How Methodologies of Defining Concepts
Structure and Limit Our Experience of Reality
From: Herbert Marcuse.(1964). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, Boston: Beacon Press
"The common feature [of one-dimensional modern life] is a total empiricism in the treatment of concepts; their meaning is restricted to the representation of particular operations and behavior. The operational point of view is well illustrated by P.W. Bridgman's analysis of the concept of length:
To find the length of an object, we have to perform certain physical operations. The concept of length is therefore fixed when the operations by which length is measured are fixed; that is, the concept of length involves as much and nothing more than the set of operations by which length is determined. [1]
"Bridgman has seen the wide implications of this mode of thought for the society at large:
To adopt the operational point of view involves much more than a mere restriction of the sense in which we understand 'concept,' but means a far-reaching change in all our habits of thought, in that we shall no longer permit ourselves to use as tools in our thinking concepts of which we cannot give an adequate account in terms of operations. [2]
"Bridgman's prediction has come true. The new mode of thought is today the predominant tendency in philosophy, psychology, sociology, and other fields. Many of the most seriously troublesome concepts are being 'eliminated' by showing that no adequate account of them in terms of operations or behavior can be given. ...
"Outside the academic establishment, the 'far-reaching change in all our habits of thought' is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel those which are irreconcilable with the system. ...
"The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior; consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcencence, not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and behavioral point of view, practiced as 'habit of thought' at large, becomes the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and aspirations. The 'cunning of Reason' works, as it so often did, in the interest of the powers that be. The insistence on operational and behavioral concepts turns against the efforts to free thought and behavior from
the given reality and for the suppressed alternatives."
[1]P. W. Bridgman. (1928). The Logic of Modern Physics, NY: Macmillan, p. 5
[2]P.W. Bridgman. op cit, p. 31
