at least initially. For him (xiii), imitation is not restricted to the conscious <\/em>act of imitation. It can be conscious or voluntary but it can also be unconscious <\/em>or involuntary, as he (xiii) points out. For him (xiii) this is not an issue because he doesn\u2019t consider people to be fully autonomous <\/em>individuals nor mere slaves to some superorganic <\/em>or transcendent <\/em>(otherworldly) power that makes the do things. It\u2019s rather that people \u201cpass by insensible degrees from deliberate volition to almost mechanical habit\u201d, as noted by him (xiii). As already explained, and reiterated here, on one hand, Tarde wants to avoid lapsing into giving primacy to the subject <\/em>and, on the other hand, he wants to avoid asserting that there is some superorganic <\/em>or transcendent <\/em>(otherworldly) \n
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